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©2001 Black Hawk Productions, LLC - Online Since 2001 - Bringing to you the true story of the Black Hawk War in Utah.
The Mormon's Black Hawk War in UtahBrigham Young's so named "Black Hawk War" in Utah began when Mormon pioneers came to Utah territory in 1847. Native Indian peoples who had inhabited the territory for thousands of years, referred to as the Ute Indians, were in sharp disagreement with settlers who were steadily encroaching upon their ancestral land at the rate of some three thousand a month! It was this infringement upon the Native peoples rights that resulted in a series of disastrous conflicts causing untold thousands of deaths. But, the murky bemusement about Utah's "Black Hawk War" is this little arcane fact... there never was a Chief the Utes called "Black Hawk" nor were there any Black Hawk Indians. The name "Black Hawk" doesn't exist in the Ute language! The Black Hawk War in Utah was not one single event, there were some 150 bloody confrontations over a 24 year period between Mormon settlers, the US Government, and Utah Native peoples during the years of 1849 to 1873. It was genocide, plain and simple, Natives were subjected to every conceivable and inconcealable torture, mass murders, rape, and death, death to others, and death to animals and plants, to the waters and the land. For Utah's Native peoples, the war meant the loss of their inheritance and heritage. It was the end of a sacred time — a time to be honored, remembered and never forgotten. Who benefits when history as it is written by the victors gives very little insight to Utah's American Indians perspective of the Black Hawk War? While writers of our time are meticulous in their often ambiguous feel-good accounts, what they write of the Native peoples is often scant, brief, and disingenuous. It is a disturbing fact that many scholars who write about Chief Black Hawk, the Black Hawk War or, any Indian history, rarely ask or care what the Indians they study have to say about their work, nor do they asked how they would analyze, interpret, or if they have their own version of the particular story they are writing about. To examine and relate to you Utah's forgotten tragedy from the perspective of the Ute, Paiute, Goshute, and Shoshoni, I will say I have deep gratitude toward them for their generosity to share their painful stories with me. However, if the true story of the Indian peoples of Utah is ever to be told, I say respectfully, it is they who will need to tell it.
My thanks to the many scholars, friends, and donors, and above all my great-grandfather Peter Gottfredson, for their help and inspiration to do this project. I sincerely hope you will find my work interesting and informative as you browse this website of the Black Hawk War: Utah's Forgotten Tragedy. Phillip B Gottfredson
Historic Photographs by Permission From: University of Utah Marriott Library Special Collections and The Utah State Historical Society
A Brief Synopsis of the Black Hawk War: Utah's Forgotten Tragedyby Phillip Gottfredson - Award Winning Advocate for the Native Peoples of Utah"There was a time when our people were happy and content living in the majestic mountains and fertile green valleys of Utah. Then the Mormons came, and our people were killed—the old, the young, the children, women—and many taken to reservations where many more would die." - Member of the Ute Tribe "We took from them almost all of their land--the reservations are just a tiny remnant of traditional tribal homelands. We tried to take from them their hunting rights, their fishing rights, the timber on their land. We tried to take from them their water right People say, "that's all in the past we just need to get over it." Like their forefathers before them, the descendents of the dominate culture of Utah are in denial and refuse to acknowledge the cruel mistreatment of Utah's American Indian peoples. Utahan's say it's the Indian people who are to blame, "we gave them every opportunity to succeed... it's their own damn fault." And so remember this, racism has to be taught. Children learn racism from their families, teachers and community. You see, there is no mystery or plethora of complex reasons why the Black Hawk War happened, it's very simple. It was our ancestors arrogance, not their humility, that caused the war. It was their greed, not their generosity, that created the conflict. It was their loathing, not their respect, that caused the deaths of countless children, women, and men. The truth gets cloaked in brilliantly managed rhetoric filled with half truths, ambiguities, and omissions by the victors who blame and demonize Utah's Native Peoples in every conceivable way. Which promotes resentment and distrust, instead of friendships, forgiveness and much needed healing. "The Time has come when Indian people need to stop being victimized. They need to tell their story and demand that it be told accurately." - Forrest S. Cuch Member of the Ute Nation What is the Ute Indians’ side of the story? And, why has their history, their account, their interpretation, their version been purposely ignored and long omitted from school curricula and historical accounts? When people are denied access to their own true history by educators as both American Indians and non-Indians of Utah have been, when Indian students are forced to accept solely the victors point of view, when cultural traditions and customs of the American Indian are systematically replaced by western beliefs; when they are denied their right to speak their own language and denied their religious freedom, when they are systematically driven from their homeland and murdered, it is a fulfillment of the Doctrine of Discovery. What is the Doctrine of Discovery? Long before Columbus arrived in the Americas, Christian Monarchs decreed that anyone who did not believe in the God of the Bible, or that Jesus Christ was the true Messiah, were deemed "heathens," "infidels" and "savages". Christians were then The early Mormon settlers are portrayed in the victor’s accounts as people who were fair-minded and of good intentions when they came to Utah territory. And upon arriving they were confronted by Indians whom they described as “friendly toward the Mormons” but later they were inaccurately and unfairly judged as barbaric wild savages who terrorized them.
The truth is Utah's Indian people were a vibrant productive culture, and didn't have any particular animosity toward early Mormon pioneers when they first arrived, whereas, according to the Book of Mormon, the church believed they had a divine obligation to convert Utah's American Indians to Mormonism, according to church doctrine, and in so doing the so-called "loathsome" Indians would become a "white and delightsome people" and would be forgiven of the sins of their forefathers. (Book of Mormon 2 Nephi 5:21-23) According to church doctrine, the nature of the dark skin was a curse, the cause was the Lord, the reason was because the Lamanites "had hardened their hearts against him, (God)" and the punishment was to make them "loathsome" unto God's people who had white skins. "When the Ute failed to assimilate into Mormon culture, the answer was to exterminate them." - Historian Robert Carter
The Cause? "It was a question of supremacy between the white man and the Indian"It was in 1850 when Mormon apostle George A. Smith, cousin to Church founder Joseph Smith, declared that the Indian people "have no right to their land" and he instructed the all-Mormon legislature to "extinguish all titles" and get them out of the way and onto reservations. This set the stage for the infamous Black Hawk War that would follow. Smith was 33 years of age when making decisions affecting the lives of thousands of Native peoples. LDS Church President Brigham Young's victory was perhaps a hollow one for, in order to fulfill his dream, he had to destroy a civilization. He complained it was "cheaper to feed them than to fight them," as he was spending millions in church funds equipping his private army to war against them. Brigham paid his Generals as much as $300 a month while some 3000 soldiers were being paid some $16.00 a month to rid the land of it's Indian inhabitants. Then in 1866 the United States government reimbursed Brigham some 1.5 million for military expenses. (See Memorial of the Legislative Assembly of Utah) Young's long-time admonition to the members of his church was to "Treat them kindly, and treat them as Indians, and not as your equals," came in the wake of the tens-of-thousands of settlers who systematically spread out across the most fertile land of the Utes. Many "saints" were spending time in the Indian camps and inviting Indians into their homes, to which Brigham responded, "If the inhabitants of this Territory, my brethren, had never condescended to reduce themselves to the practices of the Indians, (as few of them have,) to their low, degraded condition, and in some cases even lower, there never would have been any trouble between us and our red neighbors." - (See Brigham Young Discourses) Brigham Young was quoted by the Denver Rocky Mountain Newspaper as saying, "You can get rid of more Indians with a sack of flour, than a keg of powder." Just how many of the some 70,000 Indians did he get rid of? By 1909 the U.S. Census reported that the Indian population had decreased to just 2300.
Barbarians... who did you say?
What was the motivation behind such barbarianism? Money? Indeed, the severed heads were shipped to Washington and sold for "scientific examination." Some heads would fetch as much as a $100 each, a small fortune in those times. The massacre at Bear River occurred January 29, 1863. Five hundred thirty-one Shoshone were slain by the U.S. army under the command of Colonel Patrick Edward Connor—among them, old men, 90 women and children. After the slaughter ended, soldiers went through the Indian village raping women and using axes to bash in the heads of women and children who were already dying of wounds. Chief Bear Hunter and sub-Chief Lehi both were killed. The troops burned 75 Indian lodges, took possession of 1,000 bushels of wheat and flour, and 175 Shoshone horses. While the troops cared for their wounded and took their dead back to Camp Douglas in Salt Lake City for burial, hundreds of Indians' bodies were left on the field for the wolves and crows for nearly two years. Brigham Young obliged the federal governments request by suppling Connor with cavalry troops from the Utah Militia. Although the Mormon settlers in Cache Valley expressed their gratitude for "the movement of Col. Connor as an intervention of the Almighty" in their behalf, the Bear River Massacre has also been brushed aside in the history of Utah, and all blame placed on Connor. - John Alton Peterson Utah's Black Hawk War - Rod Miller's Massacre at Bear River "The Bear River Massacre has been ignored. It was not in the interest of key players—the military and the Mormons—to remember.." - Salt Lake Tribune On the night of April 21, 1866 another heinous crime was committed in Circleville, Utah, led by LDS Bishop William Jackson Allred and his son James T. S.. While Paiutes were being held captive in a below ground shelter, one by one, 24 in all -- women, men, and children, their throats were cut. The only crime that historical accounts accuses these innocent victims of is that they were Indian. - (See Circleville Massacre) "In those early days it was, at times, imperative that harsh measures should be used. We had to do these things, or be run over by them. It was a question of supremacy between the white man and the Indian." - ( See John Lowry 1894 )
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Join me, Phillip B Gottfredson, as we explore the most obscure and darkest chapter in Utah's history and, the life story of an extraordinary brilliant Ute leader named Nuch, better known as "Chief Black Hawk". He was a man of deep compassion whom history has mistakenly overlooked and demonized. From 1849 to 1863, Nuch witnessed the senseless murder of his family, the gruesome beheadings of his kin, mass executions of his people, he then was branded with the name "Black Hawk" by his nemesis Brigham Young. In 1865, he was chosen by his tribe to be a sub-Chief of his brother Chief Tabby. Out numbered and against all odds of ever winning, he commanded a
formidable counter-attack and held back white expansion
into southern Ute territory for nearly a decade. He undermined their economics, caused cattle markets to collapse, causing the abandonment of some 70
Mormon villages. Ute
leaders, especially Chief Nuch (Black Hawk), were fully aware that life as they knew
it was about to end. An honorable man, his personal torment was his people who were becoming
increasingly famished, sick, the death rate was alarming, as their hearts filled with hopelessness and
despair. Over the two years prior to his death in 1870, Nuch then led peace efforts, referred to in firsthand accounts as "Black Hawk's Mission of Peace",
that eventually brought the war to an end. Following the death of Nuch (Black Hawk) in 1870, in 1919 members of the Mormon church with pride and pleasure robbed his grave, and put his bones on public display in the LDS Museum on Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City. 
s. We tried to take from them their culture, their religion, their identity, and perhaps most importantly we tried to take from them their freedom. And what is so amazing about this whole story is that we failed. We failed after hundreds of years of trying to take everything from American Indians. We failed to do that. They are still here and there's survival; that great saga of survival is one of the great stories of all mankind." - Professor Dr. Daniel McCool University of Utah 
entitled to commit all manner of depredations upon them. Indeed America was founded upon Christian principals; there was no separation of church and state by those who drew their power from Old Testament-inspired Manifest Destiny, saying: "This is the land promised by the Eternal Father to the Faithful, since we are commanded by God in the Holy Scriptures to take it from them, being idolaters, by reason of their idolatry and sin, to put them all to the knife, leaving no living thing save maidens and children, their cities robbed and sacked, their walls and houses leveled to the earth." - Steven T. Newcomb Indigenous Law Institute and author of "Pagans in the Promised Land." 
In 1853 Ute leader Walkara (Black Hawk's uncle) told interpreter M. S. Martenas, "He (Walkara) said that he had always been opposed to the whites set[t]ling on the Indian lands, particularly that portion which he claims; and on which his band resides and on which they have resided since his childhood, and his parents before him—that the Mormons when they first commenced the settlement of Salt Lake Valley, was friendly, and promised them many comforts, and lasting friendship—that they continued friendly for a short time, until they became strong in numbers, then their conduct and treatment towards the Indians changed—they were not only treated unkindly, but many were much abused and this course has been pursued up to the present—sometimes they have been treated with much severity—they have been driven by this population from place to place—settlements have been made on all their hunting grounds in the valleys, and the graves of their fathers have been torn up by the whites." - STATEMENT, M. S. MARTENAS, INTERPRETER Great Salt Lake City, July 6 1853 Brigham Young Papers, MS 1234, Box 58, Folder 14
The gruesome be headings of some 40 Ute corpses in 1850, heads stacked in boxes, and hung by their long hair from the eves of buildings at 
He had fought the good fight, and he knew he was about to die, before Chief Nuch passed over in 1870, deathly ill from a bullet wound he received over a year earlier at Gravelly Ford while attempting to rescue a fallen comrade, he chose to travel 180 miles by horse and visited every Mormon village to apologize for the pain and suffering he and his warriors had caused. Thinking not of himself but, putting his people first, he made one last appeal, he said to them, "you broken your promises, stolen our land, killed our children, men and women, and spread disease among my people." He then asked for forgiveness and pleaded with the settlers to do the same, and end the bloodshed. "You didn't see that happening on the part of the settlers", said Forrest Cuch, "So it took a greater man to do such a thing. And that's what is overlooked in the victors’ accounts." ( See 
"It was white history that wrote it--that he surrendered. And no, a man like that don't surrender. He'll come to terms with reality. I'm done, we're done, we, we did what we could, we're done. But it gets written differently... And like any of us, I think you get to a point where it's like any war, you get in and you do what you've got to do. And maybe there's a family there, and you killed, killed their kids--you, as a human, that thing we all are, is going to at least make you say I'm sorry." - Larry Cesspooch/Member of the Ute Tribe
On September 20, 1919, an article appeared on the front page of the 
Just 49 years had passed since Chief Black Hawk had been laid to rest in 1870 at Spring Lake, Utah, when members of the LDS Church plotted the robbery of his grave. Accompanying the article is a photo of William E. Croff standing in the open grave, grinning ear to ear, while holding the skull of Nuch (Black Hawk). While the living descendents of Nuch were outraged, their voices fell on deaf ears. Seemingly without conscience or remorse church leaders condoned the practice, in spite of a federal law passed in 1906 called the Graves Protection Act. Descendents of Nuch had no real legal recourse until the enactment of the National American Graves Protection Reparation Act, or NAGPRA, passed in 1994. 
