Early Contact and Conflict

The Ute were reputed to be warlike. The first writings about them come from the journal of Fray Francisco de Escalante, a Franciscan priest who explored the Great Basin with Francisco Dominguez in 1776. By that time, mounted on horses, war parties carried out regular raids on Indians and Spanish alike. They captured slaves to trade with other tribes for horses and other goods. The Ute also warred intermittently with the ARAPAHO living on the other side of the Rocky Mountain Great Divide.

Nonetheless, because the Ute lived west of the Rockies in a rugged environment where few non-Indians other than the mountain men traveled, they avoided early clashes with the Anglo-Americans who came from the east. Isolated early incidents of violence did happen when non-Indians entered the Ute domain. For example, Ute warriors killed the famous mountain man William Sherley Williams, nicknamed Old Bill Williams, who had previously acted as John Fremont’s guide during one of Fremont’s voyages of western exploration.

Starting in 1847 and during the years to follow, waves of Mormon settlers arrived on Ute and Shoshone lands in Utah. The Ute resisted increasing encroachment in two uprisings: the Walker War of 1853 under Chief Wakara (or Walkara or Walter) and the Black Hawk War of the 1860s under Chief Black Hawk (not to be confused with the Black Hawk War of the 1830s involving SAC and MESKWAKI [FOX].