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Five major American Indian tribes live in Utah: 1) Goshute, 2) Paiute, 3) Shoshone, 4) Ute, and 5) Navajo. The Utes, Paiutes, Goshutes, and Shoshones are all related. They call themselves Newe¸ meaning The People. The Navajos call themselves Dine', which also means The People.
People in each of these tribes have faced and overcome many difficulties. Today, most tribe members value their cultural heritage, and each tribe is working to keep its unique culture alive.
You can learn much more about these tribes at http://historytogo.utah.gov.
NAVAJO
Scientists say that the Navajos migrated from northern Canada centuries ago. We don’t know exactly when the first Navajo people arrived in this area, but we know that by the end of the 1500s the Dine', lived in northern New Mexico, southern Utah, and northern Arizona. They became herders and farmers. As whites moved into the Southwest, conflicts arose between the Navajos, settlers, and the military.
In the 1860s, the United States sent army troops to bring the Navajos under “control.” New Mexicans and other tribes helped the army. Finally, in 1864, about 8,000 Navajos surrendered. They were forced to walk 300 miles to a desolate tract of land in New Mexico.
In 1868, the Navajos were allowed to return to their lands. They were given a reservation, which has become the largest Indian reservation in the country. Part of it is in San Juan County, Utah.
Sheep became an important source of food and income. Navajo women wove beautiful rugs from the wool and sold them. The Navajos had so many sheep, however, that the land could not support them all. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the U.S. government forced the Navajos to reduce the size of their sheep herds. This caused much suffering and anger.
During World War II, the government used Navajos for sending “secret-code” messages that the enemy could not interpret. The men who sent the messages were called Navajo Code Talkers.
Today there are about 7,000 members of the Navajo tribe in Utah.
GOSHUTE
The Goshutes were specialists in desert living. In the deserts of the Great Basin they gathered food (they even ate insects, like grasshoppers). Family groups moved around a lot to find food sources.
The Goshutes wove baskets for many uses.. They wore rabbitskin robes in winter and made their homes from poles covered with brush and other plant materials (called wickiups).
During the winter, they camped in a secluded place and, like other native people, told stories that taught the children their history and legends.
When Euro-Americans showed up—first fur traders and explorers, then settlers, Pony Express riders, and stage station managers—the Goshute people tried to adjust. Some tried farming, and some tried raiding and attacking. Although the U.S. government tried to get them to move to the Ute Reservation in the Uinta Basin, they resisted and stayed in their homelands.
Eventually, the government gave them lands for two reservations. One of these is on the Utah-Nevada border near the Deep Creek Mountains. The other is in Skull Valley, Tooele County.
Right now, some members of the Skull Valley Band are trying to bring income to their reservation by letting the government store radioactive materials from nuclear power plants there. Most people in Utah don’t more nuclear waste coming to Utah—and so the Skull Valley Band has been in the middle of controversy.
PAIUTE
The Paiute people have occupied southern Utah and parts of California, Arizona, and Nevada for a thousand years. They lived much as the Goshutes did, moving about with the seasons, harvesting plants and hunting animals, and living in wickiups. The Paiutes prayed to influence the spirits of nature and to show respect and gratitude. They called the most powerful spirit being “The One Who Made the Earth.”
Much of the time the several bands of Paiutes lived in friendship with the neighboring Utes. But when the Ute people acquired horses, they began to raid Paiute camps and steal women and children. They then traded their captives to the Spanish as slaves. The Navajos and Spanish also stole Paiute children to sell as slaves.
When Mormons moved onto the Paiutes’ best living and foraging spots, the Paiutes’ lives changed even more. The Mormons tried to convert the Indians to Mormonism. They hired them to help on their farms, and they shared their agricultural knowledge. And they brought diseases that killed many Paiutes.
The Mormons also claimed that the Paiutes participated in a terrible murder of emigrants called the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Many Paiutes today deny that their ancestors had a part in that massacre.
Over the years, the Paiutes suffered, as other tribes did, under federal and state policies. Today the tribe owns 4,470 acres scattered throughout southwestern Utah.
SHOSHONE
Before “white” people showed up, the Shoshones lived together with their extended families: aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents, and more. These family groups traveled through northern Utah and nearby areas hunting animals, fishing, and gathering many different kinds of seeds, roots, berries, and other foods. Pine nuts, which they gathered in the fall, were an especially important food.
As the women gathered seeds using willow baskets and hitting sticks, they shared news, traded recipes, and sang. Hunters might drive deer or antelope into sagebrush corrals or drive large animals over cliffs to kill them. They also killed small animals like squirrels and birds like ducks and grouse.
But when settlers came to Utah, their cattle, farming, and irrigation changed the land. Also, immigrants to Oregon drove their livestock across Shoshone lands. Soon, the traditional Shoshone food sources had become scarce. Although at first the settlers and native people got along all right, it wasn’t long before they began to clash over scarce resources.
The conflicts got worse until, in January 1863, soldiers from Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City attacked a band of peaceful Shoshones camped on Battle Creek, near Franklin, Idaho. The soldiers massacred more than 250 men, women, and children. The massacre was a horrifying and tragic event in the history of the West.
Despite the conflicts, many Shoshones converted to Mormonism and learned to farm. The LDS (Mormon) church gave them land for a large farm in Idaho. They called it Washakie, after a famous Shoshone leader. Later, however, the church sold Washakie to a rancher.
A few hundred members of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation now live in Idaho and Utah. Unlike the other Utah tribes, they have no reservation, although they own some land. Headquarters for the band is in Brigham City, Utah.
UTE
The state of Utah is named after the Utes or Yutas, a Spanish word. But the Utes call themselves Nuche. By 1500, the Utes had spread through eastern Utah and parts of, Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico. Each Ute band would travel from valleys to mountains and back throughout the year. Men hunted and made weapons. Women gathered plant foods, prepared meals, and carried water and wood. In the winter the Utes lived in teepees, and in the summer they built wickiups out of brush.
After the Utes acquired horses in the 1600s, they could do more things and travel much farther. Some even traveled to the Plains to hunt buffalo. Some went on raids to capture more horses. Some traded with trappers and the Spanish settlers of New Mexico and Arizona.
When Anglo-Americans moved into their territory, the Utes and whites had many conflicts over land. In northern Utah, two strong leaders, Wakara and Black Hawk, both led groups of Utes to war against the settlers, who had moved onto their traditional lands and destroyed their way of life. In southern Utah, tensions between the whites and Utes/Paiutes were high, and they fought several times, even up until the 1920s.
But, like other American Indians, the Utes lost their fight to keep their way of life. The Americans made treaties but did not keep their promises. The Northern Ute bands, along with Utes from Colorado, were forced to move to a reservation in the Uintah Basin. There they felt confined and unhappy and could not easily adjust to a life of farming, as the whites thought they should. In recent decades, the tribe has benefited from oil and gas development on their lands. Today there are about 3,000 Northern Utes.
Utah’s Southern Utes faced similar difficulties. Today a few hundred Southern Utes live on White Mesa, south of Blanding.
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used by permission, Division of Indian Affairs
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