Colorado Experience: The Original Coloradans

the Ute people have been within the moms region here our migration patterns for at least 8,000 years so if I say I was here first then I was here first we've been doing some of these things for thousands of years there are seven bands three tribes and one people the ute Indian people hard-working people in order to survive they provide us with a lesson of adaptability and resourcefulness that I think living in this beautiful but fragile landscape is something that we really can learn from Colorado experience is a co-production of Rocky Mountain PBS and history Colorado history Colorado brings history to life for audiences of all ages through exhibits collections and historic preservation programs throughout the state history Colorado connects people to the stories places and heritage of Colorado's past that provide perspectives on today and inspire our choices for tomorrow find out more at WWDC ari colorado org additional funding provided by elf Omar Foundation and the Boettcher Foundation celebrating 75 years of philanthropy in Colorado with additional funding and support from these fine organizations and from viewers like you thank you we de su cuerpo Majin boo bulya tomorrow why why why patchouli kneecap now we go to work my fire tell mama contrast the gap let the race boom over smooth way she's rubbing her south up against the tree turning around and kind of like attacking the tree they thought it that bear is attacking the tree and she's growling at the same time they wanted she bare do that for a while my leaves they got brave enough they wanted to go down ask her what she was doing they went down there and she told him a story why they do that why bears do that and during that course of time that she said you know I want to give this to you people but you know one of you have to stay with me for a year so I can teach you the songs and the dad so one of you have to go back to the village and tell the people down there that your brother's going to stay with me the following spring the brother went back up to the same place where he had left his brother with the she-bear he's seen two bears that he went up and asked that she bear so where's my brother and she told him you don't recognize him and she said no he said he's the one to us standing next to me well he had turned into a bear and they talked and they sang them songs for what they call it the the growler or the Murat day they used a jawbone of an animal and shinbone also to use that to go back and forth on that then to put it on a hollow log the sound resonated out of that you know sounded like it was crowded and there was singing these sounds he said when you go back you must tell you people that women will be the one to choose their dance partners while you're singing the sounds they'll do this dance he said then but it would be that one women will be on one side facing west and men facing east when you start dancing this is you that's like we do bear don't take very big steps that when they're upright you know so that's a you dance like that it's kind of like two three step dance back and forth and I said he said you danced like that they went back and told their people but that she bearer and his brother had told them it's because that we honoring and celebrating spring he said that's why we're going to do this it's a it's a dance to honor a celebration scream the huge people have been in Colorado since time immemorial and forensic evidence show that we've been in this area for the past 10,000 years if not 20,000 years we have creation stories from communities mountains and rivers and the four directions from around there we have the sleeping ute mountain which has a story behind itself as well as a sleeping you warrior that died in battle and where he died the earth creator created a mountain around him and rose up the mountain and our toilet community sits the base of that the creation story and the relationship ru band with other youth bands and other tribes started in that area we have stories of that of the elephants in our column that adapted that was we think with the mammoths by the time Europeans came into this country all these animals had become extinct Colorado is our homeland were the longest continuous inhabitants of Colorado we've always said we've been born here we were raised here we are the only tribe in the United States that does not have a migration story because we were born here but the you traditional hunting ground traditional traveling area for all the Utes was sparked north as up in Wyoming and significant hunting areas that are still today in Rocky Mountain National Park in Estes Park all the way down to Garden of the Gods and Colorado Springs all the way into the four corners in Utah northern New Mexico and northern Arizona the Utes were called the mountain people the people of the shining mountains and we're very nomadic and we relied on a lot of the connection with the mountains and a lot of the areas that we hunted and fished and gathered were in the mountains historically there were thousands and thousands of mute people they lived in the mountains and I claimed the Rocky Mountains from the south to the north because that's where our people lived they developed a really acute sense of internal geography they would move from place to place from the Great Basin of central Utah into the Rocky Mountains and out onto the plains at different seasons of the year looking for different resources they hunted deer another big game they hunted waterfowl and ducks sometimes they fished they hunted bison on the Great Plains they're survivors of harsh environment migrating with the animals and going to where the food source was you know harvesting berries and digging for roots and they were survivors they were workers the you people were so adaptable and traveling through the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains that our modern highway system simply overlays ancient ute trails anywhere you drive in the mountains today you're probably driving on an old youth trail we have stories of the other Spanish conquistadors coming through here like Coronado prior to Coronado coming here the Utes really had an acquired horses cuñado came through this part of the country in 1540 with this conquistadors and shiny armors and the horses and everything like that and if people kind of were afraid of these animals when they first seen him they called him mom it wasn't what we call him now within kabah you know that that's the word that they adopted from the Spaniards into the caballo the word that they call that animal at that time when I first seen him was Malou Chatham oops a word has his nose leading him that's what they call him that kind of an animal mohawk tell him that's one are you to obtain horses the UTech never openly shared history there are ceremonies with other people's because we learned that if we don't share our ceremonies our secret then we will remain strong longer we will survive as who we are longer the point of that in the past was that our enemies could not defeat us because they didn't know who we were do you know what to expect culture and heritage preserving the traditions it's really important because it's a foundation to our Native American culture our spiritual beliefs mentally physically spiritually and emotionally we have these parts of the human being that needs to be imbalancing and stable we also have the male and the female that spirit so we have to have everything in balance and a lot of that too is having respect for the water water of life water is the lifeblood of Mother Earth and so without the water you know we would not have life and all this is based upon the Sun - without the Sun we would not have water we learn from the Sun from nature nature tells us all of these things the Sun tells us all of this things the moon tells us all of these things the animals tell us all of these things the birds the turkey the Grouse and all of those have taught the Indians how to dance how to sing use the feathers as a sacred thing for him I had a person ask me one time and said well why do women walk behind the man in in your society I always see these pictures of the woman's walking behind the man and so in that person's mind it was like oh here's a slowly slave walking behind her master oh that's not the way it is the warrior the man is walking ahead to make sure that those behind him are safe the man walked in the front to protect all that he valued his family a woman she had the home he better protect her when they started recording time anthropologists and people that were studying the land when they came here in the 1300s 1400s there was a bear dance and so they could state it as one of the oldest but I would say that there were many old older dances that may still be going on today within the other tribes but for sure the bear dance was here there was a hardship between the United States government and a lot of native tribes that was similar to the time when they did the Ghost Dance and the Calvary or the government at that time was fearful of that dance because they were thought that they were performing that dance so that their buckskin was bulletproof and it scared them because you know what supernatural I guess a lot of their ceremonies was banned and the reason for this from my perspective was that it was threatening to the government they as soon as I hear the drum immediately the European people say the Indian people on the warpath so they banned a lot of it and a lot of the ceremonies that was banned a lot of the people did it under the blanket meaning that they did it secretly in the mountains or wherever they thought they might not be watched some of these people that were caught or put in prison and also hanged a shot and a lot of these things that I'm saying right now he's not put in history you know but that's what we went through to survive to hang on to some of our ceremonies by the time of the Pikes Peak Gold Rush in 1858 in 1859 the you people had established themselves for centuries in the Rocky Mountains and that meant that initially at least you people were able to avoid serious confrontations with the Americans but of course the gold in the silver is really locked in the Rocky Mountains and it wasn't long before Americans began to invade you territory in search of riches the Ute people would be here probably until midsummer then they moved to a higher ground so if you came in here when the ute people were out you'd be standing on the hill thing it's a nice valley there's nobody here boy I could you know farm and I could do this any movement establish this out and so six months later here come the youth said what are you doing here oh this is open ground there's nobody here nobody's using them nobody's using this ground I'm going to use it it's gonna be mine this was part of the migration pattern and the that the Utes had and that happened all over Colorado and so they lost a lot of good campsites and beautiful areas by 18-49 and thereafter up until 1880 there was a removal of all the Utes from the Front Range and also from the San Luis Valley 1868 was a time that they established the reservation on the western part of Colorado with just almost 1/3 of the western part of Colorado chief Ouray was appointed and selected as a spokesperson for the Utes for all of the Utes they didn't have one chief they had many leaders and he was identified by the non-indians as a cheap because I needed someone to negotiate with and since he spoke several different languages he seemed to be the logical person to negotiate with and I think that chief Ouray was called upon to bring not only peace but to try some more understanding as to what these government policies which he may have been just told about the day before and to try to decipher that into a ute language which or any tribal indigenous language which just doesn't compute all across the board I mean that that had to have been a very daunting task he often made decisions on behalf of the ute tribe that were not in consensus with other youth leaders and in fact very often negotiated away lands that that were not his to negotiate away many you people then and now saw you raised as a collaborator as as somebody who is giving up you rights in exchange for an uncertain future the Bruno agreement was in 1874 but prior to that goal was discovered in the mountains miner started coming in and stealing our gold and silver and so instead of compensating us they said we will give you three million square acres that's going to be yours forever but the miners got into it and they said no we're going to downsize your reservation to what it is now but you can still hunt and this 1 million square acres hunt this was not a negotiation it was an ultimatum that the Utes were to give up their claims to the San Juan Mountains the silvery San Juans were Aspen and Silverton and other very rich silver mining areas existed these were traditional hunting areas for the new people they had since time out of mind traveled to the sound once in the summertime to hunt for deer and elk but now they were told that they had to move away they were allowed to keep the far western strip of Colorado the far western third of Colorado this was a real blow to the sense of the you people sovereignty of their sense of governing themselves well they call it Meeker Massacre but I don't in my heart I don't believe it was a massacre was really the first onset of establishing a ute reservation in Colorado and pointing the Indian agent Nathan Meeker who came from Greeley Colorado as the Indian agent Meeker shouldn't have been there at all he shouldn't have been endangered and I think it was because he was so embedded that he looked for ways to to make money in order to pay off his debts see it reinvented himself as a self-appointed expert on Indian Affairs in the United States and he would go around the country lecturing about the this is his words the intellectual inferiority of American Indians and how if they could just be convinced to give up theirs what he would say savage ways and take up farming maybe in time they would adopt civilization most of the you people were nomadic hunters and gatherers you know they they didn't have any agriculture experience or anything like that he ploughed up the yutzes racetrack and you'd like to run their horses even to this day but he plowed up their race Shack which infuriated them a Meeker felt that he was endangered so he called Telegraph to the federal government and soldiers of troops came out of Fort Lamy and came to this place to call milk River there was warnings to the military and they were told that if they entered onto the reservation number of times there were people from the tribe sent up to talk to captain Thornburg and he was coming and they kept telling him please don't come on the reservation if you do you'll be declaring war Thornburg came across the river onto the reservation with his troops well there's a gunfire kind of a battle started there and a runner went back to the agency and said that the troops were coming those that was around the agency attacked the agency maker was killed his wife and daughters and civil women who were taken captive the tribal member and the tribal leaders at that time were still I think trying to understand government policy understanding this concept of this is my land everything on this side of this fence is mine but all of a sudden on the other side I can't hunt there anymore even though I was raised hunting these mountains and fishing these creeks are gathering these areas in this community all of a sudden it's no longer mine and I can't go there I have to ask permission for that I think that concept was still very new and I think when you really converge those two ideas you're going to have a conflict because of that incident the table you watch the the party annuity and ronpa Rica's who is also known as the white river event were all sent into Utah and then there's posters that says the Utes must go so they decided well they've really broken the law now and attacked the agent and the people that worked there at that agency and so by gunpoint military bringing their guns and stuff they were ordered out of the valley of the land and so they to come up to the reservation was abolished what was left was a small sliver of that land along the southwest border of Colorado and New Mexico that was what was left there for the three youth bands the Caputo's Mammoet and women notes in 1887 the federal government passed the Dawes allotment Act which was a federal measure designed to break up the reservations into individual parcels of private land the idea was that by granting each Indian family their own 160 acre plot it would cultivate a sense of individualism and private property and break the communal ties of the tribe it was also kind of a boondoggle because all of the so called surplus land that didn't go to Indian families were sold off to American homesteaders instead the southern tribe is called a checkerboard reservation which means that allotments were really forced upon them and after each individual tribal member receives certain amounts of acreage the federal might sold the remaining portion of the land to farmers and ranchers within the community we don't have very much very many allotted lands anymore so I always use the analogy of a piece of Swiss cheese and the holes in the Swiss cheese represents those farmers and ranchers that purchase land during the time inside the reservation boundaries and what that does it provides a very complex situation but it also provides what we deal with today we have Colorado Department of Transportation roads that go across reservation lands and some cross tribal land and some cross nine tribal land and then go back onto tribal land and the ute mountain ute tribe has a communal land owned reservation meaning that once you're on the reservation you're on it until you get off on the other side there's really no allotments or no holes in the reservation which is contiguous until you get to other side so we live on a reservation we have modern homes of running water tourists would always say do you have a TV do you still do you live in a teepee do you have a car you know of course we go to school we work I do have a teepee and we put it up on occasion the youths face challenging times after 1880 relegated down into a barren reservation in southwestern Colorado or northeastern Utah forced by the United States government to send their children far away to boarding schools in Pennsylvania or New Mexico for parents sending children away to a distant boarding school was probably the worst possible scenario it was through the relationships with extended family with parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents the children learned you culture and you'd identity our people were forced to never used our language because it was not supposed to be at all it was forbidden and we were supposed to learn the English language when I went into the government school I was told not to speak my language and some of us were told not to speak their prayer some are their medicine songs my first language I could not use so I learned a second language which is English I lost my identity because I was no more an Indian so a lot of us went through a mental emotional and spiritual experiences they were trying to take the Indian out of the person and put them into the main society mute language is who we are it identifies us with Mother Earth it's it's a gift from the Creator without the language we are only paper people we don't have an identity we need to teach the language because the language is being lost to me that's what what my culture is my culture is language I just want my language to mine I want people my people to embrace it to learn it because it is who we are so the power of the language in any nationality is the most powerful thing that you carry honoring your past leaders here that thankful for what they have done for what we have here today and that some day we can fill those boots that they have walked in it's an ongoing story that probably never will be told you know completely we need to respect all those that came before us because they were the strong ones they're my role models they lived in the mountains they survived they were surviving people there's a romantic picture of the western times but we're still here and we still have a bright future and we have a great handle on our culture we want to be respected her culture want to be respected our language our religion our way of life I want to know the past in order to be able for the children to survive the future that are kind of our goal that we build a language back up bill our spirituality back up so that we can start to embrace who we are and be proud of who we are as native people as youth from the you nation Colorado experience is a co-production of Rocky Mountain PBS and history Colorado history Colorado brings history to life for audiences of all ages through exhibits collections and historic preservation programs throughout the state history Colorado connects people to the stories places and heritage of Colorado's past that provide perspectives on today and inspire our choices for tomorrow find out more at WWDC Laredo org additional funding provided by L poem our Foundation and the Boettcher Foundation celebrating 75 years of philanthropy in Colorado with additional funding and support from these fine organizations and from viewers like you thank you this episode is available on blu-ray visit our website to order there's more Colorado experience online @rm pbs.org / colorado experience

Channel: Rocky Mountain PBS

Views: 229,410

Rating: 4.7795277 out of 5

Keywords: Utes, The Utes, Colorado (US State), The Original Coloradans, Northern Ute Tribe, Southern Ute Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Bear Dance, Ernest House, Alden Naranjo, Matthew Box, Russell Box, Loya Arrum, Nathan Strong Elk, Meeker Massacre, Meeker, Reservation, Native American, Rocky Mountain PBS, RMPBS, Colorado Experience, History Colorado

Id: lWLdijamdcQ

Length: 28min 14sec (1694 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2013