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“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 rights. 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.” - Dr. Daniel McCool University of Utah

There is no mystery or a plethora of complex reasons why the Black Hawk War happened, it’s very simple really, the Native Ute Indians of Utah were being set-upon and victimized by the United States Government and, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints-—the Mormons. The truth regarding the history of the war has since been cloaked in brilliantly managed rhetoric by the victors who blame and demonize the Ute Nation in every conceivable way, and understanding this aspect of the accounts between the Government, Church and the Native peoples is when the story becomes woefully strange, and convoluted.

There are always two sides to any war. People say, “that’s all in the past we just need to get over it.” Like their forefathers before them, the descendents of the predominate culture of Utah refuse to acknowledge the cruel mistreatment of Utah’s American Indian peoples. That demoralization and racism have become institutionalized. 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, racism has to be taught. Children learn racism from their families, teachers and community.

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 and institutions 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 repeatedly denied equal access to justice and protection under the law, when these things happen it then becomes cultural genocide, assimilation, a fulfillment of the Doctrine of Discovery.

“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 Former Director of Indian Affairs/Member of the Ute Tribe

A Brief Synopsis of How the Black Hawk War Began
“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

Christian crusaders attempted to reason with the Indian people saying they had the right to take possession of their land because the Indians were heathens, non-Christians, who didn’t believe in the bible or Jesus, the Messiah. And this is the basis for the denial of Indian rights in federal Indian law today, based upon the metaphor that the American Indians are the Canaanites or pagans in the promised land. “Consequently, the current situation of Indigenous Peoples around the world is the result of a linear program of “legal” precedent, originating with the Doctrine of Discovery and codified in contemporary national laws and policies. The Doctrine mandated Christian European countries to attack, enslave and kill the Indigenous Peoples they encountered and to acquire all of their assets” - Steven T. Newcomb Indigenous Law Institute and author of “Pagans in the Promised Land.” Also quotes from WCC Executive Committee 14-17 February 2012 Bossey, Switzerland (see also Doctrine of Discovery)

The early settlers are portrayed by the victor’s accounts as people who were fair-minded and of good intentions when they came to Utah. 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.

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
LDS Archives - Will Bagley Transcription

The truth is Utah Indian people were a vibrant productive culture, and didn’t have any particular animosity toward early Mormon pioneers, only that they were trespassing on their land, whereas, according to the Book of Mormon, the church believed they had a divine right to the land and an 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

“It Was 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.

At the age of 49 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 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)

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.

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 Fort Utah, has long been ignored, “You didn’t see the Indians beheading the Mormons.” - Historian Robert Carter

What was the motivation behind such barbarianism? Money? You guessed it, 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.

In 1863, 593 Shoshone men women and children were brutally massacred at Bear River. “As the Indians tried desperate measures to fight off the U.S. Army *(led by Patrick Edward Connor and supported by Brigham Young), including the use of tomahawks and archery, the soldiers seemed to lose all sense of control and discipline. Hundreds of corpses were left to be eaten by animals and the bones remained uncovered for years to follow”. - Rod Miller Author of Massacre at Bear River - *Words parenthesized are of my own.

“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 being held captive in a below ground shelter, one by one , 24 in all, women, men, and children, their throats were cut . Two young boys and one girl, seven or eight years of age were told by their mother to run for their lives, and when the door was opened for the next victim to be killed the three made a break and forced their way past the guards and ran. The guards fired several shots at the three but were unable to hit them. One was shot in the side but the bullet barely grazed his rib, not enough to stop him. All of the Paiute males, five women, and two older children were murdered. The only crime that history accounts accuses these innocent victims of is that they were Indian. - (As told to me by living descendents of one of the boys who survived.)

“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.” - John Lowry 1894

A Few Interesting Facts To Ponder
The names “Black Hawk” and “Antonga” are they Ute Indian names? The name “Black Hawk” is not a Ute name. It was a name Brigham Young, in jest, called the Ute’s leader. So it became that Brigham Young’s supercilious term, ‘Black Hawk,’ is the name by which he is now most commonly known. In fact there were some three or more Indians the whites referred to as Black Hawk in Utah history. It was a sarcastic joke, a mockery referring to the Sauk and Fox Indian tribes (Mesquaki) under the leadership of the real Chief Black Hawk and the tragic Black Hawk War of 1832 in Illinois, where the Mormons migrated from. It was, perhaps, a sinister message to the Utes that a similar destiny awaited them.

To the Mexicans he was known as “Antonga”, also not a Ute name. Utah’s Black Hawk was born into family of legendary leaders and known to the Utes as Nuch, he was so named in honor of his people the Nuchu, a sacred name the Utes call themselves.

So, why is it called “The Black Hawk War” when there were never any black hawk Indians in Utah, or elsewhere for that matter, when none of the Indians in Utah called themselves Black Hawk? For to do so only serves to perpetuate the dark cynicism that helped to demoralize the Native peoples of Utah. You see, the story gets a lot more interesting when you talk to the Utes.

Before Chief Nuch died 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 traveled 180 miles by horse and visited every Mormon village to apologize for the pain and suffering he and his warriors had caused. 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.”

“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

Shocking Post War Relations
Was the Black Hawk war over in 1873 as scholars say? The Mormons got their Indian land and the Transcontinental Railroad had come through. Black Hawk died in 1870. Ninety percent of the Indian population had died since the Mormons arrived in 1847. Fifteen hundred Utes were forced to walk to the reservation in the Uintah Basin where they were abandoned, and 500 more died from starvation in the first year. Were the whites satisfied? No, not yet.

On September 20, 1919, an article appeared on the front page of the Deseret News with the headline, “Bones of Black Hawk on Exhibition L.D.S. Museum.” Within the article, the writer explains that first, the remains of Black Hawk had been on public display in the window of a hardware store in downtown Spanish Fork, Utah. Then Benjamin Guarded, the man in charge of the L.D.S. Museum, acquired the remains for public display on Temple Square. For decades, the remains of Black Hawk, and those of an Indian woman and a child, were on display in the church museum on Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City.

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.

Chief Nuch was again reburied in the year 1996. It took an act of Congress, the help of National Forest Service archeologist Charmain Thomson, and the humanitarian efforts of a boy scout Shane Armstrong to find and rebury the remains of Nuch (Black Hawk). This raises the question why a Christian religious institution and its leaders would have no compassion or respect for the family of Chief Nuch who were members of the church. Was the reason simply amusement for others? Was grave robbing for art, pleasure, punishment, a morbid fascination of death, divine obligation, or, most importantly, was it a question of supremacy between the white man and the Indian?

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