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What Became of Brigham Young’s Indian Allies.

Excerpted from “The Blackhawk War” by Phillip Gottfredson

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 decoding this aspect of the accounts between the Government, Church and the Native peoples is when the story becomes woefully strange, imprecise and convoluted. Such is the nature of the business of masquerading the truth. “Until the lion tells it’s story, the glory will always go to the hunter.”

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 have given them every opportunity to succeed...it’s their own damn fault.”

But, 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 the American Indians of Utah have been, when their children 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, and assimilation. And this is the very reason why the Black Hawk War of Utah has been by design ignored and forgotten.

“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

“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 expansionists 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. These arcane elements of reason have long been the mentality of Christian supremacy upon which so many millions of dollars have been spent and so many thousands of lives wrecked. - Steven T. Newcomb Indigenous Law Institute and author of “Pagans in the Promised Land.”

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 judged as barbaric wild savages who terrorized them.

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”
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.

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

“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

In 1853 Ute leader Walkara 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 Names “Black Hawk” and “Antonga”-—Are They Utes 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. To the Mexicans he was known as “Antonga”, also not a Ute name. Chief Black Hawk was known to the Utes as Nuch, he was so named in honor of his people the Nuchu, a name sacred 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

Post War Relations
Was the Black Hawk war saga over? 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.” Deep 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 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, the wielding of power?