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A Precarious Balance: The Northern Utes and the Black Hawk War
A Precarious Balance: The Northern Utes and the Black Hawk War
BY WARREN METCALF
THE BLACK HAWK WAR IS OFTEN PORTRAYED as something of an anomaly in the territorial history of Utah. According to the traditional version, the war emerged full-blown from a minor frontier incident into the worst Indian conflict the state has ever known. This interpretation creates an enigma for historians, aside from the obvious fact that major wars do not generally erupt from minor irritations. The problem lies in the underlying assumption that Indian relations in Utah were substantially better than in other western territories. Certainly the Mormon settlers thought this to be the case and perceived that they had a special relationship to the natives, or Lamanites as they called them, because the Indians were believed to be descendants of the house of Israel. Therefore, as the argument goes, the settlers were less inclined to exploit the Indians and were generally more interested in nurturing them as brothers.
The persistence of this myth of better treatment makes the Black Hawk War seem very unlikely and also accounts for the tendency of historians to assign causation of the war to isolated events because that makes better sense in light of the traditional interpretation. In reality, however, the Utes of central Utah experienced much the same treatment as Indians everywhere in the United States. The settlers first expropriated their lands and then, when they resisted or became a nuisance, the government removed them. The Black Hawk War may thus be seen as the hostile phase of this familiar pattern. It grew out of a complex set of circumstances involving the repercussions from Indian troubles in adjoining territories, the loss of Indian farms in Utah, and the failure of the government to fulfill treaty obligations.
The seeds of conflict were sown over a period of many years. Despite Brigham Young's oft-stated policy that feeding Indians was cheaper than fighting them, relations between the Mormons and the branches of the Northern Ute Indians in Utah Territory were more often precarious than stable. A pattern of intermittent warfare developed early on with hostilities erupting in the Utah Valley in 1849. Occasional violence continued into the 1850s with the prolonged hostilities of the Walker War in 1853-54. Following this last episode Brigham Young, acting in his official capacity as Indian superintendent, sought to pacify the Indians by establishing Indian farms at several locations. The most important of these, as far as the Utes were concerned, were the farms at Spanish Fork in Utah County, Twelve Mile Creek in Sanpete County, and Corn Creek near Fillmore in Millard County.
Actually small reservations, the farms were designed to compensate for the loss of Indian land and game by providing a more sedentary lifestyle and a stable food supply. The farms were short-lived, however, because within a few years the Mormon settlers lost their enthusiasm for maintaining them. With the coming of Johnston's Army in 1858 the Saints had a reason to give up a responsibility they had already ceased to fulfill, and increasingly the problem of feeding the Indians was seen as an obligation of the federal government. This change in perception also coincided with the outbreak of the Civil War, so that at the very time the Utes were in the greatest need of government assistance the government was least capable of providing it. As a result, the Indian farms deteriorated to such an extent that most Indians abandoned them and took to the territory's mountainous regions.
Unfortunately, the face of the land had changed, with a loss of game and hunting grounds due to the vast influx of Mormon immigration and settlement, and the Utes were no longer able to sustain themselves. Conflict with whites thus became inevitable. The Civil War period was one of general starvation and neglect for the Utes, and dissidents finally reacted in 1865 by commencing a series of raids popularly known as the Black Hawk War.
The American Civil War had a profound effect on virtually all tribes living in the West. The natives were perfectly aware that encroachment by white settlers gravely endangered their autonomy and even threatened their existence. As the war in the East siphoned away the federal troops, hostile Indians in many western tribes viewed the situation as an opportunity to strike back. Raiding parties became relatively commonplace on the mail and immigrant trails, and isolated settlements were frequently in danger.
The Utes were keenly aware of these outside influences, as the news of events in neighboring territories rapidly traveled through the Indian grapevine. They were, for example, aware of the attacks being made on the eastern half of the Overland Trail by the Northern and Southern Cheyenne and other Plains tribes. During the crucial winter of 1864-65 the superintendent of Indian Affairs in Utah, Oliver H. Irish, wrote to the commissioner of Indian Affairs and expressed his fears in this regard:
Fortunately, Superintendent Irish's worst fears were never realized, but the wars came close enough to the Ute tribal lands to excite and provoke them. They knew of Kit Carson's actions against the Navajos in 1864, and also of Col. Patrick E. Connor's decisive defeat of the Shoshone at the Bear River the previous year. Seeking to forestall the outbreak of similar hostilities is Utah, Superintendent Irish hastily negotiated a settlement with the Utes known as the Spanish Fork Treaty. He explained the reasons for his quick action in the opening statement of this document: ''Owing to the Indian difficulties in the adjoining territories which were having a bad influence upon our Indians and that they were very uneasy about the reports ... I thought it dangerous to delay negotiations."
To federal agents like Irish the raiding of small bands of Indians such as those led by Black Hawk could be attributed directly to the circumstances the Indians found themselves in. Undoubtedly, the officials most closely associated with the Ute bands did not see the Black Hawk raiding as anything more, as one Ute historian has put it, "than an intensifying of the raids which had been conducted against the Mormon intruders since 1849." Superintendent Irish never mentioned the conflict in his 1865 report to the commissioner of Indian Affairs. The following year the new superintendent. Col. F. H. Head, finally informed the commissioner that "a small band of outlaws, under the command of a chief named Black Hawk, have been engaged in hostilities for nearly two years." Later, as the hostilities increased in intensity. Head warned that unless Black Hawk was suppressed an Indian war "of considerable magnitude may be inaugurated." Clearly, those most closely associated with the Uinta Utes saw the raiding as the work of a few dissident Indians who were disgruntled and hungry.
The majority of the Northern Ute bands in Utah probably did not consider it a war either, because it involved so few of their people. At the height of his powers Black Hawk (or Autenquer, as he was known by his Indian name) had only slightly more than one hundred followers in his raiding party, and half of them were said to be Navajos and Paiutes.
The Mormon settlers, on the other hand, reacted in the strongest terms to the conflict, which quickly became known to them as an Indian "war." By 1866 as many as 2,500 able-bodied men had been pressed into the militia in an attempt to secure the frontier. Their task was a formidable one; during the years 1865 to 1867 Black Hawk's men managed to steal approximately 5,000 head of cattle and kill as many as ninety settlers and militiamen. Numerous settlements in central and southern Utah were abandoned, including major settlements such as Richfield, Circleville, Panguitch, and Kanab. Black Hawk's raiders were so effective that it was a common perception among the Mormon settlers that all of the Indians in the territory were at war. In truth, evidence strongly suggests that several Ute bands, especially the San Pitch, Elk Mountain, and Uinta Utes, did supply and reinforce the raiders. However, the majority of the Northern Utes were not actively engaged in hostilities.
The Uinta Utes in particular had several reasons to feel oppressed by the Mormon settlers, not the least of which was the loss of tribal lands. As early as 1858 settlers in the Utah Valley began to dispute Indian land claims to the Spanish Fork Reservation. Indian Superintendent Jacob Forney was incredulous when the authorities of Spanish Fork City, believing that the Mormon settlers had a claim to much of the reservation, required agent Garland Hurt to give an accounting of his "stewardship" there. Superintendent Forney countered by working to enclose the reservation to prevent white encroachment, but his efforts were ineffective. By 1861 the agents were writing to Washington to complain that settlers from Spanish Fork were busy surveying the reservation with the object of settling on it. One of these agents, a man by the name of Humphreys, complained that the Mormons had no particular regard for the Indians and that they had already taken possession of all the valleys in the territory, thus depriving the Indians of their means of subsistence. He deplored the Mormons' further avarice in seeking to possess the Spanish Fork reserve before the Utes could be moved elsewhere.
That "elsewhere," as it turned out, was to be the Uinta Valley, set aside as an Indian reserve in 1861 by the proclamation of President Lincoln. Nothing was done about it for some time, as events later developed, and the Utes continued to lose their holding at the Spanish Fork and Sanpete farms. In September 1862 Agent T. W. Hatch wrote to Commissioner James D. Doty that when he began his duties he found the Indian farms in a "destitute condition, stripped of their stock, tools, and movable fences, and no one living upon either of them."
The Indians had, of course, moved out in an attempt to return to their former nomadic lifestyle. All of this had come about as the result of a general lack of government funding and an equal lack of concern among the local white inhabitants. During the winter of 1859-60 the Utes on the farms were left without shelter, food, or clothing. Following successive crop failures conditions were so bad that many Indians died of starvation and exposure. Despite frequent appeals from the Indians, government officials provided no assistance, and the Indians were so destitute that Agent Humphreys had to bury the dead in his own blankets. The next year the Utes left the farms and moved into the mountains in hopes of supporting themselves. With the best hunting grounds gone to white settlement, however, the attempt was doomed to failure. The expatriated Utes were often left with the choice of begging food from the settlers or starving. Benjamin Davies, who was the Indian superintendent in 1861, reported that the "Indians had lost confidence in the government and people of the United States, [and] had become vicious and spiteful." Well aware of the Indians' destitution, Davies warned Washington that the Utes had to commit depredations in order to subsist themselves.
Meanwhile, the Civil War absorbed the resources of the federal government. What litde attention could be paid to Indian affairs was usually directed at trying to keep the Overland Trail open in the face of hostile Plains Indians. The resulting lack of concern over matters in Utah had a profound effect on the Utes who were increasingly anxious to know what the government would do with them. Acting Gov. Amos Reed complained to the Bureau of Indian Affairs that the Indians had been led to expect benefits they never received and consequently roamed the territory annoying the settlements and disturbing the citizens.
The obvious solution was to negotiate a treaty with the Utes, one they themselves were seeking, and to remove the tribe to the Uinta Valley. Unfortunately, due to the demands of war, the government delayed, claiming that nothing could be done to develop the Uintah Reservation because of a lack of definite geographic knowledge of the area. Newly appointed Indian Superintendent O. H. Irish warned Washington of the consequences of delay:
It did not help matters that during the winter of 1864-65 an epidemic of smallpox (or possibly measles) killed many Utes in their encampments. The Indians blamed the Mormons for the deaths.
In view of these provocations it is not surprising that hostilities finally did break out in April 1865. The traditional story is that the Black Hawk War started when an arranged meeting in Manti between whites and Indians erupted in violence. A drunken interpreter by the name of John Lowry quarreled with a young Indian named Yenewood and tried to pull the Indian off his horse. This act enraged the Indians, who rode off and killed some workmen isolated in the canyons. Thus, by implication, the Black Hawk War resulted from a scuffle and a misunderstanding.
The problem with such an interpretation is that it ignores the volume of underlying unrest among the Utes. John Lowry himself, in a statement made some years afterward, denied that this incident was to blame for the war. He claimed that he had met near Gunnison during the preceding winter with Utes who were angry and determined to fight in the spring. In Lowry's words, "Black Hawk informed me what the Indians were going to do when the snow went off. They would kill Mormons and eat Mormon beef." Other versions of this incident corroborate Lowry's story. George W. Bean, an Indian interpreter well known in Utah at the time, claimed that the row over the horse started when the Indians brought a horse into Manti to pay for damages done in an earlier raid. The Indians claimed that they had done the raiding because the Indian agents had misapplied their funds and not provided food for them. Lowry, who worked with the agents, became incensed at the accusation and started the fight. That the Indians were hungry seems unquestionable. Francis George Wall stated that he knew Black Hawk very well in 1864 because he would come to the town of Glenwood every day and beg for food.
While federal appropriations were never adequate to supply the Utes with needed provisions, the charge of malfeasance made by the Indians against the agents seems to have some basis in fact. The Indians also claimed that the agents, besides misappropriating funds, used the shortages as an excuse to bill Washington for emergency purchases that were never made. The accusations were convincing enough to the new Utah Indian superintendent, F. H. Head, that he filed a list of charges against agent L. B. Kinney, who was responsible for the Uinta Utes in 1865. Among other things, Kinney was charged with selling goods intended for the Indians.
The Utes did not have to look merely toward corrupt agents for examples of government perfidy, however. A far more significant swindle was perpetrated against them in the form of the Spanish Fork Treaty, negotiated by Superintendent Irish in June 1865. Irish was a sincere and honest government employee who no doubt had the Indians' best interests in mind when he gathered the chiefs at Spanish Fork. Concerned about the unrest among the Utes, he hoped to induce them to cede all of their claims in Utah Territory in exchange for government annuities and an agency in the Uinta Valley. He could not have known what mischief his treaty was destined to create.
Irish was also a clever man, and he rightly suspected that the Indians would not trust him in light of all the other government failures on their behalf. Consequently, he invited Brigham Young and some of the other Mormon authorities to accompany him to the negotiations. Irish had the treaty read to the chiefs prior to the meeting. It promised, among other things, that in exchange for the land claims the Utes would receive $25,000 annually for ten years, then $20,000 annually for twenty years, and then finally $15,000 annually for thirty years. The Utes promptly rejected the idea of signing away their claims, however, because, as Chief Kanosh put it, "In past times, the Washington chiefs that came here from the United States would think and talk two ways and deceive us." He rejected the treaty, saying, "I do not want to cut the land in two. Let it all remain as it is."
The rest of the chiefs supported Kanosh and were opposed to signing the treaty until Brigham Young spoke to them. Young retained great influence over the Utes from his former days as Indian superintendent, and at this crucial moment he used it to great advantage. He told the Indians that they had better take what the government was wifling to give them and go to the Uinta Valley, because otherwise the government would simply take the land and give them nothing for it. He also reassured them that Superintendent Irish would see to it that they received houses, farms, cows, oxen, clothing, and many other things. The Utes asked for time to think it over and then, ultimately, signed. Brigham Young had made the difference. As Mormon Apostle Wilford Woodruff recorded it in his journal, "Col. Irish . . . could not make any treaty with the Indians only through the influence of President Young."
Not all of the chiefs were happy with the treaty, however. One Indian, San Pitch, refused to sign with the others, although he did sign later. His comments during the treaty negotiations reveal bitterness toward the settlers: "We do not want to be removed from the land. . . . The whites make farms, get wood and live on the land and we never traded the land." The significance of San Pitch's opposition may be seen in the fact that he was the Indian who brought the horse into Manti two months earlier—the same horse involved in the altercation between John Lowry and Yenewood. Black Hawk, it should also be mentioned, was a member of San Pitch's band.
At the conclusion of the treaty council Superintendent Irish met with all of the Indians except the absent San Pitch to discuss the Black Hawk raids. He warned them to stay out of the conflict and questioned them about the identity of those Indians who were involved in the raiding. The Indians were reluctant to give Irish any details, except to admit that San Pitch's family had played a role. The superintendent was convinced that San Pitch had more to do with Black Hawk's renegade band than the other chiefs would admit. Subsequent events suggest that he was likely correct; San Pitch was arrested with several of his principal men in March 1866 and charged with providing Black Hawk with ammunition and information about the settlers. San Pitch, wounded while escaping from the jail in Manti, died shortly afterwards, which greatly excited his relative. Chief Tabby of the Uinta Utes. For a time it appeared that the entire Uinta Ute band would join in the hostilities.
In the months following the negotiation of the Spanish Fork Treaty the Utes found additional reasons to threaten war on the whites. Chief among these was their failure to receive the promised benefits of the treaty. Faithful to their end of the arrangement, the various Ute bands removed to the Uinta Valley just prior to the harsh winter of 1865-66. In March, Superintendent Head, who had taken over for Irish, complained bitterly to Washington that he had no money on hand and that the Utes were in desperate need of beef and flour as well as farm implements and provisions. A month later he was writing again, this time to say that several of the Utes had died during the winter and were greatly exasperated that the treaty promises had not been kept. In fact, the dire conditions on the reservation had greatly increased Black Hawk's stature among the Indians, and large numbers were assembling and were preparing for war.
By June the situation was so precarious that Chief Tabby's band had already departed to join Black Hawk's warriors. Superintendent Head was so concerned about the agitated state of the Indians that he was afraid to visit them without provisions. A general war was only averted by his decision to accompany, a few weeks later, a shipment of goods over the snow-covered mountain passes. Upon his arrival the superintendent found his fears amply justified, for the Utes were "much enraged" and ready to begin the fight. Some of the reservation Indians had in fact already commenced attacking nearby settlements. After holding several councils to distribute presents and promise better performance from the government. Head was able to restore the peace.
As events transpired Superintendent Head's guarantees during the summer of 1866 proved as elusive to the Utes as all of the other promises that had been made. By the summer of 1867 the Utes had still not received any annuities and scarcely any provisions at the Uintah Reservation. Once again Chief Tabby threatened to join Black Hawk in a general war on the Mormon settlers, but by this time the war was winding down and Black Hawk was suing for peace.
The irony in all of this lay in the fact that the Ute bands never received the benefits promised in the Spanish Fork Treaty in 1865 because the treaty was never ratified by the United States Senate. In March 1869 the treaty was finally reported to the Senate floor with a negative recommendation and rejected. Meanwhile, the Black Hawk War drew to a close. Facing increasing pressure from the territorial militia and suffering from a debilitating gunshot wound, Black Hawk appeared at the Uintah Agency in 1867 and sued for peace. Several confederates, however, continued their raiding for another two years.
In the end, of course, the majority of the Utes did not become actively involved in the Black Hawk War, although it would not be too much to say that they acted as passive participants by providing supplies and moral support. Nearly all of Black Hawk's initial followers were killed in the fighting; yet he managed to continually recruit replacements from the Utes, Paiutes, Navajos, and other neighboring tribes. It was a very lucky thing for the settlers that the Uinta Utes and the majority of their relatives in the San Pitch and Elk Mountain bands stayed out of the war, considering the damage inflicted by those few Indians who did participate.
It is clear, in retrospect, that the Black Hawk War was not the aberration traditional histories describe it as. It was, instead, the natural outgrowth of circumstances that oppressed the Utes and drove some of them to war. Displaced from ancestral lands and deprived of their economic base, they had essentially three options: to starve, to beg, or to fight. Little wonder, then, that many chose the latter.
At the same time, officials of the federal government were in a position to alleviate these hardships and prevent the bloodshed, but through a combination of inattenation, incompetence, and duplicity, they chose not to do so. Without question the Civil War played a major role in contributing to government neglect of the Utes during the crucial years of 1859 to 1865 when timely assistance would have made all the difference. Following the war the government could have shortened the hostilities by simply living up to the terms of the Spanish Fork Treaty, but once again the Utes were forgotten.
The Civil War also contributed to the increased tensions felt by all of the western tribes during those years. The Utes were well aware of these tensions and felt that the Indians on the plains were "fighting for them, to keep the emigrants from taking possession of the country." They undoubtedly knew that the rising tide of setdement was rapidly sweeping them aside and that the Mormon immigrants, despite statements to the contrary, were not greatly concerned about their welfare. The Civil War represented one last opportunity to fight for Indian autonomy.
Finally, the settlers themselves might have prevented the war had they been willing to follow Brigham Young's advice to "feed the Indians, instead of fighting them." But after the advent of federal control in the territory, the settlers preferred to leave the responsibility to the government. It is ironic that they chose this tactic, given the nature of the Indian grievances. In 1870, after the raiding had ceased. Black Hawk toured many of the settlements in central and southern Utah and spoke to Mormon congregations. His purpose was to ask for forgiveness and also to explain his motives. As he told the Saints in Fillmore, the raids were "forced by [the] starvation of his people." Many of his men told the same story, claiming that "hunger often caused them to go on raids to get cattle to eat." Thus, the corollary of Brigham's dictum proved to be true as well: "If you will not feed the Indians, you must invariably fight them."
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