Appropriation and Accommodation: The University of Utah and the Utes

Appropriation and Accommodation: The University of Utah and the Utes

BY LARRY R. GERLACH

As the result of social sensitivities and political pressures accompanying the post–World War II civil rights movements, most publicly expressed derogatory religious, racial, and ethnic references fell into disfavor save for continued disparagement of Indigenous peoples of the United States. 1 Consequently, the National Congress of American Indians campaign launched in 1968 against media stereotyping of Native Americans was expanded in the 1970s to sports imagery. The use of nicknames, logos, and mascots had the potential of mocking Indigenous culture, disrespecting sacred objects, and promoting negative imitative behavior. Specifically, ersatz “Indian” mascots and cartoonish images like Cleveland’s “Chief Wahoo” were deemed insulting; the use of “tomahawk chops,” “war chants,” and face paint by fans ridiculing; generic labels like Indians, Braves, Warriors, and Chiefs denials of individuality and tribal diversity; and terms like “Redmen” and “Redskins” racial slurs. 2

The response was mixed. As commercial enterprises operating in the marketplace, professional sports franchises resolutely retained Indian imagery. But since a different standard applied to educational institutions where human values are the core mission, from 1970 to 2005 numerous secondary and thirty-two collegiate institutions voluntarily changed Native American identifications. 3

On August 4, 2005, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the largest regulatory body for intercollegiate sports programs, announced that effective February 1, 2006, “institutions with hostile or abusive racial/ ethnic/national origin mascots, nicknames or imagery” would be prohibited from hosting national championships or displaying such imagery on athletic uniforms during championship tournaments, and that by August 1 the ban would apply to mascots, cheerleaders, dance teams, and band members. The policy was not universal, as it did not apply to regular season contests or major college football bowl games, but banishment from NCAA championship competition effectively required compliance with the policy. 4 While the mandate did not identify specific offensive representations, subsequent guidelines expressly mentioned the elimination of Native American mascots and marks as recommended by the NCAA’s Minority Opportunities and Interest Committee. 5

The application of policy, even one unquestionably appropriate in reducing racist and discriminatory behaviors, is rarely simple. Anticipating opposition from some institutions with tribal names, NCAA president Myles Brant conceded: “Some Native American groups support the use of mascots and imagery and some do not; that is why we will pay particular attention to special circumstances associated with each institution.” The appeals review committee specifically noted that tribal approval would be “a primary factor” in determining use, because “the decision of a namesake sovereign tribe, regarding when and how its name and imagery can be used, must be respected even when others may not agree.” 6 Here, then, a case study of the University of Utah’s identification with the Northern Ute Tribe is instructive not only regarding the use of Native American imagery by non-Indian sports teams, but also the relationship between an educational institution and local Indigenous peoples, the Northern Utes of the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation. 7

I

The NCAA listed the University of Utah among nineteen offending institutions. Surprised by this inclusion, university president Michael K. Young opined: “I wonder pretty seriously if they actually have a clue what we’re doing.” The school in 2002 had advised the MOIC that its mascot was a red tailed hawk; that there was no Native American imagery, rituals, or “cheerleader antics” during games; and that the feathered drum logo and “Utes” nickname were used with “the express knowledge and permission of the Ute Tribe.” 8 The Northern Utes also took exception to the ruling, Irene Cuch declaring: “A non-Indian organization should not be the one to make the decision. This should come from tribal leaders.” Members of other Utah tribes as well as participants in the annual Native American Festival and Powwow also regarded the name inoffensive. (Doyle Conetah, a fourteen-year-old Ute, had a bottom-line view: “I think they should be able to use [Ute] as long as they keep winning.”) 9 The other Utes in the region—the White Mesa Utes in San Juan County, Southern Utes and Ute Mountain Utes in Colorado—are not included in the identification agreement but did not voice objections to use of the tribal name. 10

Phi Kappa Sigma won the 1949 fraternity homecoming award for the caricatured display entitled “Dam’ruff.” —

J. Willard Marriott, Library, University of Utah

Local sports writers predicted the university would change the identification, as seven schools had done, but administrators decided to challenge the edict. 11 After Florida State, with extensive and controversial Indian representations that had no actual connection to Seminole history, received a waiver on August 23 based on approval from the Seminole Tribe, Utah filed an appeal on August 31. Forrest Cuch, a Ute and executive director of the state’s Division of Indian Affairs, was optimistic: “If they can remove Florida State from the list, they can certainly remove the Utah Utes.” 12

In challenging the NCAA’s decision, President Young supported the ban of “hostile and abusive names and images,” but objected to “the uninformed conclusion that the University of Utah somehow runs afoul of the new policy.” The petition detailed the school’s “overarching commitment to Native Americans populations on and off campus,” emphasizing the “unique relationship with the Northern Utes and the tribe’s support for the appeal.” Appended was a letter from Maxine Natchees, chairperson of the Uintah and Ouray Business Committee, identifying how an “effective partnership” for “many years” had “benefited the tribe” and the official resolution authorizing “the Ute name as the representative symbol for the university’s athletic teams.” Far from being “hostile or abusive,” the identification was “honoring and respectful of Tribal culture” and “a source of pride for Tribal members.” 13 On September 2, the NCAA granted conditional approval of Utah’s waiver request pending assurance, promptly given, that the Northern Utes supported use of the feathered drum logo. 14

The debate over Native American identifications raised the fundamental question: Why did educational institutions adopt Indian imagery for sports teams? 15 Individual institutional motivation aside, the underlying answer is twofold. First, since the earliest days of European colonization, white Americans have repeatedly appropriated and conceptualized Native American traditions, customs, and imageries for a variety of cultural and political purposes. 16 Second, Native American imagery had long been used in American sport. 17 Preceding animal nicknames, Indian identification in sport began in the 1850s corresponding to heightened portrayals of Indians in American popular culture. As depicted by authors like James Fenimore Cooper and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and artists such as George Catlin, Alfred Jacob Miller, and Karl Bodmer, and followed by the post–Civil War work of Frederick Remington and Charles M. Russell, Native Americans were romanticized, uncorrupted “primitives” who personified independence, courage, resourcefulness, physical strength, and communal solidarity. 18 Descriptions of two midcentury Seneca pedestrians (race walkers), Louis “Deerfoot” Bennett and John Steeprock, promoted Native American prowess in sport. Steeprock was patronizingly termed a great “natural talent” who “undisciplined and undertrained” ran “on a lope as if he was going through underbrush, frequently bounding sideways as if jumping a fallen tree.” 19 These depictions, combined with popular perceptions of a disappearing American frontier where the Indian had once roamed free and unencumbered, contributed to culturally constructed notions of “Indianness,” including the idealization of the Native American warrior as a symbol of strength and indomitable bravery deemed applicable for sport.

From the 1870s to World War I numerous amateur and professional baseball teams adopted Indian names including the Hiawatha, Osceola, and Mohawk teams in Brooklyn, New York. In the early twentieth century Indian achievement in sport—the success of the Indian school teams Haskell and Carlisle, the prominence of baseball’s barnstorming Nebraska Indians, the fame of major league pitcher Albert Bender and catcher John Meyers, and the extraordinary achievement of Jim Thorpe—led to extensive newspaper accounts of the strength, courage, sportsmanship, and athletic superiority of Native Americans. 20 Between 1912 and 1932, nine professional sports teams adopted Indian names, including those that presently retain them. The first collegiate team with a Native American nickname, the William and Mary Indians, debuted in 1917.

The 1927 program for the dedication of the new football stadium heralded the use of Native American identification for Utah sports teams. —

J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah

II

Founded in 1850, the University of Utah launched its intercollegiate athletics program in 1892. Sportswriters for Salt Lake City’s three daily papers and the student newspaper, the Utah Chronicle, initially referred to teams as “the Utahns,” “the University,” “the Crimson,” or simply “Utah.” To provide an element of “local color,” expanded sports coverage after World War I saw periodic use of “Utes” and “Redskins,” and occasionally “Red Devils,” without descriptive characterization. 21 “Redskins” was not, then, always regarded as derogatory by Indians and non-Indians—to wit, a laudatory article in the New York Times about Jim Thorpe headlined: “Indian Thorpe in Olympiad; Redskin from Carlisle Will Strive for Place on American Team.” Indeed, the Cherokees originated use of “red” in the eighteenth century as a cultural self-identifier in diplomatic relations with Europeans; “red men” and “red people” were initially positive designations until white people gave them negative connotations. 22

Reflecting the phenomenal growth of football after World War I, teams became “public symbols of universities,” serving as “a powerful source of community identity and pride.” 23 The University of Utah’s adoption of Native American identification for athletic teams embodied romanticized imagery but was also apropos of place, history, and religion. Indigenous peoples were a conspicuous part of the state’s historic landscape, from pre-Columbian Fremont people and Ancestral Puebloan Anasazi to the five Indian cultures resident when the Mormons arrived in 1847—Shoshone, Ute, Paiute, Goshute, and Navajo. 24 The largest tribe then was the Northern Utes; the state’s name, Utah, is an Anglicized version of the Spanish term for the tribe, “Yuta” or “Utas.” 25 And because the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon), the dominant religion in the state, teaches that Native Americans are descendants of Lamanites, “House of Israel” inhabitants of ancient America, Indians have a special place in Mormon society. 26

It was during the Golden Era of Utah football, signaled by the arrival in 1925 of the coach “Ike” Armstrong, “the Rockne of the Rockies,” and the opening of a new stadium in 1927, that a school virtually without an Indian presence officially proclaimed Native American identification generally and the Ute Tribe specifically. 27 (The school was likely unaware that Utica, New York, was the first to use “Ute” for its baseball team, 1901–1917.) The cover of the dedication program for the homecoming football game on October 22, 1927, depicted an Indian wearing a headdress astride a horse in the middle of the stadium; inside were numerous Native American illustrations and the words to a new student cheer: “You—u—u—u Redskins, Fight! Fight! Fight!” The 1927 Utonian yearbook included a sketch of the new stadium captioned the “New Camping Ground,” sundry drawings of Indians, and football team photos headlined “Utes”; game summaries occasionally called players “Redskins” and “warriors.” 28

The 1929 Utonian solidified “Utes” as the primary nickname. With an “Indian” design bordering every page, the yearbook contained several narrations of Ute mythologies, including “Legend of the Bluebird and Coyote” and “Legend of the Peace-Pipe,” as well as a tribal history, “The Story of the Utes,” by the western historian Levi Edgar Young. Enhanced with numerous rare photographs, the article simultaneously incorporated the Utes into state history and the socioreligious views of a predominantly Mormon campus and community. Of the two bronze plaques of a bonneted Indian chief’s head donated by an alum to adorn the entrances to the stadium, the yearbook proclaimed: “We can think of no more appropriate ornament to greet people at the entrance of the stadium than these Indian heads, standing for the school and typifying the spirit of Utah.” 29 Although the school’s identification was tribal, the athletics application was gender specific. Football’s appeal—vicarious combat and exaggerated masculinity—led to an exclusive focus on “brave” warrior imagery. (Although few non-Utes knew it, the name Ute was apt for athletic competition: In Ute religious tradition, Senawahv, creator of all Indigenous peoples, declared that “this small tribe will be Ute, but they will be very brave and able to defeat the rest.”) 30 The Utes were not consulted about the use of the tribal name.

As at other schools with Indian identifications, the intent was honorific—recognition of the Utes’ heritage—but representations soon became increasingly disrespectful, ridiculing, and ultimately racist. Deprecating references, which mirrored the routinely negative stereotyping of ethnic and racial minorities in the national sporting press, increased after George Preston Marshall, owner of the National Football League’s Washington Redskins, in 1937– 1938 expanded Native American depictions through halftime shows, uniform logos, the marching band, and the team fight song, “Hail to the Redskins,” whose lyrics—“Scalp ‘em, swamp ‘um—We will take ‘um big score”—were unabashedly derogatory. 31 More broadly and effectively, popular “purple-sage” novels and Hollywood westerns promoted negative “frontier era” attitudes by invariably typecasting “Redskins” as cunning, warlike savages. 32

Utah athletic references became increasingly insensitive, demeaning, even violent. In 1947 students chose the name “Hoyo,” imaginatively translated as “little hunter,” as the name of a cartoonish drawing of a young Indian boy that became the unofficial school mascot. Sometimes referred to as a “Papoose,” Hoyo appeared on school publications and in public events as a costumed character resembling the Cleveland Indian’s “Chief Wahoo.” However, Hoyo did not serve as a games mascot save in 1953 when a transfer student from Wisconsin dressed in ersatz Indian attire performed an “Indian dance” at home football games. 33 Offensive depictions were routine in fraternity and sorority house displays and on downtown parades during fall homecomings. Most egregious were tomahawk-wielding “Indians” confronting a Wyoming “cowboy” tied to a stake on a 1960 float titled “Hoyo burn ‘um Cowboys.” 34 That Native American identifications at the university had steadily devolved from iconic to insulting was untoward but not athwart, as they reflected pervasive national racism and ethnocentrism, shockingly exemplified locally by a popular restaurant in Salt Lake City from 1925 to 1957, the Coon Chicken Inn, with a caricatured, grinning face of a black porter near the entrance. 35

More serious than college student indiscretions were willful slights. Newspapers used “Utes” and “Redskins” interchangeably and regularly employed derogatory, hostile terms like “Injuns,” “scalping,” and “warpath” in their game coverage. University stationery, posters, and merchandise featured depictions of Hoyo and the stylized profile of an Indian “chief” in full headdress. Athletic department publications routinely featured Hoyo drawings and invariably referred to teams as “Redskins” rather than Utes. “Redskins” had come to connote warlike behavior: the cover of the 1963 football media guide depicted players mounted on horses and armed with bows and arrows attacking a stagecoach carrying conference teams. Paradoxically, despite the prominence of Hoyo imagery and Redskins label, in the 1960s there were none of the racialized displays during football and basketball games that occurred at the other twenty-eight schools with similar mascots. 36 If the periodic rhythmic beating of drums and cheerleaders wearing short fringed skirts and a single-feathered headband signaled cultural insensitivity, Utah featured no mocking performances by faux “Indians” like the University of Illinois’s “Chief Illiniwek” and Florida State’s “Sammy Seminole” and “Chief Fullabull” or imitative “warlike” fan behaviors.

Most egregious weretomahawk-wielding“Indians” confrontinga Wyoming “cowboy”tied to a stake on a 1960 float.

The 1960 homecoming parade float in downtown exemplified white America’s notion of Indians as violent “savages.” The original caption reads “Hang on to that stake cowboy, only four more blocks to go.” —

J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah

The civil rights movements of the 1960s engendered heightened political awareness and activism on campus, yet even then University of Utah students and faculty apparently remained oblivious to athletic and cultural references that belittled Native Americans. Eventually, the national controversy over the use of Native American identifications in sport prompted change.

III

George S. Grossman, first-year law professor and World War II refugee, sparked the university’s awareness of the issue. 37 Finding a November 1969 newspaper advertisement for the opening of the new Special Events Center on campus that featured Indian caricatures “extremely objectionable—and insulting not only to the race they allege to depict, but also to those who would adopt or permit them to be published in their name”—he urged university president James C. Fletcher to “cease” using Native American designations for the school’s athletic teams. Fletcher, disingenuously noting the ad was “entirely” generated by the newspaper, demurred: “To change the name of our athletic squads would take a very great effort.” 38 Grossman’s subsequent complaint in January 1970 about the bookstore selling merchandise with “degrading images of Indians” had an effect: the faculty advisory committee unanimously ordered the discontinuation of items depicting the “comic Indian characterizations” of Hoyo and the “Ute Chieftain Head.” 39 Then, in April, eight Indian students on campus demanded the Athletics Department eliminate the “degrading” names “Ute” and “Redskins.” The athletics director James “Bud” Jack, sensitive to racial issues stemming from the growing political activism of black athletes since 1968, including the boycotting of games against Brigham Young University owing to the LDS church’s denial of priesthood to blacks, decided to eliminate “Indian” artwork on athletics materials. 40 The Athletics Department action coupled with what Fletcher termed Grossman’s “pestiness in this matter” prompted a university-wide review of “caricatures of Indians or anything that may seem undignified.” The university announced on June 1 that there would be no further use of Indian imagery on school documents and publications. Moreover, school officials finally realized in view of mounting protests on campus and “litigation elsewhere by the Indians” that it was imperative to consult with the Ute Tribe “to see how they feel” about the name “Utes” and “if they do object, in view of some sentiment among faculty and students, we may have to consider some changes.” 41

The cartoonish depictions in November 1969 newspaper advertisements for the Special Events Center sparked opposition to the university’s use of unflattering Indian imagery in merchandise and publications. —

Salt Lake Tribune

It was the unannounced appearance by a group of Indian students in his office that prompted President Fletcher to meet with tribal leaders. Fletcher asked Floyd O’Neil, the associate director of the American West Center who had grown up on the reservation, to invite the Ute Business Committee, comprised of two members from each of three Ute bands—Uintah, Uncompahgre, and White River—to a dinner at the Alta Club in Salt Lake City. Among the Utes in attendance were Fred Conetah and Homey Secakuku, the committee’s vice chairman who served as the principal spokesperson for the tribe. At the May 20 meeting the Ute leaders pointedly objected to the use of sacred items by university sports teams and cartoonish images in the student newspaper but supported use of the nickname. 42 In 1972, following meetings between administration and athletics representatives with Native American students and upon the recommendation of Tom King—a Cherokee, campus director of Native American Studies affairs—and the Ute Tribe, the university decided to eliminate usage of “Redskins” and “encourage the news media to refer to Utah teams only as the ‘Utah Utes.’” Subsequently, in 1975 the tribe approved the school’s adoption of a block “U” inserted in a drum with two feathers as its athletics logo. 43

Belatedly admitting that because of “an unfortunate lack of communication with Native American people, the proper and dignified representation of the Ute Indian name fell into a prolonged period of neglect,” university officials in 1981 endeavored to “once again accurately portray to the community, the honor, dignity and spirit of the Ute Tribe and all Native American People.” To that end, all athletics department use of the Ute name and drum logo had to be “conducted through prior consultations with the campus Native American Affairs advisor” to “represent as nearly as is possible . . . legitimate and authentic Native American values and customs.” 44 In recognition of the recruiting efforts that increased Indian student enrollment from eight in 1970 to 196 in 1982 and created greater understanding and goodwill on campus, the Native American advisor, Lacee Harris, a Northern Ute, in September 1983 presented to the university a war bonnet with thirty-two imitation eagle feathers—red and white, the school’s colors—for display as a “gesture of respect” for the Ute Tribe’s association with athletics and the school’s honorable respect for the tribe. 45

In 1985 the new vice president for University Relations, Ted Capener, determined to revitalize “Ute Pride” on campus. Sensitive to the growing national opposition to Native American imagery, he surveyed practices at the other twenty-seven institutions with Indian identifications before discussing ideas with the Ute Tribe. During an August meeting on the Uintah-Ouray Reservation, the Ute Business Committee, which exercised both executive and legislative authority, suggested a variety of possibilities including a “fully regaled Ute chief/mascot” horseman appearing at football and perhaps basketball games, a student contest to name the rider’s horse, the Utahna drill team wearing “headbands with feathers,” and sending “30 to 50 kindergarten through six graders” to perform “traditional dances” at football games. Remarkably, they also unanimously approved use of the term “Redskin” if “suitable and advisable” (they suggested “Ute-Redskins”) and even supported possible caricatured artwork. 46

The school had a narrower focus. Eschewing the mascot frenzy that engulfed sports in the mid-1970s, Utah was one of a few schools without a physical representation at athletic events. It was a delicate issue. A task force, formed in 1979 to examine the creation of a mascot, failed to make a recommendation, noting that such a representation would create “continuing problems because even though the Utes may think it is okay, other Indians tribes may not like it.” 47 Subsequently, during homecoming in 1980, a Ute student wearing a full headdress rode onto the football field and hurled a lance into a straw bale as a challenge to the opposing team. The intent was “to assert a proud heritage and renew a University tradition,” but the rider never appeared again. Then, inspired by Florida State’s 1978 debut of Seminole “Chief Osceola” and his Appaloosa horse “Renegade,” it was proposed in 1985 to create a “Crimson Warrior,” not as a mascot but as a symbol of “strength, courage and bravery.” 48

The Crimson Warrior received a mixed reaction, but not from Indians. The Ute Tribe endorsed the idea as “synonymous with the dignity, achievements and perseverance of the people whom it represents.” So did Indians on campus, including the Native American student advisor, Stella Clah, a Navajo; the director of Native American Studies, Dan Edwards, a Yurok; and the Intertribal Student Association, co-chaired by Randy Simmons, a Paiute, and Darrell Watchman, a Navajo. ITSA members not only enthusiastically supported the Crimson Warrior, but they also agreed to take turns

The initial appearance of the Crimson Warrior astride Qea-oontz at a football game, November 2, 1985. —

J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah

appearing as the horseman and be responsible for furnishing regalia as authentic as possible— roach (headdress), breastplate, leggings, moccasins, and face paint; the horse would also be outfitted in appropriate battle attire. However, they insisted the rider wear only one or two eagle feathers because a full headdress, even with artificial feathers, was inappropriate given the eagle’s “religious, spiritual, and cultural significance.” 49

The Crimson Warrior astride an Appaloosa named Qea-oontz (Ute for grizzly bear) was presented as the tribal symbol during halftime ceremonies at a football game on November 2, 1985. Members of the Ute Business Committee and guests joined university president Chase Peterson in viewing an innovation designed to honor both institutional tradition and the Ute people “in an appropriate and dignified manner that is responsible to Native Americans and will make the stadium alive with atmosphere.” 50 There were three problems, however. With no Ute students on campus, the rider, Thad Baldwin, was a Navajo from Arizona. (When asked about a Navajo posing as a Ute, Floyd Wopsock, Uinta Band, said: “Aw, why not?”) 51 The lance was a decorated javelin borrowed from the track team. Most important, the rider’s face paint, headdress, animal fur, and breastplate were genuine war adornments. The Ute Tribe immediately objected; consequently, Crimson Warrior pictures are rare. 52 The Crimson Warrior next made an expanded appearance on November 9 prior to the homecoming game against New Mexico. Navajo student Darrell Roberts, dressed in representative regalia, led the Utah football team onto the field, then circled the stadium before driving a spear into a hay bale at midfield as a challenge to the Lobos. 53 He then left the field, not to return during halftime nor after the game.

Initially hailed as a revitalization of “Ute Pride,” the Crimson Warrior renewed campus debate on Native American identifications owing to unintended, if predictable, consequences, as some fans initiated derisive behaviors—tomahawk chops, war whoops, face paint, and feathers. The editorial staff of the student newspaper, besides using quotation marks to distinguish athletic “Utes” from tribal Utes, launched a campaign to eliminate the costumed rider, the Ute name, and the drum logo. ITSA, now chaired by Diana Midthun, a Sioux, withdrew from participation, urging elimination of the “derogatory” rider since he had “disintegrated from a symbol to a mascot.” 54 Absent Native American involvement, the Crimson Warrior for several years was a non-Indian, former Ute football player Chuck Johansen, who rode his own horse onto the field before football games and, after planting a lance into a hay bale, dismounted and made threatening tomahawk gestures toward the opponent’s bench.

Indian students were offended by a non-Indian representing a Native American warrior, while university officials—and more importantly, Ute leaders—were disappointed by the onset of derisive fan actions. The Ute Tribal Council chairperson Luke Duncan warned: “If it gets worse, you’ll hear from us more.” To curtail embarrassing conduct and avoid confrontation with the Utes, the school in fall 1991 distributed “Standards for Appropriate Fan Behavior,” which significantly reduced disrespectful conduct at football games. 55 Finally, in 1993 the Crimson Warrior, who never caught on with the public, was quietly retired without protest from students, fans, or alumni.

The debate over the name “Ute,” which mirrored the growing national controversy over the use of Indian imagery by sports teams, continued for several years in the Chronicle as well as the Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News. Indian and non-Indian students and faculty were on each side of the issue, although a clear majority of both groups appeared to favor retaining the logo and name. 56 The discussions mirrored undercurrents of the national debate. That whites were the predominant critics of Native American identifications spoke to the paternalism of non-Indians telling Indians how to act and what to believe. Indian students resented the Chronicle staff protesting Indian identifications without first consulting them. 57 And that the most vocal Native American opponents to the Ute name were non-Utes—mostly Navajo—brought into question the propriety of members of one Native American tribe judging how brothers and sisters of another tribe should handle internal affairs.

The lone exception to the oft-heated but consistently civil exchanges occurred in October 1994. The imposing eight-foot-tall “Ute Brave” statue adjacent to the student union building, modeled after the son of a Ute chief, was vandalized—head, bow, and back sprayed with red paint. Graffiti in front of the statue and a follow-up letter to the Chronicle signed “Indigenous Warriors” underscored the political motivation of the vandalism, which occurred during the early morning after Columbus Day. The culprits were never identified, but the tone of their letters and nature of the graffiti indicated they were almost certainly not Native Americans. 58

The near-annual campus debates, intensified by a growing controversy over the name of the NFL’s Washington Redskins, raised the possibility of a name change. Pat Albers, professor of anthropology, spoke for those who thought the Native American identification should be eliminated, notwithstanding endorsement of the Ute Tribe, because it invited “national ridicule, embarrassment and even protest.” 59 While admitting “there has been no pressure to drop ‘Utes,’ and there were presently no plans to do so,” President Arthur K. Smith conceded: “We’ve been looking at the name for two years, and in the fullness of time, those discussions could lead to a change” since “the fewer people you offend, the better.” 60

In reality, a change in identification was unlikely. University officials favored retaining the name Utes, a position reinforced by a 1993 Survey Research Center poll that showed 74 percent of Utahns wanted to keep the name; only 7 percent favored a change. 61 However, controversy over the Crimson Warrior, exacerbated by offensive fan behavior, had prompted Clifford Duncan, Cultural Rights and Protection Officer for the tribe, under whose jurisdiction resided the university’s use of the Ute name, to suggest the school find a new name and symbol. But Stewart Pike, chair of the Ute Tribal Council, supported continued use of the identification, contending that mascot and name were separate matters. 62

The mascot issue persisted after the demise of the Crimson Warrior. Never utilized as a true mascot, the rider had appeared only briefly as the football team took the field for home games. As the only school without a costumed mascot, the university was increasingly pressured by Western Athletic Conference officials as well as fans to create a sideline creature to perform at home games, conference basketball tournaments, and other public functions. In 1992 an ad hoc committee representing a variety of campus organizations was formed to address the mascot issue. ITSA’s suggestion, a coyote, known as a “trickster” in Ute mythology, was apropos the tribal connection. 63 But since a mascot with a Native American association could arouse controversy, it was decided to not link name and mascot. After almost three years of discussions, the Red-tailed Hawk, a raptor indigenous to the state, was chosen with concurrence from the Ute Tribe; “Swoop,” who debuted at a basketball game on January 2, 1996, remains the school mascot. 64

The mascot controversy underscored the extent to which media reportage on the national level about Native American identifications had increased sensitivity on campus and in the community. The highly publicized 1992 federal challenge to the Washington Redskins’ ability to trademark its name was followed in 1994 by a successful challenge to the use of “Redskins” on a Utah vanity license plate. 65 In 1995 a Utah student body assembly replaced its stylized headdress logo as “kind of dated” and “in the gray area” of Indian imagery. 66 The administration, aware of the feelings of non-Ute Indians about use of ceremonial symbols, began in 2008 to phase out the drum and feather logo. Disingenuously referring to it as “a circle and a feather,” the administration, to avoid antagonizing tradition-minded alums, gradually and without commentary replaced the drum and feather with a block “U” on university stationery and publications as well as the center of the football field and basketball court while retaining the drum and feather on football helmets.

IV

Always in agreement about athletics identification, the university and the Ute Tribe in 1995 found themselves for the first time disagreeing over academic opportunity. Historically, Utes rarely attended the university, despite the reservation’s 150-mile proximity to the school. During the 1995–1996 academic year, only three of two hundred Indian students were Ute. To address the low enrollment, Adam Martinez, the education director of the Uintah and Ouray Agency, noting that the tribe’s Higher Education Grant Department had produced only nine graduates, suggested the university offer “at least ten (10) or more” tuition waivers to Ute students. When the school responded that Utes were already eligible for financial aid as “underrepresented students,” the tribe’s Business Committee decided to force the issue by requesting scholarships for members of the tribe in exchange for continued use of the name “Ute” for athletic teams. 67

When discussions failed to achieve “the desired result,” the Ute Tribe’s general legal counsel, Whiteing & Thompson of Boulder, Colorado, in December 1996 requested a meeting with President Smith “to discuss recompense to the Tribe for the University’s use of the terms ‘Running Utes’ and ‘Lady Utes’ to designate its athletics teams.” Rather than seek financial compensation for “decades of character-appropriation,” the tribe would forego legal action “in exchange for certain concessions,” namely, twenty four-year scholarships, the addition of “The History of the Ute Indian Tribe” to the curriculum, an undetermined number of memberships in the athletics booster Crimson Club, parking permits and season tickets to athletic events, gratis use of university “facilities and grounds for Native American culture awareness activities,” and a statement from the president or other “high ranking official” that the school “does not and will not support or condone any actions which demean or stereotype Indian people in any way.” The letter concluded by asserting that tribal leadership “strongly believes” the Utes and, “to a somewhat lesser extent, all Indian people have been denigrated and subjected to ridicule by the University’s characterization and caricature-ization of its athletic teams and mascots as the ‘Utes,’” and that the tribe “hopes that the University will acknowledge and publicly apologize for its past insensitivity to the effect that its actions have had on the collective psyche and public opinion of the Ute people, and will make appropriate recompense for its wrongs.” 68

Athletics Department stationery and publications in the 1950s and 1960s routinely portrayed Indians in outlandishly insensitive guises, as with this image of cartoonish Utes in headdress. —

James C. Fletcher Papers, University of Utah Archives and Records Management Center

The letter of notification came as a shock to the university because of its tone and content, both of which seemed to counter the Ute Business Committee’s enthusiastic support in the past. Larry Cesspooch, a spokesperson for the committee, said: “Sometimes, you have to move it over to lawyers, who say things in a different way.” But rather than a reasoned proposal, the letter, which had to be resent for lack of sufficient postage, constituted an ill-conceived bargaining chip. Indicating the law firm’s unfamiliarity with the school–tribe relationship, it curiously requested recompense only for “Running Utes” and “Lady Utes,” designations limited to basketball teams, and made no mention of the drum and feather logo. And instead of threatening to withdraw permission to use the “Ute” name, it requested compensation for future use of tribal identification, thereby countering the claim that usage was offensive. President Smith, who had been told the threat did not represent all tribal members, agreed to discuss the situation. 69

At a meeting on January 23, 1996, the university, which had never trademarked the Ute name or the drum and feather logo, made clear its determination to maintain an honorific, cooperative relationship, and not to enter into a contractual quid pro quo with the tribe. Smith told the group that, having adopted a new mascot, the school was willing to face the wrath of tradition-minded fans and change its identification: “We don’t want to continue to use the Ute name if it offends you. We don’t want to disparage your traditions or caricature the tribe.” When some Business Committee members then suggested that twenty annual scholarships for Ute students would be adequate compensation for keeping the Ute name, Smith refused to link permission to use the name with scholarships. “If the use of the Ute name offends you, no amount of money will change that. We can’t buy you off. . . . This should not be seen as reparation or a conscience-salve.” Nor would Smith apologize for past actions taken with the expressed approval of the tribe, promising only that the school would offer more financial aid and academic support to facilitate Utes attending the school. Educational support programs and initiatives were negotiable, the use of the Ute name was not. Its use was offensive or it was not. 70

The Business Committee ended the impasse by proposing a future meeting to discuss educational opportunities for Ute students without linking use of the name with scholarships. As committee member Roland McCook explained, the university could continue, no strings attached, to use “Ute” and the drum and feather logo as long as it was done “in a positive manner that preserved the integrity of the Ute tribe.” In its survey of attitudes toward the use of Indian identifications and imagery, Sports Illustrated in 2002 thought “the Utes’ experience with the University of Utah might serve as a model for successful resolution of conflicts over Indian nicknames.” 71

The Northern Utes, who had derived substantial income from producing and leasing gas and oil since the 1940s, were now acutely aware of the greater future economic and employment opportunities as the 1.3-million-acre Uintah-Ouray Reservation, the second largest in the United States, was located in the oil-shalerich Uinta Basin. Since Indian people represented “a pool of talent that has previously been under-developed in educational institutions and consequently untapped by industry and government,” the tribe approached the university about ways to increase Ute enrollment in scientific, technological, and business fields. The result was an agreement in 2003 stipulating how each party would contribute to “innovative educational programs” designed “to matriculate greater numbers of competent and experienced Ute Indian scientists, engineers, technicians, and business professionals who are available to Native American Tribes, private industry, and government agencies.” 72

The “Memorandum of Understanding,” not a written or oral contract, was the first official acknowledgement of an ongoing relationship. The university pledged not only to “use the Ute name in a considered and respectful manner, reflecting the pride and dignity of indigenous people and their traditions,” but also to “devote human and financial resources toward the Utes and other American Indians to encourage, inspire and support tribal youth to lead healthy lives and to pursue post-secondary education.” Correspondingly, the Ute Indian Tribe said it “desires to reaffirm the long and valued relationship between the University and the Tribe to promote educational benefits for its youth” and therefore “encourages the University of Utah to use the Ute name for the University’s sports programs with its full support” because the association “raises tribal visibility and community awareness, and generates a source of pride to members of the Ute Indian Tribe.”

Both parties deemed the association beneficial. For the university, the Ute name was a merchandise mark, a unique athletic identity that resonated with fans and intrigued national audiences, and a means of connecting the institution with the indigenous heritage of state and nation. Identification with the university was a source of pride particularly for the Northern Utes, and publicity generally for all Ute people. With six-thousand-plus members widely dispersed in Utah and Colorado, the Utes had had a low profile with the state, region, and nation; their nomadic past precluded the artwork and crafts—jewelry, pottery, and weaving— that brought distinction to their Southwestern neighbors: the Hopi, Navajo, and Pueblo peoples. (Examples of early Ute bead and quillwork are virtually nonexistent.)

Understanding that most Native American tribes exist in anonymity beyond the immediate locale, Ute Forrest Cuch, director of the state’s Division of Indian Affairs, observed: “One reason we support it is if it weren’t for that, there would be no other landmark that the tribe existed. We are otherwise invisible in the state.” 73 In addition to “What’s-A-Ute?” awareness created in locales across the country where Utah sports teams competed, the tribe’s increased visibility and influence were apparent in its prominent role in the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Clifford Duncan was part of the delegation that picked up the Olympic flame in Greece; the Utah portion of the Torch Relay began in historical tribal land with Frank Arrowchis offering a blessing, Nagki Nupa Woodhouse playing a flute, and Stephanie Spann running the first leg. Thanks to the organizational work of Larry Blackhawk, an international television audience witnessed members of the five Utah tribes providing a lavish ceremonial start to the Opening Ceremony. 74

Emboldened by their Olympics prominence and crucial role in Utah’s obtaining a waiver from the NCAA, the Utes again raised the issue of compensation for naming rights. Forrest Cuch, the most publicly visible and politically influential Native American in the state, argued that there “should be some financial consideration since the University benefitted financially from the use of the Ute name. Frankly, in all due respect, this is the business world and that’s the way it works.” Reasoning the best way to do that would be through “educational endeavors,” he asked President Smith to consider offering free tuition for Utes as well as scholarships for members of the other Utah tribes, something tribal leaders thought had already been promised in return for supporting the NCAA waiver. Smith replied that while the university had only one scholarship designated for a Ute, there were other scholarships available for minorities, including Utah Indians. To Cuch, lumping Native Americans with other ethnic minorities was a “mistake.” Not only were the Utes indigenous to the state, but also, like other Indians, have “a whole different set of issues” due to their “political relationship with the U.S. government as a result of war.” 75 For its part, the university, a public school—impacted by the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision barring the use of tax money for “race-based” scholarships—was determined to avoid the kind of commercial relationship that existed between Florida State and the Seminoles.

Ute concerns about educational opportunities continued to fester. Too few Utes were prepared for or desired to attend college. Of Utah’s nearly 31,500 students in the 2013–2014 academic year, only “one or two” of the 171 Native Americans were Utes. The tribe wanted more aggressive recruitment efforts, more financial assistance, and better advisory programs not only to increase enrollments but also to create better employment opportunities. The election of three new members to the six-person Ute Business Committee in April 2013 led to the formation of a task force in October to negotiate a formal agreement concerning the use of the Ute name and related imagery. Believing that the 2003 MOU, which had expired in 2009, did “not go far enough to promote tribal human resources,” tribal leaders in November proposed, among other things, that the school establish the office of “Special Advisor to the President on American Indian Affairs,” headed by a Ute, and provide tuition waivers for all members of the tribe. Ute and university officials met on November 21 to begin talks about the terms of a new formal relationship. 76

However, non-Ute Indian students on campus took a more radical stance. In December 2013, Indigenous Students and Allies for Change— co-chaired by graduate students Samantha Eldridge, a Navajo, and Monique Thacker, a Makah—presented administrators with a petition advocating the discontinuation of “the drum and feather” logo and “Ute” nickname. The petitioners not only resented some students wearing face paint and headdresses at football games, but they also argued that the use of Indian imagery was perforce “discriminatory and harmful” in general to Native American “traditions, customs and religious symbols.” 77

Whatever the objections and sensibilities of members of other tribes, for the Utes a continued relationship was not an issue. In March 2013, the nine members of the Ute Tribal Alumni Association (Utah graduates) had written to the university’s Board of Trustees supporting the Ute name and symbols. Noting that “the other institutions throughout our state have largely ignored our people, the Ute Indians and our Ute heritage,” they felt “to eliminate the drum and feather logo, and eventually the Ute name, thus our affiliation with the university, would be worse than disrespectful; it would be cruel.” And in response to the ISAC petition, Forrest Cuch took “major exception” to students and faculty, mostly not from Utah, for “demonstrating disrespect by opposing and totally disregarding the sovereign rights of the Ute Indian Tribe” in authorizing use of the nickname and logo while negotiating a new understanding with the school. He did, however, challenge the university to do more to “curb the disrespectful behavior” and educate “the greater community” about the history and culture of “native people.” 78

Signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Ute Tribe and University of Utah, 2014. —

Marketing and Communications Department, University of Utah

As the result of “fruitful and productive” discussions between tribal and school officials, university president David W. Pershing in April 2014 traveled to Fort Duchesne for the formal signing of a new five-year Memorandum of Understanding, subject to annual review. In exchange for permission to continue use of the Ute name and associated logo, the university agreed to add a non-student Ute to a variety of campus programs to enhance Native American perspectives; to create a special advisor to the president on Native American affairs (not necessarily a Ute but with tribal approval); to fund a full-time position on the Ute Reservation dedicated to assisting high school students to prepare for college; and to provide additional financial aid for Native American students, including two $8,000 scholarships for Northern Ute students from revenue generated by private donations and the sale of licensed merchandise, including a “Ute Proud” tee shirt designed by a Ute artist. The tribe celebrated the historic agreement by offering a prayer in the Ute language, presenting Pershing with a ceremonial blanket, and performing traditional songs, dances, and drum music. Pershing asserted: “This isn’t about money; we need to be clear about that. This is about educational opportunity.” 79 Nonetheless, the memorandum was a marked departure from the traditional informal cooperation to a de facto formal agreement.

Following the MOU, the school and the tribe jointly developed educational initiatives that met Cuch’s challenge to promote “the customs, culture, and history of the Ute people” as well as “factual information about Indian people today.” 80 The Utes became a greater presence on campus as consultants and conspicuously by performing tribal dances at the half time of football and basketball games. More substantively, Utah athletic events program inserts, pregame announcements by a Ute spokesperson, half-time JumboTron videos, and a “Ute Proud” website convey information about the tribe, past and present. And academic initiatives, such as the summer Native American Internship program in science and medical fields, enhance undergraduate education. 81

Such measures are recent extensions of the school’s longstanding academic commitment to Native American history and culture, expanded greatly since 1964 with the founding of the American West Center. The center has conducted more than two thousand oral histories of Indians in six western states, facilitated creation of tribal archives and school curricula, and assisted eighteen tribes in publishing written histories; it is also responsible for naming after prominent Utes selected by the tribe all seven streets in the university’s Research Park adjacent to the campus. 82 More visibly, in addition to the activities of Native American student organizations, the school since 1972 has hosted periodic Ute ceremonial performances and an annual Indianconducted Native American Awareness Week, culminating in the Sustaining Our Culture Pow Wow of Intermountain West tribes. Visits from prominent Indian advocates—among them Dennis Banks, Michael Bird, and Floyd Red Crow Westerman—have raised awareness of issues affecting Native Americans, including Indian identifications for sports teams. Speaking at the invitation of Indigenous Students and Allies for Change, Banks, an Ojibwe and cofounder of the American Indian Movement (AIM), criticized the use of “Ute,” a position challenged by Ute spiritual leader Larry Cesspooch who attended Banks’ talk. 83

V

While singular in particulars, the intercollegiate athletics relationship between the University of Utah and the Northern Ute Tribe speaks to fundamental sport and society issues. It illustrates the pervasive prominence of sport in America, given how effectively Native American advocates have used the popularity of team sports to call attention to racism and cultural insensitivity, as well as to how fervently some school administrators and alumni defended disrespectful traditions. It also demonstrates how sport both reflects and affects the larger society through the negotiation of contemporary social sensibilities and the legacies of historic ethnocentric violence and discrimination. The process was marked by both sincerity and arrogance—the arrogance of a school initially appropriating the name of an Indian tribe without consultation (let alone permission), of non-Indians telling Indians what they should believe and how they should act, and members of one Native American tribe judging how their brothers and sisters in another tribe should handle their internal affairs. If the tale of the Utes and the university reveals how traditional Euro-American disparaging attitudes toward Indian peoples transformed an association initially intended to be honorific into one marked by “hostile and abusive” athletic representations, it also shows how the cultural importance of intercollegiate athletics ultimately facilitated the creation of a substantive relationship of palpable pride and mutual benefit to both tribe and school. As in all historical events, context is crucial. For both the Utes and the “Utes,” their athletics association is uniquely informed by history, place, and even religion, and actuated by a desire to use sport as a means of gaining greater public recognition.

The historic and ongoing association between the Northern Utes and the University of Utah, which involves much more than an athletics identification, is a story of cultural appropriation and accommodation. The controversy over the use of Native American identifications and imagery by non-Indian schools is nuanced by the discrepancy between unilateral, generic appropriation, and specific tribal endorsement. As yet undetermined is whether all components of a given tribe must consent to an identification or, irrespective of tribal approval, whether courts might rule against the use of Indian identifications as contrary to acceptable public policy. 84 And while opinion polls show that a majority of Indians and non-Indians do not object to Native American names and images, numerous Indian peoples and tribes throughout the country resent Native American representations per se, and studies indicate possible negative psychological ramifications of such identifications. 85 In the end, it is the collective will of the Northern Ute Nation that will determine the University of Utah’s identification with Ute history and culture. The prescient observation of the Penobscot student in 1988 still obtains: “The symbolism in the Ute mascot is in the eye of the beholder.” 86

Web Extra

Visit history.utah.gov/uhqextras for a gallery of images of Utes in the student yearbook Utonian.

Notes

1 For convenience, hereafter I use interchangeably the common generic Euro-American terms for Indigenous peoples—American Indian, Indian, and Native American.

2 For example, C. Richard King and Charles Fruehling Springwood, Beyond the Cheers: Race As Spectacle in College Sport (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001); King and Springwood, eds., Team Spirits: The Native American Mascots Controversy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001); Carol Spindel, Dancing At Halftime: Sports and the Controversy Over American Indian Mascots (New York: New York University Press, 2002); Kristine A. Brown, “Native American Team Names and Mascots: Disparaging and Insensitive or Just a Part of the Game?” Sports Lawyers Journal 9 (2002): 115–30; and Jennifer Guiliano, Indian Spectacle: College Mascots and the Anxiety of Modern America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2015). Ezra J. Zeitler, “Geographies of Indigenous-Based Team Name and Mascot Use in American Secondary Schools” (PhD diss., University of Nebraska, 2008) assesses the motivations, uses, and consequences of Native American imagery. For an overview, see National Congress of American Indians, “Ending the Legacy of Racism in Sports & the Era of Harmful ‘Indian’ Mascots,” October 2013, ncai.org/resources/ncai-publications/Ending_ the_Legacy_of_Racism.pdf.

3 For a chronological listing of institutional actions, see Amy Wimmer Schwarb, “Where Pride Meets Prejudice,” NCAA Champion Magazine (Winter 2016).

4 NCAA News, September 28, 1998; July 4, 2005; and August 15, 2005. NCAA Minority Opportunities and Interest Comm., Report on the Use of American Indian Mascots in Intercollegiate Athletics to the NCAA Executive Committee Subcommittee on Gender and Diversity Issues (October 2002); NCAA Executive Committee Minutes, August 5, 2005, and NCAA Press Release: Executive Committee Guidelines for Use of Native American Mascots at Championship Events, August 5, 2005, Mascot File, Office of the President, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah (hereafter Mascot File).

5 The policy sparked considerable opposition, ranging from defense of tradition to concerns about legalities. For an overview of the background and institutional reaction to the policy, see André Douglas Pond Cummings, “Progress Realized? The Continuing American Indian Mascot Quandary,” Sports Law Review 18, no. 2 (2008) 309–35, and Schwarb, “Where Pride Meets Prejudice.” For legal issues, see Kenneth B. Franklin, “A Brave Attempt: Can the National Collegiate Athletic Association Sanction Colleges and Universities with Native American Mascots?”, Journal of Intellectual Property Law 13 (2006): 435–46; Brian R. Moushegian, “Native American Mascots’ Last Stand – Legal Difficulties in Eliminating Public University Use of Native American Mascots,” Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal 13, no. 2 (2006): 465–92; Ryan Fulda, ”Is the NCAA Prohibition of Native American Mascots from Championship Play a Violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act?”, American Indian Law Review 31 (2006–2007): 163–86; Spencer D. Kelly, “What’s in a Name: The Controversy Surrounding the NCAA’s Ban on College Nicknames and Mascots,” Willamette Sports Law Journal 5, no. 1 (2008): 17–33; and André Douglas Pond Cummings and Seth E. Harper, “Wide Right: Why the NCAA’s Policy on the American Indian Mascot Issue Misses the Mark,” University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class 9, no. 1 (2009): 135–79.

6 Ted S. Warren, “NCAA: Tribes Must OK Use of Their Names,” Associated Press, August 19, 2005, and Emily Badger, “NCAA Sets Mascot Appeal System,” Chicago Tribune, August 20, 2005.

7 For an overview of the identifications at the University of Illinois, Miami of Ohio, and Eastern Michigan, see Mark R. Connolly, “What’s in a Name?: A Historical Look at Native American-Related Nicknames and Symbols at Three U.S. Universities,” Journal of Higher Education 71, no. 5 (September–October 2000): 515–47. Danielle Endres, “American Indian Permission for Mascots: Resistance or Complicity within Rhetorical Colonialism?,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 18, no. 4 (Winter 2015): 649–89, treats the post-2005 relationship between the Utes and the university as “a form of self-colonization.”

8 Salt Lake Tribune, August 9, 2005; “American Indian Mascot Study for the NCAA Minority Opportunities and Interest Committee” (2002), Mascot File; “Institutional Information: Mascot, Nickname and Logo” (2004), Mascot File; Ronald J. Stratton to Bernie Machen, November 8, 2004, Mascot File.

9 Deseret News, August 28, 2005; Salt Lake Tribune, August 6 and 7, 2005.

10 The three tribes have never taken a formal position on the issue, but Floyd O’Neil, who knows the regional tribes well through his outreach work with the university’s American West Center since 1966, reports having “never heard a word of criticism” from them about the use of the Ute name. Larry Gerlach, telephone interview with O’Neil, February 11, 2017. That was also the opinion of Forrest Cuch, then director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs, when interviewed by the author on October 1, 2009. Their assessments coincide with informal conversations I have had with Utes, primarily Northern Utes, from 2002 to 2014.

11 Salt Lake Tribune, August 7, 2005; Deseret News, August 6 and 9, 2005.

12 Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune, August 24, 2005.

13 Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune, August 9, 2005; Natchees to Bernard Franklin, August 29, 2005, Mascot File. The petition included a pro-forma letter of support, same date, from Craig Thompson to Franklin.

14 Franklin to Michael Young, September 2, 2005; Robert W. Payne to Delise O’Meally, September 2, 2005; “University of Utah Media Statement Re: NCAA’s Ruling on Ute Name,” September 2, 2005; all in Mascot File. That same day Central Michigan also received a waiver because of its relationship with the Chippewa. The University of North Dakota’s Fighting Sioux appeal was denied because of opposition from some branches of the Sioux tribe, notably the Spirit Lake Sioux. Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News, September 3, 2005. The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, founded as a school for Native Americans and with 21 percent Indian student enrollment, was given an exemption.

15 For the array of school mascots, see Mike Lessiter, The College Names of the Games (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989).

16 Phillip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

17 For the early use of Indian names for sports teams, see J. Gordon Hylton, “Before the Redskins Were the Redskins: The Use of Native American Team Names in the Formative Era of American Sports, 1857–1933,” North Dakota Law Review 86, no. 4 (2010): 879–904.

18 “The white man’s Indian” studies include Roy Harvey Pearce, The Savages of America: A Study of the Indian and the Idea of Civilization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1953); Louise K. Barnett, The Ignoble Savage: American Literary Racism, 1790–1890 (New York: Praeger, 1976); Robert Berkhofer, The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (New York: Knopf, 1978); Lucy Maddox, Removals: Nineteenth-century American Literature & the Politics of Indian Affairs (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); and Elizabeth S. Bird, ed., Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular Culture (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996).

19 The Spirit of the Times, October 19 and November 2, 1844; American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine 15 (December 1844): 737; Edward S. Sears, Running through the Ages (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008; 2nd ed., 2015), 62; Sears, George Seward: America’s First Great Runner (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 2008), 48.

20 Jeffrey Powers-Beck, The American Indian Integration of Baseball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004); Michael Oriard, Reading Football: How the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 233–47.

21 Salt Lake Tribune, October 14, 1920. Exceptions are the football headlines “U Grid Braves Leave Today to Scalp [Colorado College] Tigers,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 14, 1920, and “Red Devils Have Spears Sharp to Repel Tigers,” Deseret News, November 3, 1922.

22 New York Times, April 28, 1912. And it isn’t today for some Native Americans, to wit the “Redskins” (Navajo) of Red Mesa, Arizona, high school. The Shiprock, New Mexico, high school designation “Chieftans” applies gender equitably to men’s and women’s teams. On the traditional meaning of the term, see the linguistic report of the Smithsonian Institution’s Department of Anthropology, Ives Goddard, “‘I Am a Red-skin’: The Adoption of a Native American Expression (1769– 1826),” European Review of Native American Studies 19, no. 2 (2005): 1–20. On Native American color identification, see Nancy Shoemaker, “How Indians Got to Be Red,” American Historical Review 102, no. 3 (June 1997): 625–44.

23 Michael Oriard, King Football: Sport and Spectacle in the Golden Age of Radio and Newsreels, Movies and Magazines, the Weekly and the Daily Press (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 7, 18.

24 Shoshone, Goshutes, Paiutes, Utes, and Navajos (Dineh). For profiles of each group, see Forrest S. Cuch, ed., A History of Utah’s American Indians (Salt Lake City: Utah Division of Indian Affairs, 2000). There being a difference between a “culture” or “people” and a “tribe” as a socio-political unit, today there are eight recognized tribes in the state: the Ute tribe of Utah (aka Northern Utes), the Northwest Band of the Shoshone Nation, the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes, the Confederated Bands of the Goshute Reservation (Ibapah), the Paiute Tribe of Utah (Southern Paiutes), the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe, the White Mesa Community, and the Navajo Nation. Gregory Smoak to Larry Gerlach, February 13, 2005. The Timpanogos Ute claim of Snake-Shoshone ancestry is without foundation. See Jared Farmer, On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians and the American Landscape (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).

25 The Spanish derived the name from neighboring tribes who referred to the Utes variously as “Yu Hta” (Comanche), “Yota” (Hopi), and “Yu Tta Ci” (Southern Paiute). The Utes call themselves as “Nu Chi” or “Noochee” (“the people”). See Donald Callaway, Joel C. Janetski, and Omer C. Stewart, “Ute,” in Warren L. d’Azevedo, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 11, Great Basin (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution., 1986), 336–67; Fred A. Conetah, A History of the Northern Ute People (Duchene, UT: Uintah-Ouray Ute Tribe, 1982); Jan Pettit, Utes, The Mountain People (Boulder, CO: Johnson Books, 1981); and Lynn Arave, “Utah, the Riddle behind the Name,” Deseret News, July 19, 1994.

26 The Book of Mormon, First and Second Nephi, relates the religious-based conflicts between two groups of Israelites who traveled to the Americas around 600 BCE culminating with the wicked, darker-skinned Lamanites annihilating the righteous, lighter-skinned Nephites. The traditional teaching that Lamanites were “the principal ancestors of the American Indians” was revised to the belief that they were “among” the ancestors of Native Americans. See Gordon C. Thomasson, “Lamanites” in Daniel H. Ludlow, ed., Encyclopedia of Mormonism (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 2:804–5; Thomas Garrow and Bruce A. Chadwick, “Native Americans: LDS Beliefs,” in Ludlow, ed., Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 3:981–85; “The Church and Descendants of Book of Mormon Peoples,” Ensign, December 1975; and Peggy Fletcher Stack,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 8, 2007.

27 Utah’s winningest football coach, Armstrong in twenty-five years compiled a 141–55–15 (.704) record highlighted by 13 conference championships, six in a row (1928 to 1933), and five undefeated seasons. The new Ute Stadium accommodated 20,000 fans, 7,000 more than the old Cummings Field.

28 Dedication Program, October 22, 1927, p. 35; Utonian 1928, 182–83; both in Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

29 Daily Utah Chronicle, November 11 and 18, 1927 (hereafter Chronicle); Utonian 1929, 10–15, 181.

30 Virginia McConnell Simmons, The Ute Indians of Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2000), 1; “Creation Myths,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 20, 2004.

31 Hylton, “Before the Redskins Were the Redskins,” 901– 2; “Hail to the Redskins,” Wikipedia, accessed March 22, 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail_to_the_Redskins.

32 See Michael Hilger, The American Indian in Film (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1986), and Neva Jacquelyn Kilpatrick, Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and Film (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).

33 Chronicle, October 3, 9, 20, 1947, and October 9, 1953.

34 For example, Chronicle, October 18, 1951; Utonian 1949, 137, 139; Utonian 1960, 129–32; Utonian 1965, 239.

35 Founded in Salt Lake City, branches subsequently opened in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, in the 1930s. “Coon Chicken Inn,” BlackPast.org, accessed March 22, 2017, blackpast.org/aaw/coon-chicken-inn.

36 For a listing of schools, see Guiliano, Indian Spectacle, 8.

37 Born in Czechoslovakia in 1938, Grossman had fled with his family to Hungary to escape Nazi persecution, emigrated to the United States under the auspices of the Jewish Community Service program, and, prior to arriving at the University of Utah, graduated from the Stanford University Law School. George S. Grossman, interview by Richard C. Wydick, April 4, 2008, at dctv. davismedia.org/show/25233.

38 Salt Lake Tribune, November 21, 1969; Grossman to Fletcher, November 21, 1969, and Fletcher to Grossman, November 25, 1969, box 45, fd. 14, James Clinton Fletcher Presidential Records, University Archives and Records Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah (hereafter Fletcher Records). The twenty-four page advertisement supplement announcing the opening of “The Wigwam,” the new Special Events and Physical Education Complex, also appeared in the Deseret News, November 20. Despite Fletcher’s denial of involvement, the extensive coverage of facilities in the five-building complex, athletics department personnel, and the men’s basketball team clearly indicates the supplement was a university production.

39 Grossman to Fletcher, January 20, 1970; Gerald R. Walk to David Laird, January 16, 1970; Eldon R. Cox to Neal A. Maxwell, February 2, 1970, Mascot File; Bookstore Advisory Board Meeting Minutes, January 28, 1979, Mascot/Symbol File, fd. 11, University Archives and Records Center, University of Utah (hereafter Symbol File).

40 The student petitioners did not sign their names. “The Demands of American Indians,” n.d., and Bud Jack to Neal Maxwell, April 29, 1970, Mascot File; Lane Demas, Integrating the Gridiron: Black Civil Rights and American College Football (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010): 102–74; Ryan Thorburn, Black 14: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Wyoming Football (Boulder, CO: Burning Daylight, 2009).

41 Fletcher to Maxwell, April 23, 1970, box 45, fd. 16, Fletcher Records; Maxwell to Eldon Cox and Bud Jack, April 27, 1970, Mascot File; Cox to Maxwell, May 4, 1970, Mascot File; Cox to Gerald Walk and Maxwell, June 1, 1970, Mascot File; Chronicle, April 19, 1972.

42 President Fletcher’s Appointment Book, May 20, 1970, box 51, fd. 1, Fletcher Records; Larry Gerlach interviews with O’Neil, July 7, 2016, and February 11, 2017.

43 Athletic Board Meeting Minutes, March 8, 1972, fd. 11, Symbol File; Chronicle, April 19, 1972. Utah’s director of Native American Studies 1971–1973 and coordinator of the Indians of the Americas Program 1977–1979, King became a renowned writer of Native American fiction. Eva Gruber, ed., Thomas King: Works and Impact (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2012).

44 Robert K. Weidner to David Midthun and Lacee Harris, December 9, 1980; Agreement on the Use of the Ute Indian Symbol, April 27, 1981; both in Mascot File.

45 Chronicle, November 18, 1982; R. J. Snow to Property Management, October 15, 1984, Mascot File; “The Ute Symbol,” Mascot File.

46 Ted Capener, memorandum, August 20, 1985; Capener to Lester Chapoose, August 21, 1985; both in Mascot File.

47 Athletic Board Minutes, November 26, 1979, February 7 and May 19, 1980, fd. 11, Symbol File.

48 Chronicle, October 18, 1980; University of Utah Review 4, no. 3 (December/January, 1980–81): 5; Byron Sims to Ted Capener, February 15, 1985, Mascot File; Chronicle, October 18, 1985.

49 Utah grads Dan and Art Monson, the latter Salt Lake County Treasurer, provided the two-year-old filly Chronicle, October 29, 1985; University of Utah News Release, October 30, 1985; ITSA Newsletter, November 1985, Mascot File; “Symbol Proposal Agreed Upon at ITSA Meeting,” n.d., Mascot File.

50 Peterson to Ute Business Committee, October 1, 1985, Mascot File; University of Utah News Release, October 30, 1985, Mascot File; Chronicle, October 18 and 29 and November 4, 1985. Alums Dan and Art Monson provided the horse.

51 Deseret News, November 5, 1985.

52 Author’s recollection of discussions with the Athletics Department’s Sports Information personnel about acquiring a picture of the Crimson Warrior. Photos of the Crimson Warrior are rare. University of Utah archives has a single black and white picture.

53 ITSA Newsletter, November 1985; Ted Capener to Peterson, November 19, 1985; both in Mascot File.

54 Chronicle, October 21, 1987; ITSA Newsletter, October 1987.

55 Chronicle, November 30, 1988; Salt Lake Tribune, October 23, 1991; El Paso (Texas) Herald-Post, November 15, 1991.

56 Stella Clah to Peterson, February 17, 1988; Dan Edwards to Ted Capener, November 2, 1988; Larry McCook to Capener, November 28, 1988; Clah to Capener, December 6, 1988; Nola Lodge to Afesa Adams, December 12, 1988; all in Mascot File. See also Chronicle, November 7 and 9, 1988.

57 ITSA Newsletter, Fall 1987, Mascot File.

58 Chronicle, October 13, December 5 and 9, 1994; undated and unsigned document from the perpetrators explaining their views received by the President’s Office on December 6, 1994, Mascot File. More than linguistic evidence points to non-Indian vandalism. The swastika drawn in front of the statue was likely intended as the hostile Nazi sign, but Indians would have known it is also the Hopi symbol for peace and prosperity. That the protest was “in honor of Leroy Jackson and Mike Barry”—the former in 1962 became one of the first African Americans on the Washington Redskins and the latter a former football coach then working with minority youngsters in Chicago—seems an unlikely tribute from Native Americans.

59 Patricia Albers to Arthur K. Smith, September 1, 1993; Ted Capener to Albers, September 16, 1993; both in Mascot File.

60 Salt Lake Tribune, October 12, 1993.

61 Ibid., December 8, 1993.

62 Beverly Sutteer to Ted Capener, May 25, 1993; Capener, memorandum of telephone conversation with Pike, July 7, 1993; both in Mascot File.

63 ITSA Newsletter, October 1987.

64 Chronicle, September 29, October 12, and November 3, 1993; John Ashton to Ted Capener, September 29, 1993, Mascot File; Capener to Jeff J. Clawson and Steve Gustavson, November 5, 1993, Mascot File; Capener to Norman D. Riggs, December 3, 1993, Mascot File; Salt Lake Tribune, January 30, 1996; Athletics Board Minutes, January 31, 1996, fd. 11, Symbol File.

65 Both the state and federal challenges ended successfully. For Utah, see Deseret News, December 23, 1994; Salt Lake Tribune, March 4, 1999; McBride v. Motor Vehicle Division of Utah State Tax Commission 977 P.2d 467, 473 (1999); and André Douglas Pond Cummings, “Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My or Redskins and Braves and Indians, Oh Why: Ruminations on Mcbride V. Utah State Tax Commission, Political Correctness and the Reasonable Person,” California Western Law Review 36, no. 11 (1999): 11–37. For the appeal to the Federal Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, see Lee Sigelman, “Hail to the Redskins? Public Reactions to a Racially Insensitive Team Name,” Sociology of Sport Journal 15, no. 4 (1998): 317–25, and C. Richard King, Redskins: Insult and Brand (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016). For a personal account, Suzan Shown Harjo, “Fighting Name- Calling: Challenging ‘Redskins’ in Court,” in King and Springwood, Team Spirits, 189–207.

66 Salt Lake Tribune, May 4, 1995; Chronicle, May 5, 1995.

67 Deseret News, February 15, 1996; Adam Martinez to Arthur K. Smith, October 10, 1995; Suzanne Espinoza to Martinez, November 27, 1995, Mascot File. An “Agency” is an administrative office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs charged with supervising relations between Native Americans and other peoples.

68 Sandra Hansen to Arthur K. Smith, December 27, 1996, Mascot File. Firm general partner Jeanne Silvas Whiteing, a member of the Blackfeet tribe, specialized in representing Native American tribes and tribal entities.

69 Mary Shea Tucker to Smith and John K. Morris, January 10, 1996; Sandra Hansen to Liz McCoy, January 18, 1996; Vickie Chapoose to Smith, January 25, 1996; all in Mascot File.

70 Deseret News, February 12, 13, and 15, 1996; Salt Lake Tribune, January 24, 1996.

71 Price, “Indian Wars,” 72.

72 “Resolution No. 03-259, Unitah & Ouray Reservation,” November 10, 2003; “Memorandum of Understanding Between the Ute Indian Tribe and University of Utah Relating to the Establishment of Cooperative Educational Programs and Initiatives for the Mutual Benefit of the Ute Indian Tribe and the University of Utah,” December 16, 2003; both in Mascot File.

73 In 2013, some 3,100 Utes lived on the Uintah and Ouray in the northeastern section of the state, 2,000 on the Ute Mountain reservation in the southeast corner, and some 1,000 Southern Utes are based primarily in Colorado. Salt Lake Tribune, February 16 and 19, 2013; Deseret News, November 11, 2013; and indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/02/20/university-utah-utes-working-toward-understanding-153661?page=0%2C4.

74 Larry Gerlach interview with Larry Blackhair, November 17, 2009.

75 Deseret News, August 24, 2005, and September 17 and 19, 2006.

76 Deseret News, November 11, 2013; Salt Lake Tribune, November 12 and December 5, 2013.

77 Salt Lake Tribune, December 5, 2013; Chronicle, December 9, 2013; ICMN Staff, “Petition to Change University of Utah ‘Ute’ Nickname on Change.org,” Indian Country Media Network, December 6, 2013, accessed March 22, 2017, indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/12/06/petition-change-university -utah-ute-nickname-changeorg-152604.

78 Deseret News, November 11, 2013; Salt Lake Tribune, December 16, 2013.

79 Deseret News April 15, 2014; Salt Lake Tribune, April 16, 2014. For the MOU, see University of Utah, accessed March 22, 2017, admin.utah.edu/ute-mou/.

80 Christina Rose, “The University of Utah Utes: Working Toward Understanding,” Indian Country Media Network, February 20, 2014, accessed April 26, 2017, indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/02/20/ university-utah-utes-working-toward-understanding-153661?page=0%2C4.

81 Jeremy Pugh, “Next Gen Healers,” Continuum: The Magazine of the University of Utah (Summer 2016): 16– 21.

82 Floyd O’Neil to Chase Peterson, November 5, 1985; Ted Capener to O’Neil, January 31, 1986; both in Mascot File.

83 Chronicle, March 21, 2013.

84 For example, in 2013 the much larger Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, which long opposed Florida State’s agreement with the Florida Seminoles, officially condemned the use of Indian mascots by sports teams. Washington Post, August 14, 2005, and December 29, 2014. On the question of tribal inclusion and potential court challenge, see Stephanie Jade Bollinger, “Between a Tomahawk and a Hard Place: Indian mascots and the NCAA,” Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal 73 (2016): 73–115 (esp. 86–88).

85 Stephanie A. Fryberg, Hazel Rose Markus, Daphna Oyserman, and Joseph M. Stone, “Of Warrior Chiefs and Indian Princesses: The Psychological Consequences of American Indian Mascots,” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 30, no. 3 (2008): 208–18; and Chu Kim-Prieto, Lizabeth A. Goldstein, Sumie Okazaki, and Blake Kirschner, “Effect of Exposure to an American Indian Mascot on the Tendency to Stereotype a Different Minority Group,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 40 no. 3 (2010): 534–53. For opinion polls, see S. L. Price, “Indian Wars,” Sports Illustrated, March 4, 2002, 66–72; C. Richard King, et al., “Of Polls and Race Prejudice: Sports Illustrated’s Errant ‘Indian Wars,’” Journal of Sport & Social Issues 26, no. 4 (2002): 381–402; Kathleen Hall Jamieson, “Most Indians Say Name of Washington ‘Redskins’ Is Acceptable While 9 Percent Call It Offensive,” The Annenberg Public Policy Center, September 24, 2004; D. Anthony Tyeeme Clark, “Indigenous Voice and Vision as Commodity in a Mass-Consumption Society: The Colonial Politics of Public Opinion Polling,” American Indian Quarterly 29 (2005): 228–38; and “Most Native Americans Not Offended by the Washington Redskins’ Name,” Washington Post, April 12, 2016.

86 Chronicle, November 30, 1988.