The Spaniard and the Ute

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 22, 1954, No. 1-4

THE SPANIARD AND THE UTE

BY S. LYMAN TYLER

IT HAS BEEN the custom to begin the documentary study of the history of the present Utah area, and of the Yuta (anglicized Utah) Indians, with the diary of Father Escalante, who, with Dominguez leading the party, entered the Yuta domain and the boundaries of the present state of Utah in 1776. The area may have been referred to as early as the 1540's as the land and lake of Copala, the mythical home of the Mexican, or Aztec, Indians. Francisco de Ibarra, governor of Nueva Vizcaya, then on the northern frontier of New Spain (presently Mexico), spent years searching for this Copala in the sixteenth century. Fray Geronimo de Zarate Salmeron mentioned that Indians encountered by Don Juan de Onate (founder of the Spanish province of New Mexico) north of the Colorado River spoke plainly of Copala. Later the present Utah was included in the area known to the Spanish as El Gran Teguayo, a legendary kingdom that rivalled Coronado's fabled Quivira (probably in central Kansas) in its purported wealth and population.

Yuta Indians may have been encountered by the Coronado expedition on the buffalo plains northeast of New Mexico and called Querechos, meaning buffalo-eaters. A form of the word Yuta was probably first recorded in the 1620's by Salmeron who wrote it down as it sounded coming from the lips of the Indians of Jemez Pueblo, in northwestern New Mexico. Some of the forms of the name that he recorded are Gawuptuh, Guaputa, and Qusutas. Salmeron also used the word Yuta, and later Spanish chroniclers followed his example.

Spanish usage of the word Yuta in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century compares with the present anthropological usage of the word Shoshonean, for the Spanish called all who spoke dialects akin to that used by the Yuta, "Yuta Indians." The Ute, Southern Paiute, and Chemehuevi (the southernmost of the Southern Paiute) were all contacted by the Spanish, and until about 1750 all were called Yuta Indians. After 1750 different bands of the present Ute began to be mentioned by name as "Yutas Zabaguanas," "Mohoaches," "Chuguaguas," "Tabeguaches," etc. The "Payuchi," probably Southern Paiute, and the Chemehuevi also begin to take on a separate identity, still as Yuta Indians but more specifically designated as "Yutas Chemeguabes," the Chemehuevi, and "Yutas Cobardes," the Southern Paiute.

The Spanish documents indicate that these Yuta Indians occupied a territory stretching from the area west of the Colorado River in southeastern California and northwestern Arizona, north of the Colorado and San Juan rivers in southern Utah, and on north of the headwaters of the Rio Grande in south and central Colorado. This was their homeland in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century. Bands engaged in hunting, trading, or raiding, regularly went beyond these limits in every direction.

The Yavapai, Walapai, and Havasupai, known as Cruzado and Conina Apaches to the Spanish, have maintained a close contact with their Yuta neighbors across the Colorado for centuries. The Hopi (Moqui) and the Navaho have a long record of both friendly and unfriendly relations with the Yutas. The Yutas apparently engaged in trade with the sedentary Indians of New Mexico long before the arrival of the Spanish. 1Northeastern New Mexico, the panhandle of Texas, and western Oklahoma, all were familiar territory to the Yuta Indians.

Zarate Salmeron, in the 1620's, wrote of the province of Quazula, the land of the Yuta Indians north of New Mexico. Fray Alonso de Posadas, in New Mexico from 1640 to 1654, spoke of Yuta Indians encountered by Onate north of the Colorado River in 1604, while enroute to the Pacific. Posadas also spoke of Yutas north of New Mexico, and sharing the buffalo plains with the Apaches northeast of New Mexico. Father Escalante, in a letter to his superior concerning New Mexico before the Pueblo Rebellion of 1680, reports that the plains then held by the Comanches (in 1778), were, prior to 1700, shared by the Yutas and Apaches. Fray Juan Amando Niel, who wrote of the Indians of the Southwest prior to 1700, also mentions Yutas on the plains east and northeast of New Mexico, and suggests that their prowess as warriors was as preeminent in that area as that of the Apaches in southern New Mexico and Arizona.

Beginning about 1650 the Apaches began to encroach upon Yuta territory, and by 1700 they were located in the Sierra Blancas north of Taos and at La Jicarilla and El Cuartelejo northeast of New Mexico. The Yutas and Comanches, intermittently in alliance from about 1700 to 1748, succeeded in dislodging the Apaches and driving them south and west. About 1748, the Comanches allied themselves with the Pawnees and French and gained access to French guns which were not made available to the Yutas. This so strengthened the Comanches that they were able to gain the upper hand over their previous Yuta allies in the area northeast of New Mexico.

The Yutas and Comanches were bitter enemies from about 1749 to the 1780's, when Juan Bautista de Anza, governor of New Mexico, succeeded in forming a system of alliances that resulted in a renewal of their friendship. The Yutas then enjoyed their old freedom of movement in the area northeast of New Mexico, and the Comanches moved south, again displacing the Apaches and forcing them into the desert regions of southern New Mexico, northern Mexico, and Arizona.

Yuta pressure against the Navaho became intense after about 1720. By this time, the sheep the Navaho had acquired from the Hopi and other Pueblo Indians during the Pueblo Rebellion (1680- 1696) had increased remarkably. Frequent raids from the Yutas caused the Navaho to gradually withdraw into the most inaccessible recesses of the area they inhabited, leaving their best farm lands and often losing some of their flocks.

This hostility on the part of the Yutas, apparently sometimes participated in by the Comanches, eventually caused the Navaho to seek peace with the Spanish. During the 1740's, the Franciscan Friars Delgado, Menchero, and Yrigoyen were sent as missionaries to the Navaho. They asked them to settle in the pueblos of Encinal and Cebolleta where Spanish soldiers would help protect them from their enemies.

During the remainder of the eighteenth century the Spanish governors of New Mexico continually played the Yuta and the Navaho against each other as a means of protecting the Pueblo Indians and the Spanish settlements from their raids to procure livestock.

During the 1770's a new surge of interest in the land north of New Mexico and Arizona came, in connection with the extension of the Spanish frontier into Alta California, and a desire to discover a feasible land route from New Mexico to Monterey.

In 1775 Fray Silvestre Velez de Escalante visited the Hopi. These Indians had consistently refused to receive the Franciscan missionaries since the Pueblo Rebellion. The governor of New Mexico wished, in some way, to bring them within the fold. The failure of Father Escalante to persuade the Hopi to accept Spanish domination caused him to recommend that they be reduced by armed conquest, for beyond them were the friendly Conina Apaches (Havasupais), and the Yutas (probably Southern Paiute). Escalante conceived of establishing the desired route from New Mexico to Monterey through their country.

Before a year had elapsed plans for the journey were completed, but it had been decided that a more easterly route through the land of the Yutas, in present western Colorado which was well known to the Spanish, would be more advantageous. Guides were acquired who previously had traded with the Yuta Indians, knew their language, and had seen their country almost to the point where the Dominguez-Escalante party entered the present boundaries of the state of Utah. It is almost certain that the Spanish had entered southeastern Utah at an earlier date, for they knew the landmarks in the area well, but no documentary evidence of any particular Spaniard or group of Spaniards entering the present boundaries of Utah before the Dominguez-Escalante party has yet come to light.

The route followed by the Dominguez-Escalante party took them up the western slopes of the Rockies to the White River in northwestern Colorado, across Utah south of the Uintah Mountains to Utah Lake, then south through Southern Paiute lands to the Colorado crossing, and on to Santa Fe. The country they saw and the Indians they observed were adjacent to the trail followed. Escalante's itinerary should not by any means be thought of as having brought him in contact with all the groups of Yuta Indians.

Escalante divided the Yutas into two major groups: The "Yutas we knew before" were divided into four provinces and called "The Yutas Muhuachis, the Yutas Payuchis, the Tabehuachis and Sabuaganas." The Yutas Cobardes, whom they had not known before, were divided into the Huascaris (Cedar Indians), the Parusis (Shivwits), the Yubuincariris (Uinkarits), the Ytimpabichis (Timpeabits), and Pagampabichis (Kaibab Indians).

The eastern Yutas, who had long been in contact with the Spanish, were more truly nomadic than their western kin. They had lived in the skin tipi since a time before they learned to ride the horse; they subsisted on the buffalo and other game of the mountainous area they claimed as their homeland and hunting grounds; they had obtained the horse from the Spanish at an early date and assisted in its distribution among other tribes; they were oriented toward New Mexico in their trade activities and there engaged in horse stealing and raiding, as well as trading in tanned hides, captives, and other items.

The Yutas Cobardes lived in huts made of willow or cane framework covered with brush, in the summer time, and with earth or skins, in cold weather. There was no evidence of the use of the Plains tipi among the Cobardes. From Utah Lake southward to the Colorado River, west of the Payuchis, these Yutas were increasingly gentle and more sedentary. The war prowess of the Eastern Yutas was replaced among these Indians by superior skill in basket handicrafts, some agriculture, the ability to spear fish, seed gathering, communal rabbit drives, and extensive use of plant food and small animals. Clothing was poorer.

In the period directly after the Dominguez-Escalante expedition the Comanche and Apache Indians continued to raid New Mexico. The Yutas were friendly and continued to be used by

the Spanish in their campaigns against the Comanches, enemies of both the Yutas and the Spaniard. In September, 1779, Governor Juan Bautista de Anza, with six hundred presidial troops, including Pueblo Indian auxiliaries, and two hundred Yuta and Jicarilla allies, carried out a very successful campaign against the Comanches.

The Comanches had descended upon the province in 1778 with great fury. At one blow New Mexico lost one hundred twenty-seven persons, dead and captured. Teodoro de Croix, commandant-general of the interior provinces, saw that the "valiant Ute" was used to good advantage as a balance first against one enemy and then another. In 1779 they had aided in the defeat of the Comanche; they were also used as a threat against the Navaho:

To withstand them, no better means has been found than that of availing ourselves of the arms of the Ute. It is sufficient that the latter declare war to make the Navaho desist from war on us.

The Navaho had formed a coalition with the troublesome Apaches Gilenos that threatened to develop into a full-scale alliance. As the Navaho were a semi-sedentary people, practicing agriculture, weaving, and becoming increasingly dependent upon their herds, they had too much to lose to risk the enmity of the Yutas, who had destroyed their flocks in the first half of the eighteenth century and had driven them into the arms of the Spanish missionaries. Raiding the New Mexican settlements was not profitable enough to compensate for the losses that would come to them in answer for such raids.

The Yutas continued to indulge in an occasional raid on one or another of the pueblos. Stock were run off now and then and other robberies committed. Croix suggested a possible answer to this:

If only the Comanche . . . were faithful friends in New Mexico, the province would not have to fear the Ute, Navajo, and Apache, as the troop and valorous settlers of the province would be sufficient to punish their hostilities. With the aid of the Comanche they could subject these nations. In this case, with the Ute, Navajo, and Apache remaining in their distant countries where they would have nothing to long for, we could see in our lands the felicitous and desired pacification.

For all these reasons, supported by the councils of war, I advised the governor to try to attract the Comanche to peace, but they have not offered it in good faith. ... I shall content myself if the Comanche make less frequent visits to the territories of New Mexico, if the Ute remain faithful to our friendship, and if the Navaho do not take sides openly in the interests of the Apache. In this way the hostilities of the latter can be withstood and punished, and the province will breathe.

Governor Anza and the presidial troops with their Yuta and Jicarilla allies continued to press the campaign against the Comanches. Not being able to withstand the combination that was arrayed against them, the Comanches were forced to abandon their forays in New Mexico and turn upon the province of Texas. Here they found "less resistance, greater helplessness, and cowardice in some settlers who have become accustomed to living in the bosom of peace." Credit was given to the "brave Ute and treacherous Jicarilla" for supplying the necessary strength to turn the tide against the Comanche.

As the Comanches receded to the south and east the Yutas and Jicarilla Apaches, their allies, again moved into the area northeast of New Mexico. Gradually the Comanches came to accept this arrangement, and their homeland was carved out of the present states of Oklahoma and Texas. The Apache withdrew further south and west to occupy northern Mexico and southern New Mexico. Driven from all sides they eventually became less and less agricultural and more and more nomadic, lurking shadows who were to develop the strike and withdraw technique until it became an art that enabled a handful of Apaches to terrorize established settlements where they were outnumbered one hundred to one.

In 1786, Governor Anza succeeded in persuading the Comanche Chief Ecueracapa to come to New Mexico to discuss terms that would lead to peace between the Comanches and the Spanish. The Yutas at first attempted to thwart Anza's plans, accusing him of preferring unfaithful Comanche rebels to faithful and obedient Yuta friends. Governor Anza "with a diplomacy that equalled his military prowess" persuaded the two principal Yuta chiefs, Mora and Pinto, that the Spanish king in his benevolence could refuse grace to no one, and that the vassals of the king, which the Yutas were, owed him strict obedience. By this strategy Anza avoided a bitter war between the Yutas and Comanches that would probably have involved New Mexico, and persuaded these enemies to return to the friendship that had existed between them in the first half of the century.

The Indians, after various charges and satisfactions on both sides, exchanged clothing before Anza, according to their custom, to renew friendship. The news quickly spread to Taos whence other Ute chiefs came at once to embrace the Comanches and smoke the pipe of peace.

The peace concluded between the Yutas and Comanches was extended to include the Navaho. These were all used as allies by the Spanish in their strife with the Apaches. Generals, or head chiefs, were appointed for each tribe at peace with the Spanish, and these were given silver-headed canes and medals to indicate their authority.

Evidence of interest in the Spanish language and customs on the part of these Indian allies led the officials in New Mexico to lay plans for their education. Older Indians were discouraged in their attempts to learn, but every opportunity was to be extended to the children. Some of the Indian youth were to be sent to Mexico City to be educated at the king's expense. The children of principal chiefs of the Comanche, Navaho, and Yuta Indians were to be trained so they would be able to assume command at the death of their elders.

The Indians were encouraged to establish permanent settlements, cultivate the soil, and become less nomadic. Oxen, ploughs, and seed were to be furnished by the government to encourage agriculture. Instruction was to be given in the best farming methods by the Spanish and Pueblo Indian tillers of the soil. The Comanches, and later the Yutas, asked that this proffered assistance be given to them.

Thirty Spanish laborers with tools were loaned to the Comanches in 1787, to assist in the erection of a pueblo on the Arkansas River. By October of that year the planned town was laid out. Nineteeen houses were completed and construction of others had begun. Corn, other seed, sheep, and oxen were transported to the village by the Spanish.

When they saw what was being done for the Comanches, the Yutas asked that the same assistance be extended to them. A site for a town was chosen one and a half leagues below Abiquiu on the Chama River. Forays by the Yutas had forced the abandonment of this town in 1747. It had been reoccupied in 1748, only to be abandoned again after severe attacks by the Yuta and Navaho, then occupied again in 1754. The town requested by the Yuta Indians was approved by the New Mexican authorities, but before work was begun it was learned that the Comanches had abandoned their pueblo on the Arkansas River. This is Governor Concha's explanation:

This nation like almost all the gentiles is full of superstition. At the moment that any person of estimation dies in any suitable spot where they have set their rancherias, they take them up and change the site, going even to a distance, and a place ordinarily lacking everything necessary for subsistence in their manner.

The idea of establishing the nomadic tribes in pueblos was soon abandoned.

In the decade that followed, the Yutas were mentioned many times in the official reports of the governor of New Mexico as well-behaved and friendly. The Yuta, Comanche, Jicarilla, and Navaho were referred to as the four allied tribes. The choice of "Generals," or head chiefs, to represent the different tribes, begun in 1786, was continued. This procedure made negotiation between the Spanish and the various tribes much simpler. Interpreters were hired to act as representatives of the Spanish in their dealing with these Indian allies.

The Spaniard became adept at using the strength of their Indian allies against unfriendly tribes. A threat to use the Yuta against them was often sufficient to temporarily stop the sporadic raids of the Navaho against the Indian pueblos. The interpreter-agents often were able to avert a threatening conflict by explaining that a certain raid was the work of a few young warriors out for a lark, and did not represent the sentiment of the entire tribe. The malefactors would be brought to justice, usually by the tribal authorities, the stolen goods returned, and peace would be maintained.

About 1800, the Spanish began to receive word of activity on the part of the Anglo-Americans north of them. There was fear of an expedition from Canada by the English in 1801. This caused the Spanish to organize a group of Yuta and Genizaro spies that were to be sent among the Kiowa, Aa, Abajases (perhaps the Arapaho), Pawnee, and other tribes south of the Missouri River. They were to keep the Spanish constantly informed concerning Anglo-American activity in the area.

February 15, 1807, two Yuta Indians brought Dr. Robinson, a young Anglo-American, to Real Alencaster, governor of New Mexico. Two Spanish officers, Almanza and Sotelo, commanding scouting expeditions that included Yuta Indians, kept a close watch on Zebulon Montgomery Pike, commander of the party to which Dr. Robinson belonged. Pike spent some time in the area north of New Mexico, supposedly searching out the sources of the Red River. He recorded the following information concerning the Indians of the area:

The Utahs wander on the sources of the Rio del Norte; they are supposed to be 2,000 warriors strong, are armed in the same manner, and pursue the same game as the Kyaways [Kiowa], but are a little more civilized, having more connection with the Spaniards with whom however they are frequently at war. They are at this time at peace with them but waging war with the Ietans [Here referring to the Comanche. Ietan is used, however, for both the Yuta and Comanche.].

And further:

The Kyaways wander on the sources of the Plate [South Platte], and are supposed to be one thousand and nine men strong. They possess immense herds of horses, and are at war with both the Pawnees and the Ietans as well as the Sioux. They are armed with bows and arrows and lances and follow the buffalo. This nation, the Ietans, and the Utahs speak the same language.

There seems to have been an almost continuous contact maintained between the Yutas Timpanogos, or Lagunas, in the vicinity of Lake Timpanogos (Utah Lake) from the visit of Dominguez and Escalante to the coming of the Mormons. The references, however, usually merely refer to them as Yuta Indians and do not name a particular group.

The Yutas Payuchis, who seem to have been more like the eastern Yutas than the more sedentary Yuta that Escalante called Yutas Cobardes, or timid Yutas, inhabited the area from the fork of the Colorado and San Juan rivers, east, apparently both north and south of the San Juan, to the area inhabited by the Yutas Muhuachis. The Payuchis and Muhuachis maintained both friendly and unfriendly relations with the Navaho. References to the Indian tribes in the Spanish documents indicate that the Navaho were east of the Hopi during the Spanish period, and that Yuta Indians generally were found north of both the Hopi and Navaho lands south of the Colorado and San Juan rivers.

The trade in captive, timid Yutas (called Piedes, Digger Utes, etc.) with the Hopi Indians was apparently carried on between the Hopi and the Laguna, or Timpanogos Yutas, of the Utah Lake area. These more aggressive groups preyed upon the timid Yutas exacting a kind of tribute from them in various forms. Among the eastern Yutas, including the Payuchis, this practice was not common. These brought captives to trade in New Mexico, it is true, but they were usually taken in raids on other tribes and did not come from among their own peoples.

Spanish trade with the eastern Yutas began shortly after 1600. There seems to have been no direct trade with the Timpanogos Yutas, however, until sometime after the Dominguez- Escalante expedition. A route which crossed the Grand River near Moab, and Green River near the present city of the same name, tapped the trade with the western Yutas. This is referred to in Utah history as the Old Spanish Trail. A branch of this trail, which seems previously to have reached both the Sevier and Utah lakes, was later extended to reach the San Gabriel Mission at Los Angeles.

We have record of Manuel Mestas, a Genizaro, being among the Timpanogos Yutas about 1800. September 1, 1805, shortly after Governor Joaquin del Real Alencaster arrived in New Mexico, a request was made for funds to pay Mestas the regular interpreter's wages. He is referred to as "a Genizaro, seventy years old, who for approximately fifty years has served as Yuta interpreter, [and] was the one who reduced them to peace."

Several charges of horse stealing against the Yuta Indians were referred to Mestas during 1805 and 1806. He recovered eight horses they had stolen shortly after the arrival of Governor Alencaster. He was in Yuta territory again in July in search of eleven horses and mules. Later he was sent to recover twenty mules and eight horses. These last twenty-eight animals seem first to have been stolen from the Spanish by Yutas Jimpipas (unknown to me), lost to a party of Comanche raiders, then recovered by Yutas Timpanogos. Mestas returned from the land of the Timpanogos with nine of the original twentyeight animals (which wasn't bad for a seventy-year oldster). The remainder were lost to the Kiowa, then operating in northeastern Colorado.

There is reference to James Workman and Samuel Spencer being in the land of the Yuta in 1809, and of accompanying a Spanish caravan, probably over the Old Spanish Trail to California. Sometime during this same period the following evaluation of the Yuta was given:

The Yuta tribe inhabits a vast territory. Although in some respects it resembles the two previously described tribes (Comanche and Navaho), it possesses a stronger tendency toward brigandage than toward acquiring recognition through virtuous acts. Their hypocrisy leads them to perpetrate acts of the most abject humiliation. Money is all powerful with the Yuta. It is the only thing that has induced them to make peace with us and to permit us to cross their territory. Last year, 1811, Don Jose Rafael Sarraceno, postmaster of New Mexico crossed the territory in an effort to locate a Spanish settlement which the Yutas have always asserted lay beyond their territory, supposedly completely surrounded by wild Indians. After having traveled for three months, he was finally stopped by a large river. Among the Indians living there he found many articles manufactured by Spaniards such as knives, razors, and awls; he obtained the same information there, that the manufacturers of those articles lived across the river (somewhere between the north and west). Since they could not tell him exactly where he could cross the river, he decided to return home; he brought back with him a large shipment of beautiful pelts which he had purchased very cheaply; for example, he traded one awl for a perfectly tanned deer hide. At this price he could have afforded to bring as many pelts as he could load on his entire mule train if it had been possible to export them.

The Yuta, the Navaho, and the Comanche are referred to as the most powerful nations in the area surrounding New Mexico, and as the tribes that have "greatly threatened the loss of the Province." Presents were given these tribes financed by the public treasury:

These presents consisted of coats and capes made of blue Queretaro, with red lapels for the big chiefs, three-cornered hats, and some medals struck off by the commandant general, who also gives them presents whenever they go to see him. In my province [New Mexico] our present governor, Don Joaquin del Real Lancaster [listed elsewhere as Alencaster], gives them food; he is polite enough to let the big chiefs sit at his table. They like wine very much; they call it crazy water; and they are not careful to remain sober. For the past four years we have also been giving presents to the Cahiaguas [Kiowa].

Mauricio Arze and Lagos Garcia left Abiquiu, March 16, 1813, enroute to Lake Timpanogos. Nothing is said of the route followed. The Arze-Garcia party remained at the lake for three days, trading with the Indians. According to the documents the Indians wanted to trade only Indian slaves, "as they had done on other occasions." According to the testimony of the witnesses, when the Spaniards refused to do this the Indians attacked them and began killing their horses.

The next day, apparently still having refused to trade in Indian slaves, they set out for the Sevier River. West of this river they encountered the Sanpete Yutas, who were less friendly than they had been when encountered by Dominguez and Escalante and met them with their weapons in hand.

At the rancheria of Guasache the party met with the same desire to trade only in Indian slaves. Finally they agreed to do this to avoid the malice of the Indians. When they returned to New Mexico after an absence of four months, they brought twelve Indian slaves and one hundred and nine unidentified pelts, said to be "but a few" of what they had seen.

Several statements by the witnesses in this trial in which the defendants, Arze and Garcia, are charged with trading with the Yutas without a license, lead one to believe that members of the party knew the country well, and that they were familiar enough with the language of the Yuta to be able to converse with them. Apparently the only group of Indians that they had not previously encountered were the Sanpete.

An interesting note on the Indians inhabiting the Rocky Mountain country from the Platte south to the Arkansas River is found in the report of Major Stephen H. Long, who reconnoitered that area in 1819-20:

These nations have no permanent residences or villages, but roam, sometimes in society and sometimes separately, over the tract of country . . . described. They hunt the bison principally, and migrate from place to place in pursuit of the herds of that animal, upon the flesh of which they chiefly subsist. Being thus accustomed to a roving life, they neglect the cultivation of the soil, and are compelled to subsist almost exclusively upon animal food. They formerly carried on a limited trade with the Spaniards of Mexico [New Mexico], with whom they exchanged dressed bison-skins for blankets, wheat, flour, maize, etc.; but their supplies of these articles are now cut off by a war, which they at present are waging against that people. They also, at distant periods, held a kind of fair on a tributary of the Platte, near the mountains (hence called Grand Camp Creek), at which they obtained British merchandize from the Shiennes of Shienne River, who obtained the same at the Mandan village from the British traders that frequent that part of our territory.

The Long expedition probably encountered both the Yuta and the Comanche but referred to them as the Ietan. The party was definitely in Yuta country at Denver, Manitou Springs, and Pikes Peak, which was ascended by Dr. James, botanist and chronicler of the expedition.

The term Ietan was applied to Shoshoni, Comanche, and Yuta by several writers of the early nineteenth century. James Mooney of the Bureau of American Ethnology explains it thus:

The Ute of the mountain region at the headwaters of the Platte and the Arkansas, being a powerful and aggressive tribe, were well known to all the Indians of the plains, who usually called them by some form of their proper name, Yutawats, or, in its root form, Yuta, whence we get Eutaw, Utah, and Ute. Among the Kiowa the name becomes lata (-go), while the Siouan tribes seem to have nasalized it so that the early French traders wrote it as Ayutan, Iatan, or Ietan. ... As the early traders and explorers knew but little of the mountain tribes, they frequently confounded those of the same generic stock, so that almost any of these forms may mean Shoshoni, Ute, or Comanche, according to the general context of the description.

The record of the Long expedition tells of battles between the Pawnee Loup Indians, and the Comanche, Ietan, and other western tribes.

September 21, 1824, James Ohio Pattie, who states that his division of a party that left New Mexico that year, and followed the Colorado River across the divide to the headwaters of the South Platte, encountered Comanches. The next day they attacked. A band of "Iatan" (probably Yuta) interceded and drove off the Comanche. The Americans traded with the Ietan, then travelled with them toward Taos. Enroute, a small group of Navaho were encountered that were scalped by the Ietan:

The Iotans danced around these scalps all night, and in the morning took up the bodies, we had buried, and cut them in pieces. They then covered themselves with skins of bears and panthers, and, taking the hearts of the dead men, cut them into pieces the size of a mouthful, and laid them upon the ground, and crawled around the pieces of heart, growling as though they were enraged bears, or panthers, ready to spring upon them and eat them.

That same year Antoine Robidoux, William Becknell, and William Heddest led parties into Yuta territory in eastern Utah and western Colorado. Robidoux was to remain in the Uintah Basin area for twenty years.

It was also in 1824 that William H. Ashley brought Jedediah Smith, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Jim Bridger, William and Milton Sublette, Etienne Provost, James Beckwourth, James Clyman, and other equally well known mountain men into the Great Basin to usher in the trapper era among the Yuta Indians.

With the coming of the trappers, the cross-country travellers, and finally the Mormons, the detail concerning the Indians of the area becomes too voluminous to be dealt with in this short article and must await another day.

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