All about the ancient tribes
Most Western Ute Indians lived in wickiups. Wickiups are small round or cone-shaped houses made of a willow frame covered with brush. Eastern Ute people preferred Plains-style tipis. Tipis (or teepees) are tall, tall, cone-shaped buffalo-hide houses that can be put together or taken apart quickly, like a modern tent.
The Utes leaned poles against each other or against living trees, forming a teepee-like shelter called wickiups. Pine, juniper, willow and aspen were used, then covered with bark, brush or animal hides.
The culture of the Utes was influenced by neighboring Native American tribes. The eastern Utes had many traits of Plain Indians, and they lived in tepees after the 17th century. The western Utes were similar to Shoshones and Paiutes, and they lived year-round in domed willow houses.
Utes practiced a flexible subsistence system elegantly adapted to their environments. The Ute Indians took advantage of the abundance of fish in Utah Lake and other freshwater sources, drying and storing them for trade and winter use. Cultivation of food plants was an early contact adaptation limited to the Pahvant.
Utes, a mainstay of Aussie car culture since we invented the bloody things back in the 1930s, are set to disappear from local showrooms replaced instead, by those most American of things, the truck, or to give them their correct nomenclature, the ‘pick-up’ truck.
The home of the Ute Indian Tribe is the Uintah and Ouray (U & 0) Reservation, located within a three-county area in Northeastern Utah, known as the “Uinta Basin,” and covers a large portion of western Uintah and eastern Duchesne Counties.
The Utes are a tribe that originated in Utah. Before the Utes came in contact with the Europeans, they practiced the religion of Shamanism. Named after Shamans, this religion was based on a belief in nature and healing.
The language of the Utes is Shoshonean, a dialect of that Uto-Aztecan language. It is believed that the people who speak Shoshonean separated from other Ute- Aztecan speaking groups, such as the Paiute, Goshute, Shoshone Bannock, Comanche, Chemehuevi and some tribes in California.
The Acjachemen, an indigenous people of California, built cone-shaped huts made of willow branches covered with brush or mats made of tule leaves. Known as Kiichas, the temporary shelters were utilized for sleeping or as refuge in cases of inclement weather.
The Ute and Southern Paiute Indians are descended from the same group of Numic-speaking hunter-gatherers that began migrating east from southern California around A.D. 1000. Historically, the two groups shared similar, but not identical, hunter-gatherer lifestyles.
The Paiutes were hunter-gatherers, and moved from place to place frequently as they gathered food for their families. Paiute men hunted deer, elk, buffalo, and small game, and went fishing in the rivers and lakes. Paiute women gathered roots, pine nuts, seeds and fruits.
Native lands contain 10% of the known onshore supply of natural gas, but most of it is mined by non-Native entities that typically pay royalties of 12.5% of sales. Tribes ‘ royalties totaled $200 million last year. The Southern Utes, meanwhile, pulled in $100 million on profits from their gas-production company.
The Ute weren’t just all work and no play. They took a lot of time to play games. They played such games as dice, where if someone rolled certain symbols they would win. They also played games that were similar to baseball and kickball.
Beaded Crafts The use of beads is a mainstay of Ute crafts. Children’s jewelry is made from various bead designs, as are decorations for vests, flutes, children’s toys and many other types of crafts. Beading is traditionally the work of female Ute artisans, and can apply to a wide array of items.
The word Ute means “land of the sun.” There are currently around 3,500 Ute Indians living on reservations in Utah, and they own 1,300,000 acres of land. Many of the Utes in Utah were originally from Colorado, when the Uintah-Ouray Reservation was created they were forced to relocate.