Great Basin Indians: An Encyclopedic History

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365 W Wakara (Tumpanawach Ute, 1815?–55). Wakara (Waccara ) in Southern Numic (see Uto-Aztecan) is translated as “yellow,” a name believed to derive from his pecuniary interests in the white man’s gold. But he was also called by another name in English derived from Euro-American hegemony in the Great Basin: Walker—after Joseph Reddeford Walker, one of the first whites to traverse the Great Basin (from east to west)—which was pronounced differently as “Wacker,” “Walkarum,” and others (R. Walker 2002, 215–16). Walker’s War was the name of one of the earliest conflicts in Great Basin Indian postcontact history and named after the notorious Ute. The other name of this notorious Ute slaver, Pan-a-karry Quin-ker, “Iron Twister,” was supposedly obtained when he was approximately twenty-five years old and apparently heard a mysterious voice cry out, “You can’t stay!” In one interpretation of what was a near-death experience, Wakara visited heaven and recounted afterward meeting someone dressed in white and seated on a throne, who essentially told the Ute what the famous 1890 Ghost Dance prophet was told following his own meeting with “God” (see Wovoka), “Go back and a race of white people will be your friends. Treat them kindly.” In his version, Wakara added, “God [then] gave me the name Pan-a-karry Quin-ker, ‘Iron Twister’” (Gottfredson 1919, 217–20). A Tumpanawach band member (see Ute), Wakara was born on or near the Spanish Fork River in north-central Utah around the time Canadian fur traders were pushing south into the Great Basin in pursuit of beaver. His father, according to Ronald Walker, was “one of the first Tumpanawach to own a horse” (2002, 217). According to another historian, Wakara’s “father purchased the[ir] tribe’s first horse from Spanish traders” around 1820 (Van Hoak 1999, 320). Born into a polygamous family, he had numerous siblings, among them such early prominent Ute leaders as Arrapeen , Ammon, Tabby, Sanpitch, and Chief Sowiette, who “won distinction as champion of peace partly as the expense of Walkara [Wakara]’s warrior prestige” (Larson 1952, 235). Aligning himself as a young man with Thomas “Pegleg” Smith and James Beckwourth, fur traders–cum–notorious whiskey and weapon traders to the Ute, Wakara was destined to become what Hobsbawm (2000) initially termed a “primitive rebel,” but in a revision of his important work, the English social historian later called this sociological type a “bandit.” Wakara, in any case, commenced upon a relatively long career of raiding Spanish caravans along the twelve-hundred-mile Santa Fe Trail between Santa Fe and Los Angeles with fellow Ute (see Old Spanish Trail). Not only did he (they) steal cattle and horses, but tribute was also exacted over that broad swath of land between (independent ) Mexico’s provinces of New Mexico and Alta California. Indeed, during one spectacular livestock raid, Wakara’s “gang” of 150 reportedly stole three thousand head of horses and mules from a Spanish mission community in Southern California for resale in America’s Missouri. Perhaps in the same raid, Wakara in the spring of 366 w a k a r a 1840 “attacked simultaneously . . . the missions San Gabriel, San Juan Capistano, and San Luis Obispo . . . [with] a motley gang of Frenchmen, Utes, Americans” (Blackhawk 2006, 139–40). Wealth from raids (as well as trade) initiated by this Ute, who was also nicknamed the “Hawk of the Mountains” and “Napoleon of the Desert,” and whose context was international—from Spaniards in San Luis Obispo in Southern California extending also to Americans in southern Wyoming—also included the sale of Great Basin Indians. Goshute (see Shoshone) as well as “Pahutes” or “Pahvants” (see Southern Paiute) women and children were captured while these social bandits were “chasing grass” for their herds of horses and then sold to wealthy hacienda owners in Taos, New Mexico, for cash to purchase weapons and ammunition from American traders in Missouri (see Slavery). Omer Stewart defined not only the vast range of Wakara’s raiding and trading activities but also the way in which it impacted on these Ute’s lives: “Walker’s horse pasture extended from the lands of the peaceful Pahvant band of Ute on the lower Sevier River to the crossing of Green River along the Old Spanish Trail west of Grand Junction, Colorado. Walker [Wakara] and his brothers—Arrapeen (Arrapine), Sanpitch (San Pete), Ammon, and Tobiah (Tabby)—were in the process of changing the Utah Ute into...