Being and Becoming Ute: The Story of an American Indian People by Sondra G. Jones (review)

Being and Becoming Ute is the first monograph to present a single history of the Utes, both the Northern Utes in Utah and the Southern Utes in Colorado and New Mexico, and for that alone it is a useful book. Jones uses the framework of Indian identity to blend the stories of two groups that are usually studied separately. Identity is a convoluted topic, and Jones supplies a good synopsis of the scholarly literature, including cogent discussions of what is “traditional” and the insidious nature of reckoning Indian blood. Her broad thesis argues that, in the face of dramatic changes in their social and political structures, and despite internal conflicts over which course to follow, Utes in both north and south constructed a collective identity as Nuu-ci through kinship, deep connections to their sacred lands, language, and cultural practices, especially spirituality. Ute bands in Utah and Colorado faced similar colonial pressures in different contexts. Both began as mobile bands of hunter-gatherers with temporary political leaders and evolved into sedentary modern tribes governed by a new managerial class. The same Ute culture that was flexible enough to thrive in a harsh environment also allowed the tribe to respond creatively to colonialism.

The “Golden Age” of Ute power in the Southwest was the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when they joined trading-raiding networks that brought riches in horses and captives. This activity also generated increased warfare as Indigenous peoples wrestled for control of these goods. As settlers began to infiltrate Ute territory more aggressively, especially after the discovery of gold in the nineteenth century, Utes faced increasing pressures on their subsistence base and threats of military backlash. Chapters alternating between Utah and Colorado skillfully trace the parallel stories of how both northern and southern groups encountered racism and demands for removal that eventually led to their confinement on reservations. Utes living in Utah were moved to a reservation in the Uintah Valley in 1861 while the 1868 Great Ute Treaty with Utes in Colorado set aside much of the western portion of the territory for their habitation. In 1873, the White River and Uncompahgre bands in northern Colorado rose up and killed their obnoxious Indian agent and were subsequently removed to the reservation in Utah. Jones argues that the tensions created by this new influx of people shaped later political skirmishes on the Uintah-Ouray reservation.

From there, Jones provides a finely grained analysis of the political, economic, and cultural development of each reservation from the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act to the present. Jones centers spiritual practices as the heart of Ute identity and traces adaptations in the Numic Sundance and the Native American Church as the twentieth century unfolded. Politically, she argues that the ruling “family dynasties” on both reservations grew out of earlier practices of inherited chieftainships, and traces changes in the ideals of Ute leadership from one grounded in age, wisdom, and personal charisma to one anchored in a bureaucracy in which tribal leaders oversee corporate tribal enterprises. Jones clearly recounts how new economic opportunities sparked intense debates over resource use, especially the distribution of funds from land claims and energy extraction, and how those arguments shaped tribal politics on both reservations in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Jones handles with sensitivity the enmity that divided the Northern Ute tribe between Utes of mixed decent and those who claimed “full blood” in the 1950s. After being dropped from tribal rolls for having an insufficient blood quantum, Utes of mixed descent pushed to be restored. After many years of failure, these Utes then fell back on their earlier connection to other Numic peoples. They proclaimed themselves to be Shoshones rather than Utes. This example demonstrates the fluidity and ultimately pragmatic nature of ethnic and tribal affiliation that emerges as a theme throughout the book...