Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation

The Northern Ute tribe, which was moved to the Uintah Ouray Reservation, is composed of a number of bands. The tribes at the reservation include the following groups:

• Uintah tribe, which is larger than its historical band since the U.S. government classified the following bands as Uintah when they were relocated to the reservation:

• The San Pitch Utes of central Utah lived in the Sanpete Valley, Sevier River Valley, and along the San Pitch River.[3][4]
• Uintah lived in northeastern Utah from Utah Lake to the Uintah Basin of the Tavaputs Plateau near the Grand-Colorado River-system.[3]
• The Timpanogos lived in the Wasatch Range around Mount Timpanogos, along the southern and eastern shores of Utah Lake of the Utah Valley, and in Heber Valley, Uinta Basin and Sanpete Valley.[5]
• The Seuvarits band was from the Moab area.[3]

• White River Utes

• The Yampa from the Yampa River Valley area and the Parianuche, who lived in the Colorado River valley (previously called the Grand River) of western Colorado and eastern Utah. The two bands are now called the White River Utes.[6][3] The Sabuagana were of the same relative area as the Parianuche.[7]

• The Tabeguache, also called the Uncompahgre, lived in the Gunnison and Uncompahgre River valleys of Colorado and Utah.[8]

Utes have lived in the Great Basin region for over 10,000 years. From 3000 BCE to around 500 BCE, they lived along the Gila River in Arizona. People of the Fremont culture lived to the north in western Colorado, but when drought struck in the 13th century, they joined the Utes in San Luis Valley, Colorado. Utes were one of the first tribes to obtain horses from escaped Spanish stock.

Spanish explorers traveled through Ute land in 1776. They were followed by an ever-increasing number of non-Natives. The Colorado Gold Rush of the 1850s flooded Ute lands with prospectors. Mormons fought the Utes from the 1840s to 1870s. In the 1860s the US federal government created the Uintah Reservation. Utah Utes, including the Timpanogos or Timpanog tribe from Central Utah, settled there in 1864, and were joined in 1882 by eight bands of Northern Utes.

The US government tried to force the Utes to farm, despite the lack of water and unfavorable growing conditions on their reservation. Irrigation projects of the early 20th century put water in non-tribal hands. Ute children were forced to attend Indian boarding schools in the 1880s and half of the Ute children at the Albuquerque Indian School died.[9]

In 1965, the Northern Ute Tribe agreed to allow the United States Bureau of Reclamation to divert a portion of its water from the Uinta Basin (part of the Colorado River Basin) to the Great Basin. The diversion would provide water supply for the Bonneville Unit of the Central Utah Project. In exchange, the Bureau of Reclamation agreed to plan and construct the Unitah, Upalco, and Ute Indian Units of the Central Utah Project to provide storage of the Tribe's water. By 1992, the Bureau of Reclamation had made little or no progress on construction of these facilities. To compensate the Tribe for the Bureau of Reclamation's failure to meet its 1965 construction obligations, Title V of the Central Utah Project Completion Act (P.L. 102-575), enacted in 1992, contains the Ute Indian Rights Settlement. Under the settlement, the Northern Tribe received $49.0 million for agricultural development, $29.5 million for recreation and fish and wildlife enhancement, and $125 million for economic development. The Ute Indian Rights Settlement is administered by the United States Department of the Interior.

The Tribal Business Committee is the governing council of the Tribe and is located in Fort Duchesne, Utah.[10]

The Uinta and Ouray Indian Reservation is the second-largest Indian Reservation in the US – covering over 4,500,000 acres (18,000 km²) of land.[2][11] Tribal owned lands only cover approximately 1.2 million acres (4,855 km²) of surface land and 40,000 acres (160 km²) of mineral-owned land within the 4 million acres (16,185 km²) reservation area.[11] Founded in 1861, it is located in Carbon, Duchesne, Grand, Uintah, Utah, and Wasatch Counties in Utah.[1]

Raising stock and oil and gas leases are important revenue streams for the reservation. The Tribe is a member of the Council of Energy Resource Tribes. The Tribe holds a 5% stake in the proposed Uinta Basin Rail.[12]

The Ute language is a Proto-Numic language within the Uto-Aztecan language family.[13] The language is still widely spoken. In 1984, the tribe declared the Ute language to be the official language of their reservation, and the Ute Language, Culture and Traditions Committee provides language education materials.[14]

• D'Azevedo, Warren L., Volume Editor. Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 11: Great Basin. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1986. ISBN 978-0-16-004581-3.
• Pritzker, Barry M. A Native American Encyclopedia: History, Culture, and Peoples. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0-19-513877-1.
• Ute Indian Tape Recordings Collection; MSS 855; 20th Century Western & Mormon Manuscripts; L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
• The Ute; MSS SC 1162; Newsletters of the Uintah and Ouray Indian Agency (1937-1941); 20th Century Western and Mormon Manuscripts; L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.

• Ute Indian Tribe Website