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Mountian-Family-Spirit: The Arts and Culture of the Ute IndiansApril 12- July 28, 2002 Visit The Ute Exhibition Opening @ the BBHC Mountain - Family - Spirit: The Arts and Culture of the Ute Indians opened on April 12, 2002 in the Special Exhibitions Gallery of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. This is the first comprehensive exhibition on the Ute Indians of Colorado, and is the result of a seven-year collaboration between members of the Southern Ute tribe, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and the Ute Mountain Ute tribe. The exhibition committee examined 2000 artifacts of Ute origin from museums across the country; deciding on 184 historic and contemporary objects and photographs that best symbolize the richness and sensitivity of Ute arts and culture. Mountain-Family-Spirit provides an overview of Ute history, culture, and art from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Exhibition pieces are drawn from the collections of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Colorado Historical Society, and other museums, this exhibition includes traditional clothing and beadwork, paintings on hide and muslin, painted shields, weapons, and baskets to name a few. A number of contemporary works by artists living on Colorado's two southwestern reservations in Ignacio and Towaco expound the continuation of Ute arts today. A major interest of the exhibition is both the continuity and change in Ute cultural forms. Due to their geographical location, the Utes occupied a pivotal place among Plains, Great Basin, and Southwest tribes. They transmitted Plains and Great Basin cultural forms to the Southwest while absorbing and transmitting aspects of Plains and Southwest Indians, Hispanic, and Anglo-American cultures. The beautifully beaded clothing reveals design influences from Plains tribes such as the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, as well as the influx of Euro-American trade goods. This special exhibition closed at the Historical Center on July 28, 2002. Ute Indians: Yesterday & TodayThe Ute Indians call themselves the Nuche, which simply means "the people." The English word "Ute" comes from the Spanish Yuta that probably derives from the Jemez Pueblo term Guapata, their name for the nearest Ute band, the Caputas. Prior to the American occupation of the West that began in the late 1840s, the Ute Indians occupied more than 130,000 square miles of territory in Colorado, Utah and northern New Mexico. Today the Ute Indians are found on three reservations, two of them in Colorado and one in Utah. The Southern Ute tribe, with their tribal offices in Ignacio, Colorado, was formed from the Muaches and Caputa bands that lived in Colorado along the Front Range and in the San Luis Valley, and ranged into northern New Mexico. The Ute Mountain Ute tribe, headquartered in the Four Corners area at Towaoc, Colorado, was formed primarily from the Weeminuche band that originally occupied the valley of the San Juan River and its tributaries in Colorado and northwestern New Mexico. A smaller group of Utes associated with the Ute Mountain reservation live at White Mesa in southeastern Utah. The northern Ute bands of Colorado included the Uncompahgre (Tabeguache) and the White River (Parianuche and Yampa). In 1880 they were forced to move to northern Utah where they share the Uintah-Ouray reservation at Fort Duchesne with the Uintah and other western Ute bands originally from different places in Utah. The Ute Indians share a common language and culture, with many family connections among bands and the three reservations. The Utes, along with the Southern Paiutes and the Chemehuevi, speak Shoshonean, a dialect that is part of the larger Uto-Aztecan language. This language family is the source of most of the native languages of the Great Basin, also extending into Mexico and Central America. Linguistically, Uto-Aztecan languages belong to the Southern Numic language family. Presently English is the predominate language used in the educational, social and business activities of the tribal memberships. Approximately fifteen percent of the tribal populations converse in the Ute language. A very small number of tribal members are bilingual or trilingual, speaking English and Ute or English, Ute and Spanish. Language, culture and family are the ties that have always bound the Ute people together. In Colorado and Utah the Utes constitute a nation, an ancient people with their own language and cultural traditions. The richness and depth of Ute cultural forms produced a complete way of life, a civilization imbued with human meaning that existed prior to the arrival of the Europeans and continues today. The Bear DanceHeld every spring, the Bear Dance celebrates the renewal of life. While the Sun Dance emphasizes the masculine principle through reference to the sun and to the individual heroism of the traditionally male dancers, the Bear Dance emphasizes the female principle of living-giving nurture and fertility. The Ute name for the Bear Dance is mamá-kwa-nhká-pu, which literally means "woman step dance." In this dance the women choose their male partners and lead the dancing. In the Sun Dance falling down while dancing is a good sign, for the dancer through his suffering may receive a vision. In the Bear Dance a fall taken by dancers is a bad sign; the dancers through the joining of female and male constitute a harmonious union, a cosmos, and a fall symbolizes the breaking of that cosmos. The Bear Dance can be characterized as the harmonious union of female and male principles; the Sun Dance in contrast is a union with a vertical or transcendent goal; it is the union of earth and heaven, made possible through the successful striving of the dancer to transcend by his earthly limits. IMAGES: |
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