Ute

• The Ute was a nomadic tribe in the now Colorado area in the Rocky Mountains.
  
  
• Hemmed in by mountains , the tribes of the Great Basin-Shoshone, Bannock, Paiute, and Ute-were among the most isolated in the American West. The Ute lived in the higher, cooler elevations where there were 15 inches or more of rain per year. Compared with Paiute land, theirs was a rich world. The men hunted antelope and small game, especially rabbits from which they made robes for the cold winter months. Like the California tribes, the Basin peoples gathered plant foods, but instead of acorns, they had pinon nuts, mesquite beans and agave plants.  Limited food resources kept Great Basin populations in check-in all, they numbered perhaps 40,000. They lived in small groups, each with its own established foraging territory.
  
  Great Basin Indians believed in a supreme being, as well as spirits who governed natural and human events.  It was important to establish a personal relationship with a spirit who could bring success in hunting or other endeavors. As elsewhere, Great Basin shamans drew their healing powers from communion with the invisible world.
  
  
• Occupying a relatively harsh and inaccessible region, the Great Basin tribes were among the last native people on the continent to lose their lands to permanent white settlers. But the Ute were probably among the first to come into possession of that most prized European import, the horse, by about 1700. The Shoshone and other Basin tribes quickly developed substantial horse herds as well, and the Basin became a highway for horse-mounted commerce in all directions.
  
  
• Unlike the horse, however, another of the white man's innovations-the fur trade-posed a dire threat to the ways of the Great Basin peoples. As the fur trade became increasingly important throughout North America, Eastern tribes fought to obtain larger trapping grounds, pushing other tribes westward and extending the fur trade itself. In exchange for furs, traders offered manufactured goods, including metal ware, textiles, iron tools, and guns.
  
  Captive women and children also could be sold to white traders, who wanted wives and labor to keep house and dress furs. Slavery had long existed among Indians before the arrival of traders, but the new competitive pressures of the fur trade made slaves far more valuable commodities than in the past. Almost everywhere in the West, raiding and counterraiding for horses and slaves disrupted relations among neighboring tribes.
  
• During the 1700's and early 1800's, Mexican authorities conducted a thriving trade in Indian slaves-bartering arms, whiskey, and other goods for women and children destined for servitude in the homes of landowners and colonial officials. They encouraged native tribes to raid one another for slave, assuring a lively commerce and fanning hostilities between tribes that might otherwise unite against them. No one was safe. Apaches, Utes, Comanches, and Navajos raided each other, as well as the more peaceable Pueblos, Pawnees, and Wichitas.
  
  Walkara, son of a Ute chief, emerged as one of the premier slave traders in the Great Basin during the 1830's and 1840's. Over six feet tall, with enormous physical strength and stamina, he had angular features and penetrating eyes that earned him the nickname "Hawk of the Mountains." He was restless, vain, and cruel, a crack shot and an excellent negotiator, dealing with Mexican traders, Anglo mountain men, and Indian rivals in  Spanish, English, and several native language.
  
  Walkara's band consisted of his four brothers, backed up by Paiute, Ute, and Shoshone followers handpicked for loyalty and toughness.  He knew the key to their loyalty was a steady supply of good horses-and he stole enough of them to be dubbed "the greatest horse thief in history." When he learned that New Mexicans would trade one horse for a slave-or two per slave if the captives were delivered directly to Santa Fe, Taos, or Abiquiu-he turned to slave trading with the same zeal he brought to horse stealing. He preyed especially on the docile, generally defenseless Paiute but was feared, with good reason, by all the tribes.
  
  When the Mormons came, Walkara welcomed them as potential customers. But they were against slavery, and in 1851 Brigham Young declared that anyone caught selling Indian captives would be arrested and prosecuted. Most of the slavers took the hint and left the area; not Walkara, however. Angry but undeterred, he eluded the Mormons and continued trading humans for horses until his death in 1855.
  
• In the late 1800's, early 1900's, there were those who found the ways and means to adjust advantageously to the changing circumstances of the period. An Ute man named Na-am-quitch- -William Wash was his white name-raise cattle and alfalfa and sold hay to the troops at Fort Duchesne in Utah. Wash used his relative propserity for some traditional goals, helping to feed less-well-off Utes and supporting the holding of the Sun Dance, even as federal officials tried to suppress the sacred ritual. Wash also joined the Native American Church, ridiculing claims that the peyote consumed in church rituals would kill pactitioners: "Sometimes people die and no eat peyote.  Horses die, cows die, sheep die. They no eat peyote.  You can't stop them dying."
  

Wichita

• The Wichita lived along the Arkansas River, northeast of the Kiowa in the Great Plains. Their villages were a model of versatility with open-sided thatched structures used for cooking, adjacent grass houses for sleeping and tepee frames for buffalo hunts. Caddoan speakers who farmed, they dwelled in the grass house instead of earth lodges, and their beehive-shaped dwellings intrigued the conquistador Francisco de Coronado when he saw them in 1540. Along with raising squash and corn, the Wichita also crafted swirl-decorated blackware pottery and were noted for the intricate tattooing of their entire bodies.
  
• Just after the turn of the 19th century, a major outbreak of smallpox and cholera struck again, nearly exterminating the Omaha, Ponca, Otot, and Iowa peopes. The vicious deseases spread north and south, heading up the Missouri River to decimate the Arikara, Gros Ventre, Mandan, Crow, and Sioux, and down the Mississippi to wreak havoc among the Kiowa, Pawnee, Wichita, and Caddo.
  
  
• The more peaceful Wichitas were a target for the Mexican slave traders in the 1700's and 1800's. The traders encouraged native tribes to raid one another for slaves, assuring a lively commerce and fanning hostilities between tribes that might otherwise have united against them. When the Mormons came, in 1851 Brigham Young desclared that anyone caught selling Indian captives would be arrested and prosecuted. Most of the slavers took the hint and left the area.
  
  
• The Wichitas were moved to their reservation in Oklahoma in the late 1800's.
  
  

Winnebago

• Known today as the Ho-chunk, they were the only Siouan speaking group in the Great Lakes region of Green Bay. Their Winnebago name comes from a Sauk/Fox phrase meaning "People of the Dirty Waters." The tribe's Wisconsin band formally changed its name to Ho-Chunk, "People of the Big Voices," an Iowa term alluding to their oratorical prowess.
  
  
• The Winnebago adopted the Grand Medicine Society, or Midewiwin, developed by the Ojibwa. It developed an extensive knowledge of plant medicine. There were medicines to attract animals to traps and snares and to lure fish; love medicines, cures for respiratory problems and a whole catalog of human ailments, as well as contraceptive and abortion-inducing medications, insect repellants, and cures for poison ivy and snakebite.
  
  
• No great domains or chieftains controlled the Upper Country; each village was an independent communtiy. A vilalge leader was selected, usually by a council of elders, onmerit alone. Proven ability in hunting and warfare, courage, stamina, and henerosity-these were the valued traits. No village leader could force a path of action. Decisions were made by consensus, with a highly formalized system of debate. Talks could consume days on end depending on the subject at hand. A minority faction might move to another village or even join a different tribe.
  
  
• American veterans of the War of 1812 were sometimes paid in land warrants instead of cash, and when land agents began buying up plots along the Wabash and Illinois rivers, the local Kickapoo fought back. In the 1820's a mining boom on the Galena River sparked a stampede into northwet Illinois, which in turn sparked a Winnebago uprising.
  
  
• For native people of the Great Lakes, the experience was less traumatic than for those further south. The opening of the Erie Canal in the 1830's produced a modest influx of newcomers, but the Americans arriving by that route proved relatively easy neighbors. Most important, American financiers were more interested in lumbering and mining around the Great Lakes than in land development. The north country was too sandy, swampy, or rocky for prosperous farming, and so the Ojibwa, Ottawa, Menominee, and Winnebago, and many Potawatomi were left comparatively undisturbed until after the Civil War. Even then, despite some shifting around, Great Lakes groups managed to stay close to their traditional homelands.
  
  Many remain there today. The region is hardly the same unspoiled, naturally balanced realm it was before the French explorers appeared four centuries ago.  Yet through all the dark history that followed-the tragic violence and irretrievable losses-descendants of the Upper country's first nations have preserved a living connection with those forebears from one generation to another, nourished by the conviction that they still belong to the land, and the land to them.
  

Zuni

• The Zuni, part of the Pueblo tribes, lived in western New Miexco, and are thought to be descended from the ancient Mogollon, who dwelt in the mountains to the south.
  
  
• The traditions of the Pueblo peoples had arisen during centuries of habitation in one of the world's most majestic landcapes. From high on a desert cliff in central Arizona, the eye sweeps out across a panorama of sage land and alkali flats, of red-rock canyons and juniper-studded hillsides. Farther off, in the violet distances, snow-capped peaks rise thousands of feet above sea level. The land is harshly unforgiving.  Nighttime temperatures can drop below freezing in the clear desert air; the afternoon sun beats down mercilessly. Rainfall is sparse-less than 10 inches a year in most of the region. It is also erratic. Scattered midsummer thunderstorms roar in from the west, drenching some areas while leaving others dry. More rain and snow falls in the mountains, where dark forests of Douglas fir and ponderosa pine cloak the slopes below the tree line. Game abounds: deer, bear, elk, and wild turkey in the high country; rabbit antelope, and wild pig in the desert scrub.
  
• Variations of the creation story.elaborated with songs and dances added over the generations, are told and retold by today's Pueblos. Each community has added its own unique details. The earliest forebears of the  Zuni came into the world with webbed feet, long ears, hairless tails, and moss-covered bodies and acquired human form after bathing in the waters of a sacred spring.
  
  
• Standing at the center of the pueblo's spiritual life was an official known in some areas as the cacique, who served as both high priest and political chief. Claiming spiritual descent from the sun itself-the Zuni called him  Sun Speaker-the cacique held council with the town's leading men to resolve disputes, hand down justice, and decide all matters important to village welfare. He was also charged with maintaining harmony between his people and the spiritual forces that controlled the universe.
  
  
• A severe drought during the 1200's devastated the Pueblo lands. It culminated in a 23-year dry spell between 1276 and 1299. Without rainfall the land burned dry, rivers and streams vanishe, and the corn crop died even as it sprouted. The Zuni's tell how Cloud Swallower, a mighty giant, devoured the thunderheads that brought the summer rains. For good measure he gulped down a few humans as well. The Warrior Twins and Grandmother Spider, a powerfully protective goddess, managed to drive him away, and the rains returned. But the event so frightened the people that they decided to move on.
  
  
• As well as the Hopi, the Zunis were infinitely helped by the Kachinas . In a world infused by supernatural forces, each visible object had a spiritual counterpart, a divine essence as real as the thing itself.
  
  
• It is not always easy to separate legend from truth in the early chronicles of Spanish colonial history. Tall tales grew up right from the start, in 1536, when four sun-dazed travelers showed up in Mexico City, capital of the newly proclaimed province of New Spain.
  
  The four men, sole survivors of a Spanish shipwreck, had spent eight years wandering through the prairies and deserts of present-day Texas and New Mexico. One was the conquistador Cabeza de Vaca; another, his Moorish slave Esteban. And although they arrived half dead, they were filled to bursting with wondrous stories. They told of grassy plains teeming with cibolos-as they called the buffalo-of industrious farmers and well-built villages, and of cities resplendent with multistoried houses and accumulated riches.
  
  In Mexico City this was sensational news. According to an old Spanish legend, somewhere in the far reaches of the New World there existed seven ancient cities of fabulous wealth. Now, with the reports of Cabeza de Vaca, the viceroy of New Spain authorized an expedtition to find the Seven Cities of Cibola. Headed by a missonary named Fray Marcos de Niza and with Esteban as guide, the party set out in 1539. Esteban was sent ahead to reconnoiter: if he found nothing of note, he was to send back a cross the length of his hand; a larger cross would mean an importnant discovery. Four days later, the story goes, Fray Marcos received a cross as tall as a man.
  
  Esteban had reached the Zuni town of  Hawikuh in western New Mexico.  It was May, and Hawikuh's residents were preparing for their main spring festival, the plaza dances heralding the annual arrival of the kachinas from their winter abodes. But this year lookouts spotted something that looked like no kachina they had ever seen-a figure with dark skin and gaudy attire coming toward them across the desert.
  
  Visitors to a town customarily sent a gift before arriving, and a member of Esteban's entourage duly approached with his offering-only this time the Moor had blundered.
  
  Esteban was undeterred, however, and strode up to issue demands for turquoise and women, boasting of powerful friends not far behind. But bravado and bluster did not impress the Zuni chiefs. They ordered him seized, conferred briefly, then announced their decision. The intruder was put to death.
  
  When Fray Marcos learned of Esteban's fate, he prudently changed his plans to visit Hawikuh and instead ascended a hill nearby.  Looking down, he saw what he wanted to see: not a muddy village, but a magnificent town with gleaming terraces, houses with jeweled doors, and streets lined with silversmiths' shops. Claiming the region for Spain, he made haste for Mexico City to deliver his breathless report to the viceroy.
  
  The result of Fray Marcos' fantasy was a much larger incursion, led this time by a soldier. Francisco Vasquez de Coronado commanded an impressive force: 230 soldiers on horseback and 62 on foot, nearly 1,000 Indian allies from the south, 600 pack animals, and 1,000 horses.  It was an awesome spectacle: never had anyone in the Southwest seen such warriors. Some carried deadly sticks that shot fire and barked like thunder, and it was rumored that the horses, with their massive heads and huge teeth, liked to eat people.
  
  Coronado soon discovered that Fray Marcos had not merely exaggerated-he had lied in every detail. There were no terraced mansions and not one ounce of gold. What Coronado found instead was trouble. The people of Hawikuh, seeking to protect themselves from the horses, sprinkled a barrier of sacred cornmeal in their path. But the horses kept coming. Terrified, the villagers unleashed a barrage of arrows. The Spaniards responded with a cavalry charge and a salvo of gunfire that sent the defenders reeling and gave the soldiers time to loot their food supplies.
  
  News of the attack swept from town to town. Who were these beings, with their fearsome animals and fire sticks? Could they be the white gods spoken of in the old stories, mighty kachinas who had said they would come again from the south? The strangers were brutal and greedy-that much was certain-and the local people could not wait for them to leave.
  
  When the conquistadors returned to Mexico in the spring of 1542, their reports of a harsh desert, cold winters, mud towns, impoverished Indians, and the continual threat of revolts finally put to rest the dream of Cibola. And with no golden cities to quicken the Spaniards' pulse, the Pueblos were left undisturbed for the next 40 years.
  
  
• In the late 1500's, Don Juan de Onate, set out from Mexico with 400 soldiers, settlers, servants, Franciscan priest, and a clear mission: "the service of the Lord our God, the spreading of His holy Catholic faith, and pacification of the natives."
  
  The Pueblo people looked upon the intruder with a mixture of fascination and dismay. Some fled into the hills. Others greeted the Spaniards as they would any other powerful visitors, offering gifts of water and corn. By and by, Onate overran the Pueblos until his ruthlessness filtered back to Mexico, and he was removed from office.
  
  
• With the Spaniards building all around them, the Pueblos had another enemy. The Zuni called them apachu, "the enemy," for the havoc they caused. Moving against the Pueblo villages in small, highly mobile groups, they would seep in without warning to carry off food, weapons, children, and anything else they could find. The Apache had at firt remained mostly at peace, showing up at the villages to trade as often as to raid. But the arrival of theSpaniards ahd changed everything.
  
  One source of friction was the activity of Spanish slave traders, who hunted down captives to serve as labor in the silver mines of Chihuahua in northern Mexico. The Apache, in turn, raided Spanish settlements to seize cattle, horses, firearms, and captives of their own.
  
  Each generation the violence grew worse. During the drought of 1640,  Apache war parties rampaged through the Rio Grande area and burned some 30,000 bushels of corn. In 1673 an Apache force hit the Zuni town of Hawikuh, where the Spanish operated a mission; they killed the Spanish friar and 200 Zuni residents, took 1,000 captives, and burned the village.