Marking the trail in the Ute Pass

 

In the spring, after the first thunder is heard, 

it is time for the bear dance.

The origin of the Ute Bear Dance relates the time when two brothers were out hunting in the mountains and as they became tired, they laid down to rest. One of the brothers noticed a bear standing upright facing a tree and seemed to be dancing and making a noise while clawing the tree. Ute legends or stories remember the time when the elders asked the hunters to go out and gather meat. As they were out hunting, they encountered some small people who ran into the rocks in the hills. They told the elders about them and the elders told them that they were called cliff dwellers which according to archaeologists were called Anasazi, the ancient ones. The one brother went on hunting while the other brother continued to observe the bear. The bear taught the young man to do the same dance and also taught the young man the song that went with the dance.

He told the young man to return to his people and teach them the dance and songs of the bear. The songs according to legends show respect for the spirit of the bear and the respect to the bear spirit makes one strong. After a long winter, everyone was ready to be outside. The Bear Dance was one way which people could release their tensions. The men and women, as they entered the corral, would wear some sort of plumes which at the end of the fourth and final day, they would leave on a cedar tree at the east entrance of the corral. As the Ute's say, leaving the plume on the tree was to leave your troubles behind and start your life anew."

__ Information from the article Bear Dance, by the Southern Ute Drum

Dances, ancient customs, and Utes, and spring...

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Some of the white marble markers still tell the story, though not as audibly and obviously, as they first did in 1911. U.P.T.  routed out in relief on the flat slabs. Originally, there were 15 of them placed by the El Paso County Pioneers. The group said they wanted to mark what was left of the ancient Ute Pass Trail between Cascade and Manitou Springs.

The group was to dedicate the newly-marked, but anciently-traveled, route in 1912.  Only trouble, according to Ute Pass historian Jan Pettit, was getting real Utes to help dedicate. 

"The town of Colorado Springs held an eight-day summer carnival in 1911. The carnival committee had requested a group of Utes Indians from the Southern Reservation for exhibition at that event. The good citizens were informed by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs that he did not favor the promiscuous employment of Indians in Wild West Shows . He was, however, not opposed to their employment in exhibitions of a historical and elevating character. A small group of Ute Indians would be allowed to participate in the marking of the ancient Ute Pass Trail and to appear at the carnival. The carnival organizers were required to enter into a contract with the Indians by posting a bond and agreeing to pay travel and other expenses in addition to paying each adult Ute five dollars. The Indian events were so polar with those attending the carnival that the celebration's name was changed to Shan  Kive (good time) with the hope of having more Indians attend in 1912," wrote Pettit in her book "Utes: The Mountain People."

But not everyone was happy. For at the carnival, Utes performed the Moon Dance and other customs that were discouraged at the reservation. In fact, most of the customs that were uniquely Ute, were discouraged by people of influence at the time like School Superintendent Werner of the Southern Ute Agency. They were apparently afraid all dancing, revived traditions and such, might set the tribe, once again, back on the war path. 

But after a series of letters between Cato Sells, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, E.E. McKean, Superintendent of the Southern Ute Agency and Fred Mathews, general freight and passenger agent for the Florissant and Cripple Creek Railroad and chairman of the Shan Kive celebration, it was finally agreed that a party of 50 adult Utes, and their families could attend the 1912 dedication and carnival. The contract called for expenses and payment of a dollar in cash, with the express prohibition of allowing the tribal members to purchase intoxicating liquors.

"A large group of Ute Indians accompanied by several dignitaries began their ride down the Ute Pass Trail from Cascade toward Manitou Springs mounted on horses furnished by the Cusack family." wrote Pettit. 

Buckskin Charlie, Chief of the Southern Utes, and Chipeta, widow of Ouray, were among the 75 or so Indians, that proceeded down the trail.

Frances Heizer, of the founding families of Cascade, described it thusly, at the time:
"Buckskin Charlie, chief of this tribe, had not been over the trail since the Utes had left this country over thirty years earlier. His birthplace was Garden of the Gods and he remembered every turn in this trail he had ridden in his youth. 'I'm seventy years old,' he said. "I never so happy in all my life.'"

The aging chief explained en route, that neutral territory topped the route, were Utes smoked the pipe of peace with enemies such as Comanche, Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Sioux. They cached their arms and substituted choke cherry branches as an indication of peaceful intentions as they proceeded down to the "medicine waters" with ailing. They believed the springs were the abode of a spirit who breathed through the water, causing them to bubble and cure, at the same time.

As early as 1847, historical accounts by early travelers to this area like Frederick Ruxton, noted that the springs (which now are in Manitou Springs) was collector of native people, and trading location as a result.

"The basin of the spring was filled with beads and wampum, and pieces of red cloth and knives, whilst the surrounding trees were hung with strips of deer skin, cloth, and moccasins. The Indian regard with awe the "medicine" waters of these fountains as being the abode of a spirit who breathes through the transparent water, and thus, by his exhalations, causes the perturbation of its surface," wrote Ruxton in 1847.

Maude McFerran Price, curator of the El Paso Pioneers Museum, is quoted in Pettit's book regarding the importance of the trail marking. 
"Today the trail lies marked forever, not alone by the marble tables, by the hopes and fears and joys and tears of the fast disappearing race of red men."

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Photo Information: Creator, H.S. Horace Swartley Poley. 
1. During the dedication of the trail, 1911. Native American (Ute) Chief Buckskin Charlie (Sapiah), poses with two children and his wife, Emma Naylor Buck (To-Wee), Chipeta, widow of Chief Ouray, sits to his right. He is wearing a Rutherford Hayes Indian Peace Medal. His wife wears  a beaded necklace.

2. In Automobile in Cascade, 1911, Ute delegation rides in style for the times.

Treehuggers, if only given a chance

Not a tree or shrub is to be seen, except on the creeks

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Early travelers to Colorado may have been avid treehuggers -- if given half a chance. Today cottonwood groves along area streambeds are a pretty common sight but it wasn’t always the case. The rare occurrence as settlers made their way across the vast prairie was truly a sight for sore eyes and became landmarks on the trail. Big Timbers, on the Arkansas, for example, became a haven for Indian camps and later the site for Bent’s Fort.
“Prairie grass fires killed seedlings, and enormous herds of buffalo trampled and grazed whatever escaped the fires. The water flow in the rivers varied from high spring runoffs after snowmelt in the mountains to periods in late summer when even the Platte River was completely dry. Not only was the drought a severe trial for the trees, the spring runoffs were so powerful that the river bottoms were scoured out, washing away the sand, bars and banks and any young trees growing there,” writes Stuart K. Weir, in his research of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
One early visitor, George Ruxton, noted the lack of foliage on the Arkansas, east of Bent’s Fort.
“Nothing meets the eye but the vast undulating expanse of arid waste; for the buffalo grass, although excellent in quality, never grows higher than two or three inches, and is seldom green in color; being thinly planted, the prairie never looks green and turf-like. Not a tree or shrub is to be seen, except on the creeks, where a narrow stamp of unpicturesque cottonwood occasionally relieves the eye with its verdant foliage,” wrote Ruxton.
When the trees were found and became landmarks, all sorts of history became attached.
One such landmark in Pueblo was known as “The Old Monarch,” and was 380 years old when it was cut down in 1883, according to “Colorado: Visions of an American Landscape,” a 1991 photo book by Kenneth Helphand and Ellen Manchester.
“In 1850 there were 36 persons massacred near this tree by Indians. Fourteen men have been hung from one of its limbs. The first white woman who died in Colorado was buried under its branches,” read text from the back of a historic photo of the tree uncovered by Helphand and Manchester.
Early settlers of Denver and Boulder transplanted cottonwood trees as a domesticating act in order to fight the wildness of their new surroundings.
But General Palmer, in founding of Colorado Springs, took such plantings to a new level.
Palmer had 600 cottonwood trees planted when water was available from city reservoirs in 1872. Palmer employed large crews to maintain the city’s trees and parks and by 1910 the city had created the Department of Forestry.
The cottonwood legacy in Colorado remains fixed.
As Theodore Roosevelt observed, the trees will probably be a part of the fabric of what is Colorado for long time to come.
“From the upper branches of the cottonwood trees overhead – whose shimmering, tremulous leaves are hardly ever quiet, but if the wind stirs at all, rustle and quiver and sigh all day long – comes now and then soft melancholy cooing of the morning dove, whose voice always seems far away,” wrote Roosevelt in Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail.

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1. Pueblo in 1880 with trademark tree.
2. Local Cottonwood near the Palmer Divide.
3. The Hanging Tree, also known as the Monarch Tree, was a landmark in Pueblo. Standing between present day C and D Street, the old cottonwood had to be removed to accommodate traffic. Photo courtesy of the Denver Public Library, Western History Photographic Collections