Junction US 160—Consolidated Ute Agency—Ignacio; 8 miles, State 284, State 172.

Graveled road. Summer or fall season recommended for visiting Consolidated Ute Agency.

This route into the only Indian reservation in Colorado winds through sage- and grass-covered hills on which graze herds of cattle and sheep. A sparse scattered growth of juniper and scrub cedar forms a spot of green here and there on the brown landscape, but this is barren country, the least attractive and desirable section of the great empire of mountains, plains, and valleys over which the powerful Ute once roamed. Gradually they had to retreat before the whites until only this part of their domain was left to them because it was attractive neither to miner nor farmer (see The People).

Branching south from US 160 (see Tour 11), 0 miles, O.6 miles west of Bayfield (see Tour 11c), State 287 crosses the northern boundary of the CONSOLIDATED UTE AGENCY, 0.8 miles, a strip of land across the southwestern corner of the State containing 16,000 acres of farm land and a great expanse of grazing country, with minor resources of coal, natural gas, and oil. The Consolidated Ute Agency has two divisions. The Weminuche, or Ute Mountain, Ute, live on unallotted tribal lands in the western part of the reservation (see Tour 11E) ; the Southern Ute occupy allotted lands around Ignacio. The reservation is a region of mesas, canyons, foothills, and some mountains, attractive in spring when the wild flowers color the hills.

The Ute are slowly increasing in number. In 1935 there were 834 members of the tribe, 6 per cent more than in 1925. They have retained their tribal unity, although some intermarriage with other tribes has taken place and a few Navaho and Pueblo Indians have migrated to the reservation. For the most part, these are not enrolled in the tribe; in cases of intermarriage, however, the children are regarded as Ute.

The old command of the tribes by the chief and his council of elders has been replaced among the Southern Ute, who elect the council by popular vote. The Southern Ute constitution provides for internal self-government through this council, which maintains law and order, establishes rules for judicial procedure, and governs the disposition of tribal lands. The constitution, adopted in 1936, has not yet been fully tested.

Although many old Ute customs are fast disappearing, their language has persisted with little apparent change. All younger Indians speak both Ute and English, and most can speak Mexican-Spanish. Like other Indians, the Ute employ sign language, and depend on frequent and expressive gestures to make themselves understood.

Most of the Southern Ute live in frame or adobe houses. Floors, doors, windows, and some kind of heating apparatus are usually found in their winter dwellings. As farmers, they are more inclined to establish permanent dwellings than the pastoral Mountain Ute, although they still use temporary summer houses of poles covered with branches of oak, cottonwood, birch, or willow. Tepees are made of canvas laid over a circular structure of 12 to 14 poles, and have only two openings—a flap for a doorway, and a flap at the apex, through which escapes the smoke from the fireplace in the center of the tepee. Food is cooked on stoves with modern utensils. The only native food much used is a bread made of Indian corn pounded to a heavy paste, but even this is being displaced by white wheat bread.

Southern Ute families have an average of 40 acres on which to raise alfalfa, wheat, and oats. The majority have gardens and occasionally a milk cow. Modern farming methods and equipment are the rule rather than the exception.

The Ute tribes never possessed great skill in the handicrafts, and such arts as they had are largely disappearing. One remaining handicraft of importance is leather work, in which the tribe excels. Excellent buckskin leather is made by scraping hair from hides with a knife or sharp bone; sheep brains are then rubbed into it and allowed to remain until it dries in the sun; manipulation with the hands, or pounding with rocks, renders the buckskin soft and pliable.

Weaving of willow baskets is another of their remaining arts. Their medicine and wedding baskets are similar in shape to a wooden chopping bowl. The names of the two baskets are used interchangeably, although some Ute declare that the wedding basket differs from the medicine basket in that it is slightly larger and has a touch of yellow in its design. The wedding basket is still used to serve ceremonial cornmeal mush to bride and groom. A heavy stalk is used for the inner framework of the baskets; around this are woven lighter willow strands, obtained by splitting a willow reed and removing the pith. The reeds are laid away in a damp place for a time, and during the weaving process are kept pliable by moistening with saliva. The practice of holding the strands between the lips results in chronic sores around the mouth. Ute baskets possess great strength and are cream-colored, the natural color of the willows, but red and black commercial dyes are generally used in their ornamentation. Woven willow jugs are coated with pinon pitch to render them watertight.

The Ute do no fabric weaving, no pottery or metal work, but make belts, hat bands, purses, dolls, moccasins, and arm bands, all intricately embellished with beads. Some magnificent war bonnets are fashioned by sewing eagle feathers to cotton caps. Twelve feathers are always used, and beadwork and weasel tails are additional decorations. Feather fans, used in the ceremonial dances, are manufactured. Some work is still done with porcupine quills, although this is almost a forgotten art.

The Ute have two ceremonial dances (see below), the Bear Dance and Sun Dance, both of which last several days. According to agency officials, the dances are fast losing their original significance and esteem.

At 4.1 miles is the junction with State 172, which the route now follows.

At 5.4 miles is the junction with a dirt road.

Left on this road to (R) the SUN DANCE FIELD (adm. 25¢), 22 miles; admission fees are used to feed Indians who come to witness the Sun Dance held in mid-July. This religious rite is performed by men, who abstain from food and water throughout the ceremony, which lasts from three to five days. Fasting, it is believed, bestows upon the dancers a supernatural power drawn from the sun.

The dance is held in a circular corral about 150 feet in diameter, constructed of cedar, pinon, or cottonwood branches woven between poles set in the earth. In the center stands a tall pole, topped with a bundle of twigs arranged to resemble a sheaf of wheat. Small resting places for the participants are partitioned off with boughs, and each has a small pathway before it. Facing the pole at all times, the dancers move forward and backward along their individual paths, but not simultaneously. Each carries an eagle-bone whistle upon which he blows when not chanting. Dangling from wrists, ankles, elbows, ears, are feathers, silver objects, animal teeth, and beads. Now and again a dancer lingers a moment at the pole, gesticulating and bowing, at which time he is said to be communing with the sun. No words are spoken, and no instructions given. The rhythm of the dance produces in the dancers a kind of auto-intoxication; each dances until he has acquired supernatural power, which is evidenced by his falling into a faint.

At 7.5 miles is the junction with the Agency Road.

Left on this road to the CONSOLIDATED UTE AGENCY HEADQUARTERS (open 8-5 daily), 0.3 miles, where the Federal Government maintains a co-educational boarding school and hospital for the Indians. The hospital is well staffed and equipped, and field nurses are employed. Of the 1939 student enrollment, only 10 per cent were Ute, 90 per cent being Navaho from New Mexico. The school supplements academic studies with courses in manual training, domestic science, and instruction in Indian arts and crafts. Athletic events, farm extension work, and demonstration projects arouse considerable interest. Approximately 60 Ute children attend regular schools in the surrounding towns.

Here is the BEAR DANCE FIELD (adm. 25¢), an inclosure similar to that used for the Sun Dance (see above), except that it has no center pole. The dance, held annually late in May or early in June, was formerly held in March to celebrate the emergence of the bear from hibernation; because it later came to interfere with spring farm work, the date of observance was changed. When the Ute were nomads, the dance was a meeting place and provided opportunity for courtship.

Women participate in the Bear Dance and select their partners; it is believed that a man who does not dance when invited will be harmed by the bear when alone in the woods. In the inclosure the men form a line facing the east entrance; the women form another line facing the musicians at the west. Music is provided by an "orchestra" seated around a sheet of tin laid over two logs or a pit. With two notched sticks, one pressed against the resonator and rubbed with the other, a rhythmic and not unpleasant humming sound is produced on this instrument, the morache. Children do not participate, but white men are allowed to join the dance, the usual fee being 10¢ to a young woman partner, or 25¢ to an old squaw, in addition to the regular admission fee.

Right from Agency Headquarters on a road that crosses Pine River to the junction with a dirt road, 0.2 miles.

1. Right here through a cemetery to the GRAVE OF CHIEF OURAY, 200 yds., indicated by a small marker placed on the boundary between the Protestant and Roman Catholic sections in order to satisfy both sects on the reservation. Another chief, Capote, is buried here, but his grave is without a marker, and only one or two Ute know its site.

Ouray, best known of Ute chiefs, was the son of a Ute father and an Apache mother. Born in 1820 in a tepee near the present town of Ignacio (see below), he was adopted into the Uncompahgre Ute tribe and became its outstanding figure. Ruling at a time when the great mining districts were being opened, Ouray had frequent contacts with the whites. Perhaps realizing the futility of resisting encroachment, Ouray always counseled peace and undoubtedly prevented many bloody clashes. One of his acts of friendship was to persuade the rebellious Northern Ute to return the women and children taken captive in the massacre at White River Agency in 1878 (see Tour 17). Unable to preserve any desirable part of his people's domain, largely because of the massacre, Ouray died a broken man in 1883. His body was smuggled away by Buckskin Charley, another Ute chief, and buried in a secret cave. Not until 1924 were the Ute induced to disinter the body and bring it here to the Agency cemetery, where it was reburied with great ceremony.

2. Left from the junction 2.5 miles on a dirt road to the junction with an unimproved side road (passable by automobile); L. here 2.7 miles to the HOME OF ANTONIO BUCK, SR. (visitors welcome), present chief of the Southern Ute. Antonio Buck, aged 58, son of Buckskin Charley who ruled the Southern Ute from 1884 until his death in 1936 at the age of 95, was elected chief of the tribe to succeed his father. A farmer and stockman, Buck has spent most of his life on the reservation, although he once accompanied his father to Washington, D. C. Educated at Fort Lewis (see Tour 11c) and having been an interpreter for a time, he speaks fluent English.

South of the junction with the Agency road is IGNACIO, 8 miles (6,432 alt., 464 pop.), named for a Ute chief. A small farming, livestock, and trading town, it does a lively business in Indian articles. The Ute do not make jewelry, but, unlike the Navaho, are excellent traders. Sheep, buckskin, beadwork, and headdresses are exchanged with the Navaho for jewelry and blankets, which are then traded to visitors for money or goods. For this reason Ignacio is one of the chief Navaho markets. The Navaho, curiously, are very fond of machine-woven rugs bearing the stamp "Navaho," and will happily trade their own rugs for more brightly colored cheap imitations.