Colorado’s oldest continuing residents, the Utes, arrived centuries before the Arapaho and Cheyenne came in the early 1800s or the Spanish in the 1700s. The Utes prevailed in Colorado but traveled lightly and left few traces.
In Colorado’s back country, you may have seen one of their ancestral homes and not realized it. The Utes leaned poles against each other or against living trees, forming a teepee-like shelter called wickiups. Pine, juniper, willow and aspen were used, then covered with bark, brush or animal hides.
These ephemeral shelters are fast disappearing, leaving Coloradans without important cultural reminders of the people who have lived here longest.
Wickiups pre-date the Ute adoption of teepees, a structure they borrowed from the Plains tribes. Even after teepees, the Utes continued to build wickiups as temporary shelters. Some wickiups have been dated after the Ute removal of 1881, suggesting that tribes people snuck back into their old Colorado home after many were banished to Utah reservations, or that they never left.
The Colorado Wickiup Project is now wrapping up an 11-year study in partnership with History Colorado’s State Historical Fund, the Ute tribes, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, and the National Forest Service under the leadership of the Dominguez Archaeological Research Group.
Team leader Curtis Martin reports that more than 84 sites were surveyed and 235 wickiups documented. Many more sites, according to History Colorado archaeologist Tom Carr, remain undiscovered.
To inspect a well-documented wickiup, check out the Ute Museum in Montrose. “I’m proud of this project done in consultation with the Ute tribes,” said Ernest House Jr., a Ute Mountain Ute now serving as Colorado commissioner of Indian Affairs. “This is a great resource shining more light on how the Utes lived and moved around Colorado.”
House’s great-grandfather, Jack House, was the last traditional chief of the Ute Mountain Utes from 1936 until his death in 1971. He is commemorated at the state Capitol in a stained glass window in the old Supreme Court chambers, a portrait that Ernest House says he visits when contemplating the problems and possibilities of his people.
“I often wonder what Jack House would do,” Ernest House said. “Unfortunately, about the only time you hear about Indians is when they are in trouble. Alcoholism. Murder. Poverty. You don’t hear about our Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Park tours, which are open to the public, or about our Ute Mountain Casino Hotel & Resort at Towaoc, which is making money for the tribe.
“The wickiup project is another positive celebration of our tribal heritage,” House said. “We were delighted when History Colorado gave the wickiup project this year’s Governor’s Award for Historic Preservation.”
Today, wickiups are mostly found in the extreme southwest corner of the state on the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute reservations, with Sleeping Ute Mountain slumbering nearby. When he awakens, Utes say, he will chase out the non-Utes. Then the tribe can repossess the state where their wickiups are fast disappearing.
Tom Noel, who teaches Colorado history at CU-Denver, welcomes your comments at www.Dr-colorado.com.
