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Show Religion Around the lodge fires in ancient times the young Utes learned from the older people that there was one supreme being, a good personal God. Under him were other beings, including a spirit of war, a spirit of peace, a spirit of floods, a spirit of thunder and lightning, and a spirit of blood who heals the sick. The Utes were pagan in the sense that they did not believe in the white man's God, although they had a supreme God who was similar to the God of the Christians. The supreme God of the Utes was associated with the sun. The sun was a bisexual diety, the He-She, whose power created all things. All the minor gods represented the power of the Great Spirit in one combination on earth, but they were still subordinate to the Great Spirit of the sun. Through these minor gods, the Utes believed, the Great Spirit expressed his love for all the Indians. When an Indian died, it was believed that he went to the Happy Hunting Ground in the sun where there was no sickness or any other miseries of life. In this place he led an ideal life filled with hunting, feasting, dancing, and merrymaking. The Utes held a general animistic belief in spirit personalities belonging to both men and animals. There were a number of animal gods, chief among them being the coyote. Many legends of the feats of these creatures were retold, and the Utes made every effort to win the favor of these gods because they could cause illness. Thus the medicine man, or shaman, ministered to the sick by drawing out the spirit cause of illness. Until reservation days, the individualistic religion seems to have changed very little. The Utes were nature worshippers who accepted and were satisfied with what nature gave. But as the white man moved into Ute lands, whittling them away bit by bit, the Ute way of life was restricted and the ceremonials were gradually reduced. When the Sun Dance reached the Utes from the Shoshone around 1890, it was quickly adopted because the Utes already believed that the power to cure came from the sun and that spirits sent visions to worthy men telling them to dance. The Sun Dance was held once a year as a curing ceremonial, and the young men danced to gain power to cure through being cured themselves. Although the dance was directed by an appointed shaman, each dancer decided whether to |
