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Show 12 difficult to imagine him to be a Ute until one reads the caption. It is necessary to remember, of course, that many Indians painted by Euro-Americans during this period had a European appearance. The Spanish exploring party left the Ute domain as they traveled southward. They had traversed a very great part of the Ute lands. The cartographer of the expedition, Don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco, drew a surprising map which very heavily influenced the history of the mountain west for the next half-century. The Ute lands were no longer tierra incognita. The expanding frontier was a fact with which the American Indians dealt in all the years after the arrival of the white man; expanding white encroachment is still in process. For the Utes, it came late and strangely. The Spanish penetration reached the borders of the Ute lands and halted, not because of Ute pressure but because of the sheer distance from the center of operations in Mexico. Because'of the introduction of the horse, many metal instruments, and many other useable items, the Utes looked with favor upon the Spaniards and their new articles of trade. It was the beginning of a long and usually peaceful as well as mutually productive relationship. There are about a dozen references to the Utes in the Spanish ^Solomon N. Carvalho, "Wakar, Late Chief of Ute Indians," Utah Historical Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Spring, 1971), cover. The original portrait is owned by the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma. |
