Ute Black Hawk War

Black Hawk War of Utah

The Black Hawk Indian War, sometimes called the Ute Black Hawk War to distinguish itself from the more famous Black Hawk War fought more than three decades earlier in Illinois, was the longest and most destructive conflict between pioneer immigrants and Native Americans in Utah History. The traditional date of the war's commencement is 9 April 1865 but tensions had been mounting for years in the aftermath of the shorter Wakara War. The incident which sparked the conflict arose from an encounter between a handful of Utes and Mormon frontiersmen at Manti, Sanpete County, who attempted to settle a dispute over some cattle killed and consumed by starving Indians. An irritated (and possibly inebriated) Mormon lost his temper and violently jerked a young chieftain from his horse. The insulted Indian delegation, which included a dynamic young Ute named Black Hawk, abruptly left, promising retaliation. Over the course of the next few days Black Hawk and other Utes killed five Mormons and escaped to the mountains with hundreds of stolen cattle.

Naturally, scores of hungry warriors and their families flocked to eat "Mormon beef" and to support Black Hawk, who was suddenly hailed as a war chief. Encouraged by his success and increasing power, Black Hawk continued his forays, stealing more than two thousand head of stock and killing approximately twenty-five additional settlers in the next year. The young Ute by no means had the support of all of the Indians of Utah, but he succeeded in uniting scattered factions of the Ute, Paiute, and Navajo tribes into a very loose confederacy bent on plundering Mormon settlers throughout the territory. Cattle were the main objectives of Black Hawk's offensives but travelers, herdsmen, and settlers were massacred when it was convenient. Contemporary estimates indicate that as many as seventy settlers were killed during the conflict.

The years 1865 to 1867 were by far the most intense of the conflict. Latter-day Saints considered themselves in a state of open warfare. They built scores of forts and deserted dozens of settlements while hundreds of Mormon militiamen chased their illusive adversaries through the wilderness with limited success.

While requests for federal troops went unheeded for eight years, Black Hawk himself made peace with the Mormons in 1867. Without his leadership the Indian forces, which never operated as a combined front, fragmented even further. The war's intensity decreased and a treaty of peace was signed in 1868. Intermittent raiding and killing, however, continued until 1872 when 200 federal troops were finally ordered to step in at a lasting peace treaty was signed at Mt. Pleasant, Utah, a settlement founded the previous decade by James Russell Ivie, one of the early casualties of the conflict.