Moominmama's Adventures: The San Juan Mountains

 

Wherein Moominmama returns to a familiar part of Colorado and learns more about the Ute people who call this area home...

The Ute people consider themselves a mountain people. Given Colorado was the center of their territory, they had to be! But they made intelligent use of the varied ecosystems that evolved with wildly differing altitudes in the mountains and valleys.

The Ute were early adopters of the horse (traded or stolen from the Spanish), and they traveled from place to place to take maximum advantage of pleasant temperatures and bountiful resources. 

"If you couldn't move in 10 minutes, you had too much stuff," one elder is quoted at the Southern Ute Cultural Center and Museum. While Moominmama has seriously downsized, she can't quite meet that standard! 

Among the interesting facts I learned: the Ute people harvested the cambium of the common Ponderosa pines in early spring when it provided a sweet sap, a surprising amount of calcium and other nutrients at a time of year before other fresh foods could be harvested.

There are still living trees with sections of bark that have been peeled off that show where the Ute people harvested the cambium underneath. And the Ute now work with archeologists, anthropologists and biologists to explore and preserve indigenous expertise. 

But like much of American history, the story of the Ute people is one of being uprooted and pushed out of their territory with both force and a slew of broken treaties.

Promised in 1868 most of the western half of Colorado  "in perpetuity" (in exchange for giving up the rest of Colorado as well as most of their territory in Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming), they were forced to cede the San Juan Mountains in 1873, creating a reservation with this prominent cutout.

Language in the 1873 Brunot Agreement supposedly gave Utes access to the San Juan Mountains for hunting. But it probably comes as no surprise that the reservation given "in perpetuity" shrank further. An uprising known as the "Meeker incident" provided just the excuse to kick the Utes out of all but that bottom strip of Colorado below the San Juan Mountains. That's where the Southern Ute reservation is today. 

Most of the northern Utes were forced onto the Uintah Valley reservation that had been established in Utah. But the Southern Utes and Ute Mountain Utes hung onto the bottom strip, and while this land lacked the natural bounty of the mountains, it later turned out to be rich in gas and mineral resources. 

The modern tribe owns energy companies, a casino and its own private equity fund, using those resources to provide pensions and health care for its elders and fund its own schools (pre-school and a K-8 Montessori school that incorporates Ute language education). The focus on preserving the language is core to much of what the tribe is doing today. The Ute language, they explain, holds a way of being not just a different set of words.

And in 2008, the Southern Utes negotiated with the state of Colorado to reclaim their access rights to the San Juan Mountains, with the agreement detailing how the state and the tribe would work together on conservation and land management.

It is heartening to see the change in attitude toward First Nations. They rarely recoup the land they lost, but many have found other ways to have a say in the conservation and preservation of their territories and holy lands. Academics are increasingly turning to the tribes to gain indigenous knowledge. We use technology now to study archeological sites without digging them up and carrying off their artifacts.

So the Ute Museum, rather than featuring artifacts, shares their people's stories and their efforts to preserve old knowledge.

While this was Moominmama's first visit to the museum, I've been to the Durango area before and thoroughly enjoy hiking in the San Juan Mountains. I also took a day to walk along the Animas River Trail in town. 

Much to my amazement, I found a group of people surfing on the whitewater of the river! There are a couple spots where the churn of the river turns the water back on itself, creating a wave. The surfers ease out into that swell, steady themselves then stand up on the surfboard -- until they lose their balance and get swept backwards downstream!

My stay in Durango is a bit of a vacation from the constant challenges of travel because I know how to find my way around. And I look forward to attending the Durango Friends Meeting on Sunday again. 

From here I will head up into the Rockies, crossing my fingers that I don't face too many snowy mountain passes at this time of year. I leave you with a photo of a piece of pottery that made me laugh. This pitcher the work of a modern Zuni artist who called his piece "The Owl."