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REVIEW
Parker is a fine writer, for one thing. Her keen eye and her memory for detail
vividly evoke time and place. Parker explores the people and events of the Basin
both as she experienced them and as she later came to understand them.
Particularly poignant are her associations with the Utes, whom her parents
treated equitably but regarded as inferiors, and her awakening to the truth of
white-Indian relationships. The author has supplemented memory with significant
research into sources that include interviews and primary documents. Utah
Historical Quarterly.
INDIAN SUMMERS –
A Memoir of Fort Duchesne 1925-1935
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(Click Cover for full image)
By Virginia Carlson Parker
List Price: $17.00 42 Photos
Agreka™ Books ISBN 1-888106-44-1 September 1998
Soft Cover 6 x 9 182p Second Printing
About
the Author
Excerpt Back Cover
Page 2
Page 3
Thought-provoking, sensitive, factual history by this
retired professional librarian. She includes Native American Folklore stories
and many of their photos. While her father supervised an experimental farm, the
author lived at Fort Duchesne during 1925-1935. She gives a detailed physical,
geographical, day-to-day, and emotional account of life there, and includes her
observation of the plight of her friends, the Uintahs and Ourays, who were
forced to live in the old Fort converted to an Indian Reservation. It changed
her forever and in ways that were in conflict with the opinions of the adults
around her.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Virginia Carlson Parker, of Logan, Utah, obtained her
Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford University. She has Masters' Degrees in
Library Science from the University of California at Berkeley and American
Studies from Utah State University.
In 1883, Fort Duchesne was
converted from a military stockade to an Indian Reservation for the Uintah and
Ouray Indians. Old Fort Duchesne, now gone, was located a mile south of U.S.
Highway 40, hidden behind a large grove of Cottonwood trees. When the Indian
lands in the Uintah Basin were opened to white settlement in 1905, it was Utah's
last frontier. A growing network of roads and canals connected the small
settlements of Ashley (now Vernal, Utah) in Uintah County and Roosevelt, in
Duchesne County. This book recounts memories of a little girl's early childhood
spent at Fort Duchesne between 1925 and 1935.
Thought-provoking, sensitive, factual history by this
retired professional librarian. She includes Native American Folklore stories
and many of their photos. While her father supervised an experimental farm, the
author lived at Fort Duchesne during 1925-1935. She gives a detailed physical,
geographical, day-to-day, and emotional account of life there, and includes her
observation of the plight of her friends, the Uintahs and Ourays, who were
forced to live in the old Fort converted to an Indian Reservation. It changed
her forever and in ways that were in conflict with the opinions of the adults
around her.
EXCERPT
THE LAND IS HEAVY
"The streams, the land, and the timber upon
the mountains, you cannot take that away. These
things, they are a part of the earth and they are
heavy, you can’t move them or lift them, I don’t
care how big you are."
Thus spoke Chief Red Cap when he was informed of the
Congressional Act making allotments to the Utes, and opening the surplus lands
of the Uintah Reservation to White settlement in 1905.
 The
Whole Gang. Click for full image
When my family went to live in the Basin in 1924, the early
years of conflict had settled into an acceptance of the allotment system,
resulting in a checkerboard pattern of White and Native American land use. The
administration of Native American affairs was centered in the offices and
facilities located at Fort Duchesne. The Uintah Basin Alfalfa Seed Experimental
Farm was established on an allotment near Fort Duchesne in 1925. The land had
been leased for ten years. The Farm was operated jointly by the Utah State
Agricultural Experiment Station and the Farm Bureaus of Duchesne and Uintah
counties. My family had spent the previous year in Roosevelt, where my father
had taught in the High School. He had graduated from the Utah State Agricultural
College with a degree in Agronomy, and planned to continue his graduate studies
while he served as Superintendent of the Farm.
I was a toddler, aged two years, when we moved into our house
at the Fort, and my awareness of our surroundings grew gradually as I grew. My
first conscious feeling about Indians, was anxiety for I was a curiosity to
them. The genetic heritage of my Swedish and Danish ancestors was all too
apparent in my blue eyes and snow white hair. Women wanted to touch it, to see
if it were real. This made me shy of them, for their faces bending close to me
were solemn and unsmiling. I could not see into their black eyes to judge their
motives, and when they spoke in the Ute language, it did not reassure me for I
did not understand what they said. Native Americans dressed differently, and
often their long dresses and shawls smelled of wood smoke and campfires.
My mother’s friends, who were Native Americans living at
the fort, were sometimes hired as baby sitters and part-time household help. I
did not see them as different from me, but as family friends. I became aware of
Native Americans as individuals as I watched them walking past the four-foot
wire fence my father erected temporarily one summer to enclose our play yard. My
brother and I were quarantined, because we had whooping cough. A huge orange
cardboard sign was hung on the outside of the fence. It carried a message
printed in large black letters, "WARNING! WHOOPING COUGH!" The
practice of quarantine for communicable diseases was common in the city, but at
Fort Duchesne no one had practiced it. Many persons passed by our improvised
corral during that summer, when my brother and I were shunned like victims of a
plague. We were often too busy playing to notice, but still we felt ostracized.
Native Americans came to the Fort in sober family groups, on
solemn business. They rode in horse-drawn wagons, leaving them in the river
bottom, and walking through our back yard on their way to the Administration
building, or hospital. The men wore blue jeans with denim or black shirts. They
wore the collar open with a brightly colored silk kerchief knotted round their
neck. Northern Utes had broad flat faces, and the men wore their hair plaited in
two braids that hung from beneath a broad-brimmed, black hat. The tall crown was
ornamented with a brightly beaded hat band.
The women always walked behind the men. They too, wore their
hair braided, but usually uncovered. Their dresses had long full skirts and they
wore a large plaid blanket wrapped around their shoulders. It was secured with a
wide leather belt which formed a pouch in which they carried a small child or
infant on their backs. The traditional cradle board used for very small babies,
was seldom seen. They always wore moccasins, sometimes ornamented with beads.
The children, who were smaller versions of their parents, tagged along in ragged
lines.
My upstairs bedroom overlooked the field between our house
and the hospital. From there, I observed the Native Americans who occasionally
came to the wailing tent located in the field beside the hospital. We children
were forbidden to go inside the fenced hospital grounds, because of the
contagious nature of the diseases of resident patients. We grew to fear the
hospital as well as its patients, but from a distance we observed the shadowy
figures who sat on the open porch which extended around two sides of the
building. Many patients had tuberculosis, and some were in the last stages of
syphilis, so they were thin and haggard looking.
I did not learn much about the problems of Native Americans
as a child. The attitude of adults in my family was generally one of tolerance
without undue concern for them. My father always felt that we were guests of the
Agency, and in no position to be critical of what he considered their business.
Nevertheless, I received the unspoken message that Whites were superior to
Native Americans. Supervising them was the Agency’s business. Benevolence was
dispensed as if they were children needing direction. If I encountered hostility
toward Native Americans, it was off the reservation and usually outside the
Basin during the winters we spent in Logan.
Top
During our "long talks," Johnny Victor told me most
of what I learned about Native Americans. He had been sent to a special school
for Native Americans and had learned about many tribes. He told me they called
themselves "The People." He told me the Creation Myth of the Utes,
which explained how they got their name. He talked about their dances,
explaining that the Sun Dance didn’t belong to the Utes. Their totem was the
bear, whose characteristics they tried to emulate. The dance of the Utes was the
Bear Dance. Johnny told me various myths about animals. In general, I listened
to his stories much as I did the stories my Swedish grandfather told, as
pastimes. I have rewritten them as I remember them, and as they pertain to my
experience.
In Logan, the year I was in the fourth grade, we built a
whole pioneer wagon train in the large sand table. Most of my classmates were
grandchildren of Scandinavian converts to Mormonism, so it was a Mormon wagon
train. When it came time to discuss the Indians, I tried to tell about my
experience on the reservation. I tried to say that they were not bad men who
attacked the white pioneers, but that they believed in the Great Spirit and held
wonderful dances to express their belief. I was trying to describe the Sun Dance
as a healing ritual, not a pagan celebration. My classmates jeered, and I began
to cry. But, I was determined not to be outdone by their ignorance, so I
finished my report by reciting Longfellow’s poem "Hiawatha," which I
had learned for my elocution lesson, and which they listened to, though it had
nothing to do with Utes. I fled from the classroom, and took refuge in the
furnace room with the custodian, Mr. Kennard, who was every child’s surrogate
grandfather. I never again tried to "talk" about the Native Americans
in Logan.
In the general population of the Uintah Basin during the 1920’s,
there was one White to four Native Americans. That population included the
majority of Native Americans in Utah at that time. Northern Utes seldom left
their reservation for the urban areas of Utah. Leaving meant traversing
formidable mountains in any direction. The roads were primitive and automobiles
were not yet commonplace. The means of transportation for most Native Americans
was limited to horse-drawn wagons.
At Fort Duchesne, Native Americans were always visible. But
with the exception of the few families who lived within the Fort circle, Whites
and Native Americans were separated by custom and residence. As a child, I was
not aware of the distinctions Native Americans made among themselves. There were
three distinct groups of Utes, of full-blood and mixed lineage. I did not know
then that to be "full-blood" was a legal description, which determined
an Indian’s rights to an allotment, to water rights, and to land. I did not
know that blood rights determined whether an Indian could inherit the allotments
provided by treaty.
The opening of the Uintah reservation to White settlement in
1905, resulted in a pattern of ownership of the Northern Ute lands which
inevitably led to conflict. Every aspect of Native American life was shattered
by the reapportionment, distribution and readjustment of their vested rights to
their homeland. The Agency at Ouray, which had been established for the
Uncompahgre Utes, was consolidated with the Uintah Agency, and the headquarters
were moved to the abandoned military post at Fort Duchesne, in 1912. There the
Bureau of Indian Affairs administered justice and aid to all three bands of Utes–the
White River Utes, the Uintah Utes, and the Uncompahgre Utes. A series of small
towns grew up across the reservation, mostly as White settlements. This was
followed by a period of canal building which made most of the reservation
available for farming purposes.
The three bands of Utes on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation,
spoke different dialects, and they had quite different customs and histories.
The Uintah Utes were indigenous to the Uinta Mountains. The White River Utes had
lived in the Colorado Rockies, and along the Yampa River. The Uncompahgre Utes
had acquired the horse in Spanish times, and from their home in the southern
Rockies and plains, they raided the trails to the Southwest. They had a
tradition as great warriors. They were pushed into the Basin from their native
lands in Colorado when silver was discovered on their lands. All lived under
different treaty rights, resulting in friction among them, even before the white
settlers arrived.
I gradually lost my anxiety about Native Americans. I learned
to see their visits to the administration building, the commissary, or the
hospital as necessary and commonplace. Their camps along the native owned
irrigation canals were a familiar sight. I came to recognize many of the
families living in the primitive log houses scattered throughout the reservation
lands. Those homesteads were unimproved by electricity or running water. They
looked poor and wretched, but no more so than those of the Basin’s white
settlers, who also lived in primitive log houses unadorned by paint, shade
trees, flower gardens or curtained windows.
Top
Whites criticized Native Americans as farmers, who did not
care for their land. Many seemed to have no employment of any kind. No one
bothered to explain to me that they lived on allotments granted in lieu of land.
Many leased their land to white farmers to farm while they, themselves, worked
as common laborers. It was unrecognized that the male Native American’s
traditional role had been totally obliterated by confining them on the
reservation. The fact that he had few tools, and little skill for farming was
never mentioned along with the criticism.
Like Chief Red Cap, I have known that we and the Native
Americans are like the mountains, "part of the earth and they are heavy,
you can’t move them or lift them."
The land is heavy, very heavy it seems.
EXCERPT
"The streams, the land, and the timber upon the
mountains, you cannot take that away. These things, they are a part of the earth
and they are heavy, you can't move them or lift them, I don't care how big you
are." Thus spoke Chief Red Cap when he was informed of the Congressional
Act making allotments to the Utes, and opening the surplus lands of the Uintah
Reservation to White settlement in 1905. Native Americans came to the Fort in
sober family groups. They rode in horse-drawn wagons, leaving them in the river
bottom, and walking through our back yard on their way to the Administration
building or hospital. The men wore blue denim jeans with denim or black shirts,
with the collar open and a brightly colored silk kerchief knotted around their
neck. The women always walked behind the men. Every aspect of Native American
life was shattered by the reapportionment, distribution, and readjustment of
their vested rights to their homeland. Whites criticized them as farmers who did
not care for their land. Many seemed to have no employment of any kind. No one
bothered to explain to me that they lived on allotments granted in lieu of land.
Many leased their land to white farmers to farm while they, themselves, worked
as common laborers. It was unrecognized that the male Native American's
traditional role had been totally obliterated by confining them
on the reservation. The attitude of adults in my family was generally one
of tolerance without undue concern for these people. I learned much from my long
talks with Johnny Victor. He had been sent to a special school for Native
Americans and had learned about many tribes. He said they called themselves
"The People." Johnny told me about their Creation Myth, their dances,
totems, and myths about animals. Truly, he was my brother and I learned deep
sensitivities about life from him. The Native American children I played with
and attended school with were just kids who "lived in the
neighborhood." Family photographs show groups of us dressed alike, grinning
self consciously at the camera.
As an adult I studied the history and read the stories
of Native Americans. I was shocked and ashamed at their treatment. The Native
American population is much greater now, and their culture and life style is as
greatly changed as that of the white settlers of the Basin. For some, it must
represent progress and prosperity. For others, it has been loss. Like Chief Red
Cap, I have known that we and the Native Americans are like the mountains,
"part of the earth and they are heavy, you can't move them or lift
them." The land is heavy, very heavy it seems.
BACK COVER
In 1883, Fort Duchesne was converted from a military
stockade to an Indian Reservation for the Uintah and Ouray Indians. Old Fort
Duchesne, now gone, was located a mile south of U.S. Highway 40, hidden behind a
large grove of Cottonwood trees. When the Indian lands in the Uintah Basin were
opened to white settlement in 1905, it was Utah's last frontier. A growing
network of roads and canals connected the small settlements of Ashley (now
Vernal, Utah) in Uintah County and Roosevelt, in Duchesne County. This book
recounts memories of a little girl's early childhood spent at Fort Duchesne
between 1925 and 1935. The experiences of this time would shape her forever.
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