Chipeta

Chipeta

Chipeta is a renowned example of the tens of millions, even billions of men and women, swept aside as trash in the indiscrimate uprooting of people who were in the clutches of powerful conquerors.

        Chipeta was born about 1842.  She was the sole survivor of a massacre and was adopted, as was the custom, by a Ute.   She joined a family of about 25 in a matrilineal and multigenerational as one of their own.

              Survival as a nomadic people was not easy; every person contributed in many age-old tasks.  Women gathered and preserved foods, dried fruits and meat for winter, made clothes from skins of animals.  Heavy skins from huge animals covered their teepees.    Nothing from successful hunts was wasted.

           In late summer the Utes returned to sheltered valleys.  They had no written language so they preserved their culture and history through stories, repeating their deeds over and over from memory.

      Chipeta learned to sew and decorate deer skins, often decorating them with beads.  She gathered herbs and grasses for medicines.  With the ability to domesticate horses and ponies they had transportation.  Life continued in this peaceful culture for thousands of years until white men of European descent descended on them. 

 These Europeans came up with the doctrine of discovery, dating from 1493, which gave Christian explorers the “right” to claim lands they “discovered.”  This terminology was developed as reason for practices which permitted indigenous people no legal or political rights.  

       These were the conditions under which Chipeta; married to   Chief Ouray, one of the most respected chiefs in the land we now call Colorado.   

Chipeta Queen of the Utes A Biography by Cynthia Becker and P. David Smith.  2003.  255pages