1639

Summarized from Violence Over the Land by Ned Blackhawk, pg 25, 57.

Luis de Rosas, governor of New Mexico, leads the first documented slave campaign against the Utes at an unknown location to the north.  

These Utes had never harmed the Spanish or Christianized Indians – it was entirely about killing and taking captives. An unknown number of people were killed, while eighty were enslaved and ended up in Rosas’s workshops in Santa Fe – where they were forced to manufacture things like blankets, hides, and ropes inside dark, dirty buildings – or further away in Mexico’s slave and mining centers. 

This is when the slave-raiding cycle officially begins for Utes, as it probably dates earlier than this one account where Utes are specifically named.  Cycle expands to include Southern Utah, Nevada, and California by mid-1700s.

A collection of documents, excerpts, and photographs relevant to the so-called Weber Ute people of Northern Utah. Not a complete history — research aid only.