This site’s mission is to gather and present a collection of documents, stories, and photographs about the inaccurately-named and often ignored Weber Ute people of Northern Utah. Why? To aid accessibility for researchers, and to dispel the notion that lack of evidence in written archives was ever the real reason behind their neglect in Euro-American histories.

Since most sources here are from Mormon and other Euro-American authors, the information will be heavily swayed toward those perspectives. Taken alone, they can only offer a one-sided, heavily prejudiced, and fragmented version of events. They cannot provide an authoritative answer to who the “Weber Utes” were; thus, they are compiled here as a research aid only.

Make no mistake: the “Weber Utes'” own voices are not included in the majority of these records. Descendants of the people mentioned within this website do still live here today. They may still have many stories about what happened here, from their own families’ and communities’ perspectives. But whether they share those with outsiders, or how they share it, is entirely their choice. The full story of what happened to the Indigenous people of Utah belongs to them.

So who were the Weber Utes?

Weber Ute was a label that Mormon settlers and government agents gave to some of the people who lived in Salt Lake, Davis, Weber, Morgan, and Tooele county areas when the pioneers first arrived. Their most documented leader was a man called Little Soldier.

The Weber part of the name comes from the favoring of the region around the Weber River by Little Soldier’s band, in today’s Weber and Morgan counties. Being nomadic, they traveled freely and often within their land.

Yet despite the Ute name, the Weber Utes are typically described in modern assessments as being Northwestern Shoshone and Goshute (Skull Valley Western Shoshone) people, with possibly a few Ute members through intermarriage.

The presence of Shoshone/Goshute people is a fact, but the exact relationship with Ute people is fuzzy. Several accounts, Mormon and non-Mormon, claimed the presence of Ute members. Weber Utes are sometimes described as being bilingual in both Shoshone and Ute languages, and they have also been tied to Salt Lake Valley’s people under Wanship in records. Wanship was a man who was recorded by several accounts to be a Ute who, with his children, was said to have intermarried into either Northwestern Shoshone or Goshute families.

The reliability of the Euro-American records is in question, however. “Ute” was used very freely by observers of Native peoples here, and documentation leaves one in extreme doubt over the depth of understanding that the authors had about the people they remarked upon. The precise nature of the link between the people under Wanship and those with Little Soldier is also uncertain so far. The tendency of Euro-American records to distinguish groups by prominent individuals, like Wanship and Little Soldier — while ignoring the rest of the people — complicates this.

Significantly, the Uintah band of Utes has claimed Weber Utes/Cumumbas as a sub-group, with Weber Utes appearing as plaintiffs in court claims against the United States. But another source exists which states that no evidence has been found of Weber Utes joining Ute reservations. How vigorously that evidence was pursued is unknown. Nevertheless, if Ute members did exist, they should not be ignored for the sake of simpler answers. These would be real human beings, not mere ink on paper, and they’d matter.

If the Weber Utes weren’t actually predominantly Ute, then, why continue to use the name here? Largely simply because it’s what the people of this region were most commonly referred to in written documentation. Without the name, one can get lost in the endless undifferentiated “Indian” references instead, which refer to neither individual, group, nor homeland. The name also marks this site as a database for Euro-American commentary about the people who originally inhabited this region, and not as an authoritative source about who they were and what happened. The questionability of the name and the content go hand-in-hand.

Tracking the Weber Ute label and the appearances of its most frequently-mentioned members and associates (i.e. Little Soldier, Ben Simons), helps one find people for whom this region was and is home, versus people who lived in adjacent areas or who were passing through. But even then, this usefulness is limited. It was a grouping decided by Euro-American observers, and not by the people themselves. Other people who were not directly associated with Little Soldier’s band were probably also included under the title at times. While others who were linked may end up overlooked.

This, along with the confusion about the Weber Ute label, highlights the unfortunate lack of inquisitiveness that Euro-American settlers seem to have had regarding the original inhabitants of this land. This can’t be escaped when relying upon their records.

Government agents, for instance, appear to have been appointed more for political reasons than for expertise. And despite living alongside these families for decades, the documentation left behind by the pioneers here usually fails to reflect much interest in Native peoples’ day-to-day activities, their identities, their family links and friends, their motivations, concerns, or hopes. Basically, their existences as actual people.

References outside of official correspondence are usually limited to scattered anecdotes of the “Indians vs settlers” variety, with many reeking of being tall tales meant to entertain or to boast bravery or horror. Even accounts of friendship are regularly scant on basic details. And though examples of friendship and kindness did occur, the context of aggressive colonization cannot be dismissed.

So sadly, you will not find many intimate details of “Weber Ute” lives on here. Only a handful of individuals even get the general respect of being referred to by name.

Contrast this with the richly detailed histories and genealogies available for even the most minorly prominent pioneers, and the disparity is headache-inducing.

(Read William R. Palmer’s comments from 1933 about this sad indifference: “Did the old timers known the Indians?”)

The Weber Ute label, not unlike Palmer’s “Cedar Indians” in its unimaginative inaccuracy, continues to be used here a warning to the reader to proceed with caution. A compilation of data from only the sources found here could never produce a legitimate interpretation of what happened. The documentation written by Mormon and American observers strongly reflects their own prejudices and motivations, and gives away a deep failure to understand those they commented upon.

These do not even begin to provide us with the other side of the story — what the Native people of this land went through, in their own words, and who they really were and are.

Thus, this website is meant to serve only as a research aid.