A collection of descriptions about Weber Utes/Cumumbas from various documents, books, and articles.

Weber Utes were frequently referred to as “Cumumba” (with various spellings), which seems to be derived from a Ute term/phrase for “talks different.” See the Language section. The term was also applied to Goshute in some sources.

Were they Northwestern Shoshone, Goshute, Ute, or a mixture? Sources disagree, which (in the case of contemporary records) exposes the authors’ failures to reach a basic understanding of the people they observed. Yet it’s possible that it may reflect changes in band composition as time went on. The meager anthropological assessments of the Weber Utes, for instance, did not occur until the late 1870s-1930s. People had already been severely displaced and otherwise harmed by settlement by the ’70s.

• A list of names and various spellings they’ve been referred to as
• 2010: Weber Utes, also known as Cumumbas, were intermarried with Northwestern Shoshone and were culturally/linguistically connected to Western Shoshone. Cumumba also appears as a band connected to Ute people of Uintah and Ouray
• 2007: “So-called Weber Utes were Shoshoni with an admixture of Gosiutes (actually Shoshoni themselves with a somewhat separate identity) and Utes”
• 2003: Weber Utes (or Cumumba = Rabbit Fish Eaters), also called Kumanpagi by author, were interrelated people of the Salt Lake Valley
• Ca 2000: Clifford Duncan: Cumumbas were speakers of Ute and Shoshone, and they were Utes who came out of Shoshone families.
• 1999: Weber Utes were a group created by intermarriage between Utes and Shoshones, and they lived in a shared area between the nations
• 1993, 1981, 1957: Ute tribe asserts continuity with Weber Utes: Ute Indian Tribe vs The State of Utah, 1981; Uintah Ute Indians of Utah vs the United States, 1993; Uintah and White River bands of Ute Indians vs the United States, 1957
• 1986: Western Shoshone country encompassed area of Goshute in Tooele, Skull Valleys, Deep Creek, and the ‘Weber Ute.’
• 1985: Weber Utes and Goshutes “merely were Shoshones who spoke a different dialect from those of Nevada Shoshones”
• 1985: Cache Valley, Bear River, and “Weber Ute” Shoshonis editorially deleted from The Handbook of North American Indians
• 1972: “Wipayutta” is given as a name referring to the Skull Valley Goshute
• 1970: Weber Utes were a Shoshone band who spoke “same dialect as the other Northwestern bands”
• 1955: “The Cum-um-bah, or Weber Ute, are sometimes classified as Ute, and sometimes as Shoshone. […] At the time of the coming of the Mormons, they occupied the territory which included the site of present Salt Lake City.”
• 1937: Weber Utes were Shoshone on the southeastern edge of the Great Salt Lake, their language similar to other Shoshone.
• 1937: “Weber Ute” were called Salt Lake Valley Shoshoni in this paper.
• 1908: People who “formerly held possession of Salt Lake Valley to Weber Valley” were close to Goshute, but had distinct tribal organization and slightly different dialect
• 1901: Court case, 1901: “Webber Utes or Little Soldier’s band” among the separate, distinct, & independent bands of Utes determined in 1865-1867
• 1900: James S. Brown: “The Indians we met [in Salt Lake Valley, led by Little Soldier] were called Utes, but they were different from the Utes over on the reservation and talked more like the Shoshones, in the north.”
• 1869: “The Weber Utes – These Indians live in and about Salt Lake City.  They have some ponies, and subsist by hunting, fishing, and begging.  They do not cultivate any land.  The Weber Utes number about three hundred.”
• 1868: “Cum-min-tails, or Weber Utes. This tribe is formed from numbers of different Utah and Shoshone bands”
• 1866: The Weber Utes: “Their land is nearly all occupied by settlers, among whom they beg their maintenance. [,,,] They are much opposed to leaving their present haunts to locate upon a reservation.”
• 1865: “Weber-Utes, numbering eight hundred, living in the Salt Lake, Weber, and Ogden valleys, and in the neighborhood of the towns.  They are a mixture of Utes and Shoshonees, and are represented as an idle, shiftless, and vagabond tribe, giving much trouble by petty depredations”
• 1862: “Weber River Yutas” are the people most often seen in Great Salt Lake City in early 1860s; they understand Shoshone and their chief settlement is forty miles to the north
• 1860s: “The Weber Utes live in the vicinity of Salt Lake City…Their chief settlement is 40 miles to the north… The Cum Umbahs‘are mixed-bloods of the Utes and Shoshonees, and range in the region of Salt Lake, Weber, and Ogden valleys in Northern Utah.’”
• 1855: Brigham Young: “The Shoshones, or Snakes, […] the Utahs, Cumumbahs, Piedes, Pah Utahs, Pav-Vants, and Diggers are so broken up into small bands, that it is impossible to tell with any degree of accuracy their numbers”
• 1852: Brigham Young: “Mouth of Weber is held by Cumembahs or Snake Diggers who united by marriage with a broken off band of Shoshonees which the Shoshone Indians do not claim at all as belonging to their nation”
• 1852: Brigham Young – “Cumumbahs [inhabit] principally the central part of this Territory extending north and south and westerly from the settlements and bordering upon the desert”
• 1850: The Nauvoo Legion militia papers and the Deseret News refer to the people along the Weber as “Utes” who are separate but united with nearby Shoshones, when Terikee is killed in North Ogden
• 1849: Oliver Boardman Huntington describes politics between the Shoshones in Salt Lake Valley and Utes in Utah Valley, referring to Wanship – that there were two families who held Salt Lake and Utah valleys, and they were constantly at war. “All were of the Ewtah tribe, but for some cause those of Wandship’s side had seceded and called themselves Shoshonies… when the two Vallies were at peace they would intermarry and that would bring another war”