The religion of the Ute people has always been highly individualistic in its application. None of the religions of the people from the European continent has ever been successful in altering this view among the Ute people. The Ute people believed in the pervasive power of Senawahv who fought and won over evil forces, and therefore their view of life and afterlife was essentially optimistic. They believed in a Creator God, Senawahv, and other lesser gods–a God of Blood, healer of the sick a God of Weather, controller of thunder and lightning a God of War and a God of Peace. Long before white contact, the Ute people believed in the immortality of the soul. This allowed them to maintain their food supply without endangering the size of herds, the grasses, or plants on which they subsisted. Economics determined that they live in small bands of probably fewer than two hundred people, except for the large encampment at Utah Lake. The Utes used their territory with systematic efficiency for the gathering of food and for the comfort of the season. Their myths, together with their traditions, told the Utes how they were “supposed to live.” It was far from the stereotype of Indians as an aimlessly roaming people ruled by primitive whims, ruthless to their women, children, and enemies. One family might build several, depending on where they chose to live during that portion of the year: one at a fishing camp in winter, another near the place where seeds were gathered in July, another for the gathering of wild berries and fruits in August and September, and yet another in the pine forests where the women could gather the nuts and men could hunt in late summer and fail. These structures were also cool in summer. The shelters for the largest portion of the tribe were tepees, but brush and willow houses that were easily heated by an open fire were used as well. Not all of the Ute bands, however, were so fortunate as the Utes of the Utah Lake area who had an abundance of trout available as well as berries, seeds, roots, venison, and fowl but as with most Indian tribes, they well understood the uses of the earth. The desert Indians ingeniously gathered myriad kinds of seeds and cacti to augment the large and small animals that were their main source of food. Buffalo meat was sliced thinly and dried bones and marrow were boiled and ground into a gelatinous food seeds were crushed into flour and berries were dried, with part of the harvest pounded into dried meat (pemmican) and stored to be eaten in wintertime. The White River band of Indians hunted and fished in the Colorado Rockies and the Uintas during the summers while their women gathered seeds and berries. In these lands of mountains and deserts, the Utes were assured of ample food. They knew that once their lands had stretched as far east to what is now the city of Denver, as far west to the Great Salt Lake Desert, and from northern Colorado and northern Utah south to the New Mexico pueblos. The elders handed this knowledge down to them in family tepees, during tribal ceremonies, and in the everyday practice of religion and acknowledgment of their myths. And don’t let them ever forget how we’re supposed to live, who we are, where we came from.”–Connor ChapooseĬonfined on reservations, no longer free to range over the mountains and deserts of their lands in the incessant quest for food, the hard-pressed Utes never completely forgot how they were supposed to live, who they were, and where they came from. The journal is published under the auspices of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde (the German Society for Ethnology) an the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory).…. The Zeitschrift für Ethnologie also offers a view of German ethnology abroad and provides an international forum for ethnological discussion through the inclusion of the articles by prominent foreign colleagues. Authors with new material on the subject of regional ethnology present their methodology, their theoretical perspective and the further development of the theoretical-methodological discussion through their results. The Zeitschrift für Ethnologie publishes articles of a theoretical-methodological nature, with emphasis on empirical knowledge. It was founded in 1869 by German scholars Adolf Bastian and Robert Hartmann. The Zeitschrift für Ethnologie (Journal of Ethnology) has been considered the primary journal of German ethnology for over 100 years.
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