Detail of an 1844 by John C. Frémont showing the Great Salt Lake and the territory of the Ute people
23 February 2022
The name yuta was given by the Spanish to the people now known as the Utes, a people speaking a language in the Numic (Uto-Aztecan) language family. The Spanish acquired the name from yúdah, a word in an Athabaskan language, perhaps Navajo or Western Apache, meaning high, a reference to mountainous land. The Ute people dwell and have traditionally dwelled in what is now the state of Utah and surrounding territory.
English-language references to the Ute people, using the name Utah, date to at least 1807, when Zebulon Pike recorded the following in his journal:
26th February, Thursday.—In the morning was apprized by the report of a gun, from my lookout guard; of the approach of strangers. Immediately after two Frenchmen arrived.
My sentinel halted them and ordered them to be admitted after some questions; they informed me that his excellency governor Allencaster had heard it was the intention of the Utah Indians, to attack me; had detached an officer with 50 dragoons to come out and protect me, and that they would be here in two days.
Mormon settler-colonists arrived in what would become the state of Utah beginning in 1847. The United States acquired the territory in 1848, following the Mexican-American War, and the official Territory of Utah was created in 1850. Utah became the forty-fifth state in 1896 after the Mormon Church in the territory officially renounced polygamy.
Sources:
Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
Pike, Zebulon M. An Account of the Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi. Philadelphia: C. & A. Conrad, 1810, 201. Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO).
Image credit: John C. Frémont, 1844, Library of Congress. Public domain image.