Tribal histories often suffer from a tendency to focus on one people in conceptual isolation from closely related neighbors. Ute history has long been plagued by this balkanization, as the Numic-speaking people ranged across a wide swath of the western slope of the Rockies, the Wasatch, and the basin and range provinces in between. Over the centuries, numerous kin-based clans coalesced into historic bands, then further reduced into the three composite Ute tribes that exist today. Historians have treated them as discrete peoples, widely divided by worldview and geography. Sondra Jones's marvelous book is a welcome relief from that approach. At last, we have a history of the Núu-ci, or “The People,” as the Utes call themselves, that examines them holistically and collectively.
Being and Becoming Ute is impressive on several levels, not the least of which is its comprehensiveness. Beginning with their emergence from the southwest corner of...
