Colorado are the canyons of the San Juan, and below the mouth of the San
Juan is the great Navajo Mountain. Still to the south the Grand Canyon
of the Colorado is in view, and in the west a vast mesa landscape is
presented with its buttes and pinnacles. Still to the southward Paria
River is seen heading in a plateau on the margin of the province and
having a course a little east of south into the Colorado.

The region of country which has been thus described, from the Tava-puts
Plateau to the Paria River, was the home of a few scattered Ute Indians,
who lived in very small groups, and who hunted on the plateau, fished in
the waters, and dwelt in the canyons. There was nominally but one tribe,
but as the members of this tribe were in very small parties and
separated by wide distances the tribal bonds were very weak and often
unrecognized. The chief integrating agency was religion, for they
worshiped the same gods and periodically joined in the same religious
ceremonies and festivals. A country so destitute of animal and vegetal
life would not support large numbers, and the few who dwelt here gained
but a precarious and scant subsistence. To a large extent they lived on
seeds and roots. The low, warm canyons furnished admirable shelter for
the people, and their habitual costumes were loincloths, paints, and
necklaces of tiny arrowheads made of the bright-colored agates and
carnelians strung on snakeskins.

When the Mormon people encroached on this country from the west, and
when the Navajos on the east surrendered to the United States, a few
recalcitrant Navajos and the Utes of this region combined. They had long
been more or less intimately associated, and a jargon speech had grown
up by which they could communicate. Finally, the greater number of these
Utes and renegade Navajos took up their homes permanently on the eastern
bank of the Colorado River between the Grand and the San Juan rivers.