Review by Ed Quillen
History – August 1996 – Colorado Central Magazine
People of the Red Earth – American Indians of Colorado
by Sally Crum
Published in 1996 by Ancient City Press
ISBN 0-941270-88-2 paper
0-941270-89-0 cloth
Like many books about Indians in the West, this one starts with modern archæology and ancient creation sagas. Unlike most books about Indians in the West, this one doesn’t end at the turn of the century — it follows each of the major tribes to the present, with information about reservations, economic plans, and off-reservation population centers.
Books with such a wealth of information often get tedious or confusing, but People of the Red Earth is well organized and quite readable. It also avoids the New Age romanticizing that turns every warrior into a spirit-quest shaman of transcendental enlightenment who left sacred sites behind with every step.
People of the Red Earth is organized chronologically for the prehistoric times before 1500, from Paleo-Indians through Archaic, Anasazi, and Frémont cultures.
With the arrival of Spaniards with horses and history (history comes from written accounts, and North American tribes were not literate), the book switches to geographic organization: plains and mountains.
Afterward, there’s an exposition of rock art, an account of non-reservation Indians today, an explanation of archæological digs, and a glossary of Indian place names in Colorado.
The place names section was a bit disappointing. It was thorough on “outside” names that came to Colorado — for instance, Tennessee Pass, named by miners for their home state that was named for a Cherokee leader.
But it misses some distinctively local names, like Pagosa Springs, from a Ute term for stinking water. And it says Poncha is “from a Ute word meaning `tobacco’,” even though the Ute term for tobacco isn’t within a day’s ride of “poncha.”
And the book could have used some closer editing. For instance, Yarmony is an obscure spot west of Kremmling, just about where Grand, Summit, and Eagle counties come together. Crum correctly places it one reference, but in another, she has it east of Kremmling, “between Kremmling and Granby.” And how can something be “in southeastern Colorado near Golden,” which is in northeastern Colorado? Merchants venturing north from Santa Fé in the 1830s and 40s would be Mexican, not the “caravans of Spanish traders” Crum writes about.
In general, though, I found this book fairly solid, and I learned some things I hadn’t known before:
4Middle Park is one of the coldest places imaginable to spend a winter now, let alone 6,000 years ago without central heat, and yet Archaic people apparently lived year-round in a pit house near Yarmony.
4The Woodland culture of the Midwest — better known as the Mound Builders — extended into Colorado. Their pottery was pressed; the Anasazi, who came later, made coil pots.
4Although the Utes borrowed much from Plains culture — tepee, travois, clothing — they “did not count coup or judge a man’s bravery by his battle feats. Stealing a horse tethered next to a sleeping enemy was considered a deed of greater honor than killing anyone.”
This is the best general history of Indians in Colorado — thorough, fair-minded, well-organized, smoothly written, and full of pointers to more information, ranging from books to historic sites, tribal headquarters, and museums.
If you’ve ever been curious about the people who lived here before 1860, people whose descendants are still among us, then read this book.
–Ed Quillen