In 1946, Charles Kelly and friend Frank Beckwith visited Chief Wakara’s burial site in Dry Canyon, near Meadow, Utah. Unfortunately, the grave had been robbed and emptied in 1909. Kelly and Beckwith confirmed this, finding the hole Wakara had once rested in and the stones and poles that once covered it. The monument built in 1973 does not mark Wakara’s exact burial place. Chief Wakara was born in the Utah Valley in the early nineteenth century. According to historian Gustive O. Larson, he was seen as “subtle, vain, and cruel.” According to others, he was “looked upon generally as unpredictable, clever, and savage.” When his father the chief died, he and his siblings entered a bloody succession struggle from which he wrested tribal leadership. Not many details exist of Wakara’s childhood, so historians looking at his life often cite the general history of the Western Utes. Very important to the Utes’ migration patterns and economic activities were horses. Horses made hunting and combat more efficient and allowed the Utes to expand the area (and people) they extracted resources from. To ensure that horses had plentiful grass, the Utes migrated back and forth between California and Utah along the Old Spanish Trail. The Utes raided more horses from California missions and also traded Paiute and Goshute enslaved persons along this trail as well. In 1847, the Mormon pioneers arrived in the Great Salt Lake valley. This was the beginning of a near-complete disruption of Wakara and the Utes’ way of life. Trade was a central tenet of Wakara and Brigham Young’s initial friendship. Brigham Young’s policy towards Indians was to establish peace through trade and gift-giving. For Wakara, he saw the arrival of the Mormons as the start of a convenient and profitable trading relationship. While peaceful at first, their relationship soured as resources that Wakara’s Utes had once relied on were exhausted and as Mormons interrupted the highly profitable Indigenous slave trade. In July 1853, the Ivie Incident served as the catalyst for the Walker War, which lasted into the spring of 1854. Interestingly, Wakara spent most of the war outside the territory on the Old Spanish Trail. In 1855, Wakara died of pneumonia, and with his death, Ute territory became gradually incorporated into Utah Territory.
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