Great Leader: Ouray of the Uncompahgre Ute, 1833-1880
Native leaders who won the respect of both their own people as well as Whites were rare in the West. Animosity between both sides ran too deep for each side to see the good in the other, or to allow for such personal sentiments. Some leaders commanded the respect of their White neighbors, though they did so at the cost of rousing the suspicions of their own people. Ouray was born in November, 1833, in what is now New Mexico. On the night of his birth, a meteor shower occurred which was seen as a good omen. The name Ouray means arrow in Ute, referring to the stars shooting across the night's sky. Ouray's father was a Jicarilla Apache who'd been adopted as a child into the Uncompahgre band. When Ouray was 27, he inherited his father's position of leadership among the Ute people. By then, he'd already born his share of personal tragedies. Ouray's first wife was a Uncompahgre woman known as Black Water. She died in childbirth to their ...