The Ute people migrated to the Four Corners region by 1300, from where they continued to disperse across Colorado’s Rocky Mountains over the next two centuries.Īs they expanded across the Great Basin the Utes were connected by the Southern Numic language, a division of the Uto-Aztecan language family. They are generally believed to have first appeared as a distinct people in AD 1000–1200 in the southern part of the Great Basin, an area roughly located in eastern California and southern Nevada. Prior to contact with Europeans, the Ute people inhabited a vast expanse that included much of present-day Utah, Colorado, and northern New Mexico.

The history of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe is dominated by a long process of territory contraction and cession. Tribal Headquarters is located in the town of Towaoc at the base of Sleeping Ute Mountain in the southwest corner of Colorado.

The largest portion of the reservation is in Montezuma County, which is bordered by Mesa Verde National Park to the northeast, the Southern Ute Tribe to the east, the Diné ( Navajo) Nation to the south and west, and a mix of US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) public lands and private lands, including the city of Cortez, to the north.

Approximately 2,200 tribal members live on, work on and use these lands. Their tribal lands comprise 597,288 acres of trust land and 27,354 acres of fee land in southwestern Colorado, northwestern New Mexico, and small, isolated sections of Utah. The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe is one of three federally recognized tribes of the Nuche ( Ute) people.

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