Chief Wakara (also known as “Chief Walker” or “Walkara”) was a 19th-century Ute leader who shaped the American West. He partnered—and clashed—with Brigham Young, defended Native sovereignty, and led legendary horse raids. In 1850, Wakara was baptized into the Latter-day Saint faith, treating it as one strand in his broader spiritual life, while many pioneers interpreted it as a step toward his skin becoming “white and delightsome.” Modern Utes caution against calling him “chief,” noting it’s a derisive term that misrepresents their culture’s situational leadership. In this interview, historian Max Perry Mueller explains how Wakara influenced westward expansion and why his role has largely been erased from history.
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Wakara: Ute Leader of the American West
Who was Chief Wakara?
Wakara (c. 1815–1855), a Timpanogos Ute leader known to most Anglo-Americans as Walker, deserves recognition as one of the West’s founding figures, alongside Brigham Young and Junípero Serra. Like them, Wakara built trade routes and industries, oversaw new settlements, and shaped the region’s political and geographic boundaries.
And like them, Wakara often did so through violence—including the enslavement of Native Americans.
Equally important, Wakara defended Native territory and, at times, Native lives. Like Crazy Horse of the Lakota and the Sauk leader Black Hawk, Wakara’s Utes pan-tribal warriors stalled and briefly reversed settler expansion.
Similar to his fellow Ute leader Ouray, Wakara also pursued peace and trade negotiations in hopes of limiting colonial encroachment and protecting Ute homelands.
By the mid-nineteenth century, Wakara and his pan-tribal cavalry of horse raiders and slave traders dominated the Old Spanish Trail. They exacted tribute from travelers along what was then the region’s most important overland route and sold their services to explorers like John C. Frémont, assisting with mapmaking—for a price.
Through his horse raiding and Indian slave trading in the 1830s and 1840s, Wakara supplied Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American settlers from Santa Fe to San Bernardino with the human labor and horsepower that fueled their empires and colonial projects.
What does “pan-tribal” mean?
Pan-tribal refers to when different Native tribes unite for a common purpose—such as warfare, trade, or defense.
Why shouldn’t Wakara be called chief?
My Ute mentors have cautioned me against using the label “chief.” They do so for two reasons.
First, contemporary Utes object when non-Natives use “chief,” as it has often been turned into a term of derision.
Second, the Anglo-American concept of a chief as a permanent authority over all community matters does not accurately reflect Ute culture, which instead follows a situational leadership model.
Through group consensus, leaders were assigned temporary roles. Wakara, for example, served as “war chief” or “captain” in battles against White settlers and other Native peoples. During fish festivals, Ute “captains” and “chiefs” oversaw the harvest.
Was Wakara the greatest horse thief in history?
Many have said so! During the 1840s, Wakara and his cavalry would travel to California each fall along the Old Spanish Trail. During the late fall and early winter, they targeted the horses and cattle of the wealthy rancheros for nighttime raids.
After they gathered hundreds and even thousands of horses—hiding them in the canyons west of San Bernardino—Wakara and his cavalry headed back east, bringing horses to market in Santa Fe and other places where they fetched high prices. During one raiding season, Wakara reportedly stole as many as 3,000 horses.
How did Wakara both aid and resist Mormon expansion?
Wakara was not simply a bystander to Mormon expansion—he was both a key partner in its early growth and one of its fiercest opponents. Starting in the late 1840s, Wakara became one of the most influential forces in the colonization and Christianization of the West.
Soon after the Latter-day Saints arrived in the Great Basin in 1847, Wakara struck a bargain with Brigham Young: in exchange for Mormon cattle, guns, foodstuffs, and promises to buy his horses and enslaved Indians, Wakara approved and oversaw the establishment of the first Mormon settlements outside the Salt Lake Valley.
He also became one of the West’s greatest defenders of Native sovereignty. Soon after their arrival, the Mormons began to destroy his band’s sacred hunting and fishing grounds and tried to usurp his slave trade. Wakara’s Utes began an uprising against the Mormons (the so-called Walker War), which temporarily reversed colonial expansion.
Many believe Wakara was poisoned.
Wakara died suddenly in 1855—most likely due to a communicable disease that the Mormons brought west, though then and now many believe Wakara was poisoned.
His burial reminded observers of those of ancient Egyptian pharaohs. His horses, wives, and Indian slaves were killed and buried alongside the Ute leader in his mountainside tomb.
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How do historians portray Wakara?
Despite his role in shaping modern-day New Mexico, California, and Utah, Wakara is largely absent from the founding stories of the American West, including Mormon pioneer history.
When he does appear, Wakara is often reduced to the archetype of the incorrigible “savage Indian” in what Richard White has called the theater of “inverted conquest.” In this retelling, Euro-American settlers—and the historians who followed them—cast themselves, rather than Native leaders like Wakara, whose lands were seized through force, deceit, and disease, as the victims of unprovoked aggression.
My book, Wakara’s America: The Life and Legacy of a Native Founder of the American West, seeks to recover the environmental, spiritual, and political worlds of Wakara and his people by engaging both material and written archives.
Each part of the book centers on a material object—from “Wakara’s Fish,” the sacred tribal food destroyed by Mormon irrigation ditches, to “Wakara’s Skull,” which was stolen from Wakara’s gravesite for reasons I discuss in the book.
Chief Wakara and Brigham Young: Allies and Rivals in Utah
What do we know about the first time Wakara and Brigham Young interacted?
Wakara and Brigham Young first met at Temple Square in June 1849. A few weeks later, Wakara and some 300 of his people also attended the first Pioneer Day celebration.
But Wakara and Young had already been communicating via letters and interpreters for the previous two years.
How did Wakara influence Brigham Young’s decision to settle in the Salt Lake Valley?
Wakara and his Utes had a direct impact on the location of the center stake of Zion. Brigham Young and the Vanguard Company of Mormon pioneers had planned to locate their settlement at what is now Utah Lake/Provo. They had learned from John C. Frémont’s reports and maps, which Wakara had assisted with, that the Utah Valley had the best water, the best fields for planting, the most game, and the most fish.
But just before entering Utah, Jim Bridger warned the company that if they tried to settle in the Utah Valley, Wakara’s Utes would likely run them off—or worse—for encroaching on their sacred fishing and hunting grounds.
Wakara decided where “this is the place” was located!
So, Young and the Vanguard Company decided to locate the first settlement in Utah in the Salt Lake Valley between the Shoshones and the Utes.
In other words, even more than Brigham Young (and God), Wakara decided where “this is the place” was located!
How did the relationship between Wakara and Brigham Young evolve?
Both Brigham Young and Wakara saw themselves as the most powerful men in the Great Basin. Between 1847 and Wakara’s death in 1855, they alternately partnered and clashed in pursuit of greater power.
Wakara aided the Latter-day Saints in settling the Sanpitch Valley and permitted settlements along the Old Spanish Trail. His aim in these alliances was to expand his trading network, adding new markets for horses and enslaved people.
Young required “Lamanite” converts to submit to Mormon supremacy.
Brigham Young, meanwhile, recognized that Wakara could either bolster or obstruct his efforts to establish Utah as a Mormon homeland and subjugate the region’s Native peoples.
For Young, the Saints’ mission was to gather “Lamanites” into the fold—but only by requiring them to abandon their economic, political, and spiritual lives and submit to Mormon supremacy.
After Wakara’s baptism and ordination in the early 1850s, Young briefly hoped he might aid in this project of erasure, transforming Native peoples into a “white and delightsome people.”
But when Wakara resisted, defending his people’s homelands and way of life, Young turned to war.
How does that clarify the origins of the Walker War?
Wakara’s background with Brigham Young illustrates that it is wrong to blame Wakara for the so-called Walker War.
During the 1853–54 conflict, Wakara was often hundreds of miles away from the fighting between the Nauvoo Legion and the Ute bands. Apart from the initial violent dispute over a failed fish trade, Wakara did not take part in the cycle of revenge raids—Ute strikes met by Mormon attacks not only on Utes but also on other, often uninvolved, Native communities.
However, Wakara did use the peace treaty that ended the war to renegotiate the terms of his relationship with Young, including extracting more trade goods from and promises that the Mormons would not encroach further into his lands without Wakara’s blessing.
Young did not keep this promise long. He didn’t have to, as Wakara died soon after the peace deal was made.
Why do you refer to the Walker War raids as “Brigham’s War”?
In truth, Young and other Mormon leaders waged war on Utah’s Native peoples from the earliest years of settlement to well into the early twentieth century. For that reason, I call this decades-long campaign that changed the lives of the Utes “Brigham’s War.”
Parley P. Pratt infamously urged that it was best to “go and kill” Native men, enslave women and children, and “make them do what we want.”
A handful might be redeemed through Mormon “adoption” and indenture, but most were to be “exterminated.”
On this, Parley Pratt, Brigham Young, and other early leaders agreed.
When Wakara Joined the Latter-day Saint Faith
When was Wakara baptized and ordained to the priesthood?
Wakara was baptized into the Latter-day Saint faith in 1850 in the City Creek of Manti—a community he had helped found the previous winter.
Wakara also encouraged (and perhaps led) more than 100 of his own followers into the baptismal waters.
A year later, he was ordained a Mormon elder, likely becoming the first Native American from Utah to receive the priesthood.
How did Latter-day Saint pioneers interpret Wakara’s conversion?
The Mormons saw Wakara’s baptism and ordination as the Ute leader’s acknowledgment of Mormon supremacy, his desire to abandon his “Lamanite” ways and become “white and delightsome.”
One settler in Manti recalled that, after his baptism, the “tawny” skinned Wakara became “as white as” any Mormon settler.
What did the conversion mean to Wakara?
Wakara didn’t believe he was “converting” to Mormonism. Instead, as Linford Fisher has described Native conversion to Christianity, Wakara “associated” with this new faith—adding to his religious and cultural world, not replacing and abandoning his old one.
As such, Wakara’s Mormon baptism and ordination were part of his efforts to use the Mormons’ systems of colonialism, commerce, and even religious conversion to expand his own empire.
He sometimes directed the Mormons to build settlements on the lands of his Ute rivals, whom the Mormons then displaced or massacred, allowing Wakara to consolidate power within the tribe.
Again, these settlements also lined his pockets, as Wakara’s network of markets for his Indian captives and stolen horses expanded.
Chief Wakara and the Indian Slave Trade in Utah
How was Wakara involved with Indian slavery?
Some contemporary Utes and Paiutes deny that Wakara ever participated in Indian slavery. They do so, in part, because of a failure of definitions. That is, as the historian of Indian Slavery Andrés Reséndez has argued, when we hear the word “slavery,” Americans think of African chattel slavery practiced in the American South (and parts of the West).
To be sure, at the same time that Wakara became the West’s great horse thief and trader, he became the region’s most prolific trader in Indian captives.
On his way to and from California to raid horses, Wakara captured and enslaved Paiute women and children in southern Utah. (The Paiutes’ lack of horses made them easy targets for Wakara’s master horsemen.)
Wakara sold his captives at slave markets in Santa Fe and Abiquiú, condemning them to bondage as house servants, fieldhands, and concubines.
Why did Wakara practice Indian slavery?
It is clear from the groundbreaking work I have done with some of Wakara’s descendants (including descendants who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), some of Wakara’s captives became his kin. That is, Wakara likely adopted some of his Paiute captives as his own children and married Paiute women. He also gave his own children to some of his Anglo-American trading partners—including the Mormons.
I call this form of Indian slavery, the purpose of which was to, yes, increase power and wealth, but also to build kin networks, “Native Indian Slavery.” I contrast that form of slavery with “Settler Indian Slavery,” which reduced Natives to their bodies—merely objects to trade and exploit.
In this way, Settler Indian Slavery was more like the chattel slavery practiced in the American South.
How did Latter-day Saints respond to Wakara’s Indian slavery?
At first, the Mormons condoned and even blessed Wakara’s trade in Indian captives.
- War was the means by which they planned on ridding Utah of Native men.
- Slavery was the means by which they planned on ridding the land of women and children. They were particularly interested in buying up young girls who were the carriers of the Natives’ collective knowledge and the mothers of future generations.
But soon, the Mormons moved to cut out Wakara as the middleman by coercing—through force or promises of food—Paiute parents to give the settlers their children to raise.
Because the trade in Indian slaves was officially against the law, the Utah territorial legislature provided a legal gloss—in the form of laws of indentured servitude and “adoption”—which allowed Brigham Young’s faithful to fulfill his instruction to “buy up Lamanite Children” as fast as they could.
What did early Latter-day Saints engage in Native slavery?
The Mormon participation in the Indian slave trade served two purposes:
- Indentured servitude: This practice allowed the Mormons to recoup the cost (in the form of essential labor) of the purchase of their captives, whom they first bought from Wakara and other traders and later from the captives’ own parents.
- Adoption: Through “adoption,” the Mormons fulfilled their divine mandate to covenant with “Lamanites,” return them to the faith of their forefathers, and restore them to “whiteness.”
The Legacy of Wakara in Utah and the American West
Where is Chief Wakara buried?
Because of the sacred nature of Wakara’s burial site, I will not name it here. In the book, when I discuss it, I purposefully obfuscate the location.
For more than a century, it has been a site of graverobbing—an illegal and immoral act. That graverobbing includes the stealing of Wakara’s remains and those of the other ancestors buried along with him.
The removal of Wakara’s remains—and their current fate—is how I begin the book and frame much of its narrative.
Kanosh stared down into the emptied graves. Gone from the tombs, constructed out of huge sandstone slabs, were the bodies of Kanosh’s son and brother. Gone too were the remains of Kanosh’s fellow Ute leader, the most famous and feared Native American in the early American West: Wakara (often anglicized as “Walker”).
Excerpt from the Introduction: “Wakara’s Remains,” page 1.
Suffice it to say here: the removal of Wakara’s remains is part of his erasure from history.
To make way for Manifest Destiny, including the Mormon version, Wakara—a founding father of the West and a defender of Native sovereignty—had to be removed from history books and the land.
What should readers, especially non-Natives, remember about Wakara?
Readers should remember that despite these centuries-long efforts to erase and remove Wakara, Wakara’s fellow Utes, and all Native people, Wakara still remains.
What I mean is that his influence on the creation of the American West can still be seen on the land. This story of remaining—of Wakara, of his fish, of his horses, of his stories, and of especially his people—is the key takeaway of the book.
In this time of great ecological disasters and political turmoil, non-Natives should look to Wakara’s descendants, especially my friend and mentor Forrest Cuch (Ute Indian Tribe of Utah), as well as other Utah Natives, including Darren Parry (Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation).
As the Great Salt Lake is rapidly drying up due to extractive and exploitive practices, as the planet is warming, Forrest and Darren model ways in which Indigenous peoples and Non-natives alike can practice healthier, more reciprocal, even sacred ways of being in relationship with the natural world as well as with other humans.
These practices, they argue—and I agree—can help heal the planet and heal humanity.
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About the Scholar
Max Perry Mueller is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln whose scholarship helps recover the overlooked legacy of Wakara and other Indigenous leaders in American religious history. He is the author of Wakara’s America: The Life and Legacy of a Native Founder of the American West (Basic Books, 2025), which examines Wakara’s influence on Mormon settlement and Native sovereignty. Mueller also wrote Race and the Making of the Mormon People (UNC Press, 2017) and contributes to leading academic and public outlets. His recognized expertise in the intersections of religion, race, and politics provides readers with a deeper understanding of how Wakara shaped both colonial expansion and Native resistance in the American West.
Further Reading
Explore more From the Desk articles about Native Americans in pioneer Utah:
- Was Slavery Practiced in Utah Territory?
- What Does the Book of Mormon Say About Skin Color?
- Did Moroni Dedicate the Manti Temple Site?
- Who Was Jacob Hamblin?
- What Happened When Buffalo Bill Met the Mormons?
Ute Chief Wakara
Read what top scholars and publishers say about Wakara and the Utes:
- Wakara’s America: The Life and Legacy of a Native Founder of the American West (Basic Books)
- Wakara [Also Known As Walkara and Walker] (The Church Historian’s Press)
- The Walker War, Part One (Sunstone)
- Wakara Meets the Mormons, 1848-52: A Case Study in Native American Accommodation (Utah Historical Quarterly)
- Brigham Tells Isaac Morley That Wakara Is a “Friend,” And They Will Become “White and Delightsome” (B. H. Roberts Foundation)
- The Re-Convergence of Mormon and Indian History (Juvenile Instructor)
Wakara’s America: Table of Contents
Each part of the Ute leader’s biography focuses on a material aspect of Wakara’s life:
Part I: Wakara’s Burial
- Chapter 1: Wakara’s Last Days
- Chapter 2: A Pilgrimage into the Wilderness
- Chapter 3: Pioneer Days
- Chapter 4: Fillmore
Part II: Wakara’s Fish
- Chapter 5: The Name of a Lake
- Chapter 6: Spawning Season
- Chapter 7: Too Much Fishing
Part III: Wakara’s Horse
- Chapter 8: Horse Wars
- Chapter 9: We’ve Always Had the Horse
- Chapter 10: Land Pirate
Part IV: Wakara’s Slave
- Chapter 11: “The Saddest-Looking Piece of Humanity”
- Chapter 12: “Gold and Silver and the Richest Treasure”
- Chapter 13: “A New Feature in the Traffic of Human Beings”
Part V: Brigham’s War
- Chapter 14: A Massacre at Nephi
- Chapter 15: The Name of Wars
- Chapter 16: Keep the Women, Kill the Men
Part VI: Wakara’s Skull
- Chapter 17: “The Graves of Their Fathers”
- Chapter 18: Crania Americana
- Chapter 19: “Please Say Nothing About the Crania”
- Conclusion: Wakara’s Return
3 replies on “Who Was Chief Wakara?”
Mueller’s comments on the Saints “condoning” and “blessing” Wakara’s slave trade are, to say the least, fraught. Not an ounce of pushback?
George A. Smith explicitly blessed the trade. See the letter of recommend he gave Wakara to sell horses, buckskins, and Paiute children (March 20, 1851) https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets/be32258d-efc6-448a-97bd-9946db28a3a1/0/0?lang=eng
Yes, they certainly blessed the trade in children. See George A. Smith’s letter of recommend to Wakara to trade with the settlers in horses, buckskins, and Paiute children. https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets/be32258d-efc6-448a-97bd-9946db28a3a1/0/0?lang=eng