“The Knowledge of the White People”
In a 1960 interview, Connor Chapoose described the transition for Ute children from the Uintah Boarding School at Whiterocks, which closed in 1952, to the public schools in the Uinta Basin.
Families in the tribe, he explained, “pretty much faced that we have to go to school, that the law meant for us to go to school and to acquire, to get to know the knowledge of the white people.”
But public school districts often failed Native children. Chapoose recalled that Ute students were made to sit in the back of classrooms and were frequently called “dumb” by their white peers. White parents, he said, even warned their children: “Don’t you play with that filthy Indian.”
The result, in Chapoose’s view, was that Ute children struggled in school—underperforming not because of ability, but because of the systemic barriers placed before them.
Connor Chapoose (Northern Ute), 1960 July 30
Item — Reel: 1
Role of Chief, migration, dreams, tribal law, communication, territories, how to become a chief, tobacco, tribal politics, food, shelters, hunting, blankets, origin, Chief Ouray, councils, clothes, role of women, pregnancy, childbirth, parent–child relations, sexual behavior, a girl’s first menstrual period.
Total running time: 1 hour 7 minutes. Interviewed and recorded by John Boyden in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Connor Chapoose (Northern Ute), 1960 August 13
Item — Reel: 2
Medicine Men, tribal law, council meetings, names, ear piercing, recreation, arts and crafts.
Total running time: 1 hour 11 minutes. Interviewed and recorded by John Boyden in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Connor Chapoose (Northern Ute), 1960 August 15
Item — Reel: 3
Dance, clothes, Bear Dance, Sun Dance.
Total running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. Interviewed and recorded by John Boyden in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Connor Chapoose (Northern Ute), 1960 August 22
Item — Reel: 5
Language, education, Medicine Men, the Sun Dance, sacred places, religion, Doctors and Medicine Men, Native American time concept.
Total running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Interviewed and recorded by John Boyden in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Connor Chapoose (Northern Ute), 1960 August 23
Item — Reel: 6
Religion, the creation, relationship with animals, origin of races, origin of human characteristics, origin of tribal names, the coming of the White Man, the Ghost Dance, ghosts, Ute territories, morals and virtues, bathing custom, marriage customs, sexual behavior, polygamy, justice for unfaithful spouses.
Total running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. Interviewed and recorded by John Boyden.
Connor Chapoose (Northern Ute), 1960 September 14
Item — Reel: 7
Total running time: 43 minutes. Interviewed and recorded by John Boyden.
Connor Chapoose (Northern Ute), 1960 September 16
Item — Reel: 8
Sun Dance and youth, storytelling, youth of today, social workers and Native American relations, Federal policy regarding education, child–parent relations, Federal policy, Native American–Caucasian relations, Mormon–Native American relations, Non-Mormon–Native American relations, Ute–Navajo relations, language, self-concepts, childhood.
Total running time: 2 hours 0 minutes. Interviewed and recorded by John Boyden in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Connor Chapoose (Northern Ute), 1960 September 19
Item — Reel: 9
Total running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. Interviewed and recorded by John Boyden.
Connor Chapoose (Northern Ute), 1960 September 20
Item — Reel: 10
Bureau of Indian Affairs, cattle business, farming, Colorado judgment, economics.
Total running time: 1 hour 7 minutes. Interviewed and recorded by John Boyden in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Connor Chapoose (Northern Ute), 1960 September 28
Item — Reel: 11
Total running time: [not listed]. Interviewed and recorded by John Boyden.