SACRED GROUND

U.S. Forest Service archaeologist Bill Kight stopped and looked at his friend, the Ute tribe's liaison with the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

Barrel-chested and copper-hued with the high cheekbones and round facial features of his people, Frost seemed to be testing the air for some unseen presence. Long, thin braids of black and silver-streaked hair hung down his chest, which still heaved from the climb that had taken them to this point 10,000 feet up a mountain in the White River National Forest.

They were on their way to a cave where several years earlier spelunkers had discovered the remains of a human male estimated to be about 8,000 years old. It was now a crisp, sunny fall day in 1992, and Frost and Kight were joining a group of scientists that included professor Patty Jo Watson of Washington University in St. Louis, one of the top cave archaeologists in the world, who had been coordinating the research team.

This was an exciting find for the scientists. Although not the most ancient human remains discovered in North America, they were the oldest found at such an extreme altitude, where previous scientific thought had held that man was at most an infrequent visitor.

Kight, a tall, rangy man, had already visited the cave. But few others had been allowed inside, and those few were sworn to secrecy. The last thing they wanted was to pinpoint the area for artifact hunters or the new-agers who'd ruined a number of sites in their pursuit of Native American spirituality.

Now, after months of careful study, the scientists would remove the remains for testing at various universities. Unlike excavations of the past, however, this one would treat the bones with the reverence due a human being and included a promise to return the remains to the Utes for reburial. Watson had requested that a Native American be present; Frost was the logical choice.

When Frost stopped on the mountainside, Kight knew that they were within an eighth of a mile of the cave, which had been named "Hourglass Cavern" by the explorers who found the remains. But this was Frost's first visit.

"We're close now," Frost said. It was a statement, not a question. Kight didn't bother to answer, and simply waited for his companion's next move.

"This man was powerful," Frost continued. "I mean, he was strong but he also had a lot of personal power. He lived around here."

Kight wasn't about to question how Frost arrived at those conclusions. Although the pair had only known each other since that summer, Kight already had learned to trust Frost's uncanny sense when it came to such things.

Frost had been working as a government consultant, helping to identify sites that would be considered sacred by their former residents, primarily Utes, in the Routt and White River areas. Sometimes the only physical signs would be a ring of stones on some high vista or a platform in a tree where an ancient medicine man had communed with the spirits of this land.

And sometimes Frost identified areas as sacred based on nothing more than "a feeling," yet archaeologists often later found proof to support his contentions. It was a measure of Frost's growing stature that government scientists were beginning to accept his statements without the benefit of hard evidence.

Perhaps it could be explained by Frost's natural knack for spotting places where his ancestors were likely to have practiced their beliefs. But there were other things, unexplainable things...such as the eagles that seemed to appear whenever Frost was working.

Theirs was an unlikely friendship, all the better because it was so unexpected. Kight was a classically trained archaeologist--a scientist looking for rational answers to every question. Frost, on the other hand, had learned his archaeology by walking with his grandmother on the Southern Ute reservation in southwestern Colorado. From her he had also learned that some things have no explanation and that sometimes it is better not to ask.

Kight and Frost shared a mutual respect. But what Kight liked best was his new friend's humor; he took neither himself nor his spirituality so seriously that he forgot he was just a man. In fact, only one thing really seemed to set Frost off, and that was the so-called "medicine men"--white and Indian--who sold Native American religious practices.

Kight and Frost also shared a love for the land around Glenwood Springs, headquarters for the White River forest service offices and the ancestral home of the Utes.

It was easy to see why the mountain tribe had ascribed a special spirituality to the high red cliffs, hot springs, towering mountains and valleys filled with aspen, deer and elk. Kight knew how Frost dreamed of a day when the Utes might return to look upon the land of their ancestors and perhaps even live there once again.

He had been excited when Kight told him about the discovery of the remains in the cave. If the estimates of the man's age were correct, they could be seen as scientific validation of Ute creation myths that placed their ancestors in these mountains long before other tribes--Indian and white alike--arrived in the area.

As they resumed their climb, Frost felt the presence that had stopped him grow stronger. It was the man in the cave. At the narrow entrance, the feeling was nearly overwhelming. It was a good feeling, not hostile, but extremely powerful.

Just inside the entrance, Frost stopped again. The remains had been found about 300 yards farther in, down a tortuous passage; in some spots the scientists had to crawl on their bellies. That the man had reached that point on his own--rather than having been dragged there by animals--was clear from the 122 black smudges on the ceiling and walls that the scientists had counted. They had been caused by the man's torch.

There was an ongoing scientific debate about this man. What had he been doing at such a high altitude? And why had he crawled back through that labyrinth?

Some scientists theorized that he was a hunter who had entered the cave to escape one of the storms that could suddenly sweep across the Colorado high country even in the summer. But that didn't explain why he had gone so far back into the cave.

Others thought he might have been an ancient spelunker whose torch had gone out as he explored the cavern. Unable to find his way out, he had quickly died of hypothermia in the eternally damp, chilly cave.

But Frost thought otherwise. "He came here to die," he told the group of scientists assembled at the site. "He knew this cave and had explored it. He knew that his time was coming and wanted to die here." The scientists nodded. Frost's theory wasn't beyond the realm of possibility, and whatever they thought of its likelihood they kept to themselves.

A few of the scientists wanted to give the remains a name. This had been standard archaeological practice in the past, leading to such posthumous celebrities as "Lucy," the female predecessor of homo sapiens whose remains were found in Africa several decades ago. But Frost adamantly opposed the idea.

"He had a name once," he argued. "He had a family and people who loved him. He is our friend and deserves our respect."

Frost went no farther into the cave. From discussions with Kight and Watson, he was satisfied that the scientists were treating the remains with the utmost respect. Instead, he took out offerings of tobacco and sweetgrass and prayed, asking the man's spirit to forgive their trespass and explaining that they came with only the best intentions.

He then left the cave and looked out over the land where his ancestors had hunted and raised their families and prayed to the spirits and their creator for thousands of years. At that moment, an eagle appeared and flew toward him and Kight.

A good sign, Frost thought. The spirits approve.

"Before there were people, the Creator called Coyote and handed him a bag that was tied at the top. The Creator then told Coyote to take the bag up into the mountains."
The old woman paused a moment to make sure her young grandson was paying attention. Kenny had been born in the winter of 1954, and she was raising him in the town of Ignacio on the Southern Ute reservation.

It was important to Bertha Frost that Kenny learn about the heritage of the Nuche, which simply means "the people" in the Ute language. So much had been lost in the hundred years since the American government had divided the Utes and forced them to leave their homes. All they had left were the things the whites could not take--their language, their culture and stories--but even these had faded with time and neglect.

But she had nothing to worry about. Kenny loved these stories and quickly settled down to listen.

The Utes knew Coyote as the trickster, a role he played in other Indian cultures in the West. A slave to his curiosity who was constantly getting himself into trouble, Coyote could be counted on for a good tale. The boy looked at his grandmother expectantly and, satisfied, the old woman continued.

"The Creator warned Coyote not to open the bag. Coyote agreed and took the bag and set off for the mountains.

"For some time Coyote traveled across the plains with the bag in his mouth. But when he stopped to rest, his curiosity got the better of him. So Coyote carefully opened the bag a little bit to peek inside.

"When Coyote opened the bag, some strange creatures jumped out and ran off before he could close it again."

From his infancy, Bertha had taught her grandson the language of their people. But as he grew older, she also stressed the importance of his studies in the white schools. This occasionally confused the young boy.

One day in elementary school, Kenny spoke to his friends in Ute. That act earned him a swat across the hands with a stick by the white teacher who warned, "We speak English here." Kenny complained to his grandmother, expecting her support, and was surprised when she sided with the teacher. If he wanted to help his people, she said, he needed to concentrate on his education in the white schools. The ways of the Nuche could wait until he got home.

From his grandmother, Kenny learned to respect and revere the land as though it were a living thing. She told him the stories of the animals: Coyote, whose humorous misadventures taught lessons about patience and honesty, and especially Eagle, who delivered the prayers of good people to the Creator and returned with his blessings.

In the evenings after he finished his homework, she would talk about the great chiefs and battles with the ancient enemies: the Arapahoe, the Apache, the Navajo. She pointed out that his family history was intertwined with people from his great-great-grandfather, the medicine man and war chief Naneece, to her own husband, a renowned medicine man. And she taught him the songs of healing and thanks.

"Coyote took the bag and trotted toward the mountains in the distance. But as he got closer, Coyote noticed that the creatures in the bag were wiggling. Again, his curiosity got the better of him, so he stopped and opened the bag. But when he did, some more of the creatures jumped out and ran away."

Of all his grandmother's stories, Kenny was most intrigued by those concerning the lost homeland of the Utes. In the days before the white man came, the Utes had hunted throughout the mountains of Colorado as well as parts of Utah, New Mexico and Arizona. But the most sacred of the lands lay to the north, near what became Glenwood Springs and the Flat Tops Wilderness Area.

In the high valleys were hot springs guarded by the spirits; on top of sheer cliffs were sites where warriors and medicine men for centuries sought visions that would chart the future. And hidden from untrained eyes were deposits of minerals that yielded the red, yellow and black paints the Utes wore in those long-ago days to protect themselves from the elements, to decorate themselves for dances, and to go to war.

To other Indians, the Utes had been the People of the Shining Mountain. But the locations of the sacred places now were lost, and not even the elders could remember the Ute names for the mountains and valleys. These waited to be rediscovered by the people.

Walking with his grandmother on the reservation, Kenny learned how to spot where other Indians who had once lived in this part of Colorado had left their mark--burial grounds, vision-quest sites, lodges. Sometimes in their wanderings they would come across pieces of pottery and tools left behind by the former inhabitants.

"Leave it," she would tell the boy if he stooped to pick up some artifact. "It used to belong to someone, and their spirits are still here." Back at home, she would tell him about the Anasazi, the old ones who had lived in the arid lands that bordered the reservation and vanished long before the Utes came to live there.

"Finally, Coyote reached the high mountains where he met the Creator. `Coyote, you opened the bag,' the Creator scolded and Coyote had to admit it.

"The Creator then opened the bag and let the rest of the creatures out. `These are the Utes,' the Creator said, `and because you opened the bag too soon, they will always have to fight all the other people you let out to protect these mountains.'"

True to their creation mythology, the Utes have always battled to keep invaders from their mountains. For centuries they fought rival Indian tribes, particularly the Arapaho, who repeatedly tried to gain permanent footholds in the high country.

Then in the late 1500s, a new tribe arrived from the south: the Spaniards looking for lost cities of gold. Finding none, they razed villages and took slaves instead.

Still, the Utes clung to their high perches. The Spaniards had brought with them horses, which the Utes captured and bred. They became expert mountain riders, even expanding their range now that they were no longer on foot.

It was the Americans with their numbers and superior weaponry who finally dislodged the Utes in a series of battles, broken promises and unkept treaties. They pushed the Utes into an ever-shrinking domain. And in the mid-to-late 1800s, as Colorado looked toward statehood, the People of the Shining Mountain were divided into three groups and sent to reservations: the Northern Utes to Fort Duchesne, Utah; the Ute Mountain Utes to Towaoc, Colorado; and the Southern Utes to Ignacio, Colorado.

Of the three branches, the Southern Utes faired the best. Their reservation was only 75 miles long and 12 miles wide, small compared with the Lakota reservations in South Dakota, but seven rivers crossed the land and it was fertile for farming and rich with wildlife and timber. And beneath the surface lay large deposits of oil and gas. Far-thinking leaders invested the tribe's funds and even established a college scholarship program that Kenny Frost took advantage of after graduating from high school.

Armed with a bachelor's degree from Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Frost returned to Ignacio in the mid-Seventies to work for his tribe. The Southern Utes were in the process of taking control of their natural resources from the Bureau of Indian Affairs; Frost was given a job with the unwieldy title of Administration Assistant to the Natural Resources Division Chief. During the next four years, he helped set up the tribe's books so it could track the bounty of its resources.

But the area of concern closest to his heart he had learned from his grandmother. Rights to the oil, gas and timber on the reservation were leased to companies with the stipulation that the routes of any pipelines, roads or work areas must first be surveyed for archaeological sites. If such sites were discovered--often by Frost--the companies had to make arrangements to go around them.

It was interesting work, but after a few years Frost was restless and ready for a new challenge. For another four years he worked for the tribe's Office of Education, trying to ensure that federal dollars intended for the education of Indian children in the white-run public schools filtered past the bureaucrats and actually went to books and supplies. He also pushed to involve parents--intimidated historically by the whites on the school board--in the education of their children. Leading a voter turnout drive during school-board elections, Frost helped get the first Indians and Hispanics elected.

Soon Frost was feeling restless again. Something was calling to him, and he didn't know how to answer. He commited himself to the Sun Dance, each year enduring a grueling marathon of fasting and dance in order to place himself closer to the spirits and his creator.

But still his search wasn't over. Frost signed up for the Colorado Law Enforcement Academy in Glenwood Springs and went to work for the tribal police in Ignacio. Although that job didn't last long, it made Frost realize that many of the problems of Indian youth were a result of their losing touch with their culture and religion. He drifted to Arizona, where a chance meeting with a film director landed him a role as a Mexican Indian in a Hallmark Hall of Fame production. It was followed by several other movies, only one of which made it to the theaters, in which Frost was the only real Indian surrounded by white actors wearing wigs.

He returned to Colorado in 1986 and moved to Craig. Although his ancestors had wandered the region that included the Routt National Forest for centuries, Frost was an oddity on the streets of a town that hadn't seen many Indians for more than a hundred years. And he was not made particularly welcome.

An exception to the hostile reception was Jan Roth. A former employee of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., Roth had founded the Sundance Research Institute in Craig in order to pursue his various interests--everything from the original inhabitants of the land to the effects of ultra-violet light on the ozone layer.

Roth heard about Frost through mutual friends, and soon they were combing the hills looking for sites of Ute habitation. Frost didn't know it yet, but his search was over.

end of part 1