The famous Ute Chief Black Hawk will come home to rest Saturday, May 4, in Spring Lake's town park.
Black Hawk's remains, dug up by miners in 1911 and most recently displayed in Brigham Young University's Museum of Peoples and Cultures, will be reburied near the grave in Spring Lake where his wives laid him to rest 85 years ago after he died of tuberculosis.His family will hold a memorial service at 11 a.m. in Spring Lake and bury him in a simple pine coffin amid traditional Ute tribal music, tribute and dance at a site two miles southwest of Payson, at 12240 South and Spring Lake Road.
The event will close a painful period for his brother's Mountain Family - Chief Black Hawk had no direct descendants - and opens up opportunity for the citizens of Spring Lake and historians to tell a more complete story of the chief who first lived with Mormon settlers but ultimately came to fear and attack them.
Uinta National Forest official Charmaine Thompson; Bureau of Indian Affairs representative Christine Sagendorf; Shane Armstrong, a Pleasant Grove Eagle Scout; and Marva Eggett, a Utah Valley State College instructor, worked to effect the reburial and will participate in the ceremonies.
Kaysville historian John Peterson, who has written a history of Antongeur (Chief Black Hawk), will pay tribute.