From the interior front flap:
The Ute Indians live on three reservations in Colorado and Utah: the Southern Ute tribe with headquarters at lgnacio, Colorado; the Ute Mountain Ute tribe with headquarters at Towaoc, Colorado (including a group living at White Mesa, Utah); and the northern Ute Tribe on the Uintah and Ouray reservation, with headquarters at Fort Duchesne, Utah. Historically and linguistically a division is made between the western Utes, who originally were basin dwellers, occupying lands in today's central and western Utah, and the eastern Utes, sometimes called the Colorado Utes, who were mountain people centered in the ranges of today's state of Colorado, with territory extending into New Mexico and Utah.

The eastern Ute people are the focus of this book. They developed a distinctive culture based upon their adaptation to the mountain environment in which they lived and their geographical location situated between Plains tribes to the east, Shoshonean tribes to the north and west, and Pueblos, Navajos and Apaches to the south. Their culture and history were further impacted by the arrival of the Spaniards in New Mexico in the sixteenth century and the Anglo-Americans in the nineteenth century.

This publication documents the variety and rich traditions of Ute arts and culture with color illustrations of 139 historic artifacts and over 40 contemporary works, as well as numerous historic photographs of Ute life. Articles by Ute cultural leaders and other scholars provide groundbreaking studies of Ute prehistory, history, world view, culture and art.

The exhibition for which this book has been written has been a seven-year project, which included an inventory of approximately 2,000 objects of Ute origin or attribution found in more than twenty museums around the country. This publication seeks to reveal the incredible richness of Ute material culture and artistic sensibility, heretofore almost unknown. The goal is to make Ute Indian history and culture better known to the public at large and to take a first step toward identifying the characteristics of Ute art forms, which have not previously been clearly distinguished in the literature or in museum collections. Another goal has been to make available to a younger generation of Utes information in visual and written form about their heritage and the civilization from which they come.