Meeting "Chief Blackhawk" Nu'intz

February 02, 2025

Meeting "Chief Blackhawk" Nu'intz

Story of the Torus Breath and Chief Antonga by Katie Jo

Before I knew I was on the shamanic path, I was living as a single mother raising three children and working three jobs to provide for them. One of those professions was art commissions which included painting drums. With a seven-day work week, the only free time I had was on Sunday mornings.

I created the habit of rising before dawn and driving a few miles to a nearby pond in Spring Lake, Utah. Sitting upon the hill, I had the perfect vantage point to watch the sun break over the mountains and stretch across the pond like arms reaching for an embrace. The trees would ignite in color and auras of pastels surrounded them. Ducks and geese swam lazily in the water, and I would hold my drum near my heart and beat it softly.

As the drum played, I felt a cocoon of peace surround me and it was often the only time in that period of my life that I could fully relax and be wholly in the moment.

To my right, there was a tall aspen tree with a red sandstone rock at its base. As I drummed the shamanic drum, I “imagined” there was a Native Man sitting on the stone keeping me company. Sometimes, I would glance over my shoulder, feeling as though I wasn’t alone, and this “imaginary” indigenous man was tangible. Years went by, Sundays on that hill, became my spiritual anchor.

During the weekdays, I worked in a sales position at a diamond and fine jewelry store. One day, an older man with thick silver hair, out-of-date glasses, and weathered denim overalls dropped off his watch for repair and as I asked the gentleman for his contact information, I recognized the address being near the pond I spent Sunday mornings at.
“Hey!” I chimed, “I sit out by the pond every week right by where you live!”

“Black Hawks Grave.” he provided, and I paused, stunned.

The man then told me the story of Chief Antonga. That he was a warrior who united the local tribes against the settlers after witnessing the massacre of his small village as a young child. He was considered a military genius. He protected the women and elderly by moving them into Diamond Fork Canyon where they could be easily defended from the clifftops that flanked the passageway to their camp. He stole cattle and created truces between former enemy tribes.

As he witnessed the toll of war on the valley, he realized that peace would never be complete unless it included all people, including the whites. He began to use his skills of leadership and advocacy to create truces. His role was crucial to creating a bridge between the two cultures.

After his death, his sacred burial ground was ransacked, and his body was removed and displayed in museums as a sideshow.

In recent generations, his posterity was able to rightfully claim his remains and his body was laid to rest once again. This time, at the top of the hill overlooking the pond in Spring Lake.

As the man told me this story- my heart seemed to stop.

“He’s buried there?” I asked, “How do you know?” I stammered, thinking of my weekly imaginary companion.

“I know because I helped re-bury him.” He answered.

After my encounter with the elderly man, I stopped taking the Chief’s attendance for granted as an illusion of my mind. I approached the mornings differently, now having a sense of reverence.

One morning as the dawn was breaking, I set my drum to the side and stood to greet the warmth, my bare feet cushioned in the damp grass.

For the first time, Chief Antonga, rose from his rock and came to stand beside me. I saw him begin to move his arms in a pattern from Earth to Sky and Sky to Earth. I felt an understanding that it was connecting Heaven and Earth and opening the heart. I mimicked what he was doing.

Drawing the energy from below with the breath. Exhaling through the heart and giving the energy to the world and upwards. Then reversing to pull the energy down from above, expanding from the heart and back to the Earth.

“The life of Timpanogos Chief Black Hawk had come full circle when, on September 26, 1870, at the age of 35, the Chief's loving kin honorably laid him to rest on a hillside overlooking Spring Lake above Payson, Utah, the place of his birth. Black Hawk had crossed over to the spirit world and into the arms of his ancestors.

Black Hawk was born into a royal lineage of Timpanogos leaders. The Timpanogos Tribe, a band of the Snake Shoshone, documents his ancestry back to 1776, when Spanish explorers Dominguez and Escalante met his great-grandfather, Chief Turunianchi the Great of the Timpanogos Nation. Chief Turunianchi had a son named Moonch, who was the father of Chief Sanpitch (Tenaciono). Sanpitch's mother, Tanar-oh-which, gave birth to several children. Chief Sanpitch was the father of Black Hawk. He was the eldest of seven siblings, all of whom became Timpanogos leaders: Wakara, Sowiette, Arapeen, Ammon, Tabby, Tintic, Kanosh, and Grospean. See Timpanogos Biography; The Utah Black Hawk War

The tribe knew him as Nu'intz. By the age of thirteen, Black Hawk's peaceful life along the Wasatch Mountains was disrupted when Mormon settlers arrived in 1847. In 1849, Brigham Young, the president of the LDS Church, ordered the Mormon militia to exterminate the Timpanogos Nation. See Battle Creek Canyon Massacre

… just 49 years following Black Hawk's burial, on September 20, 1919, members of the Mormon church robbed Black Hawk's grave. The following article appeared on the front page of the Deseret News with the headline, "Bones of Black Hawk Now on Exhibition L.D.S. Museum." The reporter writes that the remains of Black Hawk had been on public display for amusement in the window of a hardware store in downtown Spanish Fork, Utah. When Benjamin Guadard, the man in charge of the L.D.S. Museum, acquired the remains for public display on the recently completed Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City to attract visitors.” blackhawkproductions.com