The Yutas may have been encountered by Coronado’s expedition on the buffalo plains, where they were called Querechos. A form of the word “Yuta” was likely first recorded by the Franciscan missionary Gerónimo de Oñate Salmerón in the 1620s. Writing down what he heard from the Jemez Pueblo Indians, he recorded variants such as Gawuptuh, Guaputa, and Qusutas—terms that apparently meant “mountain people who live in straw or brush huts.” Salmerón also used the word Yuta, which was then adopted by later Spanish chroniclers.
The prefix Pai, used to distinguish between eastern and western Ute peoples, probably came to the Spanish through the Havasupai, Walapai, or Yavapai—Yuman-speaking groups—where pai means “people.” When asked by the Spanish about the people across the Colorado River, these groups likely answered “Payuchis”, meaning “Ute people.” In the Spanish period, the Payuchis north of Moqui and Navajo lands appeared more similar to the eastern Utes than to the Yutas Escalante later called “Yutas Cobardes.”
From seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century usage, the word “Yuta” may align more closely with the modern category “Shoshonean” than with the present-day meaning of “Ute.” The Spanish referred to all who spoke a Yuta dialect as the “Yuta Nations,” a group that included the Chemehuevi, Southern Paiute, and Ute. Today these groups are likewise classified as Shoshonean. Because the Spanish did not see significant cultural differences among them, it is difficult to identify whether references in early Spanish documents pertain to the ancestors of present-day Utes, Southern Paiutes, or Chemehuevi. Clear distinctions were not recognized until the Garcés–Escalante period.
It is important to remember that Indian cultures, like modern ones, were dynamic and adaptable, not static. To classify groups as Ute, Southern Paiute, Chemehuevi, and so on—based solely on descriptions by Garcés, Escalante, Powell, or the early Mormons—and then to project those classifications backward in time, is to overlook the constant changes in culture and way of life. Escalante’s “Yutas Cobardes”, for example, may have differed greatly from the Yutas known to Oñate or Salmerón. Still, the Yutas described by the early Spanish chroniclers most closely resemble the people we now recognize as Utes.
At the time of Spanish arrival in New Mexico, the Yutas occupied territory stretching from Pecos, where they traded plains goods to Pueblo peoples, westward and north of New Mexico, and into Arizona west of the Colorado River, where the ancestors of the Chemehuevi lived. Beginning around 1650, Apache groups began encroaching on Yuta lands. By 1700 the Apaches had established themselves in the Sierra Blanca north of Taos and in the Jicarilla and El Cuartelejo areas northeast of New Mexico.
From about 1700 to 1748, the Yutas and Comanches allied to drive the Apaches south and west. But around 1748, a new Comanche alliance with the Pawnees and the French—who supplied firearms—shifted the balance of power. Strengthened by French guns, the Comanches gained dominance over their former Yuta allies in northeastern New Mexico. From roughly 1749 through the 1780s, the Yutas and Comanches were bitter enemies. Only when Governor Anza established a new system of alliances in the 1780s did peace return. Afterward, the Yutas regained freedom in their traditional lands northeast of New Mexico, while the Comanches turned south, once again displacing the Apaches into the deserts of southern New Mexico, Mexico, and Arizona.