Mary May (Harris) Denver, née ReedMatriarch of ManyTerminated Mixed-Blood Uinta, Roll #168
Mary May (Reed) Harris was Ute by identity and spirit, though her father was white and her mother an Eastern Shoshone. Mary always considered herself Ute. She was born on November 8, 1858, in Green River, Wyoming, the eldest of eight children of James B. Reed and Margaret “Wy-vee-da” Young.
At the age of eight, her family moved to Brown’s Hole, north of Vernal, Utah, and later to Whiterocks, where her father helped establish the Uintah Agency.
Mary’s youth was filled with responsibility—helping her mother care for her younger brothers and sisters, while also learning the skills she would need to become a wife, mother, and keeper of a home. The Ute word for home is Kan-ne-ga, meaning “a setting or staying place.” Mary’s Kan-ne-ga was always filled with love and teachings.
As a young woman, Mary was sent to the Teller Institute in Grand Junction, Colorado, as part of the first group of Native students to attend. Her father insisted she receive an education and strengthen her English, though Mary was already fluent in English, Ute, Northern Paiute, and Eastern Shoshone.
It was at Teller Institute that she met Henry Ernest Harris, a Northern Paiute from the Pyramid Lake area in Nevada. With her parents’ consent, Mary and Henry married. Together they had eight children—four boys and four girls.
For a short time, the family lived in Nevada, but Mary became so homesick that Henry promised they would return to Utah and live with her people. He kept his word, building Mary a Kan-ne-ga on the reservation, where they raised their family. Henry worked for the government and the Tribe for many years, while Mary ensured their home was grounded in culture, tradition, and faith.
She taught her children the Ute language and the old ways, attended ceremonies, and passed on deep respect for Mother Earth—the four-legged, the winged, and even the “creepy crawleys,” all of whom were their brothers. To her daughters, she taught how to be good mothers; to her sons, how to be good husbands. Above all, she taught them to respect the Creator and to be thankful for life’s blessings.
Mary lived peacefully on the reservation her entire life, watching her children grow, marry, and raise families of their own. Yet in her later years, she faced a grief she could not understand. When her children told her that, under government policy, they and their descendants would no longer be considered Utes of the Uintah Band, her heart broke. She could not comprehend how Washington, D.C. could decide who her people were, nor why her relatives would suddenly no longer be her relatives.
Her greatest sorrow was knowing she could no longer live life as she always had—camping in the Uintah Mountains, gathering berries, hunting, fishing, tanning hides, and visiting the sacred places her ancestors knew. She feared for the future of her family and wondered if, when she walked the Spirit Road, her body would still be allowed to rest in the land of her people.
Mary lived to be 102 years old. She had seen much in her lifetime, but nothing grieved her more than the destruction of her people’s way of life under termination. On June 27, 1960, Mary walked the Spirit Road, leaving this world with a broken heart but also with a powerful legacy of love, teaching, and resilience.
She was laid to rest beside her beloved husband Henry in the Fort Duchesne Cemetery on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation.
Mary’s descendants include the Currys, Denvers, Murdocks, Secakukus, Harrises, and one Zuniga family. Truly, she was—and remains—the Matriarch of Many.
By Nola Jean Zuniga