“Pikes Peak” is perhaps America’s most famous mountain. However, I wonder how many people know its name is based on a lie?
Zebulon Pike never climbed the eponymous peak. Instead, he climbed a nearby peak, Mount Rosa, and cast a frustrated gaze on the mountain that now bears his name.
Unfortunately, numerous authors (ignorant of its indigenous name) later assigned his name to it and, as we know, “a lie told often enough mistakenly becomes the truth.”
But history is about telling the truth, or it should be if we are to learn from our past. The truth is that Colorado was home to the Ute Nation for hundreds of centuries before the European invaders arrived. In fact, the Tabeguache (People of Sun Mountain) Band of the Ute Nation took their name from “Tava” (Sun).
When the explorer John Wesley Powell lived among them for a year, he noted this close association with place: “An Indian will never ask to what nation or tribe or body of people another Indian belongs but to ‘what land do you belong and how are you land named?’”
This intimate connection to the Earth was fostered by use of the Medicine Wheel. This was the umbilical cord to Earth Mother at the center of every encampment. On its Heart Stone, the choicest part of every item harvested was left as an offering of thanks and in a reciprocal gesture of nurturing.
The Pikes Peak massif abounds with these circular stone umbilical cords. The Tabeguache belonged to Tava. This is a profound cultural difference from the dominant society.
However, even more than this connection is the Ute understanding of Great Spirit/God. In Ute cosmology, Great Spirit is not an entity but an energy, “Puwa,” that is everywhere and within everything in the universe.
This, again, exposes a deep chasm between our two cultures. “Puwa-gut” (Spiritual Interpreters/Medicine People) have a deep respect and awe for this energy. Rarely do they use their sacred name in public because of the power that it holds.
Like a person’s sacred name, “Tava” is charged with the powerful star energy it embodies. Every time the name is spoken, our breath adds resonance to its energy.
This is critical in these times of prophecy as we humans take our next steps of evolutionary progress. We desperately need the battery power of this star energy to help us evolve into our higher and better selves.
It is no accident that Pikes Peak is situated almost exactly in the center of Colorado, in the heart of the Rockies. It is our Heart Stone, and with its ancient and powerful name “Tava,” it can help us once again to find our center.
A Tava Advocate
Editor’s note: The Bulletin does not publish anonymous letters to the editor or guest editorials. However, we know this writer’s identity, and he has asked to have his name withheld because he feels this essay is not about him or his ego.