A Utah Indian Chief Controlled the 1800s Mountain West Through Slave Trading, Building Pioneer Trails, Horse Stealing, and Becoming Mormon

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

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Summary

The American Indian leader Wakara was among the most influential and feared men in the nineteenth-century American West. He and his pan-tribal cavalry of horse thieves and slave traders dominated the Old Spanish Trail, the region’s most important overland route. They widened the trail and expanded its watering holes, reshaping the environmental and geographical boundaries of the region. They also exacted tribute from travelers passing along the trail and assisted the trail’s explorers with their mapmaking projects—projects that shaped the political and cultural boundaries of the West. What’s more, as the West’s greatest horse thief and horse trader as well as the region’s most prolific trader in enslaved Indians, Wakara supplied Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American settlers from Santa Fe to San Bernardino with the labor and horsepower that fueled empire and settler colonial expansion as well as fueled great changes to the West’s environmental landscape.

Today’s guest is Max Mueller, author of of Wakara’s America: The Life and Legacy of a Native Founder of the American West. We look at his complex and sometimes paradoxical story, revealing a man who both helped build the settler American West and defended Native sovereignty. Wakara was baptized a Mormon and allied with Mormon settlers against other Indians to seize large parts of modern-day Utah. Yet a pan-tribal uprising against the Mormons that now bears Wakara’s name stalled and even temporarily reversed colonial expansion. Through diplomacy and through violence, Wakara oversaw the establishment of settlements, built new trade routes, and helped create the boundaries that still define the region.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Scott here with another episode of the History and Plug podcast.
0:07.2	Before the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s, America's Mountain
0:12.0	West was something that had to be crossed over as quickly as possible before death came
0:16.3	from disease, starvation, a tribal attack, or any of the other hundreds of dangers from
0:20.6	the untamed wilderness. Now, there were those who tribal attack, or any of the other hundreds of dangers from the untamed
0:21.0	wilderness. Now, there were those who did create pockets of civilization in this anarchic, lawless
0:26.2	area. Two of these founding fathers are Junipero Serra, who established nine Spanish missions in the
0:31.3	California coast in the 1770s, and Brigham Young, who led the Mormon pioneers to the great
0:35.7	Salt Lake Valley in 1847, and established
0:37.9	hundreds of settlements there. But there's one more unlikely figure who can be considered a founder
0:42.0	of the American West. And that's Warkara, a Ute war leader, a legendary horse thief, an enslaver,
0:47.5	trader, who terrified pioneers crossing west, but is also responsible for building new trade
0:52.2	routes and industries who helped draw the geographical
0:54.5	boundaries that define the American Southwest and made that part of the nation what it was in the
0:58.9	19th century. Today's episode, I'm speaking to Max Mueller, author of Wakara's America, the life
1:03.9	and legacy of a native founder of the American West. We look at the horrific levels of violence
1:08.5	that reigned in this time period, how survival met ruthless pragmatism and being able to switch sides, such as Wakara's baptism into
1:15.0	Mormonism, and what's been left out of American Western history.
1:18.2	Hope we enjoy this discussion with Max Mueller.
1:22.4	And one more thing before we get started with this episode, a quick break for a word from
1:26.0	our sponsors.
1:27.3	Need a daily spark of hope and direction? Let the Daily Bible app from Salem Media be that spark.
	...

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