Religious and Cultural Significance

The ancient Fremont people created the pictographs and petroglyphs at Nile Mile Canyon. There is evidence that the Fremont inhabited Nine Mile Canyon as early as 700 A.D., and around 1250 A.D., they were displaced for an unknown reason. One of the earliest Native peoples to inhabit Nine Mile Canyon after the Fremont were the Ute people.

An example of how the Fremont depicted their agricultural habits on the walls of Nine Mile Canyon (Photo: Ken Lund, CCSA).

Left: A rock shelter stands as one of the last remains of the peoples who once inhabited Nine Mile Canyon (Photo: Tricia Simpson, CCSA). Right: Remnants of a pit-house from 770 – 1,070 years ago (Photo: Ntsimp, CCPD).

Ute anscestors arrived in the Nine Mile Canyon area around the same time that the Fremont people departed.¹ Ute understand the sacred value of the surrounding rock art, and their ancestors added their own histories to the walls while regarding the Fremont histories as part of their own story.² “This is our church,” Ute religious leader Larry Cesspooch said in a statement for the Sacred Land Film Project. “These cliffs, they’re as high as any cathedral — they’re what God put here.”³

Along with contemporary Ute people, the Hopi, the Northern Cheyenne, and Pueblo communities regard the Canyon as sacred, a place of important history, or a site they maintain ancestral ties with. Hopi elders have recognized some of the images as clan symbols, affirming an ancestral connection to the Canyon for the Hopi.⁴ The Fremont people shared many similarities with the neighboring Ancestral Pueblos, whose contemporary descendants are the Puebloans or Pueblo peoples.⁵ The importance of this site means that these peoples continue to fight for the sacred rock art’s protection nearly every year as corporations seek to exploit Nine Mile Canyon for its natural resources.