Uncompahgre Ute
The Tabeguache believed that the Pikes Peak region is their home. Their name for Pikes Peak is "Tavakiev", meaning sun mountain. Living a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle, summers were spent in the Pikes Peak area mountains, which was considered by other tribes to be the domain of the Utes. Pikes Peak was a sacred ceremonial area for the Tabeguache Utes, or people of Sun Mountain, including their Sundance grounds and culturally scarred Ponderosa Pines that were used for different purposes, including prayer, burial, peeled-bark medicine, and arborglyphs or message trees. Some of the trees are 800 years old. An endowment was established by the Pikes Peak Historical Society in 2001 to help members of the Ute Nation to return to their homelands around Pikes Peak.
In the fall they would travel Ute Pass and visit the springs where they "made offerings to the spirits of the springs for good health and good hunting". There were about ten mineral springs, called "manitou" for the "breath of the Great Spirit Manitou" believed to have created the bubbles, or "effervescence", in the spring water. The springs were considered sacred grounds where Native Americans drank and soaked in the mineral water to replenish and heal themselves. Ute and other tribes came to the area, spent winters there, and "share[d] in the gifts of the waters without worry of conflict." Artifacts found from the nearby Garden of the Gods, such as grinding stones, "suggest the groups would gather together after their hunt to complete the tanning of hides and processing of meat."
William Pike
Several sources state that William was born in Dorset. In 'A History of Dorset' () A. Lindsay Clegg, former Town Clerk of Bournemouth, claims that Pike lived at Moordown, now within modern Bournemouth, then part of the Liberty of Westover. Pike, or Pyk was a common name in Westover since the 14th century, according to the Christchurch Cartulary (). Pike is also said to have lived at West Moors in West Parley, where he worked as a carpenter. He was executed by being hung, drawn and quartered on 22 December 1591 for denying the Royal Supremacy. He is thought to have been converted to Catholicism by Thomas Pilchard. Rachel Lloyd suggests that the Pikes were a Bristol family, and that William (who lived in the Village of Moors on the Hampshire border) was the brother of Martha Pike. Martha’s husband Henry Falkner had converted priest John Chapman to Catholicism, in 1579. Henry mentioned his brother-in-law William Pike in his will.