CHAPTER
3
TRAPPERS, EXPLORERS, GOLDSEEKERS
W.
ith the coming of European fur trappers, exploration parties sent by the federal government, and the hordes of avaricious forty-niners, the history of Box Elder moves from prehistory onto the stage of history—written history, for that is the defining factor which separates prehistory from history. There are no first-hand accounts. History, then, requires language, not only spoken, but written. The presence of a written record, and the recording of events, makes history. The ancient ones who lived off the land and migrated with the seasons, from the marshes and desert's fringe to the lush high-mountain valleys, the people whose clothing was of rabbit skins, whose feet were shod with reeds and buffalo hocks, whose weapons were made of obsidian and flint and jasper, who ate grasshoppers and crickets, ricegrass and pickleweed, and who lived in caves and wickiups kept no written records, as far as we know. They kept—nor left—no history we can decipher. They were pre-historic. The first n o n - I n d i a n s to record their impressions of parts of Utah were the Spanish friars, Dominguez and Escalante, who traveled through as far north as Utah Lake in the summer of 1776. While
