CHAPTER
4
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF KANE COUNTY AND INDIAN TROUBLES
W.
hen the United States government acquired the land that would become Utah Territory in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ending the Mexican War, the way was paved for settlement of the Kane County area. The Compromise of 1850 formally organized Utah Territory while admitting California as a state and defining other territory formerly claimed by Mexico. In organizing Utah Territory on 9 September 1850 Congress rejected the application for the State of Deseret petitioned by Mormons on 2 March 1850. The territorial legislature was not granted authority over land distribution, water regulation, or timber use. Mormon church president Brigham Young played a direct role in the establishment and development of more than 300 settlements founded in the thirty-year period between the pioneers' arrival in the Great Basin in 1847 and his death in 1877. More than one hundred other towns were settled after the pattern he established from 1877 until the end of the nineteenth century. While the story of Mormon settlement of the Great Basin is considered by many to be an epic of significant dimensions, the Mormon 49
