Utah Centennial County History Series - Sanpete County 1999

M o r m o n s were not the first white people to encounter the Indians of Sanpete Valley. The Spanish Franciscans, Dominguez and Escalante, and the American-Flemish Jesuit, Pierre De Smet, had earlier described in their journals and letters Indians that probably included the groups established in Sanpete Valley.

On 30 September 1776, Escalante recorded a meeting, in presentday Juab County, with a party of twenty Indians identified by Utah Indian authority William R. Palmer as "Sanpitch" Indians from Sanpete and Sevier valleys: Very early there came to the camp twenty Indians. . . . all wrapped in blankets made of rabbit and hare skins. They conversed with us very pleasantly until nine o'clock in the morning. . . . These had a much shorter beard than the Lagunas, and their noses were pierced; through the hole in the nose was carried a small polished bone of the deer, hen or other animal. In features they resembled the Spaniards more than all the other Indians now known in America. . . . They use the language of the Timpanogotzis.'