Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 26, Number 4, 1958

Page 1

UTAH

STATE

HISTORICAL

flr v

»^u

SOCIETY


HISTORICAL

QUARTERLY

October, 1958


ABOUT THE COVER The Home of the Utah State Historical Society, 603 East South Temple, Salt La\e City, Utah.

PHOTO COURTESY J . L. PULSIPHER

Looking south through the arches on the sun dec\ on the second floor of the mansion.

PHOTO COURTESY W I L L I A M SEAL


HISTORICAL

QUARTERLY

A. R. Mortensen, Editor

UTAH

STATE

HISTORICAL

SOCIETY

VOLUME XXVI, NUMBER 4 October, 1958

Copyright 1958, Utah State Historical Society, 603 East South Temple, Salt La\c City, Utah



CONTENTS Mountain

Men Before the Mormons,

The Salt Lake City Beobachter:

BY LEROY R. HAFEN_

Mirror of an

307

Immigration,

BY THOMAS L. BROADBENT

Early-day

Trading

329

with the Nevada

Mining

Camps,

BY WILLIAM R. PALMER

The Great "Mormon" The President's

Reviews

Globes, BY MARK HAFEY

369

BY LELAND H . CREER

373

Report,

and Recent

353

Publications

MULDER AND MORTENSEN, Among by Contemporary LARSON, The

the Mormons:

Observers,

Red Hills

Historic

Accounts

BY J O H N W . CAUGHEY

of November,

BY RTJSSEL B. SWENSEN

GUDDE AND GUDDE, EDS., Exploring with Fremont: The Private Diaries of Charles Preuss . . . , BY HOWES WILKINS, ED., The Great Diamond Hoax and Other Stirring Incidents in the Life of Asbury Harpending, BY KELLY. WISTER, ED., Owen and Letters,

Wister

His

Bannoc\

387

390

BY TYLER

391

Other Publications Historical

385

388

of the Sage, BY SMART °f Idaho,

383

Journals

BY LINFORD

MURBARGER, Sovereigns MADSEN, The

Out West:

381

393

Notes

403

ILLUSTRATIONS Mountain

Men,

fames Bridger,

BY W . H . JACKSON

Louis

Vasquez,

Etienne

306

Provost, Peter Skene Ogden

Pegleg Smith

318

Salt Lake City Beobachter Karl G. Maeser, Andrew Hans Besenstiel Nat

Gardner's

328 Jenson

331

cartoons wagon,

Cedar City Tithing

333 Burros

in Tonopah,

Nevada

Office, Cedar Co-op Store, DeLamar,

Gold field, Nevada Former

Newspaper

reader, Archive clip

352 Nevada, 359

Coach House

Microfilm

31 I

372 stacks

377 files

379


1


"Mountain Men, 1830." Reproduced irough the courtesy of Clarence S. Jackson from a copy of a William H. Jackson painting in the Utah State Historical Society.

MOUNTAIN MEN BEFORE THE MORMONS By LeRoy R. Hafen*

The early trappers and traders, who came to. be known in the West as Mountain Men, were the pioneer explorers of Utah. Their coming west was not prompted by patriotism, but by economic motives; it was beaver skins that lured them. High-topped beaver hats, worn in the style centers of the world, caused the demand and made the market. So into the wilds went brigades of hardy men, braving winter storms, grizzlies, and hostile Indians. For months they lived on a meat diet; in good times it was buffalo hump ribs and venison; in hard times, scrawny mule steaks, Indian dog meat, or stewed moccasins. Once wedded to the wilds and having had the thin veneer of civilization rubbed off, the typical fur gatherer was loath to return to the restrictions of town life. Opening fresh trails and discovering new lands were to him but part of the day's work, incidental to the business of trapping. Virgin territory was likely to yield the greatest return in pelts, so there was a money reward for trail blazing. Most of the trappers were young men, strong, hardy, adventureloving. With their bronzed faces and long hair, it was difficult to dis* Dr. Hafen is professor of history at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. He has authored and edited many books dealing with the history of the West. The above article was delivered by him at the sixth annual dinner meeting of the Utah State Historical Society on May 10, 1958.


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UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

tinguish one from another, or all from a band of Indians. In a beaver or coonskin cap and a fringed buckskin suit gaily decorated with dyed porcupine quills or bright glass beads, the trapper was proudly dressed. With a powder horn, shot pouch, and muzzle-loading rifle he was selfsupporting and independent. In his day beaver skins were money in the West, and with these hairy banknotes he could buy anything that was for sale. At the summer rendezvous, that great fair of the wilderness, trappers, Indians, and bourgeois traders gathered in some mountain valley to exchange furs for supplies. Amidst the horse races and foot races, the wrestling bouts, Indian dances, shooting matches, fights, the gambling, and drinking, the seasoned fur trapper had his brief holiday of prodigal living. Most fur men were without book learning, but they were educated for the life they led. They could read the tracks of moccasins, the sign of beaver, the trace of travois; they could mold their bullets from bars of lead, and strike a fire with flint and steel. A skin lodge furnished the trapper with shelter, while for summer nights a buffalo robe was spread beneath the stars. A horse to ride, one to carry his trappings, others for his squaw and children, if he had been long in the wilderness, and he could journey wherever trails led, or did not lead. He gloried in the name of Mountain Man. The Utah region, like other areas of the West, was first thoroughly explored by the fur men. They converged upon Utah from three directions — the southeast, the northwest, and the east. American traders based in Santa Fe came in by way of the San Juan, Green, and Uinta rivers; British fur men pushed in from Fort Vancouver and the Columbia by way of the Snake and Bear rivers; and Americans from Missouri came up the Platte, over South Pass and to the Green, Bear, and Weber. The principal leaders on these three fronts were outstanding men who have left their names etched deep on the map and in the history of Utah — Etienne Provost, Peter Skene Ogden, and Jedediah Smith. Provost was a French Canadian who removed to St. Louis and Santa Fe; Ogden, the son of a Tory of the American Revolution, became a brigade leader of the British Hudson's Bay Company; and Smith was a Yankee who responded to the lure of the West. Let us sketch briefly the careers of each. Etienne Provost is a shadowy figure in the Rocky Mountain picture. Born in Canada about 1782, he moved to St. Louis and there,


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at the emporium of the Western fur trade, joined the first large trapping party to reach the front range of the central Rockies. This company, headed by Auguste Chouteau and Jules De Mun, went up the Arkansas River in 1815. After trapping two years in the mountains they were captured by the Spaniards and were taken to Santa Fe. Their goods were confiscated and they were jailed for two months, before being finally released.1 After Mexico's independence from Spain was won in 1821, Americans broke wagon tracks on the Santa Fe Trail to enter the newly opened market. Provost was one of the first to go, and by 1823 he was conducting trade and trapping operations from a New Mexico base northwestward. By the fall of 1824 he had crossed the Wasatch Mountains to the Great Basin, and here had a clash that gave his name to Provo River and ultimately to the city of Provo. Some Snake Indians who had been ill-treated by British trappers, came upon the white men headed by Provost and decided to take revenge upon the unsuspecting party. What occurred is told by W. A. Ferris, a mountain trapper: . . . [The Snake Chief, Bad Lefthander] invited the whites to smoke the calumet of peace with him, but insisted that it was contrary to his medicine to have any metallic near while smoking. Proveau, knowing the superstitious whims of the Indians, did not hesitate to set aside his arms, and allow his men to follow his example; they then formed a circle by sitting indiscriminately in a ring, and commenced the ceremony; during which, at a preconcerted signal, the Indians fell upon them, and commenced the work of slaughter with their knives, which they had concealed under their robes and blankets. Proveau, a very athletic man, with difficulty extricated himself from them, and with three or four others, alike fortunate, succeeded in making his escape; the remainder of the party of fifteen were all massacred.2 The exact location of the tragedy has not been determined. Some accounts say it was on the river that flows into Utah Lake; others, on the stream that flows from the lake.3 ' T . M. Marshall (ed.), "The Journals of Jules De Mun,' Missouri Historical Society Collections, V (1928), nos. 2 and 3. 2 W . A. Ferris, Life in the Rocky Mountains, P. C. Phillips (ed.) (Denver, 1940), 308-9. 3 The problem is discussed and sources cited in LeRoy R. and Ann W. Hafen, Old Spanish Trail (Glendale, 1954), 97-99.


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UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Provost and the remnant of his party retreated across the Wasatch and wintered on Green River, but next spring he was back on Weber River. There, on May 23, 1825, about six miles above the mouth of Weber Canyon, he met Peter Skene Ogden, with his big catch of fresh furs from Cache Valley and Ogden River. Then another large party of Americans came up, and a clash between them and the Britishers was narrowly averted. This story we shall tell presently in our sketch of Mr. Ogden. On June 7, 1825, in the Uinta Basin, Provost met General W. H. Ashley, leader of the big trapping outfit from St. Louis. Soon he helped Ashley and his trade goods to the head of Provo River, across Kamas prairie, and to the Weber. Most of the trappers soon made their way east, going a little south of the route later known as the Mormon Trail, to the Green River Valley. There they were to assemble in early July at the first great rendezvous of the Rocky Mountains.4 Provost was most likely there, as also he was at the second rendezvous, of 1826, held in Cache Valley. Then he returned to Missouri and took employment with a group known as the French Company, and later he was employed by the American Fur Company. He continued thereafter as a fur company employee and ceased to be a free trapper. The fugitive records occasionally show his name among the Crow Indians of Wyoming and on the Upper Missouri of Montana. In 1839 he was guide for Nicollet and John C. Fremont on their exploring tour between the upper waters of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. In 1829 he married Marie Rose Salle in St. Louis. One daughter reached maturity. Provost died in St. Louis on July 3, 1850, when the Utah city that perpetuates his name was but one year old.5 Peter Skene Ogden, who has left his name and impress in Utah, was the most outstanding British mountain man who ever operated in this territory. One of my students, Ted Warner, has just finished a Master's thesis on Ogden, and from it I extract a brief account of his career. Ogden's English ancestors came to America in 1643. His grandfather, Judge David Ogden, was a graduate of Yale; his father Isaac, graduated from King's College (Columbia). In the American Revolution the family was divided in sentiment; Isaac remained loyal to the 4 Dale L. Morgan (ed.), "The Diary of William H. Ashley," Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society, XI (1954-55), 184-86, 279-85. 5 The fullest account of the life of Provost has been worked out by Dale L. Morgan, notable Utah historian, and is embodied in his jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West (Indianapolis, 1953), and in his Provo, Pioneer Mormon City (Portland, 1942).


James Bridger (1804-1881). Viewed Great Salt La\e, 1824; founded Fort Bridger, 1843.

Etienne Provost (cl782-1850). first large trappijm-pmiy

Member of the ituvii'^k^ktmlistiithmm^.

Louis Vasquez (1798-1868). Partner of Bridger. Photo courtesy Missouri Historical Society.

Peter Skene Ogden (1794-1854). Of Hudson's Bay Company. Photo courtesy A. A. Knopf, Inc.


312

UTAH HISTORICAL

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king. He was finally forced to leave his holdings in New York and to go to England. His loyalty was rewarded by a judgeship at Quebec. It was in that city that Peter Skene Ogden was born in 1794. Peter grew up in Montreal. His parents wanted him to enter the ministry or the law, but he preferred the freer life of the frontier. He took employment with the North West Company, served it for eleven years, and won distinction by his daring and hardihood. One companion of the period refers to him as the "humorous, honest, eccentric, lawdefying Peter Ogden, the terror of the Indians, and the delight of all gay fellows." e After the North West Company was consolidated with the Hudson's Bay Company, Ogden became a chief trader for the latter company. For five years, 1824-29, he led the important Snake River brigade. He went from Fort Vancouver and the Columbia, up the Snake River of Idaho, and to die Bear River and Cache Valley of Utah, and to the Humboldt River of Nevada, and through California. Ogden's first trip to Utah was in company with that famous American fur man and explorer, Jedediah Smith, who had come to die British Flathead post as an unwelcome guest in 1824. The two men parted on Bear River in April, 1825, Smith going up the river and Ogden down.7 There soon began in this region a bitter rivalry between the British and American trappers, in which literally the fur flew. Some of Ogden's men saw the Great Salt Lake on May 12 and 22, 1825. Ogden traversed Cache Valley and in fifteen days caught one thousand beaver. On May 16, 1825, he discovered a mountain-encircled hole, or park, with a river running through it. He called them New Hole and New River. They thereafter were given his name. Ogden's Hole was the Huntsville area, and Ogden was never at the site of the city of Ogden. After catching over six hundred beaver in the Ogden's Hole area, the British company crossed south to Weber River. Here they encountered Etienne Provost, and a small company. Ogden reports: Shortly after the arrival of the above party [Provost's] another of 25 to 30 Americans headed by one Gardner and a ° Ross Cox, Adventures on the Columbia River, 245, quoted in E. E. Rich (ed.), Peter Skene Ogden's Snake Country journals, 1824-25 and 1825-26 (London, Hudson's Bay Record Society, 1950), xix. 7 David E. Miller has edited the journals of the Ogden trip of 1824-25 in Utah, identifying the route in the Utah Historical Quarterly, XX (April, 1952) and XXII (April, 1954).


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Spanjard [sic] with 15 of our trappers who had been absent about two days also made their appearance; they encamped within 100 yards of our Camp and hoisted the American Flag, and proclaimed to all that they were in the United States Territories and were all Free indebted or engaged, it was now night and nothing more transpired, the ensuing morning Gardner came to my tent and after a few words of no import, he questioned me as follows, do you know in whose Country you are ? to which I made answer that I did not, as it was not determined between Great Britain and America to whom it belonged, to which he made answer that it was, that it had been ceded to the latter, and I had no license to trade or trapp to return from whence I came without delay, to this I replied when we received orders from the British Government to abandon the Country we shall obey, he then said remain at your peril.8 They thought they were in Oregon Territory, to which the Joint Occupation Treaty between the United States and Britain then applied. In reality this was Spanish Territory, conceded to Spain in our Treaty of 1819; but neither trapper band knew this and so both tried to bluff the other. About half of Ogden's men deserted to the Americans, taking a large portion of the furs with them. An actual fight was barely avoided. Kittson, Ogden's clerk, reports: . . . A scuffle took place between Old Pierre and Mr. Ogden regarding the horses lent by that Gentleman to the old villain, who was supported by all the Americans and 13 of our scamps of Freemen. . . . Gardner with his gang of villains soon come to assist and debauch others to separate from us. . . . On seeing Mr. Ogden laying hold of the beaver, I order'd Sansfacon to call out that the beaver and horse belonged to the Company. Which he did, and we got them. Gardner immediately turns to me saying Sir I think you speak too bravely you better take care or I will soon settle your business. Well says I you seem to look for Blood do your worse and make it a point of dispute between our two Governments, . . .9 8 Frederick Merk, "Snake Country Expedition, 1824-25," Oregon Historical terly, XXXV (June, 1924), 109-10.

Quar-

"David E. Miller (ed.), "William Kittson's Journal Covering Peter Skene Ogden's 1824-1825 Snake Country Expedition," Utah Historical Quarterly, XXII (April, 1954), 138-40.


314

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Ogden, with the remnant of his party, retreated back to the Snake River country and finally back to the Columbia. But he was to return for four more expeditions. On the second he again encountered the Americans and the contest was a draw. In the third clash he came out decidedly the victor. Joe Meek, famous Mountain Man, tells of an interesting incident. The Americans had plied the Indians and some of Ogden's men with whiskey and were thus enabled to procure some of their furs. Meek reports: . . . a stampede one day occurred among the horses in Ogden's camp, and two or three of the animals ran away, and ran into the camp of the rival company. Among them was the horse of Mr. Ogden's Indian wife, which had escaped, with her babe hanging to the saddle. Not many minutes elapsed, before the mother, following her child and horse, entered the camp, passing right through it, and catching the now halting steed by the bridle. At the same moment she espied one of her company's pack-horses, loaded with beaver, which had also run into the enemy's camp. The men had already begun to exult over the circumstance, considering this chance load of beaver as theirs, by the laws of war. But not so the Indian woman. Mounting her own horse, she fearlessly seized the pack-horse by the halter, and led it out of camp, with its costly burden. At this undaunted action, some of the baser sort of men cried out "Shoot her, shoot her!" but a majority interfered, with opposing cries of "let her go; let her alone; she's a brave woman: I glory in her pluck"; and other like admiring expressions. While the clamor continued, the wife of Ogden had galloped away, with her baby and her pack-horse.10 In November, 1828, Ogden discovered the river that flows across northern Nevada and was to become the life-line for California-bound goldseekers and homeseekers. This small but important stream was for a time called Ogden's River, and should be so known today. But unfortunately, Fremont, when he encircled and named the Great Basin, labeled this stream the Humboldt. Baron von Humboldt was a great geographer and scientist, but he was never within a thousand miles of the river that now inappropriately bears his name. Ogden's farthest trapping tour, in 1829-30, took him south to the Colorado River and to the Gulf of California, and then up through the 10

F. F. Victor, The River of the West (Hartford, 1870), 95-96.


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entire length of California. Upon returning to the Columbia he became a chief trader in the British Columbia area, and later chief factor. His last dramatic and important service was the rescue of the forty-seven captives held by the Cay use Indians following the tragedy of 1847, when Dr. and Mrs. Whitman and a number of children at their school and mission were massacred. Ogden remained active in the management of the fur trade until a few months before his death, which occurred at Oregon City, in the presence of his Indian wife and family. I have visited his grave in Oregon City. Provost had come in to Utah from the southeast, Ogden rode in from the northwest; the third contingent of trappers moved in from the east. The leader, as indicated above, was Jedediah Smith, greatest of Far Western trapper-explorers. He has been called the Knight in Buckskin. Dale Morgan, notable Utah historian, has given us such an excellent full-length biography of him that here I need only to sketch his career and indicate his character. Jed Smith came of pioneer New England stock, one of a family of fourteen children. In 1822 he responded to General Ashley's famous call for "enterprising young men" and keel-boated up the Missouri River. After the big fight with the Arikaras he led a party to the Crow country of Wyoming and crossed South Pass to the rich beaver haven of Green River. With two other experienced fur men, Jackson and Sublette, he bought out the Ashley company in 1826, and planned an expansion of the business. He now entered upon a notable career, from which he was to emerge as the greatest single explorer of the West. He opened the first two overland routes to California—from South Pass to Los Angeles, and from the San Joaquin back over central Nevada to the Great Salt Lake. He was first over a Pacific Coast land route from San Diego to the Columbia River. He drew the first map delineating the geography of the central Rockies and the Great Basin. In all his travels, through virgin wilderness and rugged terrain, among crude companions and hostile tribes, he remained the Christian gentleman. The rifle and the Bible were equally his reliance. His character is revealed in a letter to his brother, written from the Wind River on Christmas Eve, 1829: It is that I may be able to help those who stand in need that I face every danger — it is for this, that I Traverse the


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Mountains covered with Eternal snow — it is for this that I pass over the Sandy Plains, in the heat of summer, thirsting for water where I may cool my overheated Body — it is for this that I go for days without eating, and am pretty well satisfied if I can gather a few roots, . . . pray for me My Brother — & may he, before whom not a Sparrow falls, without notice, bring us, in his own good time, Together again . . . let it be the greatest pleasure we enjoy now, . . . when our Parents are in the decline of Life, to smooth the pillow of their age, & as much as in us lies, take from them all cause of Trouble.11 The dangers he faced cannot be recounted here. We shall merely note that on his second trip to California the Mojave Indians pounced on him while he was crossing the Colorado River, killed ten of his eighteen men and took his goods and supplies. The survivors had to cross the torrid Mojave Desert in August on foot, but they reached California and later rejoined the trapping band he had left there the year before. From the Sacramento River, Smith's reunited party trapped northward toward Columbia. On the Umpqua River he was again attacked by Indians, and this time only Smith and three men survived from a party of twenty. Jed Smith retired from the mountain fur trade in 1830 and returned to St. Louis. But the spell of the West was still upon him. He launched into a new career as a wagon caravan trader over the Santa Fe Trail. Upon his first trip westward, in the summer of 1831, while ahead of the company looking for water in the Cimarron Desert cutoff, he was set upon by Comanches, and his career ended at the age of thirty-two. Thus perished one of the greatest explorers and noblest characters of the Far West. Let us now take a sampling of other Mountain Men. First, Tom Smith, who was not related to Jed Smith and was a very different type in most respects. Tom was born in Kentucky, one of a family of thirteen. His Irish father had fought under General St. Clair in the Indian wars of the old Northwest Territory. Tom learned a bit of writing and cyphering in a little round-log schoolhouse, but he had a fight with the teacher, threw down his slate, and headed West. In 1823 he joined a caravan to Santa Fe, and the next fall began trapping in western Colorado. After many Indian scrapes on the Gila and Colo11 J. C. Parrish (ed.), "A Group of Jedediah Strong Smith Documents," Publications, Historical Society of Southern California, XIII (1924-27), 307.

Annual


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rado, we find him in North Park, Colorado, in 1827. Here an Indian arrow struck his leg just above the ankle, shattering both bones. When he stepped toward a tree for his rifle the bones stuck in the ground. His companions being unwilling to cut off the leg, Smith called for the cook's butcher knife and cut off the muscles at the fracture. He objected to having the wound seared with a red-hot iron to stop the bleeding, so they wrapped the stub in an old shirt. In twenty-four hours the bleeding had stopped, leaving him almost bloodless. For several days he was carried in a litter swung between two horses. The party moved westward and went into winter quarters on Green River, where they were joined by a band of Utes. These Indians were grieved at their old friend's loss. They wailed, chanted, chewed up certain roots and spit the juice on the wound. This, Smith later told an interviewer, they "kept up for several days, while the stump gradually healed under the treatment." A wooden leg was now fashioned for his use, and he was thereafter known as Pegleg Smith.12 He was not especially handicapped by the loss; in fact, the peg leg frequently became an effective weapon in a fight. Pegleg Smith continued his trapping and trading and became especially famous as a raider of the horseherds of the missions and ranches of California. On Bear River in eastern Utah he had a ranch of his own in 1849. A letter of his, written to Brigham Young on June 15, 1849, is in the L.D.S. Church Historian's Office. In it he offers to sell to the Mormons skins and furs, and also some small coin for change. His fine horses were available for trade to overland emigrants who came by the ranch during the gold rush. Horace Bell, one such emigrant, asked Pegleg how he came to have so many horses. "Oh I went down into the Spanish country and got them." "What did they cost you," we inquired. "They cost me very dearly," he said. "Three of my squaws lost brothers, and one of them a father on that trip, and I came near going under myself. . . . " "How many did you get?" we again queried. "Only about 3000; the rascals got about half of what we started with away from us, d - - m them." 13 12 See the series of sketches on the life of Pegleg Smith published in Hutching's California Magazine in 1860-61. 13 Horace Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger (Santa Barbara, 1927), 290.


Pegleg Smith, notorious horse thief and raider of the missions and ranches of California, first made his appearance in the West in the early 1820's. Pegleg later turned to prospecting in Arizona. The famous, but still lost Pegleg Mine, is still being searched for by credulous tenderfeet. Smith's last days were spent near a grogshop in San Francisco, where he died in 1866. William Wolfskill and George Yount won a place in Utah history by being the first to traverse the entire route of the Old Spanish Trail, which ran from Santa Fe through Utah and to Los Angeles. Wolfskill


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and Yount, from Kentucky and North Carolina respectively, first operated as fur traders in the 1820's from a New Mexico base. In the winter of 1830-31 they conducted a trapping and trading expedition into Utah. Wolfskill's account book recently came to light. It records the wages of hired trappers at $7.00 and $8.00 per month. Supplies carried on pack horses were charged at New Mexico prices: tobacco and gun powder each $1.50 per pound; lead 50 cents per pound; gun flints 3 cents each; knives generally at $1.00; combs at 50 cents, and jew's-harps at 25 cents. Beaver skins were credited at $5.00 each." On the Sevier River they encountered the Utes who, after being given presents of knives, tobacco, beads, awls, and vermilion, gave the white men permission to hunt and trap in all the territory of the Ute nation. Yount, who was known to the Indians from previous visits, harangued the natives in pompous words. He spoke of the Great Father at Washington and his mighty guns, big cabins, and many braves. He was, said Yount (as related by Yount to his biographer, Rev. Orange Clark), . . . vice regent and son of the Great Spirit who rolls the sun, and whose pipe when smoking makes the clouds. Whose big gun makes the thunder. And whose rifle bullets and glittering arrows make the red lightning. Of these he could discourse till they fell flat on their faces, take the earth from under his mockasins and sprinkle it on their heads; and as he closed would rise upon their knees and worship him. Majestically would he raise them, or order Wolfskill to raise them upon their feet, bid them kiss his rifle, in token of respect for the Great Father at Washington and be seated at his side. The presents, which were the chief object of regard after all, and to obtain which they would worship anything, were distributed, and Yount permitted them to taste a morsel from his dish.15 The traders continued to California, where several members of the party became prominent pioneer citizens. Wolfskill developed a farm near the old Los Angeles plaza, at the site of the present big railroad station. Yount settled in the Napa Valley of northern California, where he was the outstanding pioneer. Jim Bridger is too well known for me to sketch him here. But of his associate I might say a word. Louis Vasquez was the partner of 14

The original ledger is owned by a descendant of Wolfskill, and I have a photostat

15

Hafen and Hafen, op. cit., 149.

of it.


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Bridger at the trading post of Fort Bridger, and is the one who sold the fort to the Mormons. Vasquez was born in St. Louis in 1798. He was the youngest of twelve children, with a Spanish father and French mother. One of his brothers was guide to Captain Zebulon Pike on his famous exploration tour into the Southwest in 1806-7. Louis Vasquez began his career as a fur trapper in 1823, ascending the Missouri in Ashley's famous party of that year. For two decades he was a notable Mountain Man, trapping the streams for beaver, trading with the Indians for furs. He was the founder in 1837 of Fort Vasquez on the South Platte, about forty miles north of Denver. A collection of his letters, written in good French, indicate that Louis had a fair education. Years ago I obtained photostats of these letters from the Missouri Historical Society and published a sketch of his life.10 In 1842 Vasquez and Bridger joined forces and came out to the mountains to trade. At Fort Bridger they were visited by various travelers, some of whom have left accounts of the men. W. G. Johnston, who met Vasquez in June, 1849, wrote: "Mr. Vasquez was a fine portly looking gentleman of medium height, about fifty years of age, and made an impression of being intelligent and shrewd." 17 Johnston was conducted through the fort by Vasquez's wife, a white woman from Missouri, who invited him to sit on a chair and treated him to fresh buttermilk. Vasquez opened a store in Salt Lake City in 1849. In 1855 he sold Fort Bridger, or at least his interest in it, to the Mormon Church for $8,000.00. The notorious Bill Hickman claims to have been one of the men who carried the load of gold for the purchase of the fort. In 1930, I interviewed the stepson of Louis Vasquez. This was Hiram Vasquez, then ninety years old and living at LaVeta, Colorado. Hiram went with his mother to Fort Bridger in 1848. Hiram told me: One day my sister and I were playing at Fort Bridger when some Indians came up and caught me. Sister got away. They gave me to Chief Washakie and I was kept by the Indians for about four years. I played with the Indian children and became expert with the bow and arrow. . . . My clothes, when with the Indians, were decorated with porcupine quills. My hair grew long and was ornamented with silver ornaments. . . . '"LeRoy R. Hafen, "Mountain Men; Louis Vasquez," Colorado Magazine, X (1933), 14-21. "Ibid., 19.


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One time, when I was nine years old, Washakie's band went to Salt Lake City and camped on a hill northeast of the city. They wouldn't let me go into town, so I decided to go alone. I went to bed early, Then in the night I got up, pulled on my leggings, put on my moccasins and buckskin shirt, picked up my buffalo-calf robe and took the trail toward the city. I went to a corral and doubled up like a jackknife in one corner. In the morning women came and began milking the cows. I climbed the fence and went to some houses and looked in at the doors. I could speak no English. An interpreter was found who had heard of my being stolen. He told me to stay in the house for ten days. That time seemed longer than my stay with the Indians had been. I strongly objected when they wanted to cut my hair. They bought me some little red boots and other clothes and I felt like a king. They then took me back to Fort Bridger. Father (Louis Vasquez) did not know whether the Indians had taken me or not. ls Hiram Vascjuez said that his father kept one room or part of a room of the fort as a safe. He remembered seeing a pile of gold in it. This was probably the money given by the Mormons for purchase of the fort. Louis Vasquez left the mountains after selling Fort Bridger. He built himself a brick house in Westport, a suburb of Kansas City. Ten miles south of the city he had a farm, and his neighbor there was Jim Bridger. From my sketch of Vasquez published twenty-five years ago, I read: Vasquez and Bridger, who had trapped beaver, fought Indians and pioneered the West together for nearly half a century, spent their declining years as quiet neighbors on their Missouri farms. Before a fire on long winter evenings they must have re-fought the Blackfeet with many a hairbreadth escape, waded the streams to tend their beaver traps, or rollicked at the gay summer rendezvous on Green River. And perhaps a wind from the Rocky Mountains would on occasion blow down the chimney and lade the smoke from hickory 18 Hiram Vasquez, "Experiences at Fort Bridger, with the Shoshoncs and in Early Colorado," ibid., VIII (1931), 106-8.


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hearth logs with an odor of pungent pine, while dimmed eyes of Mountain Men saw buffalo hump-ribs, fixed on sharp sticks, spitting at the fire.19 Vasquez died in September, 1868, and is buried in the Catholic cemetery at Kansas City. Bridger was first buried under an apple tree on his farm, later to be removed to a cemetery in Kansas City. Boy Scouts hold a memorial service each year at the grave of old scout Bridger. Miles Goodyear, a red-headed Connecticut Yankee, accompanied the Whitman-Spalding Oregon-bound party of 1836 when he was but sixteen years old. At Fort Hall on the Snake River, modern Idaho, he left the missionary party and took to the wilds. For years he was a Mountain Man, trapping beaver, trading for furs, and living with the Indians. He married an Indian girl, who bore him two children.20 After trapping and trading for some years he built Fort Buenaventura, a ranch near the site of Ogden, in 1845, and became the first settler in Utah. In the fall of 1846 he took some pack horse loads of buckskins to southern California, and there sold them to Fremont to help clothe his ragged soldiers. Fremont's certificate of indebtedness for $662.50 was received in payment on February 1,1847. As Miles moved northward through California, he procured a band of horses which he drove east, along the Humboldt route, in the spring of 1847. He reached Bear River just in time to meet Brigham Young and the pioneers. Goodyear could advise the Mormons about the geography and resources of the Great Basin. Late that year Miles sold his ranch on the Weber River to the Mormons for $1,950.00, and again traveled south to Los Angeles. With the money received for his ranch, Goodyear purchased California horses and in the spring of 1848 headed his caballada east for Missouri, where a good market for horseflesh had been developed by the Mexican War. When he arrived at the Missouri, the war was over and the horse market had collapsed. So rather than sacrifice the horses he had driven so far, he headed them back toward California where the discovery of gold had created a new demand. Goodyear's energy and ability, coupled with his knowledge of horses, the country and the Indians, enabled him to succeed in getting I0

LeRoy R. Hafen, "Louis Vasquez," ibid., X (1933), 21. For a biography see Charles Kelly and Maurice L. Howe, Miles Goodyear, the First Citizen of Utah (Salt Lake City, 1937). 20


MOUNTAIN

MEN

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his band back to California and in effecting one of the longest horse drives in American history — some 4,000 miles. At the mines he was able to dispose of his horses at high prices, retaining a few, however, to serve as a string of pack animals to carry supplies to the mines. Overexertion and exposure brought his death on November 12, 1849, at the age of thirty-two. His brother Andrew reports Miles's last words as a wish to have inscribed on his tombstone: "The mountaineer's grave. He sleeps near the western ocean's wave." His wish was complied with. He is buried in Benecia, California. One of the Mountain Men who early visited the Salt Lake region and gave us a good description of the area was Osborne Russell. He has left us his Journal of a Trapper, the best original book on trapper experiences written by a fur man. Russell was brought to the mountains by Nathaniel Wyeth, that Boston ice merchant who left New England to make his fortune in the Far West through catching furs in the mountains and salmon in the Columbia. In our region here, we remember Wyeth especially as the founder in 1834 of Fort Hall, trapper post and later a great emigrant way station on the Snake River, near present Pocatello. Osborne Russell came out with Wyeth in 1834. In the party also was Jason Lee, the first missionary to Oregon. Just before they reached Snake River they met Captain B. L. E. Bonneville, who also had a trapping party in the mountains. Russell helped build Fort Hall and thus describes the operation: . . . On the 18th [of July] we commenced the Fort which was a stockade 80 ft square built of Cotton wood trees set on end sunk 2x/i feet in the ground and standing about 15 feet above widi two bastions 8 ft square at the opposite angles. On the 4th of August the Fort was completed. And on the 5th the "Stars and Stripes" were unfurled to the breeze at Sunrise in the center of a savage and uncivilized country over an American Trading Post.21 For nine years Russell was a fur trapper in the mountains, traveling widely throughout the region. He spent Christmas, 1840, at the site of our city of Ogden. In the party were three lodges of whites and half-breeds with Indian wives and children, and fifteen lodges of Snake 21 Osborne Russell, journal of a Trapper, Aubrey L. Haines (ed.) (Portland, Oregon Historical Society, 1955), 5.


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Indians. Russell stayed in the lodge of a Frenchman with a Flathead Indian wife and one child. The Frenchman was host at a special Christmas dinner, to which gens d'esprit (kindred spirits) were invited. The lodge was thirty-six feet in circumference, with a fire in the center. Around this the guests sat crosslegged on skins. Russell describes the dinner: . . . The first dish that came on was a large tin pan 18 inches in diameter rounding full of Stewed Elk meat The next dish was similar to the first heaped up widi boiled Deer meat (or as the whites would call it Venison a term not used in die Mountains) The 3d and 4th dishes were equal in size to the first containing a boiled flour pudding prepared with dried fruit accompanied by 4 quarts of sauce made of die juice of sour berries and sugar Then came the cakes followed by about six gallons of strong Coffee already sweetened with tin cups and pans to drink out of large chips or pieces of Bark Supplying the places of plates, on being ready the butcher knives were drawn and the eating commenced at the word given by die landlady.22 The following spring Russell went soudi along die mountains east of the lake and traded with the Ute Indians and their Chief Want-aSheep, on Utah Lake. He describes this fresh-water lake as being about sixty miles in circumference, with an oudet about thirty yards wide. Russell writes: "I passed the time as pleasantly at this place as ever I did among Indians, in the daytime I rode about the valley hunting waterfowl who rend the air at this season of the year with their cries." He took his furs to Fort Hall. In the spring of 1842, writes Russell: . . . I started in company with Alfred Shutes my old Comrade from Vermont to go to the Salt Lake and pass the Spring hunting water fowls eggs and Beaver. . . . arrived at the mouth of Bear river on the 2d of April. Here we found the ground dry the grass green and myriads of Swans, Geese, Brants and Ducks which kept up a continual hum day and night assisted by the uncouth notes of the Sand hill Cranes. The geese Ducks and Swans are very fat at this season of the year We caught some few Beaver and feasted on Fowls and Eggs, until 20th May and returned to the Fort where we stopped until the 20di June when a small party arrived from the Mouth of the Columbia river on their way to the United States and my com~ Ibid., 115.


MOUNTAIN

MEN

325

rade made up his mind once more to visit his native Green Mountains after an absence of 16 years whilst I determined on going to the Moudi of the Columbia and settle my self in the Willamette [of Oregon]. 23 Russell settled in Oregon and then in California and had a rather distinguished career on the Pacific Coast. In the party with which Alfred Shutes journeyed back to the United States was a very interesting character. This was Joseph Williams, who in 1841, at the age of sixty-three, had left his home and family of ten children in Indiana to go on a mission to Oregon. After spending the winter on the Northwest Coast he was now returning home in 1842. From Alfred Shutes, Osborne Russell's companion, Williams obtained a description of the Salt Lake Valley and wrote this in the book that recounted his travels and which he published on his return home. Rev. Williams writes: Here [at Green River] I was told that the Eutaw Indians wish to have a missionary to come and settle amongst them, and to learn them to raise grain. I am of the opinion, that on the east side of Big Salt Lake, that Bear River empties into, would be a great place to establish a mission, and well calculated for raising all kinds of grain. It is good, rich land, a well watered and healthy country. Fish and fowls are very plenty. A beautiful prairie, about one hundred miles long, lies between the lake and the mountain. The plains are covered with green grass all winter, and well calculated for raising stock. Some pines on the mountains, and cotton wood along the creeks and rivers that flow into the lake. There is plenty of salt on the edges of the lake. It is about two hundred and fifty miles in circumference, and lies in 40° north latitude.24 How interesting that this description should appear in a book published at Cincinnati in 1843. I wonder if any of the Mormon pioneers ever saw that notable little book. It was available three years before they left Nauvoo. We know that Fremont's book, published in 1845, was studied by the Mormons, but I have found no evidence that they saw Williams's book. "Ibid., 124-25. 24 LeRoy R. and Ann W. Hafen (eds.), To the Rockies and Oregon, 1839-1842 (Glendale, 1955), 269.


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QUARTERLY

Well, so much for the Mountain Men. Some say they left no impress upon the West, for most of them had left this territory before permanent settlements were made in Utah. But are not the men historic who first explore a country and make known its features, even though they do not make homesteads, open mines, or found cities? Fur men made the paths that became our highways, traced out the passable canyons, and revealed the habitable valleys. They were the true trail blazers of Utah. Beside the beaver streams in which they waded and set their steel-jawed traps, now stretch our green farms and blossoming orchards. From their campfire ashes have sprung our cities.



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The first page and an advertising sheet of the first issue of the Salt Lake City Beobachter, August, 1890. Published lor fortyfive years, the paper reflected the assimilation of the German immigrant into his new cultural environment.

THE

SALT

LAKE

MIRROR

OF

CITY AN

BEOBACHTER:

IMMIGRATION

By Thomas L. Broadbent*

When the Salt Lake City Beobachter rolled from the press for the last time on October 3, 1935, a journalistic enterprise of almost forty-five years came to an end. The demise of this German language weekly suggests a twofold story of journalistic endeavor and of the unusual assimilation of an immigrant people. The background of the story is the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — more commonly known as the Mormon Church — with its vigorous missionary system designed to gather converts to "Zion," Utah's Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Particular success was achieved in England and the northern countries of the European continent. From the middle of the nineteenth century the flow of convert-immigrants1 increased until by 1890, isolated from seaports and industrial centers though it was, the territory of Utah could boast 2,121 foreign-born Germans, 117 Austrians, and 1,336 Swiss, * Dr. Broadbent, formerly on the faculty of the University of Utah, is dean of students at the University of California, Riverside, California. 1 There is no evidence that this movement of converts to America was in any way connected with the abortive revolution of 1848 which resulted in an emigration of Germans to America in large numbers.


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a number destined to increase significantly during the next two decades.2 While a great many of the newcomers settled in Salt Lake City, considerable numbers were soon found throughout rural Utah, in Idaho, and in Wyoming where, congregating in many communities, they rapidly became active participants and leaders in civic as well as religious affairs. PREDECESSORS A Scandinavian press was already well established3 when in 1881 a convert named Goebel, publisher and printer by trade, founded the Salt Lake City Anzeiger, which was destined to quick death after three numbers because of the high cost of newsprint and insufficient capital backing. A second attempt to supply the German "saints" with a newspaper in their mother tongue was the Mormon Anzeiger, appearing — in German type which Goebel had been unable to procure — on August 26, 1882. The publisher, Carl Lynn, a "convert from the east," likewise fell victim to financial difficulties and gave up after four numbers.4 Eight years passed before Dr. Joseph Walter Dietrich, "former Catholic priest in Bohemia" and also a convert, tried his hand in the spring of 1890 with the Intelligenz-Blatt. If we may rely on die statements of the paper itself, it was immediately successful, being sold "in offices, hotels, restaurants, saloons, stores and private homes" of the area. It also found subscribers in Kansas City, Cincinnati, San Francisco, and New York, and emigration agents and editors of the most important journals of Europe received copies.5 The publisher availed himself of the counsel of an advisory committee headed by Dr. Karl G. Maeser, prominent convert scholar and educator whose name looms large in Utah's educational and cultural history.6 Through ten numbers Dietrich guided the fledgling weekly, increasing the circulation to 2 U.S. Bureau of the Census, 16th Census of the United States: 1940. Population, Vol. II, Part 7, Table 15. "Foreign-born white, 1910-1940, and Total Foreign-born, 18501900 by country of Birth for the State." "Cf. William Mulder, "Utah's Nordic-Language Press: Aspect and Instrument of Immigrant Culture" (Master's Thesis, University of Utah, 1947). "Salt Lake City Beobachter, December 12, 1914. This number contains an account of the predecessors of the Beobachter and a note on the editors of that paper to date. 5 Intelligenz-Blatt, June 14, 1890. Complete files of the Beobachter and of the Intelligenz-Blatt are preserved in the office of the Church Historian, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah. "Dr. Maeser was the first president of Brigham Young Academy (now University), Provo, Utah.


SALT LAKE CITY

BEOBACHTER

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something over two thousand before he retired from the field because of illness. Two weeks after the discontinuance of the Intelligenz-Blatt, its successor appeared on August 9, 1890. Its masthead read: "Der Salt Lake City Beobachter — A German Organ for the Region of the American Rocky Mountains." Basically, the history of the Beobachter falls into three periods; these in turn reflect corresponding eras in the assimilation of the German speaking saints. The first, from 1890 until the outbreak of World War I, is a continuation of a transition process which had begun with the influx of German speaking converts three decades earlier. The second, essentially the war period with its aftermath of adjustment, is a time of testing by fire and of consolidation of loyalties. The third, beginning with die establishment of "The Associated Newspapers" in 1923, marks the transition from newspaper to religious journal and mirrors the completion of the assimilative process. T H E EARLY PERIOD The tone and content in the early period were established by the first publisher, owner, and editor, Joseph Harvey Ward. A native American, Ward had served as missionary to Germany and more recently as business manager of the Intelligenz-Blatt under Dietrich. For assistance he called on converts F. W. and Edward Schonfelt and a

Karl G. Maeser (1828-1901). Prominent educator, served in an advisory capacity to an early foreign language newspaper.

Andrew jenson (1850-1941). Church Historian and member of the board of foreign language papers in the later years.


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UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

certain "Professor von Haag." Financially, he subsidized the enterprise from other businesses. Whatever its problems, the paper was on a sound enough footing that it survived Ward's death in July, 1905, without missing a single number. Gustav F. Buschmann (later Bushman), compositor and assistant to Ward, served as interim editor until November, when there was announced the formation of the Beobachter Publishing Company. Capitalized for $2,500.00, shares were advertised at one dollar par value with controlling interest held by the church. A board of directors was elected by "die Prasidentschaft," presumably the presidency of the church, and in the October general conference of the membership of the church, Hugh J. Cannon was sustained by vote as president of the board, Rulon S. Wells as vice-president, and Arnold H. Schulthess as editor and business manager. Buschmann was retained as compositor and assistant. The Beobachter now began a long period without change of management and without competition.7 There is no evidence of internal disharmony or of interference by the supervisory board8 until after World War I, a development which is treated later on. The early numbers of the Beobachter are so much like its predecessor that it is difficult to distinguish between the two except for the masthead, although examination reveals that Ward excludes the advertisements for liquor, tobacco, the saloons, and die beerhalls regularly carried by the Intelligenz-Blatt.9 By 1891 the page size is increased by one fourth to make room for a seventh column, and by 1900 the number of pages advances from six to eight. Internal changes are subtle, reflecting the gradual Americanization of the immigrant. The reader senses a strongly defensive attitude during 1890 and 1891 as the newcomers find themselves caught up in the bitterness of the struggle for political, social, and economic supremacy between two powerful local parties.10 In spite of its announced neutrality, the 7 Beobachter, March 8, 1901, mentions a Utah Staats-Zeitung, "gewohnlich SchnappsZeitung genannt." Not extant. October 30, 1912, carries an editorial "Nachruf" (obituary) offering condolences to the Utah Freie Presse whose one issue of October 18 was never distributed. Not extant. 8 In contrast compare the fate of the Koirespondenten, constantly in conflict with, and opposed by the church, culminating in the excommunication of the editor, Otto Rydman. Mulder, op. cit., 52. ' Only one such advertisement appears in the Beobachter, a quarter page purchased by the Fred J. Kiesel and Company, wholesale grocers of Ogden, which had appeared in the Intelligenz-Blatt and continues through five numbers of the Beobachter. Occasionally, e.g., on September 13, 1890, a small drugstore advertisement mentions "cigars, perfumes and the best of liqueurs for medicinal purposes." 10 Cf. G. Homer Durham, "The Development of Political Parties in Utah: the First Phase,' Utah Humanities Review, I (April, 1947), 122-33.


SALT

LAKE CITY

BEOBACHTER

333

Samples of cartoons appearing in the fictional Hans Besenstiel's series of letters to the editor haranguing the Liberal party. Beobachter illustrations courtesy Historian's Office, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Beobachter inevitably sides with the Peoples' party, supported by the church and the Deseret News against the Liberal party, supported by the "Gentiles" and the Salt Lake Tribune. The Intelligenz-Blatt had carried plea after plea for tolerance, understanding and acceptance of new people and new concepts into the American culture. Typical is an editorial appearing in what was to be the last number. "The contributions of all immigrant groups must be preserved, their national cultures respected if the United States is not to fall victim to the evils of nationalistic pride in its most evil form. . . . The airstreams . . . now carry a poisonous breath in this respect, we mean the hate against everything which is German and which is especially stirred up in the coarsest manner by many newspapers. . . ." a l Ward further suggests the problem in defining the purpose of his paper. His objectives are "not to favor a special clique, for that we are too honorable — too German — but rather to favor a party, not religious or political, but one of the heart, of the conscience; to warn the new arrival not to fall into the snare of the trapper, but to examine everything for himself." "We must," he concludes, "take up the cause of the oppressed, discover injustice, and illuminate the right." {Beobachter, August 9,1890). "Intelligenz-Blatt, July 26, 1890.


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The Beobachter takes the field against the Liberal party very directly in a series of letters to the editor from a fictional "Hans Besenstiel." 12 Highly exaggerated in their satire, extremely earthy in their humor, these letters strike blow after satirical blow at die party and its philosophy. Free of die need to maintain the neutrality so strongly asserted editorially, "Besenstiel" pokes fun unmercifully at his opponents through his fabulous characters "Brother Saufer" (toper), "Friend Schnapps" (brandy), "Pastor Heiligschein" (sanctimoniousness), "Brother Schlaufink" (crafty bird), and the right honorable "Herr Ex-Baron Ohnegeld (impecunious) von Carpetsack." He is not above an occasional dig at his German compatriots, in a good-natured way, from the security of his "Schatshugel" (treasure hill) and "Paradieshalle." By 1892 the local parties had been supplanted by die national Republican and Democratic parties, which cut across church, economic, and cultural lines, and the feud, if it did not die out entirely, at least became less acrimonious. A calmer, less defensive tone is noticeable in the Beobachter and obtains generally until the rumbles of World War I begin to be heard. Even "Besenstiel," having no real targets for his barbs, disappears in early 1892. Meanwhile, with emotional roots still clinging to die soil of die fatherland, the converts maintained an active interest in "home" and countrymen. Particularly was this true since many of them were isolated from loved ones, not only by geography, but by the bitterness toward the new religion of those left behind, and the realization that the move was permanent. How eagerly they must have looked forward to the "Notes From Home" which occupied so much space. Reports of floods, fires and all sorts of natural catastrophes, celebrations, festivals of singing clubs, notes on the travels, illnesses, successes and local appearances of celebrities all take a prominent place. Stories of crimes committed, criminals apprehended, and court processes vie for space with labor news and discussions of union problems. A typical issue, for example, carries reports from twenty provinces and the free cities. Under each province are date lines from cities and towns too numerous to list. Much space is given to political and social matters of the "old country." A continuing concern for the affairs of Bismarck and the Kaisers runs through the numbers of the first two decades, with the 12 See T. L. Broadbent, "Hans Besenstiel: Immigrant Satirist," Western Humanities Review, XII (Spring, 1958), 151-57.


SALT

LAKE CITY

BEOBACHTER

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sympathies generally going to Bismarck. Thus, in 1890, the Kaiser, as King of Prussia, is reported trying to reorganize the Prussian House of Lords (Herrenhaus) to eliminate opposition to his social reforms. It will be impossible, the editor thinks, because of the vested interests of the rich nobility. In 1891 the danger of the Russian-French alliance is pointed out in a story which emphasizes that for years Bismarck, now deposed, has prevented such an alliance through astute statesmanship. "One wonders whether the young Kaiser will now finally decide to call to Bismarck for help, and if it finally happens, will it be too late?" A poem by Kaiser Wilhelm I is published in 1893 with the notation that it contains his political philosophy, and as late as 1914 a sermon given by the Kaiser in 1900 replaces the usual article in the church column. While there is evident on die one hand a growing insistence on political participation and equality in the new country,13 there is on the other a sentimental, almost stubborn loyalty to the monarchial system which even the mores of the new land cannot quickly replace. If the Beobachter reflects an understandable attachment to the fadierland, it reflects equally a cultural gregariousness among the immigrants themselves. Notes from countrymen scattered throughout the region are provided by letters and by reports from businessmen and church leaders returning from visits to outlying districts. Germans are taking the lead in Eureka, a mining community where they now constitute two thirds of the population; a Swiss immigrant has been made bishop in Midway; church services in German are being held in Logan, Providence, Midway, Provo, Payson, Santa Clara, Willard City, and Park Valley in Utah and in Paris, Montpelier, Bern, Rexburg, and Thomas Fork in Idaho. News stories and advertisements proclaim the activities of a great variety of organizations: the German Dramatic Society, the Schiller Lodge, the Goethe Lodge, the Swiss Colony, the Swiss Club, the Gymnastic Society and many more. As one reads through the numbers of this early period one visualizes the social activities centered largely around the church and more specifically around the closely knit German speaking church community. Many of the organizations went beyond the purely social, maintaining welfare, insurance and burial funds. In addition to providing a contact with the fatherland and countrymen, the Beobachter provided a continuing contact with the church 13 Beobachter, November 15, 1890, in an editorial, "German-Americans in Congress," decries the refusal of German-Americans to be candidates for congressional office. Not since Carl Schurz in 1875 has there been a German-American senator.


336

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

and its doctrines. Almost without exception the German immigrants were literate, although few of them knew the English language upon arrival in Zion. From the beginning, each number carried sermons of church leaders in German translation, discussions of theology, and news of ' qppenings and developments within the chorch. Converts, new in tne faith and in Zion because of their acceptance of it, were fed liberally with spiritual food along with news and entertainment. As will be seen, the emphasis on religious material became decidedly stronger in later years. In the area of entertainment the Beobachter played an important role, especially before the immigrants had mastered English, but continuing throughout the life of the newspaper. A lively feuilleton section with its "Kaleideskop" presents a great assortment of items. Short stories by local writers and by authors in Germany appear and some novels in installments. One finds poetry, much of it by first class German poets, such as Schiller's "Die Worte des Glaubens" (Words of Faith), Hermann Lingg's "Eine Arme Mutter" (A Poor Mother), Friedrich Holderlin's, "Naturbetrachtung" (Observation of Nature), and "Krieg und Frieden" (War and Peace) by Liliencron. There is a good-natured review of Mark Twain's essay, "The Awful German Language," an article on "Shakespeare und die Frauen" (Shakespeare's Women), and a eulogy of Edwin Booth as "the greatest actor of America." Concerned for the cultural level of its readers, the'Beobachter prints a warning against the "Dime Novellen" which are, it inform- its readers, partly translations from the French and partly from the Russian — "novels of the most sensual type." Each issue during the early period regales its readers with jokes and bits of satirical humor.14 Nor is the practical aspect neglected. One reads how to restore oil paintings, how to polish bronze figurines (were art treasures part of the precious cargo brought to the new home?), how to protect enamel cookingware, how to prepare clay for the making of jugs and dishes, how to protect chickens against the pips. A fascinating note explains the use of coffee as a disinfectant "much less offensive than carbolic acid or chlorine in hospital rooms." In a day before mechanical re" Examples: "I hope you realize that you have in my daughter a noble, generous girl." "Certainly and I hope she inherited these traits from her father." "After considerable experimentation, the horses of the French cavalry are to be shod with paper. Twenty years ago France already had horses which appeared only on paper." (Frankreich hatte schon vor 20 Jahren Pferde, die (bloss) auf dem Papiere erschienen). A satirical reference to the War of 1870 Physician: "You must be prepared for the worst regarding your wife." "You mean she has a chance of recovery?"


SALT LAKE CITY BEOBACHTER

337

frigeration, meat could be kept fresh for days by sprinkling it with ground coffee. That he might better understand the customs and traditions of his new country, the reader is invited to study its history in articles of a popular nature. He may read numerous discussions of t'-'! Revolutionary and Civil wars. The census is explained and he is encouraged to co-operate in making it complete. He is admonished to understand the true significance of the Fourth of July celebration and to participate wholeheartedly. The bewildering intricacies of the Electoral College System are analyzed, and he is urged to prepare himself for citizenship as rapidly as possible and to vote as soon as he can. Biographical sketches of Americans in literature and history call his attention to his cultural heritage; news and articles of local, national, and international nature vie for his interest. In the field of social problems the Beobachter consistently takes a firm stand. Without deviation and with great vigor it supports the franchise for women. The equality of all human beings demands they be given the vote; the contributions of women in professional fields justify it. Idaho, it is pointed out, has provided in the constitution submitted for admission to the Union that women shall have the vote in all elections dealing with the public schools. While that is a step in the right direction, it doesn't go far enough. (I, 7, September 20, 1890). When the question is raised in a Mediodist publication "Shall Women Preach?" the Beobachter answers, "if they want to, can anyone stop them, even the whole Methodist world?" (II, 45, November M, 1891). In the matter of capital versus labor, strong suspicion of capital and sympathy for labor show themselves. Note is taken, for example, of the net profit for the railroads of $2,087.00 per mile of track, "ihe railroads and this enormous wealth are in the hands of twenty men. "Already the railroads are stronger than the government," says the paper, "and the railroads have won every argument. It is enough to make one shudder with fear." (I, 5, September 6, 1890). Rockefeller, Gould, Huntington, Vanderbilt, and Stanford are typical of the fifty men who control the economic market and could, by manipulation, ruin the country. They are arousing the hate and rebellion of the workers. "In the old world these great fortunes are often looked upon as a benefit, since they are used in the industrial interest of the folk." (II, 14, April 11, 1891). When labor and capital came to grips, as, for example, in the strike of the English coal miners in 1912, the sympathies are uniformly on the side of labor. Paradoxically, the same number


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takes note of the fact that the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce is planning to publicize the opportunities of Utah to potential European emigrants. This, the Beobachter editorializes, would be a mistake. What Utah needs is capital and industry to make jobs for workers already here. Persecution of the Jews causes the Beobachter deep editorial concern. Regarding the persecution in Russia, for example, the editor exclaims, " 'Whom the Gods would destroy they first make blind.' The Czar doesn't see that in persecuting the Jews he is loosing forces which will eventually destroy him." (I, 7, September 20, 1890).15 Politically, as the local parties gave way to strong national ones, the German immigrants tended to become Republicans rather than Democrats, although by no means unanimously. The reasons are suggested by the Beobachter. Very few will deny that the Democratic party is the conservative, the Republican party the progressive, even radical one, advocating among other things full franchise for women, temperance in the use of alcohol, and (in the past) abolishment of slavery. Mormons, more liberal in their approach to social problems than their neighbors who so often criticize them, have long advocated these same progressive principles. "We know the Republican party is not perfect by far, but as long as it stands for progress, freedom and reform, we will support it." (II, 23, June 13, 1891). Perhaps less idealistic is the commendation by the Beobachter of Republican support for tariff for the protection of agriculture, cattle, wool, and silver. Tariff on sugar from Cuba is particularly important in view of the growing beet sugar industry in which German immigrants take particular pride, since the sugar factory at Lehi, Utah, was built after the pattern of German factories and was the first such factory west of die Mississippi.16 The Republican leanings of the Beobachter and its readers become especially clear during the presidential campaign of 1912. In spite of a claim of complete neutrality, in order not to give the "kickers" an opportunity to complain about church interference, Taft is supported because he "has made clear that big trusts must be controlled no matter how desirable they may be; he has stood up to Russia without offending her; he has sided with Utah's Senator Smoot in advocating the protective tariff so important to the west." " 15

Cf. Beobachter, January 17, 1890; June 20, 1891; October 17, 1891. '"Ibid., December 26, 1891, reports that the Lehi sugar factory has just closed after a season producing 1,250,000 pounds of sugar. " Reed Smoot, Republican Senator from Utah, 1902-1933, and a leading advocate of protective tariffs.


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Presaging a long period of anti-British sentiment is the vigor with which the Boer War is reported with all sympathy for the insurrectionists. England's prestige and influence will be significantly lowered as a result of this affair, predicts the editor. "The English have lied so much in this war that one can no longer believe them even when they occasionally tell the truth." Since this strong anti-British attitude continues until America's entry into World War I, one may speculate that it is a reflection of a comparable attitude in Germany during this period of intense competition between the two nations for colonies and industrial markets. One wonders whether there was any overt antipathy for the English converts in Zion. There is no internal evidence. On the matter of Utah's admission to the Union, surprisingly little is said in the Beobachter. The act making Utah a state was signed into law on January 4, 1896. A search of the numbers surrounding that date produces only two allusions to this event. On the tenth of January a one column, five-inch article lauds Utah's statehood and proclaims the forty-fifth star in the flag one deserving to be glorious and bright. On January 31 the editor offers one year's free subscription to the parents of the first child born in the new state after ten in the morning of January 4. Since the act was signed one day after the January 3 issue appeared with an entire week elapsing before another number came out, perhaps the news was "cold." In view of the foreign circulation and the dependence of so many local inhabitants on the Beobachter, the lack of editorial comment and extended news coverage is difficult to explain. If more attention is paid in this brief analysis to the non-news features of the publication, it is because the editorials and more subjective features most clearly show the personality of the paper and the immigrant. It should not be inferred that there was no coverage of local, national, and international events. A sampling of any number will show substantial numbers of column inches of objective reports.ls Indeed, a comparison through the years makes it clear that the amount of such news increases proportionately during the first two periods as the need for the "special interest features" decreases. That the paper carries, even though on a reduced scale, "Notes From Home" and an active feuilleton section right to the end attests to the continuing nostalgia of the readers for native land and language. " I n the earliest issues much of the local news was printed in German and English side by side, as a means of assisting the reader to learn the new language.


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WAR AND AFTERMATH The dual loyalty to native and adopted land caused die German immigrant no difficulty during the first decade of the twentieth century. If he followed his German sympathies and, taking the lead from his fadierland, became anti-British, he had many non-German colleagues. If he enjoyed the socials, the dramatic and choral performances, the religious meetings of his own language group, he was no different from the Swedish, the Danish, the Dutch or the Norwegians. His loyalties were not questioned, and he was accepted freely into the society of his church and his community. With the approach of the war, he, unlike the other immigrant groups, found himself faced widi unique problems which are abundantly reflected in the pages of the Beobachter. It is significant to note here that the issue of July 1, 1914, for the first time carries on the editorial page a box with the statement, "German Organ of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints." There is nothing to indicate change of control or of management. One must assume either that the church desired to be more closely identified with editorial policy for its own good reasons, or that die editor felt die need of the announced support of the church in the approaching crisis. The first editorial recognition of the possibility of war is found on July 29 in an editorial, "The European Volcano," which analyzes die Serbian-Austrian conflict and assesses the roles of the European nations. The editor fervently hopes the war can be avoided. But war was not to be avoided. The issue of August 5, 1914, carries a five column banner headline: "War Has Become a Fact." More important than the headlines — major and secondary — are an editorial and several articles justifying Germany's position. Because the editorial represents the opinions expressed throughout this issue and during the next two years, it is quoted here in full: The war just begun has brought a feeling of deepest sorrow to all people in the entire land, and most especially to the countrymen of those people who would gladly have avoided war but were drawn into it by unavoidable circumstances. Many newspapers express the opinion that Germany, as one of the greatest powers, might have prevented the outbreak. The London Times even says that Germany, without consideration of right or wrong, acted only in her own self interest. This is a most unjust criticism. Germany acted precisely in the manner demanded by right and justice and we believe


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every word of the Kaiser when he said in his last short public address: "We do not desire war, for we know what war means. If, however, our enemies force us to take up arms, then we are under obligation to protect our people and our rights, but our enemies shall learn in consequence what a war can mean for them. Now while our soldiers lend their arms to the Fatherland and raise their hearts in trust to God, may the rest of the folk go into the churches and pray to the Almighty to help us to victory." We gladly accept these words of our Kaiser as the genuine expression of his sentiments and every loyal German joins in his expressed wish that there be no war, but that if war must come, die Lord may support and protect them. May a permanent peace be not far from us. The next issue has two notes of importance. On page one under large headlines is the news that the German-United States cable has been cut and that all news will now have to come via France and England and will therefore be highly unreliable. Page two carries a report of a mass meeting held during the week and attended by over five hundred persons. The purposes of the meeting were to establish a German-American Relief Organization, to explore the best ways to explain the position of Germany to the American public, and to discover means of aiding the fatherland. From the meeting a telegram resolution went to the German Ambassador with assurances of all possible assistance. The program, reflecting the duality of loyalties — apparently not felt to be a conflict of loyalties — included the singing of "Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles," and "Die Wacht am Rhein" and the reading of two patriotic and rousing poems, "Auf dem Schlachtfeld" (On the Battlefield) and "Aufruf 1813" (Call to Arms 1813) by Korner, followed by a toast to President Wilson and the singing of the "Star Spangled Banner." Several speeches exhorted the audience to render all possible moral and financial aid to the fatherland. The German speaking saints, by publicly taking a united stand, called attention to themselves as a group and thus invited criticism which was not long in coming. The Beobachter supports the stand taken in the meeting and defends Germany against continuing castigation. To the reaction of horror, for example, which followed the German invasion of Belgium, the Beobachter points out that everything in war cannot be justified, and since the invasion has occurred, there


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can be little point in discussing justification. One can be sure, however, that the reports are not totally reliable. On August 26, 1914, in an editorial, "Must We Be Ashamed of Being Germans?" readers are reminded that only three weeks ago: . . . our friends and the press could not say enough good things about Germany, her schools, her social reforms, her cultural contributions, the superb organization of her government and army, the devotion of her people. Now this has changed. The American press has gone too far in placing blame and degradation on Germans. We have "taken it on both cheeks!" Now we must determine who our friends are, stand solidly together and in firmness prove that we are no different now than we were three weeks ago. Only in this way can we maintain our dignity and help our country. When Germany introduced bombing from the air by the Zeppelin attack on Antwerp, the Beobachter counters the criticism by pointing out that Germany, Russia, and France were not signatories to the agreement of the Third Peace Congress at the Hague which prohibited the use of bombs from the air. It is easy, the paper points out, to understand why the other fifteen nations joined in such an agreement, since they had no means of using such weapons, which admittedly are very dangerous. "He who does not wish to be torn to pieces by a lion should not tantalize the lion." (XXV, 35, September 2,1914). To refute the constantly appearing stories of German atrocities, the Beobachter publishes a statement signed by five journalists, Roger Lewis of the Associated Press, Irvin S. Cobb of the Public Ledger, Harry Hansen of the Chicago Daily News, James O'D. Bennett and John T. M'Cutcheon of the Chicago Tribune all of whom deny the atrocity stories. They have, according to their published statement, accompanied the German army for two weeks in an advance of over one hundred miles and have found no evidence of the reported acts. On the contrary, German soldiers are exemplary in their actions. (XXV, 36, September 9,1914). There is a constant flow of letters to the editor answering the angry attacks of the anti-German press. Gradually, however, defensive aggressiveness gives way to more impersonal notes on the progress of the war, to encouragement for Germans in America to hold fast to their ideals. Frequent articles covering regulations and rules of personal conduct and explanations of policy and procedure replace the militant editorials and articles of early war days.


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That the paper itself was having difficulty can be imagined; indeed one wonders that it continued publication without missing a single number throughout the war years. Canada, for example, seemed not to be permitting delivery of the Beobachter, according to the editor who offered one month's subscription to all Canadian subscribers who responded with information as to whether they were receiving their copies. Mailings to Europe ceased altogether. As America's entry into the war approached, a new note appears which undoubtedly reflects the concern of the readers. Significant of the general feeling is an analysis of Wilson's peace proposals which includes a provision for a League of Nations. Germany, says the paper, offered essentially the same things in her peace proposals of January. "Peace will be preserved not through paper treaties but through a strong power group with Germany at the head. Europe will then have lasting peace . . . and we [in America] will enjoy the blessings of this peace without giving up the traditions of a hundred years and without subjecting ourselves to the danger of international involvement." (XXVIII, 5, January 31, 1917). By March, America had adopted a policy of "armed neutrality." This is to be regretted, says the Beobachter, but it need not lead to war. By the end of March, America's entry seems inevitable. Here, now, is a crisis. Under a large reproduction of the American flag there appears an announcement of a meeting to be presided over by Governor Simon Bamberger, to discuss the position of German-Americans in the present emergency. Without a dissenting vote the following resolution was adopted at the meeting on March 29 (America declared war on April 6): As loyal American citizens of German and Austrian birth or extraction, assembled in mass meeting at the auditorium in Salt Lake City this 29th day of March 1917, we have met to reaffirm our allegiance to the American flag and the American government. While with every other good citizen we deplore the state of war which is devastating and depopulating Europe, and deprecate any necessity which may force this country to participate in that war, we unreservedly pledge our support to the United States government in such an emergency. Should war be declared against any foreign power or potentate for the protection of American rights and lives we hereby Resolve to do our part as citizens of the republic whose liberty and opportunities we have enjoyed and whose hospi-


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tality has sheltered us when we sought refuge from oppression and injustice in other lands; and we further Resolve that we neither owe nor consider any higher national allegiance or obligation than that which we hereby acknowledge to the United States; and we further Resolve to expose and defeat by every means within our power, any and every effort made, either secretly or openly, by citizens or foreigners, to embarrass, hinder, injure or betray this government, its officials, its army or navy, in carrying on war against any foreign foe whatsoever, and we Resolve further that we stand ready and willing to do our full duty as citizens in war as in peace, and to fight, if need be, for the defense of American rights and the glory of the American flag; and we Resolve that a copy of these resolutions be forwarded by the governor of the state to the president of this republic as a pledge of support from loyal citizens of Utah, whose ties of birth, blood and recollection are not strong enough to hold against the bonds of duty, gratitude and patriotism which bind us to the land of our adoption. Faithfully the Beobachter adheres to this declaration of loyalty throughout the remainder of the war. Stubbornly, and with dignity, however, it encourages in its readers pride in national extraction and refusal to deny one's ancestry. It does not accept unjust personal accusation of itself or its readers meekly. And so the war years passed. Following a heart attack suffered by Editor Schulthess, Hermann Grether succeeded to the editorship on the fourth of April, 1918. On the second of May a minor but significant change appears on the masthead. To the statement "Official Organ of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" there is added "American in Everything but the Language." The feuilleton and "Notes From Home" — almost exclusively from Switzerland — continue. News stories are factual and parallel to those in the English language press. At last came the armistice. Perhaps the news was considered old when the November 14 issue appeared, but to the writer who vividly remembers the wild celebrations with which the false and then the genuine armistice were greeted, the Beobachter report seems very subdued indeed. With no unusual headlines, a factual and very conservative report of the signing itself accompanies a fervent hope that Wilson's plea that "the enemy be treated without vengeance and harsh-


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ness" be accepted by all allied peoples. News of the armistice shares the front page with a quarter-page picture of Joseph F. Smith, president of the church, and a statement honoring him on his eightieth birthday, a report of the eighty-ninth conference of the church and about one eighth of a page devoted to Swiss humor. In the next issue, with the exception of a short poem "Friede" (Peace), there is not a single reference either to the war or to the armistice and subsequent problems. Perhaps the editor and the readers were sufficiently war-weary to let the English language papers carry the burden. Perhaps, too, readers of the Beobachter no longer relied on the German language organ for news except in those areas in which they could respond sentimentally as Germans. Perhaps, too, the transformation of the Beobachter to a religious organ of the church had begun. Not until well after the war did the first internal conflict in the history of the paper occur. In the issue of October 7,1920, there appears a bitter letter headed "Farewell to our Subscribers and Friends" signed by Hermann Grether, editor, and G. F. Bushman, compositor, both of whom had been asked to resign. An editorial of September 9, "The Real Campaign Questions," had opposed vigorously America's entry into the League of Nations, had attacked the motives of England and France in urging American entry, and had staunchly supported the candidacy of Harding over Cox for the presidency. Now, argues the letter, because Rulon S. Wells, chairman of the controlling board of the Beobachter, is a Democrat and pro League of Nations, Grether and Bushman have been asked to resign. A long and vituperative report of a conference between Wells and Bushman ends with a "bill of particulars": the political articles and especially the editorial are responsible for the request for resignations; the request was incited by "Kickers" such as brothers Bode, Sentker, Wolters, and Willy Wehler, who acted out of personal animosity and ambition and without familiarity with the paper; the Beobachter has been very successful under the direction of the two men involved as constantly increasing subscriptions will testify; Grether was not given a hearing and was most unjustly treated; there is no truth in the assertion that "many German-Americans have demanded a change." In a signed article Willy Wehler, the new editor, replies three weeks later. His reply may be summarized as follows: he regrets having to reply at all, but the misstatement of facts, the use of names and the claim that the removal was for political reasons make it mandatory; political reasons had nothing to do with the resignations; they were,


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in fact, inevitable since much of the content, particularly personal letters and articles, had long been in such bad taste that they had brought ridicule on the paper and on the official sponsor, the church; the main purpose of the Beobachter, to proclaim the Gospel in the German language and to present news and articles of all types which might interest all readers without offending any one group, has been subverted; the editor, literarily impotent, has abdicated his editorial responsibilities to his compositor who has proved himself too lazy and inefficient to perform satisfactorily; Bushman, for his part, has used the paper to further his own personal political ends, hoping perhaps to win for himself a little office (Postchen). Finally, Wehler reminds his readers, Bushman was already of questionable reputation among Germans because he was ashamed of his people and his native land during the war and snubbed them by Americanizing his name from Buschmann to Bushman. A letter in the same issue from Rulon S. Wells maintains that the political articles at issue were indeed slanted and unacceptable for an official church paper which represents those of both parties. He insists, however, that this is not the reason for the dismissal and asserts that both men knew of the dismissal and the reasons well in advance. Finally, in the same issue, there appears a warm letter of recommendation for the new editor from Schulthess who assures the readers that Wehler is an able and a good man and that Schulthess would have invited him to serve as an assistant long since had there been sufficient funds. One is led by this remark to wonder why Wehler rather than Grether was not selected to succeed Schulthess. Thus ends the conflict. It is symptomatic of a factionalism which seems to have developed within the German-American population as a result of the pressures of the war and the post-war adjustment. It is indicative in a corollary manner of the progressing assimilation and the subsequent dissolution of the homogeneity of the immigrant community. There is also implicit in the controversy a more active and direct concern on the part of the church for editorial policy, a more careful supervision than had previously existed, presaging the final stage in the Beobachter s history. TRANSITION AND FINALE By late 1923 the days of the weekly as it was originally conceived were numbered. The immigration act of 1921 had virtually stopped the flow of converts to Zion. In fact, Zion was not redefined as "The Pure


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in Heart," and converts were urged to remain in their own countries to build up the church throughout the world. Immigrants no longer depended on the foreign language press for news and entertainment and had largely been assimilated into the cultural, business, social, and religious life of the cities and towns. First and second generation American descendants had no real ties with the old country and only a filial attachment to its language and culture. Some did not even speak or read German. Geographically and culturally the German speaking community of 1890 and 1891 had ceased to exist. Against this background there was established in 1923 the Associated Newspapers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints with a common "executive editor" for all church-owned foreign language papers.19 By announced policy all were to have the same content with the exception of some local (homeland) news items. An editorial committee was organized with one representative of each paper "for the purpose of overseeing the content and for general participation in the publication." The content was to consist principally "of things related to the church, sermons, editorials on religious themes, translations of church literature, to be printed in octavo to facilitate its eventual binding into a book." At a series of meetings held during May, Adam L. Peterson was named as manager and J. M. Sjodahl as executive editor under the direction of the editorial board. For the Beobachter, Willy Wehler was retained as editor. This essentially marks the end of the Beobachter as a newspaper and makes it admittedly a church journal. However, the change is one of emphasis rather than of total deletion of traditional material. While the front page is now devoted almost entirely to church material, the inner pages continue to carry the feuilleton section, notes from home and news coverage of important events, e.g., the English-American war debt conferences, the recognition of Russia, and the national and international ramifications of the depression of 1929. Hitler and the National-Socialist movement are given editorial and factual coverage beginning in 1933. In January there is printed without editorial comment a story of Hitler's demands for German repudiation of reparations and war debts. His appointment as Chancellor is reported, again without editorial comment, in February. A week later a lengthy article analyzes the movement: On the positive side stands the abolishment of the class system under Hitler, a point which must have 19

lander.

Salt Lake City Beobachter, the Bikuben, the Utah-Posten, and the Utah-Neder-


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seemed of considerable consequence to the immigrants now so accustomed to the democratic pattern; on the negative side is stressed the fact that the movement is anti-Christian in concept and violates all Christian principles. In successive months strong anti-Hitler editorials appear aimed primarily at the Jewish persecution and the violation of treaties and agreements. How, the editor asks, can the German people let themselves be deceived just at a time when the German Republic is winning world respect and through patience and hard work is bringing about an orderly abandonment by the allied nations of the most objectionable features of the Treaty of Versailles? Since the readers of the Beobachter were primarily church members, and since, as has already been suggested, the process of assimilation was by this time well advanced, it may be fairly assumed that the position of the Beobachter does not do violence to the attitude of this particular group of German-Americans. The identity of the various editors after 1923 is most difficult to ascertain. Following Wehler the names of Adam L. Peterson, Reinhold Stoff, Jean Wunderlich, and John S. Hansen appear. That the last editor was Edward Hoffman is confirmed by his letter of farewell in which he joins others on October 3, 1935, in announcing cessation of publication. Dr. John A. Widtsoe, chairman of the Committee of the Associated Papers, outlines the reasons for discontinuing all foreign language papers owned by the church: restrictions on immigration, death of the older generation, increase in other news agencies and increase in the relative costs of publishing and the establishment in the various countries of mission publications fulfilling the proselyting functions previously performed by the Utah foreign language press. To these, Executive Editor Sjodahl adds that die opposition to the church at home and abroad has decreased to the point where a foreign language press is not needed to present a defense against misunderstanding, lies, and opposition which, parenthetically, suggests a provocative parallel between the final acceptance of the convert immigrant into his new cultural environment and the assimilation of the church into the broader world community. Finally, a farewell letter by Andrew Jenson, Church Historian and a member of the board, reviews briefly the life of the foreign language weeklies. He has, he announces, saved complete files of all of them, a fact for which this writer is infinitely grateful, for this file of the Beobachter is, so far as can be learned, the only complete file in existence.


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CONCLUSION Writing in 1923 of the immigrant press in America, the eminent sociologist and specialist on immigrant matters, Mr. Robert E. Park, stated, "The character and contents of the papers published in these immigrant areas are an index . . . to the characteristic interests, ambitions, and social attitudes of the people who read them. In this way it is possible, not merely to define different immigrant areas, but to sketch in a rough way,their moral,psychological,and political complexions."20 This is the really significant aspect of the Beobachter, for in spite of the fascinating journalistic history of the paper itself with its growth, its amazing continuity through the emotional violence of the first world war, with its evolution from newspaper to religious journal, it is the picture of an immigration seen through its pages that is of primary importance. Here is a gathering based entirely on religious conversion. Yet unlike some other religious congregations which have sought refuge in this land but have held fast to customs of another world and another time and have maintained group identity as a religious principle, this one made no attempt to preserve its ethnic identity but rather strove for acceptance into die cosmopolitan group. On the other hand, neidier did these converts fit into the usual pattern of immigration described by Mr. Park. According to this pattern, most immigrant groups in this country are colonies of a town, a city, or a restricted area in the old country which has been struck by the emigration fever and has lost substantial numbers to its colony in the new world. By and large, he asserts, these newcomers have been peasants, thus posing special problems in adjustment and assimilation and making them particularly dependent on, and vulnerable to, leadership — good or bad — from within the group. Because they have come from such a low social and economic level, they have been either totally illiterate or on such a low plane of literacy that unscrupulous countrymen have all too frequently used the foreign language press, written down in level, to control them and often to exploit them. A closely knit language community has been carefully encouraged as a social refuge and is the only agency outside the public schools which has helped in the assimilation into the new

20 Robert E. Park, Society (Glenco, 111., 1955), 153. Reprinted from American Review, HI (March-April, 1925), 143-52. "Ibid., 152-75.


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Looked at through the pages of the Beobachter and against these conclusions, the German immigrant group in the Rocky Mountain area stands out as a notable exception. Gathered literally one from a village and one from a family, they in no sense represent the type of colonization described by Park. In general, they came from the middle or upper classes and almost without exception were literate and capable of exerting independent judgment. While there were leaders within the group, the Mormon immigrant looked primarily to the established leaders of the church for guidance in temporal as well as spiritual matters. The church, while giving full recognition to the cultural contributions of its foreign-born members and encouraging them in the preservation of valued traditions and language ties, by the very nature of its program and because of the cosmopolitan nature of its membership, inevitably provided a climate conducive to complete assimilation. For if the church encouraged the holding of meetings in the mother tongue, it also insisted that its members of all language origins participate together in the "regular" services, further that German, Swede, Dutchman, Norwegian, and Englishman work and worship together as brethren. Finally, the Beobachter, far from being an instrument of exploitation and control, adhered to its policy, immediately announced, to "sell eyewater that will be good for the eyes of the people," particularly to open the eyes of the newcomer to the schemes of those who would try to take advantage of him. It represented the German-American viewpoint faithfully, reflecting the honest emotional struggles of the expatriate as an "enemy" citizen in a country at war. It served the needs of its readers for news, inspiration, entertainment, and education, and it adapted itself to the changing needs of its readers as they moved gradually but inexorably toward their desired goal of complete absorption into the cultural, economic, and social structure of America as they had into the religious structure of their church. The very demise of the Beobachter is both indication of the thoroughness of the assimilation and the final paragraph in the story.




"heir wagons loaded with produce, ped. Hers from Utah marketed their goods in [the Nevada mining camps which were almost wholly dependent upon the Morimon settlements for the necessities of life.

EARLY

DAY T R A D I N G

NEVADA

MINING

WITH

THE

CAMPS

By William R. Palmer*

In 1861, '62, and '66 the United States government took three ribs from die then gigantic territory of Utah and created the state of Nevada. The operation, like an appendectomy, brought relief from the pains and ulcers which constantly afflicted Utah's extreme right side. Something there was always festering and in eruption, and the people were resentful of every restraint or legal poultice that was imposed from the Mormon capital city of Great Salt Lake. They wanted freedom, not government — freedom to do> their own hangings and to decide titles to mining claims with the shotgun. The government had its hands too full with the Civil War and its adjustments to give much supervision or guidance to the vigorous, selfwilled new state, and the state did little or nothing to regulate its turbulent citizenry. The shotgun was for years the law of the land, and Nevada became at once the capital of the "Wild and Woolly West." * Dr. Palmer is a former member of the Board of Trustees of the Society. An authority on various phases of Utah history and Indian life, lore and legend, he has long been known as the "Dean of Southern Utah's Historians." The lecture here printed was delivered on May 9, 1958, at the second meeting in the bimonthly lecture series sponsored by the Utah State Historical Society.


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The chief purpose of creating this new state was to save Virginia City, with its fabulous Comstock Lode, for the Union. The move amply justified itself, for the silver of Virginia City went far toward paying the Civil War debt. Thus, Nevada, through its first three or four decades, could hardly be called a law-abiding state. Through the 1860's and on down to 1900, it was overrun with cattle rustlers, gamblers, thieves, robbers, soldiers of fortune, white slavers, and fugitives from justice from all the odier states. Mormons from Utah were regarded as legitimate prey, and there was, in fact, little law for the protection of any travelers. This was especially true in the southern mining areas where Mormon produce peddlers went to market their surplus farm products. The last large slice of Utah (1868) added to Nevada brought the joint state line to its present location, and that line became at once the line of cleavage between two violently clashing ideologies — the Mormons in Utah and the law-disdaining wild western inhabitants of Nevada. Between them, frictions were inevitable and clashes frequent. Still, they could not build impenetrable walls between themselves, for they were mutually dependent in a very real and vital way upon each other. The Mormon settlements of southern Utah produced surpluses of farm commodities — grain, flour, hay, meats, dairy supplies, lumber, shingles, mine timbers, molasses, wine, and fruits — and the only available practical market for these commodities was the Nevada mining camps. Utah had almost everything needful but money, and of this there was always a desperate shortage. Nevada, on the odier hand, had plenty of money, but was short of the common necessities such as hay, grain, and other food supplies. And so, with only an imaginary line between them, Nevada was lacking everything but cash, and Utah, with a surplus of foods and other supplies, always was desperately in need of money. Yet, with this ideal economic situation of rich cash markets on one side of the line and a surplus of the needed supplies on the other, Mormon peddlers crossed that line at their peril. They could take their loads into Nevada with safety, but coming back with money was always an anxious hazard. Somewhere along the lonely road in the thick cedars, or in some rocky winding canyon, many of them were held up at gunpoint and robbed. Enough peddlers, however, made it through in safety, and the need for money in Utah was so pressing that men were always ready to take the chance.


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Pioche was the hungriest camp within the range of southern Utah, and peddlers from Millard, Beaver, Iron, and Washington counties went there. Usually they did well in spite of the risks. The rich ores of Pioche were discovered as early as 1864, but the camp developed rather slowly at first. About 1870 a Frenchman named F. L. A. Pioche came in and began development in earnest. The camp was named for him. Soon two other men, William Raymond and John Ely, came in and began working the Raymond-Ely section of the camp. Outlaws, gamblers, saloon men, claim jumpers, and bad men and wild women of every kind swarmed in, and Pioche soon became the wildest, bloodiest, most lawless camp in the whole west — rivaling even Tombstone in Arizona. Murders were almost weekly occurrences, and it was a dull week when there were no killings. Most of these were in the saloons and gambling dens, and Pioche still boasts that it had seventytwo killings before there was one natural death. Its "Boot Hill Cemetery" holds nearly a hundred graves (exact number not known), and the names of many of those who fill them were never known. As stated before, the Nevada mining camps were the market places for about all the surplus commodities produced by the southern Utah farmers. Taking hay, grain, flour, hams, bacon, poultry, young pigs, lumber, shingles, mine timbers, butter, cheese, and many other things to supply Pioche, Bullionville, and other camps, produce peddlers were on the road almost constantly. For a time the camps welcomed the Utah men, bought their produce, and treated them fairly — the dangers came after they had sold out and started home. Prices in the main were satisfactory, and the Utah producers appreciated having such a good cash market for their commodities. Loads of lumber, shingles, and mine timbers were bought outright by the mine companies and lumber dealers. Most other commodities were peddled from door to door. Peddlers who were honest in their dealings and sold good grade merchandise had little difficulty in selling out their loads. There were regular established stores in Pioche which handled groceries and foods, and these suffered a loss of business to the produce peddlers. The merchants felt that these transient peddlers were "horning" in on their field, and they tried to do something about it. They thought that they had a right to a commission on all such goods sold by outsiders in their territory. The commission idea was not accepted by the Utah peddlers, but they made a compromise proposal. They proposed to sell their loads entire, on a wholesale basis, to the stores. If


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they could unload in one place, it would save a day or two of time on each trip and the unpleasant task of house to house canvassing. This proposal was accepted by the dealers, and, for a time, as long as dealer and peddler dealt fairly widi each other, the system worked out for the benefit of both. But a time came when the Pioche stores began to squeeze the peddlers. The produce, of course, was not of uniform quality nor had it ever been, and this was used to beat down prices. Also, the dealers became "choosey" and instead of buying out the entire load as they had agreed, they would take only what they wanted. The produce man then had to go back to peddling to clean out his load. The store operators knew that when a man arrived in Nevada with his load of produce he was pretty much at their mercy. If he did not like the prices offered, he had the alternative of going back to peddling, which had its dangers, or taking his load back home. Some of the peddlers tried to beat the dealers' "racket" by going door to door peddling, but it proved to be a hazardous venture. The unscrupulous dealers set up a "goon" squad, and somewhere out in the woods on his way home the peddler would turn the point of a hill and find himself looking down the barrel of a gun in the hands of a highway robber. Under such circumstances it was healthier to give up his money than to fight for it. So, the Utah farmers, who had to raise a certain amount of cash for taxes or missionary support, were forced to freight their produce to die mining camps and take the best prices the dealers would pay. Prices dropped to two cents a pound for grain — about one-half or one-third of what they should have been. A Millard County man, who had been peddling at Pioche trying to break the "racket," was overtaken in Hamblin Valley inside Utah by two holdup men sent out to "work him over." At gunpoint they made him get out of the wagon. Searching him, they found no money or gun, and he refused to tell where his money was hidden. They made him hold up both thumbs about six inches apart, and while one of the robbers held a gun on him the other wrapped the whip around the thumbs, then inserted the whipstock between and began twisting the whip as tight as he could. While the one robber twisted, the other ransacked the wagon where he found die money hidden in the back folds of the wagon cover. Coming out with the money in a sack, he climbed on his horse and held a gun on the freighter while the other robber released the whip and mounted his horse. The two then went back up the road to Nevada as fast as their horses could take them.


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The freighter, with great pain and difficulty, drove his wagon to Frisco. Here the thumbs, cut to the bone, and the badly swollen hands were dressed. Friends hurried the suffering man to his home. He was taken at once to Salt Lake City where the doctor said both thumbs were dead, and he amputated them at the second joint. Several other bad robberies occurred about the same time and for the same reason. Brigham Young spent the winter of 1873-74 in St. George and learned first hand about these conditions. Times here were hard, for the Jim Fiske Panic of the 1870's was at its worst in Utah. There had been heavy crop losses also from frosts and insect pests, and the people were very discouraged. It was during this winter that Brigham Young mapped out the system of Co-operation which he called the United Order. He was wise enough to see that in the final analysis the mining camps were almost wholly dependent upon the Mormon settlements for a large part of their necessities. There were no other feasible markets to which they could turn. Brigham Young said, "This is a two-edged sword the mining camps are swinging against us. They are as dependent upon us as we are upon them. We will make the sword cut the other way until they recognize that their game can be played by our side too." He organized the peoples of all the southern settlements into United Orders and told them to stop hauling their produce to the mining camps for awhile and see what happened. Then he appointed an agent in every town to deal with the camps when they came to Utah to buy, as he knew they must do sooner or later. He also suggested the prices they should ask. When the Mormon peddlers stayed home, conditions soon became desperate in Pioche. There were no hay or grain or dairy or poultry products to be had out there. The dealers were forced to come to Utah and contract at Mormon prices for the produce they must have. They were glad to contract here on a delivered basis at four to six cents a pound for the grain they had extorted from the peddlers at two cents a pound. The grain was paid for here, freight included, in advance. Then Mormon freighters delivered the goods, and, since they carried no money, the holdups stopped. The two-edged sword truly was made to cut the other way until amends were made fully for the extortions of the past. In two years the United Orders broke up, and every man was once more on his own. The dealers at the mining camps had learned their


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lessons too, and from that time on relations with the mining camps were on a more legitimate business basis. Occasional holdups occurred, but these seemed to stem from individual initiative rather than from being dealer inspired. The produce that went to the camps was the product of many small farms and dairies. Few men had enough surplus to justify a trip on their own. In 1870 Iron County had 264 farms. One man owned as much as forty acres. Ten others had twenty-five acres each, and the other 253 farmers had an average of less than ten acres each. Shipping to the mines had to be a highly co-operative effort. In assembling these goods the Co-op stores and tithing offices became most efficient mediums. Tithing in those days was paid almost wholly in kind, and a great deal of miscellaneous produce accumulated at the tithing office. Through the 1870's the St. George temple and tabernacle were being built, and all the tithes of southern Utah converged there. Silver Reef, which then was at its best, absorbed most of this tithing produce, but some of it, too, was sold in Pioche to raise money for the temple. The Co-op store in Cedar City, as did the others, rendered a remarkable service to the people in assembling, grading, and marketing these assorted products. The store's outlet in the main for these commodities was the Nevada peddlers, who upon returning from a trip paid their bills at the store in cash. Very little of this money received by the store ever circulated at home, for the store sent it to Z.C.M.I. in Salt Lake City to pay for goods. Only the peddlers' profit went into the veins of home trade to circulate a few times. When I was a young man I worked in the Co-op store and learned the system firsthand. This, of course, was long after the lawless period of which I have spoken, but the system at the store was still the same. People brought their little dabs of grain, potatoes, eggs, dried fruit, butter, cheese, hams, bacon, shoulders, and so forth to trade for goods. We handled also buckskin gloves and dried berries from the Indians. I weighed this produce at the granary and gave the person a due bill for it. A notebook was tacked on a grain bin in which I entered the receipts. Then, tearing off the lower half of the sheet, on this I wrote, "Good for 75 cents, or $1.35, or $4.20 (as it might be) payable in merchandise at the Cedar Co-op Store," signed it "William R. Palmer, Clerk," and gave it to the customer. He could go to the store and trade it out or he could trade it somewhere else, for the due bills circulated around. Such bills paid the blacksmith, the cobbler, and they even paid


Early view of DeLamar, Lincoln Nevada, now a ghost town. Photo Nevada Historical Society.

County, courtesy

Cedar City Tithing Office, built in 1856-57 torn down about 1910. Photo courtesy William R. Palmer.

Freighting in Goldfield, Nevada, spectacular gold strike. Photo Nevada Historical Society.

site of a courtesy

Cedar Co-op store, built about 1867, was community market-place. Photo courtesy William R. Palmer.

for admits for children in the public schools where, in turn, the trustees paid them to the teachers on their salaries. The store due bills circulated around like cash among the home people, and the Co-op store did a sort of produce banking business. I took care of all the produce that came in. The eggs were packed in boxes, layer on layer, in wheat or oats. A lid was then nailed on and the number of dozens of eggs and pounds of grain marked plainly on the box. Weight of hams and shoulders was marked on each, and the same with cheese. Everything was packed for easy loading and convenient handling. Wheat was ground into flour at the store's grist mill


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and sacked into fifty pound bags. We could load a peddler up in short order and bill him clearly. There had to be many substitutes for money, or business would have frozen tight. Among these mediums that circulated widely were tithing office due bills, called T. O. script, or just T. O., issued generally at St. George but redeemable at any tithing office in the church; city and county scripter warrants; factory pay due bills; Beaver Woolen Mills due bills; and the store due bills of which I have spoken. One of the very best was called K.K.K. — Kane Kounty Kurrency. The Bowman Mercantile Company of Kanab issued handfuls of small "bearer" checks —$1.00, $2.00, $3.00, and $5.00, and paid them out as change. If a man had twenty-five dollars in change coming to him, he got it in these small checks. They circulated all over southern Utah, and some of them had indorsements all over the back. Many people who signed their names had no idea it implied an obligation to make the check good, but the paper was so much like real money that they felt honored to inscribe their names. These produce mediums of exchange, of course, were not as fluid as the "coin of the realm," but they served to bridge a very stagnant pool of commerce. It sometimes took a lot of trading around to convert T. O. and factory script into something that would sell in Pioche. As has been stated, there were two factories — the woolen mills in Beaver and the cotton factory in Washington. Sometimes the Nevada peddler could trade a horse or a cow for Washington factory pay. He went to the factory and purchased a bolt of flannelette, some sheets, or yardage of factory, and these sold readily in Nevada. Sheepmen sold their tag wool to the mills in Beaver for merchandise script or for blankets which could be exchanged for money in Pioche. Sheepmen paid their herders as much of this script as they would take. This plaint from one young sheepherder, Rube Walker, shows their reactions to it: Old Jake (his boss) comes round just once a week, He stays with me all day, And every time before he leaves He talks more factory pay. I sit and listen all the while To what he has to say But I keep thinking to myself Oh damn your factory pay.


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It was cotton goods in the morning boys And woolen goods at night, A green jeans hat to wear to church You bet they were all right. But when you're all alone at the sheep camp And you cannot get away, It wouldn't be so bad if you had a wife To use your factory pay. But now I lay me down to sleep May the Lord watch overhead And if I die before I wake Keep the sheep safe on their bed, And if there's anydiing coming to me For all my work and care Give the factory pay to my best girl For I can't use it over there. The livestock men fared better at the mining camps than the produce peddlers. They could not kill their animals here, haul them out and peddle them there from door to door. There was no such thing as cold storage to facilitate such a move. Their sheep and cattle had to be driven to Pioche and sold on hoof to the butchers there. The troubles of the livestock men came not from the dealers in Pioche, but from thieves and cattle rustlers who stole cattle and horses from Utah ranges and sold them in Nevada. In the early days of the sheep industry, sheep were raised for wool rather than for meat. Ewes were kept as long as they could live on the range and raise a lamb. Then they were condemned and sold for slaughter. Wethers grew larger and produced more wool than ewes, and they were never killed for meat or sold until their teeth were broken and too worn to winter on the range. In 1879 contracts were made by the Cedar Sheep Company with W. H . Mathews of Panaca and Mr. Loomis and Gus Adleman of Pioche for the sale of fifty to seventy-five head of mutton per week, the same to be delivered on foot at Pioche once each week. The price was $2.00 per head. The company then contracted to buy back all the pelts at 10 cents each. Every week during the summer and fall for five or six years a little herd of sheep was trailed out from Cedar to Pioche. A wagon always went along to carry bedding and food for the herder, and to bring back the pelts from the last shipment. In Cedar City the pelts


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were shorn at 10% cents each, and the shorn hides were then sold to the Co-op store tannery for 12% cents each. These were tanned into fine kid leather. The Co-op store also operated a shoe shop in which three or four shoemakers had steady employment. These men took the tanned sheepskins and made them into ladies' fine hightopped button dress shoes. The pelt wool found ready market at the Provo Woolen Mills at 27% cents a pound, and many of the ladies' shoes were taken to Pioche and sold. Thus the by-products netted the sheep company as much profit as the sheep did themselves. This was home industry followed to its final conclusion. The Co-op store shoemakers also made into men's boots and shoes the cowhides and calfskins which the tannery turned into leather, and many of these were marketed at the mining camps. As the years passed a time came when the mining camps could not use all the surplus meats the Co-op Sheep Company produced. The herds were increasing and sheepmen from other sections were bringing meat into the camps. But since ewes and wethers continued to grow old and had to be disposed of, a butcher service was rendered during the summer to the people at home. A little butcher shop was built on Main Street, and every Friday twenty-five to thirty fat sheep were brought to town and slaughtered in the city slaughter house north of town. Charles Ahlstrom was the company butcher. He gave the "plucks" — the hearts, liver, and lights — to the youngsters who always swarmed there to see die butchering, and die children took them home for the family to use what they wanted and feed the rest to the dogs. At four o'clock on Saturday morning the shop was opened, and the people rushed down, before the flies became too active, to get a piece of fresh mutton. The meat was cut only into quarters, and die customer bought either a leg, the hind quarter, for 60 cents, or a "wing," the front quarter, for 40 cents. He also brought his own sack to carry it home, for no wrapping was done by the salesman. These prices, cheap as they were, still brought the company $2.00 a head, the same as at Pioche, and they still had the pelt without purchasing it. They were saved also the expense of trailing the sheep to the mining camps. The only expense entailed by the company was for the butcher, but that was a "salty" bill. They paid Charles Ahlstrom 5 cents a head for butchering the sheep and selling them out. I have one expense account paid Ahlstrom in 1881 of $16.75 for butchering 335 sheep, a few each week during the summer at 5 cents per head.


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But bad as die holdups and robberies had been, Utah's heaviest losses were to cattle rustlers and horse thieves. The law in Nevada was pretty much on their side. Once the thieves got their stolen animals across the state line they were safe. It was almost impossible to replevin stolen stock, and when the thief had sold an animal or. transferred it into a third person's hands, the law would not touch the case. The theory was that the present owner had paid good money for the animal, and his right of possession must be respected. Livestock protective associations were organized in the southern counties, and guards were kept out along the state line most of the time. Iron County, and perhaps the other southern counties likewise, commissioned these guards as deputy county sheriffs, and that did put a little "crimp" in the thieving operations. Thirty-eight men were convicted of grand larceny in the District Court at Beaver, and this was not half of the rascals who were operating the nefarious schemes. One man, Nate Hansen, was killed by a deputy marshal who came upon him pushing a herd of forty or fifty cattle up Stateline Canyon toward the Nevada line. As soon as Nate saw the officer, he put spurs to his horse and tried to escape. The deputy called "halt" several times, but Hansen kept going. He was shot dead less than a mile from the line he hoped to get the stolen herd across. Another deputy, David Bulloch, came one day upon the fresh tracks of a band of horses headed for the Nevada line. Some of them were shod animals, and Bulloch suspected that these were stolen from freighters on the road. He followed the tracks into Pioche and that evening found some of the horses in a feed yard. He was told that a dark-complexioned man from Utah and a well-known Nevada horse thief had brought them in. Dave guessed who the dark-complexioned Utahn was, and he went to the saloon to look for him. He found his man standing at the bar ordering a drink. Bulloch walked up to him and said, "Come on, Bob, I've come for you. We are going back to Cedar City right now." Four men were seated at a gambling table nearby and had heard Dave. The men laid their cards face down on the table, picked up their revolvers, stood up, and moved in a half circle around behind Bulloch. With drawn guns one of them said, "You don't have to go, Bob, if you don't want to." Bulloch, a bluff Scotchman, said, "You're doggone right, Bob, you're going to go and I don't want any trouble about it either." Bob hesitated a minute, and the gambler said, "What do you say, Bob?" Bob said, "Fellows, this man is an old friend of my father


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and mother, and I have worked for him many times. He has always been square with me, and I don't want anything to happen to him." Bob put out his hands to be handcuffed, and the four gamblers sat down to the table to finish their game. Bob went to Cedar without making any trouble, was convicted of grand larceny, and served out his sentence in the penitentiary. A remarkable thing about that arrest was that a Nevada sheriff was in the saloon and saw and heard the whole affair, but did not lift a finger to help Sheriff Bulloch because Bulloch was a Mormon from Utah. None of the horses were ever recovered. Now back to the holdup men. Athe Meeks, from Parowan, took a load of mine timbers to Pioche and sold them to one of the mines. On a previous trip he had taken his little eight-year-old daughter Sadie out and left her to visit with an aunt who lived there. This trip he was taking her home. Having loaded only long timbers out, he had no wagon box for the return trip. He fixed their roll of bedding on the back hounds for a comfortable seat for Sadie, and he tied a rope across the top of the bolster for her to hold onto over rough places. For himself, he folded the horse blankets over the front bolster and sat there with his feet on the tongue hounds. About six or eight miles east of Panaca in the cedar-covered hills, two men with drawn guns rushed out in front and stopped his two span of mules. They ordered Meeks to throw up his hands, but, instead, he dropped down between the wheel mules and drew a pistol out of his boot top. The men were trying to get a shot at Meeks, but the lead mules were trying to turn around and this kept him covered. Meeks got an opening on the man in front, whose name was Al Miller, and shot him dead. He fell off his horse onto the road. Meantime, the other robber, known as Little Frank, was riding down along the side of the wheel mule and was reaching over its back to get a shot at Meeks. As his horse came close beside the mule, Meeks reached up, grabbed the bridle reins, and gave a tremendous jerk. The horse reared up and jumped sideways, and just then Meeks came up from under the mule's belly. Frank took a shot at Meeks, but when the horse jumped sideways it threw him off aim and the shot went wild. Meeks then shot Frank. Frank dropped his gun and grabbed the wound in his chest, spurred his horse and got away as fast as he could. Meeks took a shot at the horse; the animal floundered, but Frank's spurs lifted him straight, and they disappeared into the cedars. Meantime, the mules had turned around and with dragging lines


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were running back down the road to town. The little girl was clinging to the bolster rope with all her might. When the outfit reached Panaca, the mules had slowed to a trot. Men on the street saw them coming and stopped them. The little girl told what had happened, and that she thought her father was killed. A posse was quickly formed. One man drove the mules with Sadie still riding, others got in a wagon in the street, and some went on horseback. Up the road a mile or two they met Meeks hurrying to catch his outfit. Little Sadie was safe, but badly frightened. Soon they were back on the scene of the crime. Al Miller's body was still in the road where he fell. Meeks showed them which way Frank had gone, and a man on horseback, Peter Fife, was sent to follow his trail. It was a bloody trail and easy to follow. About two miles out in the cedars Fife saw the spot where Frank had fallen off his horse. He had floundered around some but managed to mount again. A quarter mile farther on he found Frank dead in a pool of blood, and the horse also lay dead a few yards farther on. After Meeks had told his story he climbed onto his wagon, took up the lines and drove away for home. He had killed the two robbers and a horse and had not lost so much as a broken line. The outlaws of the region swore vengeance against him, but he made many trips after that. Always when he reached the Nevada line and began to pass through Hell's Gate, he carried a rifle across his knees and pistols in his boot tops. But he had acquired the reputation of being a dangerous man to molest, and no one ever tried it again. In another holdup, Nat Gardner of Cedar City was the elected victim. Fortunately he had had police experience, which served him well on this occasion. He had started for DeLamar with a load of grain, but when he reached Caliente he found a good market there and sold out his load in one place. Two men standing by saw him receive his money and put it in his pocket. They watched him go out and get into his wagon, untie his wagon cover, fold it in quarters, and lay it down in the wagon box. It was a very cold day with a strong wind blowing from the north, and he had taken the cover down to keep it from being torn off. He had a double-bed wagon box, and as protection from the cold wind he raised the front end of the top bed an inch or two. Passing the lines through that crack, he could lie down in the box under the wagon cover and could see to drive his well-broken team. Three or four miles up the road toward Panaca he heard a car coming from the rear. It turned off to the left to pass him dien circled around in front, stopping the team. The car halted on Nat's right side,


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and a voice ordered him to stand up and stick up his hands. Nat obeyed. When he stood up he recognized the two men who had watched him receive his money in town. They were driving a very old, dilapidated pickup car with no top on it. One of the fellows stepped out of the car with a pistol in his hand and ordered Gardner to take off his coat and throw it out on the ground. Nat obeyed. "Now," said the robber, "empty your pockets and throw everything out on the coat." This done, the fellow ordered, "Turn all your pockets inside out," and "now keep your hands up." The robber then came over nearer the wagon and stooped over to pick up the coat and the things which Nat had purposely scattered as he tossed them out. In a flash Gardner reached down in the wagon and picked up his rifle. He shouted, "Drop that gun and throw up your hands." The startled robber looked up and saw that Nat had him covered. He had both men covered, in fact, for they were in a straight line and could be watched. The robber dropped his pistol and put up his hands, and the fellow in the car, at a motion from Gardner, put his hands up also. "Kick that gun off under the wagon," Nat ordered. "Now take your overcoat off and throw it down; put your coat on top of your overcoat; take that sweater and your hat off and throw them down." "Good hell, man," the fellow almost tearfully pleaded, "have mercy. You wouldn't turn a man out on a cold day like this in his shirt sleeves would you?" "Do what I say and do it quick," Nat commanded. "You didn't think of that when you were stripping me." The fellow threw down his sweater and hat. "Now empty your pockets and drop everything on your overcoat, turn your pockets inside out." When the outlaw had complied with all these orders and stood shivering with cold and fright, Nat said, "You can pick up all your things at the police station in Panaca tomorrow morning. Now get into that old jalopy and beat it back to Caliente, and don't try to follow me." The fellows got away as fast as they could. Gardner then gathered up the robber's things, rolled them in the overcoat, and tossed them into the wagon. Then he gathered up his own things, money included, put on his coat and drove on. He camped that night in Panaca. The robber's belongings were turned over to the city marshal with a full description of the men and their old car. No one ever called to claim the stuff, and, so far as Gardner could learn, the law did not bother to hunt up the robbers, both of whom could easily have been picked up. And so these last two holdups ended dis-


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astrously for the robbers. They picked the wrong men and came out bad losers in a tough game. The safest and most lucrative outlaw racket of all was played by one Ben Tasker who claimed the Desert Springs ranch just inside the Utah line. Old Ben lived there with a colored woman called "Nigger Lize," and his place was the hide-out for a bad nest of outlaws who plied back and forth across the line. Tasker had been educated for the ministry and could "quote Bible by the yard." Ben had two or three narrow cellars dug in the side of a hill, and in these he hung hind quarters of dressed beef. The old rascal knew that cattle with their heads and hides off could not be identified, so every week he boldly took a load of hind quarters and loins into Pioche to sell at only 6 cents a pound. Front quarters, being cheaper than grain, were fed to his pigs. The cattle, of course, were all stolen so the meat cost him nothing. Tasker kept a butcher, a Dutchman named Engleking, employed for years, but he never would settle up with him. When Engleking asked for a settlement, Ben gave him a few dollars and a promise to settle later. Finally the Dutchman decided to leave, for he concluded that Ben never intended to pay. He set out on foot for Pioche, but he never arrived there. He knew too much of Old Ben and his ways to be allowed to leave the ranch. A few weeks later a freighter camped at Desert Springs went out one morning to hunt a horse that had wandered during the night. Out in the thick cedars he came upon what appeared to be a recently dug grave. He told one of those cowboy deputy sheriffs about it, and Iron County instituted an investigation. The grave was opened, and there was Engleking with a bullet hole in his head. Ben Tasker was arrested for murder and taken to Beaver, then the seat of the District Court, for trial. He bribed his guards and broke jail. Hurrying back to Desert Springs, he picked up his money, his guns, two good saddle horses, and a pack outfit and escaped to Mexico. President A. W. Ivins had known the old rascal at Desert Springs and knew of his escape. One day in his travels around Mexico he met face to face with a man in priestly garb whom he recognized as Old Ben Tasker. He was serving there as the pastor of the town's Protestant church. This story may not be of commerce, exactly, between Utah and Nevada, but it was Utah beef that had been feeding the Pioche miners. Old Ben had been a sort of bloodsucking leech on the commerce between the two states.


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As time went on, government from Carson City became more articulate in Nevada's remote parts. For a long time the law had shown little concern for what went on in the capital's distant hinterland. She knew, of course, of the killings and murders at Pioche, but she was willing to let the people there settle their quarrels in their own way. She knew, too, of the robberies and holdups. It was the tax-paying potential that finally drew the state's arms around that rambunctious camp. Pioche today is a sedate and orderly city of churches, good schools, and good homes, and its community life is as law-abiding as any city in the state. The lawless element is safe in Boot Hill, or has drifted away to safer climes. But the aura of the old Wild West still lingers in the air. Southern Nevada has its scenic and storied places that should take many tourists and historians there for their vacations. There is a subtle thrill in standing on the ground where Athe Meeks killed two robbers and escaped widiout a scratch, or in traveling the road where Nat Gardner paid his holdup man off in full and with interest in his own coin. One should visit the old Pioche million dollar courthouse, half or two-thirds the cost of which was paid in interest at 10 per cent by the politicians who borrowed the money to build it. It is an impressive example of political recklessness. Then a walk along the row of nameless mounds that is Boot Hill Cemetery will be a silent but solemn testimony of what Nevada was in the heyday of her youth. Utahns and Nevadans now trade and traffic together in peace and goodwill. The railroads carry produce to market, and there are no peddlers' wagons to tempt the robbers. Livestock men cross and recross that once-fatal state line in warm fraternal friendship. Time has healed the great wrongs of the past, and there has been almost a complete turnover in population on both sides of the line so there are no old scores to settle nor old sores to be healed.


THE

GREAT

"MORMON"

GLOBES

By Mar\ Hafey*

Elder John Taylor, Erastus Snow, and Frankjin D. Richards arrived also August 11, on return from their missions to Europe. Elder Taylor having brought apparatus for an extensive sugar factory, which he is locating in Provo, Utah County; and Elder Richards brought two large globes, 3 feet each, to present to the University of Deseret.—Deseret News, October 16,1852. Sugar machinery and a pair of large globes — celestial and terrestrial — were certainly uncommon items in the western wagon cargoes of a century ago, but each had its important place in the developmental designs of the Mormon empire. That the sugar factory failed is well known; how well the great globes served their intended purpose is less easily ascertainable. Judging by their present condition we can be certain that they received much use — and far too much abuse. Such * Mr. Hafey is a graduate student in Geography. Acknowledgment is given to Dr. D. W. Meinig, Geography Department, University of Utah, for his help in determining the dates of the globes from historical data shown on the globes.


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academic paraphernalia were hardly newswordiy, and it is difficult to trace their history. It is recorded that during the Fourdi of July celebrations in 1869 they were mounted on platforms and hauled in procession on wagons,1 presumably to offer some tangible evidence of the academic stature of the local university. How long they were actually used is unknown. For years they stood in the Utah Treasure Room of the George Thomas Library at die University of Utah. In 1941 the pressure for space sent them into the dusty oblivion of basement storage. In 1957 they were installed in their present place in the lobby on either side of the main staircase, each enclosed in an octagonal glass case. An inquiry into the origin and nature of these globes suggests that they are of value not only for their place in local history but because of a degree of rarity as globes diemselves. Each globe is three feet in diameter, originally mounted in a graduated brass meridian circle (now missing from the terrestrial globe), a full wooden horizon circle, and four-legged cradle mount. The legend on the celestial globe reads: Malby's Celestial Globe exhibiting the whole of die stars contained in the Catalogues of Piazzi, Bradley, Hevelius, Mayer, LaCaille & Johnson The Double Stars marked from Herschell & Strewe corrected from Bailey's edition of Flamsteeds British Catalogue with additions carefully collected from the observations of the most esteemed British & Foreign Astronomers together with the Nebulae observed by W. Herschel, Sirs Herschel, Messier & Mr. Dunlop, Published by Malby & Co. Manufacturers & Publishers of the Globes &c of die Society for the Diffusion Of Useful Knowledge. Houghton Street Newcastle Street Strand London. 1845. Accompanying diis title are legends which give a guide to the symbols used for various magnitudes. The other globe, about which the inquiries have been made, carries the following legend: Terraqueous Globe exhibiting the present state of die whole world by John Addison. Manufactured and Published by Malby and Co., Globe Manufacturers and Publishers [of the?] Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. 37 Parker Street Little Queen Street [?]. [illegible] 'Clarissa Young Spence and Mable Harmer, One Who Was Valiant (Caldwell Idaho, The Caxton Printers, 1940), 132.


THE GREAT

GLOBES

371

If a date was appended it has been completely defaced. Happily, internal evidence allows the establishment of a date of engraving within very narrow limits. Fittingly, the map of Utah serves as the best single clue, for the territory of Utah, established in 1850, and extending from the Continental Divide to the present western boundary of Nevada, is clearly shown, as is the neighboring territory of New Mexico, established in the same year. The Oregon boundary along the forty-ninth parallel and Minnesota Territory (organized 1849) further attest to a careful revision of plates sometime in 1850-51. Thus Elder Richards must have obtained die newest and most accurate globe available during his brief tenure as president of the L.D.S. British Mission (January 1,1851 —May 8,1852). Malby and Company published a special atlas to accompany tiiese globes under the title, "Augustus de Morgan, Globes, celestial and terrestrial, London, Malby and Co., 1845." The maps and charts were derived directly from the gores of the globe. These globes are evidently by no means common. It seems that there are but diree similar ones. The oldest (ca. 1837-38) is an Addison globe published by J. Casy, at Jesus College, Oxford. Malby probably took over the Addison plates from Casy for their globes. The British Museum has an 1867 Malby terrestrial globe, and another, ca. 1873-78, is in the Commonwealth Relations Office. The Utah globe ca. 1851 therefore represents an intermediate revision. Curiously, the London Post Office Directories list the firm of Thomas Malby & Son at 37 Parker Street only from 1855 to 1877. Miss Ena L. Yonge, Map Curator of the American Geographical Society, is gathering information for a proposed "International Catalogue of Early Globes" to be issued by the Union Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences. Miss Yonge reports that so far she has received notices of but three other similar Malby globes in the United States: Colgate University, 1845; Dartmouth College, 1848; and the Mariners Museum, Newport News, Virginia, "after 1828." The Utah globes are therefore certainly worth preserving and deserve some skilled restoration, for they are in seriously damaged condition. The terrestrial globe, particularly, which has obviously had much the greater use, needs immediate attention to halt further cracking of the plaster shell. Unfortunately, large areas are either so badly smudged or worn as to be illegible. Nevertheless, whatever their condition, they are historic items of great interest both to students of the local heritage and to cartographers, geographers, and historians in general.



ie former Coach House on the property it 603 Each South Temple has been beautifully remodeled and is providing temporary quarters for the State Library. Eventually it will be used as the Records' Management center for the Archives Division of the Utah State Historical Society.

THE

PRESIDENT'S

REPORT

By Leland H. Creer*

"History," says Scott, "is the sum total of human experience, clarified by criticism." In the fullest sense of the word, history includes all we know about everything that man has ever done or thought, or hoped or felt. In a practical sense, however, the historian chooses only those pertinent facts of a causal-effect relationship which demonstrate in summary outline the evolution and devolution of civilization in all the ages. Again as Von Ranke says: "Universal history embraces die events of all nations, and times in their connection, insofar as these affect one another, appear one after the other, and all together form a living totality." History, in reality, is mankind's memory. Without it, humanity would be a mere conglomeration of units, born today, forgotten tomorrow. He who knows no history can only regard life as a flat surface. For him there is no past, and he can have little discernment of the influences of contemporaneous events on the future. "He is [like] a fly buzzing on the window pane in company with other flies with no conception of race memory, national memory or the forces which created the life about him." * Dr. Creer is head of the department of history at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. He has served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Utah State Historical Society since 1949 and has served as its president since April, 1957. His Report was delivered at the sixth annual dinner meeting of the Society on May 10, 1958.


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In ancient times, most historians felt that the chief purpose was to entertain. Others, like Polybius, have represented the value of history as a means primarily of instruction, to present an object lesson. Beginning with Von Ranke and the German school of historians of the latter quarter of the nineteenth century, however, the chief aim of history has come to be the determination of facts, the finding of truth, the discovery of things as they are and were. The task of the historian then is first to determine the truth and secondly to tell the truth. The ascertainment and correlation of facts, the verification and weighing of evidence, the discriminatory use of hypotheses, the cautious attempt to form generalizations — all these are the canons by which the historian works. To pursue his task, the historian deals with written documents, and with these materials almost entirely. The document is his starting point, fact his goal. His method of research is indirect, for unlike the physical scientist, he cannot observe directly the data which he uses. It was Von Ranke who said, "In historical research, I do not go back to the sources, I go back of them." Organized for the purpose of collecting, preserving, and disseminating the materials of history, particularly those pertinent to the Intermountain West, the Utah State Historical Society was created during the Jubilee year, 1897, which occasion marked the fiftieth anniversary of the coming of the Pioneers to the Great Salt Lake Valley. Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws were drawn up and approved on December 28. Franklin D. Richards was elected the first president. Among the seventy-four charter members were: Governor Heber M. Wells, John Henry Smith, A. O. Smoot, Richard W. Young, C. C. Goodwin, Franklin S. Richards, H. W. Lawrence, John T. Caine, Orson F. Whitney, Charles W. Penrose, R. N. Baskin, Spencer Clawson, John R. Winder, Emmeline B. Wells, J. E. Dooley, Orlando W. Powers, Heber J. Grant, Andrew Jenson, and Joseph T. Kingsbury — all noted and respected leaders of the state. The objectives of the Society, as noted in the Articles of Incorporation were: The encouragement of historical research and inquiry by the exploration and investigation of aboriginal monuments and remains; the collection of such material as may serve to illustrate the growth of Utah and the Intermountain region; the preservation in a permanent depository of manuscripts, documents, papers, and tracts of value; the establishment of a library of books and publications, and a cabinet of antiquities and relics;


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375

the dissemination of information and the holding of meetings at stated intervals for the interchange of views and criticisms. Speaking on this memorable occasion, Professor Joseph T. Kingsbury, in explaining the motives of the Society, put the matter succintly as follows: The Historical Society has an important work to perform in accumulating facts pertaining to the history of the people of the state, both with respect to the past as well as to future time. . . . Nothing is more interesting, and in fact more important, than the study of man, than to know his past history, his mode of living, the amusements in which he participated, his everyday thoughts, his attainments in the arts and sciences, his manners and conduct. This is as it should be, for around man all else centers. He is the most nearly perfect being of all creation within the knowledge of the human mind. His structure is the grandest, the most complicated and the most ingeniously formed. His capabilities and intelligence far surpass all other beings. There is therefore a good reason for having an interest in man and his works and for taking an interest in his past life. The Historical Society of Utah, I take it, is prompted by more or less the same motives which have actuated other societies and other men and women that have taken upon themselves to gather facts and relics pertaining to the past history of man, and to gather in the facts and incidents of his current history, and to preserve all for their own benefit and information, and for the benefit and information of those of future generations. Under the capable leadership of Dr. A. Russell Mortensen, who assumed the office of director and editor of its publications in 1950, the Utah State Historical Society has made steady progress toward the realization of the above aims. A year ago the Society occupied its current spacious quarters, formerly known as the Governor's Mansion, a gift to the state by Thomas Kearns, its original builder and owner. It is always "open house" at the new residence, for the Historical Society, be it understood, is a public state institution housed in a public building, and designed to perform a public service. Since its occupancy of the new residence, hundreds of writers, historians, graduate students, genealogical workers, foreign visitors, and public officials have frequented its many rooms and utilized its splendid facilities in quest of further knowledge, for the edifice has become a veritable storehouse


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of priceless written and pictorial memorabilia of Utah from the time of its origin. Furthermore, the Society, under careful regulation, is making available its facilities to various groups who are interested in pursuing objectives through organized lectures, programs, meetings, etc., which are compatible with the aims of the Society. During the past year, two public receptions were held, one in commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the Society; another to exhibit the William H. Jackson collection of pictures which was purchased and donated to the Society by Nicholas G. Morgan, Sr. During the past year an effort has been made to revitalize committee action. Six important standing committees were created and their functions carefully defined. These include the committees on Archives; Public Relations; Library; Publications; Expansion and Membership; and Finance, Buildings and Grounds. To activate interest in the Society bimonthly meetings of the Board of Trustees have been scheduled and written reports requested from committee chairmen. As a result, renewed interest among Board members has been developed, for which your president expresses sincere gratitude. (A) ARCHIVES. In 1951, the legislature created a division of State Archives and made the Historical Society responsible for all noncurrent public records. Most of the archival material — official papers, correspondence, minute books, commission reports of die territorial and state governors of Utah — are filed in the basement vaults. Several serious obstacles, however, confront the archives program. First, insufficient archival space. Only a few of the valuable public records of the state can be housed properly under present facilities. All of these valuable documents should be kept in fireproof air-conditioned vaults, specially constructed under archival specifications. Until this is done, many historically valuable records will have to remain in the vaults of the agencies of origin, many of them unclassified and therefore rendered useless for historical purposes. Personnel. There is immediate need for at least two additional staff members in the Archives Department — a trained assistant whose activities should be devoted to the field of record management, to insure the creation, filing, indexing, and preservation of current records before they reach the archival stage; and the other, a field representative whose chief function should be to advise city and county agents relative to the proper disposition of records. Professional advice is necessary if county recorders and clerks are to function wisely in the important


PRESIDENT'S

REPORT

Librarian John James adjusts a microfilm roll on the reader in the library for a researcher.

377

Staff member Ohleen Leatherwood checks the territorial records section of the archives.

work of record keeping and preservation. In addition, the field representative might assist as an organizer of county units. Insufficient funds. More funds are needed for salaries, archival space, fireproof vaults, and microfilming. That the Society in its archival program has already saved the state thousands of dollars can be demonstrated easily. Dr. Everett L. Cooley, the archivist, says: Since January 1, 1957, the Archives has been instrumental in the legal destruction or disposal of 4,865 cubic feet of worthless public records. Translated into file cabinet storage, this would amount to the emptying of 608 four-drawer file cabinets. Translated into dollars this amounts to freeing $48,640.00 worth of equipment (608 file cabinets valued at $80.00 each) plus $6,080.00 of free office space (608 file cabinets occupy 2,432 square feet of space valued at $2.50 per square foot). So the total savings effected by this disposal amounts to $54,720.00, more than four times the total budget of the Archives for the current year. The preservation of important historical records of the state through microfilming has scarcely begun. Funds are necessary for this service. Only recently, thanks to the generosity of the Genealogical Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the minutes of the Commission of Salt Lake City (1850-1957), were made available on microfilm to the State Archives. A similar microfilm program should be carried throughout the state in both city and county offices.


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(B) PUBLIC RELATIONS. Much effective work in public relations has resulted through favorable yet factual newspaper publicity, thanks to the good offices of George F. Egan, chairman of that committee. A bimonthly lecture series, free to the public, has been arranged also. The first assigned address was delivered March 7 by Dr. A. Russell Mortensen on the subject, "The Historical Society: A Public Institution," and the second by William R. Palmer on May 9 on the subject, "Early-day Trading With the Nevada Mining Camps." The generous use of the Mansion and its splendid facilities has attracted wide attention. An excellent opportunity to effect better public relations, particularly outside of Utah, has been accorded the Society through an invitation to serve as major sponsor for the joint convention of the American Association for State and Local History and the Society of American Archivists to be held in Salt Lake City this coming August. It has been suggested that public relations might be improved locally by transferring the Society to outlying areas through regional conventions organized and held occasionally in communities where interest is alert but contacts with the parent society difficult. (C) LIBRARY. The library is the heart of the Society's activities and functions. Reference and reading rooms are on the second floor with tables, desks, and lounge chairs for patrons. Catalogues, indices, newspaper files, and microfilm facilities are readily available. One room is devoted to pictures and maps of great historic value and another to the splendid Nicholas G. Morgan Collection of more than two thousand volumes on Western Americana. The latter includes also microfilms of rare and historically significant books, pamphlets, periodicals, diaries, letters, and manuscripts as well as rare editions of church periodicals, books, and pamphlets. When Mr. John James was employed as first professional librarian of the Society in 1952, he found only four thousand volumes. These were uncatalogued and improperly stored in the cramped quarters of the State Capitol. Hundreds of volumes of no historical worth were given to other institutions, and today, after five years, while the number of volumes has increased to only forty-five hundred, all these have been catalogued. In addition there are sixteen hundred pamphlets catalogued. A microfilm reader today services two hundred fifty rolls of films as compared with fifty, five years ago. These films contain rare historic records impossible to obtain in their original form. For example, the library contains thirty reels of the Weekly Deseret News (1850-1900), sixteen reels which record the entire manuscript collection


PRESIDENT'S

REPORT

379

Mrs. "fane" Stites, reference librarian, shown working on the newspaper clip files, a valuable and much used portion of the research facilities of the library. of the Bancroft Library, and others containing the record of priceless journals, diaries, and manuscripts gleaned from such depositories as the Library of Congress, Bancroft Library, Huntington, Yale, Harvard, and the New York Public libraries. The newspaper clip file, one of the most popular in the library, is an interesting innovation. Selected newspapers are examined, and all articles of Utah interest are clipped, indexed, and filed. Two additional extra-curricular projects of the library are worthy of mention. One is a card index by author, title, and subject of all registered dissertations pertaining to die history of Utah and the Mormons found in universities and colleges throughout the United States. So far more than fifteen hundred theses have been so listed. The other is the compilation of a "Union Catalogue of Published Materials on Utah and the Mormons." This project, begun several years ago by Dale L. Morgan, lists by author, title, and date all published materials found in every library in the United States. So far the library staff has listed more than nine thousand separate items and has typed some thirty thousand cards. Despite the excellency of the library and its staff, further progress is impeded through lack of funds. It is recommended that the current budget of $2,000.00 per year for the purchase of books be increased to at least $5,000.00, for the present appropriation is not sufficient to cover even the cost of new books which appear annually. I also recommend that the Library Committee attempt to acquire either by gift or purchase some of the larger private collections of the state.


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(D) PUBLICATIONS. The Board of Trustees is proud of our Quarterly. When Dr. Mortensen first assumed the role of director and editor in 1950, seventeen volumes of this periodical published on an annual basis had appeared. Since that time, Volume XVIII, Pageant in the Wilderness, and Volume XIX, West from Fort Bridger, have been issued, and the Quarterly has appeared regularly on a true quarterly basis. It is now in the twenty-sixth volume. The Publications Committee in recent issues has attempted to make the Quarterly more salable by proposing a more attractive cover, improving the type, and adding timely illustrations. Writes Dr. Mortensen in a Newsletter dated February, 1958: The July issue will be full of interest and excitement. A new and different approach is being made. In co-operation with the Utah Tourist and Publicity Council and the State Parks Commission, a magazine devoted to the history of the parks and other scenic areas of Utah is planned. Many illustrations are to be used, both black and white and color, and outstanding writers are preparing effective articles. In addition to the regular issues of the Quarterly, it is hoped that special issues containing completed research of the authors will appear occasionally as special monographs. (E) EXPANSION AND MEMBERSHIP. Under the very capable chairmanship of Dr. Joel E. Ricks, immediate past president, a comprehensive program of expansion is being planned. Excellent chapters have already been organized in Cache and Utah counties, and it is expected that Salt Lake and Weber counties will be similarly organized within the current year. A new plan of membership involving institutional as well as individual affiliation might result in increased membership. It is with pride that we recognize the phenomenal growth of the Utah State Historical Society during the past decade. But we must also become increasingly aware of our greater responsibilities to the people of the state along with this growth. Our biennial budget has increased from $40,000.00 in 1950 to $152,800.00 today, and our membership has grown from approximately three hundred and fifty to more than one thousand during the past eight years. No task is too great to preserve the marvelous heritage of our wonderful pioneers. In this we must not fail. With a loyal and devoted Board of Trustees, an efficient staff, a sympathetic legislature, and your enthusiastic co-operation, the future of the Society appears permanently assured.


REVIEWS

Among

AND

the Mormons:

Edited by

RECENT

Historic Accounts

W I L L I A M MULDER and

PUBLICATIONS

by Contemporary

Observers.

A. RUSSELL MORTENSEN.

(New

York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1958, xiv + 482 + xiv pp., $6.75) Per capita the Mormons are probably the most written-about sect in the United States. T h e peculiarities of their beliefs and practices drew early attention. Their insistence that they were a chosen people not only in religion but also in business and politics called forth persecution and still more publicity. T h e n followed the dramatic exodus to the wilds of Utah, heroic achievement in making this land productive, and a forty-year battle with the United States on the degree and conditions of integrating M o r m o n d o m and the nation. In the twentieth century Utah came into closer resemblance to the West as a whole, but without losing all its individuality and without shrinkage of its clientele of interested readers. T h e consequence is a great body of writing about the Mormons, much of it violently partisan on one side or the other, but some of it as free of distortion as was humanly possible. Perhaps it is the very abundance of this literature that explains the delay until 1958 for any attempt to assemble out of it a source-book on Mormon life and experience. Among the Mormons does this job so well that it is apt to be the first reference on almost every reading list on Utah or the Mormons.


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The two editors brought a wealth of experience to the task. Both earned the doctorate with studies in Mormon history. One has been editor of the Western Humanities Review, the other of the Utah Historical Quarterly. Both have been living and breathing Mormon history for a long time and soaking it in through the pores. This familiarity with the field paid off when it came to making selection of what to include in the anthology. Expertness of a high order was needed to tie these varied bits together and make them into a book. A few writers, such as Sarah Scott and Charlotte and Martha S. H. Haven and Thomas L. Kane, are quoted more than once, but the selections are cut down to reasonable brevity and a broad sampling thus is made possible. In the difficult art of providing continuity Mulder and Mortensen have shown real genius. In introducing each item they identify the writer and say enough about die dieme and setting so that the reader is ready for what follows. Usually they manage to prepare him for references and allusions as well. In a book like this it is not so important that one's favorite passage be included; the chances are that this morsel is well known and readily available. What really counts is the finding and presentation of obscure and overlooked tidbits. Among the Mormons has many such delectables drawn from newspapers and out-of-the-way periodicals, some from neglected books, and a few not previously published. Some offer hearsay testimony, but most of them were written at the scene and all but a very few were written at the time. Historians therefore do not get much of a shake, and Brigham Young is directly quoted only once and on a rather incidental matter. The only basic criticism I would offer concerns apportionment of space. The first fifteen years, the episodes from Palmyra to Nauvoo, get a full third of the book. I grant that in this period the Church was launched, the nucleus of the faithful made three major migrations, the principal leaders for the next several decades were recruited, and the Gentile world got its first impression of Mormonism. Still, a case can be made diat more than two-thirds of Mormon history was still to come — the exodus from Nauvoo and all the travail and attainment of the hundred-odd years since the transfer of headquarters of the Church to Salt Lake City. It might have been better planning to have budgeted more for the long span in Utah. For any other state, any other unit of the western population, we would be inclined to ask how much of their experience was in line


REVIEWS AND RECENT PUBLICATIONS

383

with that of the rest of the West. That question can be asked about die Mormons too. The answer as accumulated in the hundred good voices heard in Among the Mormons is not in absolute unison, but it seems to say that the Mormons came nearer being unique than typical. Unquestionably they did have peculiarities traceable largely to their religion and the impact of their church upon so much else, but it would be most remarkable if the peculiar elements actually outweighed all the others that were ordinary and standard for the West in general. Visitors and reporters, however, quite naturally played up what was distinctive, and, if they overdid it, proper anthologists can hardly do other than follow diat same proportion. When it comes to the writing of the history of die Mormons, diat ground rule will not apply, and the historian, if he does his job as well as diese two anthologists have done theirs, will face up to this question whether the epic of the Mormons has been mainly peculiar or in more fundamental respects in step with that of the West. JOHN W. CAUGHEY

University of California at Los Angeles

The Red Hills of November. By ANDREW KARL LARSON. (Salt Lake City, Deseret News Press, 1957, xvi + 330 pp., $5.00) Andrew Karl Larson, the author of this recent history of the town, Washington, in Utah's "Dixie," is a competent and trained historian. His ancestors on both sides participated as leaders in the settlement and development of this frontier community. He was brought up in the midst of many surviving witnesses of die town's early history and was vitally influenced by their account of epic struggles, failures, and achievements. He was an outstanding history student, particularly in research, under the late William J. Snow at Brigham Young University. He wrote the "History of the Virgin River Valley" for his master's dissertation at the same university. In tins piece of research he displayed an exhaustive, thorough analysis of all available source materials and a most informative, clear exposition of his interpretative conclusions. He has spent over a decade of research in obtaining the source materials for this present work. He is a teacher of history at Dixie College, St. George, Utah. The Red Hills of November, in spite of its poetic title, is a most mature and scholarly history of Washington from its first settlement in


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November 1857 up to 1900. Its founding was planned by Brigham Young to be the nucleus of an extensive cotton-raising project along the banks of the Virgin River in southwestern Utah. The majority of its first pioneers were selected from converts of the Southern states because of their expert knowledge of cotton farming. But shortly after their arrival, a large number of Scandinavian settlers were called to this place from Sanpete County, Utah. The first eight chapters are largely concerned with the initial settlement and the strenuous struggle for survival in an arid region quite desolate when compared to the well-watered valleys of northern Utah. The major problems were the creation of a new community, the development of successful farming under the most adverse conditions for irrigation, and the sporadic Indian depredations upon their livestock. As inferred above, the most crucial community issue, which required over thirty years to solve, was the harnessing of the capricious waters of the Virgin River for irrigation. Time and again the dams which were so essential for raising the water to the level of the irrigation canals were washed away by river floods. Many settlers were completely discouraged and left the community. But the majority, led by patient and determined leaders, endured to an ultimate triumph over the unruly river. This history also describes other economic activities, and the ecclesiastical, social, and cultural developments in this pioneer town. However, the major emphasis and the greatest amount of interpretative analysis is given to the story of the various economic interests, institutions, and achievements. The account of the rise and decline of cotton farming is one of the major highlights of the book. The agricultural, industrial, and commercial aspects of the production of cotton and its textiles play a most vital role in the economy and development of the community. Washington being the central area along the Virgin River for the growing of cotton, and because it had the large threestoried "cotton factory," had many vital relationships with the Mormon farming communities along the Virgin. Although the Latter-day Saint Church was a dominant influence in the founding and organizing of the community, and its ideals were those of the early settlers, relatively small attention is given to ecclesiastical affairs. However, the resolute courage, the sustaining faith, and the determined obedience to the will of the church authorities in the establishment of the "cotton mission" are dominant undercurrents of group and individual attitudes throughout the book. There is no attempt to make this history an heroic epic of dramatic crises and excit-


REVIEWS

AND RECENT

PUBLICATIONS

385

ing frontier adventure. Actually, the struggles and crises are those of backbreaking toil, near-starvation, disease, and discouragement. There are a few exciting Indian troubles. But they were of an incidental importance. In the composition of this history the author exhibits a combination of scholarly research, penetrating insight, and sympathetic understanding relative to his subject. In spite of his intimate connections with the town, he presents his historical analysis and interpretation with great objectivity and restraint. He combines into an essential unity the many facets of the little town's history. He describes the settlers as vital human beings with frailties, eccentricities, and peculiarities as well as the more positive virtues. He gives color and personal interest to his interpretative narrative by having the early settlers speak for themselves from well-selected excerpts of early memoirs and diaries. These are only one aspect of a rich hoard of primary sources that are frequently cited. However, this large amount of excellent documentation does not detract from the history's essential unity and clarity. This is a book which will appeal to the layman as well as the scholar. There are many illustrations of important historical sites, town institutions, and leading personalities. The maps indicate with simple clarity the important geographic features. The roles of the people, as individuals, or as a group, together with their leaders, are set forth with narrative skill and graphic portrayal. The illustrative anecdotes are choice in their display of the typical experiences of people in a frontier community. RUSSEL B. SWENSEN

Brigham Young University Exploring with Frimont: The Private Diaries of Charles Preuss, Cartographer for John C. FrSmont on His First, Second, and Fourth Expeditions to the Far West. Translated and edited by ERWIN G. and ELISABETH K. GUDDE. Volume XXVI, American Exploration and Travel Series. (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1958, xxix + 162 pp., $3.95) Publication of the Preuss diaries brings to students of Western Americana an interesting historical "find" and one of the most fascinating personal documents of its kind in recent years. Much extrinsic interest lies in the fact that these are the field journals of Charles Preuss (b. 1803, d. 1854), topographer and mapmaker for John C. Fremont on


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UTAH HISTORICAL

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his Far Western expeditions of 1842, 1843-44, and 1848-49. Preuss, considered by experts the finest western cartographer of his time, kept these diaries in German script for his family. In so doing, he provided a highly personalized account which supplements, corroborates, and at times fills gaps in Fremont's polished reports of the first two explorations. Briefer and more sketchy, but still of interest, is Preuss's third journal, written on the disastrous and controversial midwinter attempt to cross the southern Rockies. In the first two diaries Preuss wrote many graphically descriptive passages and recorded interesting details not mentioned in Fremont's reports and memoirs, nor in the several Fremont biographies. For instance, Preuss noted Fremont's imaginative but unsuccessful attempt to photograph topographic features with daguerreotype camera in 1842. This effort, probably an American "first," preceded by ten years similar attempts designated "earliest known" in the late Robert Taft's authoritative work on the pictorial history of the West. The diarist also reported Fremont's explosive anger in violent petty quarrels with "Kit" Carson and Preuss himself, personal details not recorded elsewhere. Utah readers will appreciate Preuss's wonder at the teeming wild life (mostly "small, good-tasting ducks and . . . plover") encountered in the lower Bear River Valley: "I have never seen so many waterbirds together. It sounds like distant thunder when they rise." (Pp. 87, 88.) Such reportorial entries are interspersed with highly subjective complaints, criticisms and emotional reactions to Preuss's experiences on the trail, and to the personalities and actions of his companions. His continually deprecating comments reveal that Preuss harbored deep resentment toward Fremont, the party leader who was ten years his junior. A proud, middle-class German, still "unassimilated" after a decade in America, the mapmaker sharply expressed his sense of alienation from the mountain-men companions he termed "rabble": "If I only had a few congenial fellows, Germans, of course, with me, we could make this monotonous prairie life agreeable enough. But so completely alone among these twenty-five people!" (P. 13.) Through such outpourings of his attitudes, prejudices and emotions in these diaries, Charles Preuss, the man, emerges from the shadowy figure of a mere historical reputation and assumes the dimensions of a recognizable personality a century after his death. Erwin and Elisabeth Gudde, known for previous works in Western Americana, have competently translated and edited these diaries, and have introduced the diarist with an excellent biographical essay.


REVIEWS AND RECENT

PUBLICATIONS

387

In addition to Preuss's portrait, the book includes samples of his field sketches and finished illustrations, and a sketch-map of routes of the three exploring expeditions. With gratification the reviewer notes the volume's dedication to the late Eleanor Ashby Bancroft who helped so many students of history in her long years of service at the Bancroft Library. EDWARD H. HOWES

Sacramento State College

The Great Diamond Hoax and Other Stirring Incidents in the Life of Asbury Harpending. Edited by JAMES H. WILKINS. (Reprint of 1913 ed., Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1958, xix -j- 211 pp., $2.00) This is the true story of two innocent looking prospectors who in 1871-72 perpetrated the cleverest swindle in western history on William C. Ralston, the financial genius of California, "The man who built San Francisco." The book might well have been titled "The bigger they come the harder they fall." The author, one of the victims, was no amateur in business. Before he was twenty-one years old he had made a fortune of more than a million dollars, and was a partner with Ralston in many business and mining ventures. His story, written many years after the event, is probably the most amazing record of a great swindle ever written. Briefly, it concerns two ordinary appearing prospectors who brought a bag of rough diamonds for safekeeping to Ralston's bank. Naturally Ralston wanted to get in on the new find and persuaded the prospectors to sell him a half interest in the new field. After sending two expeditions to the nearly inaccessible diamond field to gather samples, after having the stones tested by Tiffany, and after the West's leading mining engineer had pronounced the field genuine and fabulously rich, a company was formed and stock was sold to a selected few in San Francisco. The hoax was finally exposed when a German horse wrangler dug up a diamond that had been partially cut. He showed this to Clarence King, a famous geologist working for the government, and that ended one of the most fantastic promotion schemes ever conceived. The two prospectors left the country with about half a million dollars, and Ralston made up the losses to stockholders. The main fault of this reprint is that the editors have not indicated the exact locale of the salted diamond mine. The author's mention of


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Rawlins, Wyoming, is the only hint. However, there is another littleknown book which does give the exact location. This is Outs kin Episodes, by William G. Tittsworth, published in 1927. The location is a flat-topped mountain just south of Brown's Hole which ever since has been known as Diamond Mountain. Diamond Spring, where the prospectors camped, is located near the southern edge of the mountain, not too far north of Vernal. From personal knowledge of the country, this writer believes he knows the route taken by the prospectors to reach their salted diamond field. Tittsworth, who was an early settler in Brown's Hole, states that the two men, on their trips to the location, would get off the train at various stations — Rawlins, Rock Springs, or Evanston — and hire horses locally for their "prospecting trips." Their main route apparently was from Rock Springs, going into Brown's Hole through Jesse Ewing Canyon, then the only trail. Crossing Green River, they proceeded up Crouse Canyon to the comparatively flat top of Diamond Mountain, going almost as far south as possible, where they found Diamond Spring. In those days this was considered about as far from civilization as one could get. Billy Tittsworth happened to be in the country when Clarence King was returning from his inspection trip. He and some others backtrailed King and found the field, with evidence of extensive digging. The diamonds had been "planted" in ant hills in sandy soil. Most of them had already been dug up, but this group did find a few, proving the location. They were actually almost worthless commercial diamonds, but since no one in America had seen rough diamonds, all the so-called experts were fooled. Since the site of this hoax was in Utah, the book will have special interest to Utah readers, especially those who are familiar with the Diamond Mountain country. _, T. CHARLES KELLY

Torrey, Utah Owen Wister Out West: His Journals and Letters. Edited by FANNY KEMBLE WISTER. (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1958, 269 pp., $5.00) This readable book exonerates Owen Wister of much of the blame for creating the tiresome cowboy stereotype which for more than half a century has galloped through uncounted pulp magazine stories, books, movies, and TV westerns.


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Wister did create the original Knight in Chaps and Spurs and an array of artificial Western trappings — and also the beneficent and enlightened judge-landowner. It develops, however, that he did so under some protest and because of the demands of the reading public — or the magazine editors — of the times. Heroes just before and at the turn of the century were virtuous, and they won the hand of a pure woman in combat in which good triumphed over evil. Private journals which Wister kept of his many trips West and found in a desk drawer in 1938, fourteen years after his death, reveal that he did not believe all this romantic nonsense. In fact, he was wont to complain that "the plain talk in my Western tales published in Harper's (1893) . . . never 'got by' the blue pencil of . . . Henry Millys Alden, liberal as he was for those genteel times." Wister had been commissioned by Harper's to go West and report what he saw and heard, but soon Alden was complaining that his story was "too bloody," and Wister was retorting that you cannot recount Western adventure without blood. Harper's of those days was a far cry from the Harper's of a decade ago which published with obvious delight the devastating expose of the "phony West" with its drugstore cowboys and greedy (and exploited) modern Judge Carters. Other "censors" persuaded Wister to tone down his realistic stories of the brawling period West. On one occasion Wister watched an infuriated rancher savagely beat a spent horse until he was exhausted and then gouge out one of its eyes. He included the episode in The Virginian, but his good friend, Teddy Roosevelt, talked him out of using the eye-gouging part. The episode, as related in The Virginian and in Wister's journal reveals that the man in real life was more humanly helpless than the fictional character. In the novel, the cowboy threshed the brutal rancher. But the man who saw the actual beating recorded in his journal: "I was utterly stunned and sickened at this atrocious cruelty, and walked back to my own horse and sat down, not knowing very well what I was doing. . . . " Owen Wister Out West is the product of his daughter, Fanny Kemble Wister (Mrs. Walter Stokes) who lives in the family hometown of Philadelphia. Her Preface, Introduction, and Epilogue are delightfully done, as are the excerpts from the journals of experiences in the West between 1885 and 1900 and from his personal letters. Naturally, the book is wholly sympathetic, including the efforts to explain his namby-pamby writing.


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It would be interesting to see what Wister would have done with today's "adult Western" stereotype. Wister drew most of his observations about the West from southeastern Wyoming (and his comments about some of the early-day towns would infuriate their chambers of commerce today), but he owned and operated a small ranch in the Jackson Hole country. (By this time [about 1912] Wister, famous as a writer, and his family visited in Salt Lake City several times en route to the ranch and back to Philadelphia. Mrs. Wister and the children, including the author of this book, sometimes remained in Salt Lake for weeks at a time, usually staying at the Moxum Hotel and enjoying trips to the lake and Fort Douglas. The book covers an earlier period.) His daughter recalls the summers spent in Wyoming with nostalgia. "When we came to the stone marking the boundary between Idaho and Wyoming, we yelled with joy," she recalls. "Every rock, every sage bush, every aspen tree was different and better because it grew in Wyoming. . . . With condescension we had looked at Utah, Montana, Idaho, but here at last was Wyoming." Take that, you "Utaphiles." _ TT T '

r

ERNEST H. LINFORD

Salt Lake Tribune Sovereigns of the Sage. By NELL MURBARGER. (Palm Desert, California, Desert Magazine Press, 1958, 342 pp., $6.00) Most of us who love this Great Basin and its people and history find ourselves resenting the passage of time. Every week that goes by, we reflect — almost every day, in fact — death claims some old-timer and stills forever the stories he would have told if only someone had listened. Thus, week by week, history's sources die. If only a man had time to travel and listen before it is too late... . Well, Nell Murbarger had the time. Rather, she made it. Twelve years ago, she fled the security of a newspaper desk and started roaming the West, seeking out the characters who made history or who could remember something of those earlier ones who did. If nothing else, her book will help ease the consciences of a good many writers and lovers of Western history who realize that this sort of thing ought to be done and who can be grateful that someone is doing it. Sovereigns of the Sage is a book of uneven quality. This is not surprising. People are of uneven quality, too, and so are the stories they


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tell. Miss Murbarger simply records the stories she heard in her travels through the desert back-country, with little embellishment. Whenever she ran across a really interesting character — such as Josie Pearl, for example, the "nearly-100-years-old" prospector who still works her northern Nevada mine, alone, one hundred miles from the nearest town — her story rings with excitement and interest. Other times, she is reduced to retelling oft-told histories of various communities, without adding a great deal of knowledge or understanding. But she does cover the ground — from the crest of the Sierra to the Continental Divide, and from the Salton Sea to Flaming Gorge. Nor does time hold her prisoner; she bounces freely from pioneer days to modern dam-building and back without more than catching her breath. Utahns can be grateful that Miss Murbarger possesses a particular passion for the Great Basin country — possibly because in its emptiness, human character looms large. Most of her stories are set in the old mining camps of this area and in the little Mormon communities where progress has not erased the charm and flavor of the old days and where a few old-timers still sit in the sun with their memories. She dwells with particular affection on the old tales and the old settlers of Utah's Dixie. Sovereigns of the Sage is not documented and organized history. Miss Murbarger spent some time and effort rummaging old newspaper files and checking other sources, but much more in simply traveling and listening. But history is not made up only of duly recorded facts. Folklore, true or not, is also part of history, for it is a reflection of what men think ought to have happened, and thus is a reflection of the men themselves. History or folklore — or both — Nell Murbarger's newest book will be a welcome companion to anyone who travels the Great Basin and who has the curiosity to wonder what might have happened here yesteryear. WILLIAM B. SMART

Deseret News The Bannock of Idaho. By BRIGHAM D. Caxton Printers, 1958, 382 pp., $5.00)

MADSEN.

(Caldwell, Idaho,

It is a pleasure to welcome another significant contribution to the history of the American Indian. Each Indian tribe has a long and interesting story which is often difficult to reconstruct. The absence of adequate written records during the period prior to European contact


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requires the historian to depend upon the traditions of the Indian group which grow dimmer with the death of the old people who engaged in the traditional way of life. The early sporadic contacts by non-Indians leaving a written record are often difficult to piece together into a continuous account. The reports of Indian agents to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C, are often dry and repetitive. To make an interesting and accurate account from materials available is not an easy task, and Dr. Madsen is to be complimented for the contribution he has made. It is also difficult to be objective in dealing with an Indian tribe or in telling of their relationship with the United States. Although there is room for criticism of Bureau policy and particularly of its implementation, as well as of the mediocre individuals who frequently were appointed as Indian agents, Dr. Madsen's account makes it apparent that the acculturation process had by 1900 strongly affected this Indian group. One may quarrel with the Indian policy of the United States or with the way this policy has been effected, but this one hundred year span in the history of the Bannock Indians is evidence that acculturation, assimilation, and, to some extent, integration have occurred. One might add, almost to the extent that today die Bannock has practically disappeared as a separate people. The Bannock were a strong-minded, courageous, and aggressive group. The restlessness that spread throughout the Indian country as a result of the activity of the invading Europeans and of the horses, firearms, and trade implements that went before them caused the Bannock to leave their ancestral homeland in eastern Oregon to range over a wide area in southeastern Idaho. Their warlike attitude and the effect of their activities on neighboring Indian groups possibly achieved for the Bannocks a larger place in history than their numbers would ordinarily warrant. However, in spite of their determination to preserve their way of life, life on the reservation under the surveillance of government agents having army units available to quiet disturbances when they arose, plus the gradual encroachment upon the area by settlers, eventually brought about compliance and changes in life patterns. The colored frontispiece, decorated end-sheet map, and twelve drawings by Maynard Dixon Stewart enhance the quality of the work of the historian. This book will be of interest to the general reader of Western history as well as the scholar. S. LYMAN TYLER

Brigham Young University


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393

Danger Cave. By JESSE D. JENNINGS. (Anthropological Papers, Number 27. University of Utah Department of Anthropology, October, 1957, 328 pp., $6.00) Danger Cave is the report of the findings from a series of archaeological excavations in western Utah. Of the three sites, Danger, Juke Box, and Raven caves, Danger was the most informative and lends its name to the report. It is located less than two miles east of Wendover, Utah. To quote from the "Setting" really a Foreword to this report the author says: "The human story inferred in this report was set in one of the most remarkable of North American environments — the desert West. The natural subsistence resources of this land are today quite sparse; the balance between success and failure in survival has always been delicate. The fact that human groups survived in this environment deserves serious ecological note. Although no intensive study of this aspect of the problem is being undertaken here, the cultural data cannot be appreciated or evaluated without a modicum of information regarding the terrain and the biotic resources of the region." An inventory of the resources — the physiography of terrain, the flora and fauna, reptiles, birds, and mammals, follows, and the author concludes: "Without this knowledge of the present climate and resources — which has been characteristic from the beginning of human history in the region, so far as is now known — a full appreciation and understanding of the archaeologic data here presented would be impossible." A detailed account of the excavation procedures and problems encountered is given of each site. "Geological Considerations," "Material Culture," "Comparisons," and "Implications" are the chapter headings which follow. Illustrations are numerous and include tables, photographs, line drawings, charts, and maps. A bibliography and several Appendices conclude the report. This study has little relationship to the recorded history of Utah and the Intermountain West; yet it throws considerable light on the prehistoric role of the region. The North American Deserts. By EDMUND C. JAEGER. (Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 1957, vii + 308 pp., $5.95) The five deserts of North America — the Chihuahuan, Sonoran, Navahoan, Mohavean, and the Great Basin — extend from central Mexico almost to the border of Canada. The author explains that to be


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called a desert a geographical area must satisfy certain conditions as to weather, and although the five in North America have many characteristics in common, he shows that each desert has its definite individuality in its plant and animal life, climate, land formation, and geologic history. The author feels that the desert abounds in so many unusual things to be observed that it becomes necessary for those who are uninitiated in desert lore to learn a few of the desert's fundamental characteristics in order to discover the more subtle scenic aspects and the less easily seen inhabitants. Nondetailed maps give a quick view of the general desert boundaries, and the text suggests routes. To aid the reader in identifying desert inhabitants a series of line-drawings of insects, reptiles, birds, mammals, and plants identifies forms discussed in the text. Much of the phraseology of science has been avoided but scientific names have been included to provide an accurate means of identification for the serious reader and as an aid to familiarize the student with them. Blank spaces have been left alongside the names and descriptions, and it is suggested that marks be made when specimens have been found and recognized. In this way. the book can be a valuable aid to the student, casual traveler, or explorer. A bibliography and index are included.

On the Bloody Trail of Geronimo. By LT. JOHN BIGELOW, Angeles, Westernlore Press, 1958, 237 pp., $7.50)

JR.

(LOS

Westernlore Press has printed On the Bloody Trail of Geronimo as Volume XII in its Great West and Indian Series in a limited edition of 750 copies. It is the first published book version of the journal, written in serial form, by Lt. John Bigelow, Jr., illustrated by Remington, Hooper, McDougall, Chapin, and Hatfield, and first published in Outing Magazine in 1886. Written from the field in Arizona, the journal presents a picture of army life during the long-drawn-out Apache rebellion under Geronimo and his fearless sub-chiefs. It gives descriptions of the terrain covered, the mines, ranches, and inhabitants of the territory, and presents Bigelow's own observations on frontier life. His comments on current trends of thought relative to the attitudes of both military and civilian officials toward enlisted men reflect the trend towards better schooling, better accommodations in barracks, and better diet for army personnel. Arthur Woodward has supplied annotations to the text, the Foreword, and the Introduction.


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395

Graphic Description of Pacific Coast Outlaws. Thrilling Exploits of Their Arch-Enemy Sheriff Harry N. Morse. By CHARLES HOWARD SHINN. (LOS Angeles, Westernlore Press, 1958, 107 pp., $5.50) Charles Howard Shinn published his original paper-bound book in the 1890's, and with annotations and an introduction by J. E. Reynolds, plus a useful index, Westernlore Press has reprinted it in complete text as number XI of its Great West and Indian Series. Brigandage in California began with the conquest of the region by Americans. Outlaws, mostly dispossessed, bitter Spanish natives, moved to the mountains, to prey on the miners, the towns, and the stagecoaches. They hated the gringos — the pushing avaricious strangers who had usurped their homeland. In bands, and singly, the bandidos spread terror throughout the countryside. This book is concerned with the true exploits of Harry N. Morse, Sheriff of Alameda County, California, and contains rare items on the banditry of California's early days. It not only tells the story of one of the most remarkable law enforcement characters of the West, but is also a source document on the exploits of such Pacific Coast outlaws as Joaquin Murieta, Tiburcio Vasquez, Narcisco Ponce, Procopio or "Red Dick," and other merciless gunmen of those exciting early times in California.

Buckjk}n and Spurs. A Gallery of Frontier Rogues and Heroes. By GLENN SHIRLEY. (New York, Hastings House, 1958,191 pp., $4.50) Author Glenn Shirley has been a member of the Stillwater, Oklahoma, Police Department since 1936, and for several years he served as captain of the Bureau of Identification. At present he is Criminal Deputy in the Payne County, Oklahoma, Sheriff's Office. His interest in law enforcement problems in the West has led him to do intensive research, and he has written and published several books, including Law West of Fort Smith and Pawnee Bill, in addition to many articles on criminal identification in technical journals and popular magazines. The stories in Bucksk}n an^ Spurs read like the wildest inventions of the dime novelists, but are true, based on the author's research. Portraits of a dozen frontier characters—villains and heroes—are sketched, but the author has chosen some of the less well-known rather than the over-exploited frontier characters of radio and TV fame.


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The Autobiography of the West: Personal Narratives of the Discovery and Settlement of the American West. Compiled and Annotated by Oscar Lewis. ( N e w York, Henry H o l t and Co., 1958) The Blackjeet, Raiders of the Northwestern Plains. By JOHN C. EWERS. (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1958) The Fancher Train. Co., 1958)

By AMELIA BEAN. ( N e w York, Doubleday and

The Federal Lands: Their Use and Management. By MARION CLAWSON and BURNELL HELD. (Baltimore, T h e Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957) First Through the Grand Canyon. By R. E. LINGENFELTER. Early California Travel Series XLV. (Los Angeles, Glen Dawson, 1958) From Wilderness

to Statehood:

A History of Montana,

1805-1900. By

JAMES MCCLELLAN HAMILTON. Edited by MERRILL G. BURLINGAME.

(Portland, Binfords and Mort, 1957) The Frontier in Perspective.

Edited by WALKER D . W Y M A N and CLIF-

TON B. KROEBER. (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1957) The Gentle Tamers: Women in the Old Wild West. ( N e w York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1958)

By D E E BROWN.

Historic Sites in San Bernardino County. A Preliminary Report. By ARDA M. HAENSZEL. (San Bernardino, San Bernardino County Museum Association, 1957) James Pierson Beckwourth, 1856-1866, An Enigmatic Figure of the West: A History of the Latter Years of His Life. By NOLIE MUMEY. (Denver, T h e Old West Publishing Co., 1957) A Journal of the Voyages and Travels of a Corps of Discovery, Under the Command of Capt. Lewis and Capt. Clarkje of the Army of the United States, from the Mouth of The River Missouri Through the Interior Parts of North America to the Pacific Ocean, During the Years 1804, 1805, and 1806 . . . By PATRICK GASS. (Reprint of

original 1810 ed., Minneapolis, Ross & Haines, Inc., 1958)


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AND RECENT

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Natural History of a Wasatch Spring. Lake City, T h e Ralton Co., 1957)

By CLAUDE T . BARNES. (Salt

Natural History of a Wasatch Summer. Lake City, T h e Ralton Co., 1957)

By CLAUDE T . BARNES. (Salt

Over the Salt La\e Trail in the Fall of '49. By WILLIAM B. LORTON. (Los Angeles, Privately printed, 1957) Pageant of the Pioneers. By CLARENCE S. JACKSON. (Minden, Nebraska, Harold W a r p Pioneer Village, 1958) Stories of Arizona Copper Mines: The Big Low-Grades and the Bonanzas. (Phoenix, Arizona Department of Mineral Resources, 1957) Traveler in the Wilderness. By CID RICKETTS SUMNER. ( N e w York, Harper and Brothers, 1957) The

Travels

of Jaimie McPheeters.

By ROBERT LEWIS TAYLOR.

(New

York, Doubleday and Co., 1958)

RAY ALLEN BILLINGTON, " H O W the Frontier Shaped the American Character," American Heritage, April, 1958. LELAND HARGRAVE CREER, " M o r m o n T o w n s in the Region of the Colo-

rado" (Glen Canyon Series N o . 3 ) , Anthropological ber 32, University of Utah, May, 1958.

Papers, N u m -

, " T h e Activities of Jacob Hamblin in the Region of the Colorado" (Glen Canyon Series N o . 4 ) , ibid., N u m b e r 33. DEAC DUSHARME, "Man's Conquest of the Colorado," Arizona ways, June, 1958. NAURICE R. KOONCE, "Flying the Colorado," ibid. JONREED LAURITZEN, "They Braved the Wild, Wild River," ibid.

High-


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CHARLES C. NIEHUIS, "River Playground," ibid. L. F . WYLIE, "Glen Canyon D a m , " ibid. NOLIE MUMEY, "Black Beard, Ceran St. Vrain, Frontiersman, Indian Trader, Territorial and Political Leader, and Pioneer Businessman," Denver Westerners Roundup, January, 1958. , "Writers of Western History" (Josiah Gregg, M.D.), ibid. , "Writers of Western History" (Thomas Jefferson Farnham, 1804-1848), ibid., February, 1958. , "Writers of Western History" (Asa Shinn Mercer), ibid., March, 1958. DOROTHY O. REA, "Prominence Comes to Promontory," Church News [Deseret News], March 1,1958. , "Utah's First Scientist Laid Foundation for Modern Studies [Orson Pratt]," ibid., March 29,1958. "Exploring one of Utah's U n k n o w n Areas," ibid., April 26, 1958. "Pipe Spring, A National Monument," ibid., May 17,1958. HAROLD LUNDSTROM, "Lonely Grave of a Pioneer Mother [Rebecca B. Winters]," ibid., July 19,1958. JOSEF AND JOYCE MUENCH, "Lee's Ferry," Desert Magazine,

April, 1958.

BARBARA H A M M E N , "Night in Gateway Canyon [southeastern U t a h ] , " ibid., May, 1958. HARRY C. JAMES, " W e Would Protect Desert Plant Life," ibid. NELL MURBARGER, "Opalite at the Silver Cloud [Nevada Desert]," ibid., April, 1958. -, " W h e n the Brass Band Played at Taylor . . . [Nevada]," ibid., May, 1958.


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, " T h e Seven Troughs Bonanza," ibid., June, 1958. -, "White Man's Medicine in M o n u m e n t Valley," ibid., July, 1958. , " M u s e u m W h e r e 'Ideas' a r e M o r e I m p o r t a n t ' T h i n g s ' . . . , " ibid., August, 1958.

Than

NORMAN B. WILTSEY, " W h e n Riches Come to the Navajo . . . ," ibid. CRISTIE FREED, paintings by V . Douglas Snow, "Music in the Rockies," Ford Times, June, 1958. MARJORIE NELSON SHEFFIELD, paintings by V . Douglas Snow, "Tuba

City, Arizona," ibid., July, 1958. ANDREW F . ROLLIE, "Robert Glass Cleland, 1885-1957," Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly, March, 1958. RAMONA W . CANNON and BOYD O . H A T C H , " M o r m o n Pioneering . . .

It D i d n ' t E n d in '47," Instructor, July, 1958. "They T o o A r e Pioneers [Hopi and Navajo Indians]," ibid. N I N O FABIANO, "II Mormonismo E L o Stato Teocratic Dell' Utah," Le Vie Del Mondo, A n n o X I X , N u m e r o 10, Ottobre, 1957. R U T H D E E T T E SIMPSON, " T h e Coyote in Southwestern Indian Tradi-

tion," Masterkey,

March-April, 1958.

VOLNEY H . JONES, "Death of James H . Miller, Agent to the Navaho," ibid., May-June, 1958. " T h e Grand Teton — Jackson Hole Country," Special Issue, Minnesota Naturalist, N o . 2,1957. DAVID S. BOYER, " H u n t i n g t o n Library, California Treasure House," National Geographic Magazine, February, 1958. WELDON F . HEALD, "Wheeler Peak and its Glacier," Nevada and Parks, N o . 1, 1958.

Highways


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"Aging Monuments to Mormon Pioneers in Nevada . . . the Old Houses at Bunkerville," ibid. SHIRLEY NEWCOMB KELSEY, " T h e Santo N i n o of Zuni," New

Mexico

Magazine, July, 1958. STUART B. MOCKFORD, "Janson Lee's Peoria Speech," Oregon Quarterly, March, 1958.

Historical

AUGUST C. BOLINO, " T h e Role of Mining in the Economic Development of Idaho Territory," ibid., June, 1958. "Slade Is N o More," Part I, Overland News, March, 1958. "Slade Of T h e Overland," Part II, ibid., April, 1958. RALPH C. TAYLOR, "Mormon Settlement on the Arkansas," ibid., JulyAugust, 1958. DAVID E. MILLER, " T h e Donner Road through the Great Salt Lake Desert," Pacific Historical Review, February, 1958. RICHARD D . POLL, " T h e Political Reconstruction of Utah Territory, 1866-1890," ibid., May, 1958. FREDERICK A. MARK, "Idaho . . . F u r Trader Crossroads," Pacific westerner, Spring, 1958. FRANK P . DONOVAN, JR., "Harry Palimpsest, May, 1958.

Bedwell — Railroad

North-

Raconteur,"

HORACE S. HASKELL, "Flowering Plants in Glen Canyon Late Summer Aspect," Plateau, July, 1958. W I L L I A M C. MILLER and DAVID A . BRETERNITZ, "1958 Navajo Canyon

Survey Preliminary Report," ibid. "When Mormons Destroyed Fort Bridger," Pony Express, April, 1958. STAN RASMUSSEN, "Adventure in the Glen Canyon of the Colorado," Reclamation Era, May, 1958.


R E V I E W S AND RECENT

PUBLICATIONS

KENNETH T . GREEN, " W e Remember Kirtland Temple," Saints' March 24, 1958.

401 Herald,

EDWIN ROBERT FISHBURN, "Come to Historic Nauvoo," ibid., May 19,

1958. WALTER N . JOHNSON, " T h e Restoration of Nauvoo Homes," ibid. E. L. KELLEY, "Neighbors' Estimate of Joseph Smith III," ibid., June 2, 1958. N E I L M. CLARK, "Giant of the Colorado," Saturday Evening Post, April 5, 1958. ANDREW HAMILTON, "They Find Baubles in the Dust" [Rock hunters, photographs of Valley of the Goblins in U t a h ] , ibid., May 31, 1958. "Fort L e m h i and the Salmon River" (A letter from Dell Adams), SUP News, February, 1958. JESSE D . JENNINGS, "Proposed Escalante River Inspection Trek," ibid. WALTER A. KERR, "Huntsville, Small T o w n with Great Appreciation," ibid. RICHARD D . POLL, "Thomas L. Kane and the Peaceful Settlement of the 'Utah W a r , ' " ibid. DAVID E. MILLER, "San Juan Hill," ibid., May, 1958. HORACE A. SORENSEN, "Promontory Summit! Is it E n o u g h ? " ibid. , "Washington Report — Log of a Successful Visit" [for furthering Golden Spike M o n u m e n t ] , ibid., June, 1958. HAROLD H . JENSON, "First Pioneer Celebration in Utah," ibid. BERNICE GIBBS ANDERSON, "Massacre at the City of Rocks, Almo Creek, Idaho Territory, 1861," ibid.


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-, "Page of History at Connor Springs, Box Elder County," ibid., July, 1958. IVAN J. BARRETT, "Romance of Cotton in Utah's Dixie," ibid. "Glen Canyon . . . from the Moving Highway of the Colorado," Sunset, March, 1958. MARION MACINNIS and FLORENCE RANDALL, " T h e Mill T h a t W o n the

West" [The Holladay Windmill], Think, February, 1958. "Permanent Art from the Shifting Sands" [Indian sand painting], ibid. SETH P . EVANS, "Utah's Cattle Industry," Utah Economic Review, April, 1958. REED W . BAILEY, "Living in Harmony with Nature," Utah Review, May, 1958.

and Business

Educational

ART THOMAS, "Management of our Public Lands: For all of the P e o p l e ? " ^ . , May, 1958. T. L . BROADBENT, "Hans Besenstiel: Humanities Review, Spring, 1958.

Immigrant Satirist,"

Western

FRANK JONAS, "Possibilities in Research in Western Politics," Political Quarterly, June, 1958.

Western

"The Peril of the American West" (Robert West H o w a r d Charges that T V and Movie Falsifications of Western History Become Tools of Anti-American Propoganda), Westerners Brand Book, March, 1958. "Singing Wires in the Wilderness" (David H . Rush of Western Union Tells of the Building of Telegraph Lines that Completed Coast-toCoast Communication), ibid., May, 1958. MATT CLOHISY, "Lucien Bonaparte Maxwell, Prince of the Wilderness," Westerners New Yor\ Posse Brand Boo\, N u m b e r One, 1958.


HISTORICAL

NOTES

The eighteenth annual meeting of the American Association for State and Local History and the twenty-first annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists was held jointly in Salt Lake City, Utah, August 17-20, 1958, with headquarters at the Hotel Utah. The Utah State Historical Society, the Genealogical Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the National Society of Daughters of Utah Pioneers, the National Society, Sons of Utah Pioneers, and the Nicholas G. Morgan, Sr., Foundation had the signal honor to serve as hosts. A. R. Mortensen served as Program Chairman for the AASLH and Everett L. Cooley was Local Arrangements Chairman for the entire affair. The convention officially opened with registration Sunday, August 17. From 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. on that day a reception for delegates and their guests was held at the Mansion, 603 East South Temple. In the evening, 7:00 p.m., at the Hotel Utah Roof Garden, a buffet dinner was served. Nicholas G. Morgan, Sr., presided, and a welcome to Utah was given by the Honorable George D. Clyde, Governor of Utah. In his opening remarks Governor Clyde stated that "history is prologue." He then pictured Utah Territory as it was when the Mormon pioneers first entered the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, briefly sketched the arduous taming of the desert by these stalwart people, outlined the early agricultural and industrial pursuits, and forecast the future with the present industrial growth due to water conservation practices and


404

UTAH HISTORICAL

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the untold wealth which lies buried in the desert and mountain regions and is just now beginning to be exploited. The past is but prologue to the present and die future, he concluded. William Mulder of the Institute of American Studies, University of Utah, delivered the address, "The Mormons in American History," which was well received by the assembled delegates as an enlightening explanation of the place of the Mormons in America. Concurrent sessions were held on Monday, the eighteenth. At 10:00 a.m. at the Pioneer Memorial Museum, the archivists discussed "Aesop Revised — The Turtle and the Hare, Or How to Make Haste Slowly in Records Management." At die same hour the panel for the AASLH discussed "What is Wrong with Historical Publications." At 2:00 p.m. the topic was "Church Archives, Manuscripts, Museums," and "The Role of Historical Agencies in a State Parks and Historical Marker Program." The annual dinner and business meeting of the SAA, Dolores C. Renze presiding, was held at 7:00 p.m. Announcement and recognition of Fellows elected for 1958 was made, and William D. Overman, Society president, delivered the address, "The Pendulum Swings." Tuesday, August 19, was Tour Day. Guests were taken by bus to the Great Salt Lake, Bingham Copper Pit, and Big Cottonwood Canyon. Luncheon was served at Maxfield's Lodge, after which the buses continued on to Brighton where most of the enthusiastic tourists enjoyed a ride on the ski lift. At 5:00 p.m. all were back at the Pioneer Village Museum where an old-time western supper was served under the stars, guests toured the Museum, and bonafide western entertainment was provided by Horace and Ethel Sorensen. Joint sessions were held on Wednesday, August 20. At 10:00 a.m. the panel discussed "Western Archival Resources." At 12:30 a joint luncheon was held at which Clifford L. Lord, president of the AASLH, presided at die annual business meeting and presentation of Awards. At 2:00 p.m. the subject was "Reclamation — Its Influence and Impact on the History of the West." Reed W. Bailey of the Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Forest Service, was chairman. Panelists were Governor George D. Clyde, Marshall N. Dana of the National Reclamation Association, and Paul Jones of the Navajo Tribal Council. At 7:00 p.m. the AASLH held its annual dinner. Clifford L. Lord presided, and John W. Caughey of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, and the University of California, Los Angeles, delivered the concluding address of the convention. "Toward an Understanding of the West." It was a most thought-provoking,


HISTORICAL

NOTES

405

excellently delivered address which could very well have as much significance for an understanding of the West as did Frederick Jackson Turner's famous thesis, "The Frontier in American History," given sixty-five years ago in Chicago. According to all reports received, the convention rated among die most successful ever held by the two organizations. SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT Annual Awards of Merit of die American Association for State and Local History were instituted to pay tribute to those individuals and organizations promoting a better understanding of our national heritage at a local level. "Awards are made only in the case of unusually meritorious work. The mere fulfillment of routine functions (in the case of a historical society for instance) is not justification for an award, unless such fulfillment involves a radical change in policy for that society. Action over and above the ordinary call of duty is the usual prerequisite for an award." So reads the instruction sheet which gives the criteria upon which Awards of Merit are given. It is with considerable pride, therefore, that announcement is made of the selection by the Awards Committee of the AASLH in its 1958 meeting for the Rocky Mountain Region: State or provincial historical societies and agencies publicly or privately supported. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY and A. R. MORTENSEN

Books in the field of serious history. Among the Mormons: Historic Accounts by Contemporary Observers. Edited by William Mulder and A. Russell Mortensen. (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1958) Individuals contributing significantly to the understanding and development of local history or local historical programs. WILLIAM R. PALMER, CEDAR CITY, UTAH

Other winners in the Rocky Mountain region were: Organizations: DENVER POSSE, T H E WESTERNERS, DENVER, COLORADO FORT BENTON MUSEUM, FORT BENTON, MONTANA


406

UTAH HISTORICAL

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A. R. Mortensen was elected to the council of the American Association for State and Local History for a four-year term. The editors of American Heritage, published by the American Association for State and Local History, have disclosed that they are seriously considering launching a sister publication. It is tentatively entitled Horizon and will be devoted to the arts and culture, past and present. There will be literature and philosophy, the study of man and nature, wit pageantry, and the arts of good living. The American Historical Association is preparing a Guide to Photocopied Historical Materials in the United States and Canada to be published late in 1959. The Guide will be a desk reference book, paralleling the Guide to Historical Literature, which will tell where to find important bodies of microfilmed and other photocopied materials and how to use and procure them. It will locate photocopied holdings of historical manuscripts by standard union list practices according to traditional subject and period fields of history. Information is now being collected through co-operation with archives, libraries, and historical societies in the United States and Canada. The method of preparing the text anticipates the possible issuance of supplements. The editor welcomes information that will assist him in making the Guide as complete as possible. Correspondence should be directed to Dr. Richard W. Hale, Jr., Editor, Boston University, Copley Square Campus, 84 Exeter Street, Room 401, Boston 16, Massachusetts. The Society extends dianks to its friends and supporters, individuals and institutions, for their gifts to the library: J. Cecil Alter, Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Ashby, Claude T. Barnes, Howard L. Blood, Mrs. Josephine Chase Bradshaw, Mrs. Chloe B. Bruce, Mrs. Kate B. Carter, Mrs. Virginia Creighton, family of Thomas W. and Hanna R. Cropper, Stanley R. Davidson, Glen Dawson, Lucile M. Francke, Mrs. John D. Giles, Randall Henderson, Milton R. Hunter, John James, Jr., Mrs. Rhoda M. Jones, family of Mary Grant Judd, Dorothy F. Kaye, Charles Kelly, Francis W. Kirkham, A. C. Lambert, Gustive O. Larson, Paul B. Lister, Merrill J. Mattes, William F. McCrea, David E. Miller, Nicholas G. Morgan, Sr., M. C. Morris, Jr., Hugh F. O'Neil, T. Earl Pardoe, M. Wilford Poulson, Mary Bennion Powell, Thomas F. Preshaw, Amol Rawlins, Mina Madsen Remund, Brig. Gen. Franklin Riter, Lester Roberts, Harry Simonhoff, William B. Smart, Reed Stout, James D. Wardle,


HISTORICAL

NOTES

407

Sam Weller, Miss Edith L. Wire, Levi Edgar Young, Arizona Department of Mineral Resources, Battle Creek (Michigan) Historical Society, Brigham Young University library, Church of Jesus Christ (Temple Lot), Genealogical Society, L.D.S. Church Historian's Office, League of Women Voters, Lehi High Priest Quorum, Lincoln National Life Foundation, Los Angeles Westerners, Nevada Department of Economic Development, Phillips Petroleum Company, Provo Chamber of Commerce, Sanpete County Industrial Development Committee, Stanford University library, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Union Pacific Railroad Company, United States Geographical Survey, Utah Copper Division Kennecott Copper, Utah State University, Zion-Bryce Natural History Association.



UTAH

STATE

HISTORICAL

BOARD OF TRUSTEES (Terms Expiring April 1,1961) JUANITA BROOKS, St. George

LELAND K. CREER, Salt Lake City NICHOLAS c. MORGAN, SR., Salt Lake City JOEL E. RICKS, Logan RUSSEL B. SWENSON, PrOVO

(Terms Expiring April 1, 1959)

SOCIETY

OFFICERS 1957-59 LELAND H. CREER, President NICHOLAS c. MORGAN, SR., Vice-President

A. R. MORTENSEN, Director

PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE JUANITA BROOKS, Chairman LEVI EDGAR YOUNG A. R. MORTENSEN

LOUIS BUCHMAN, Salt Lake City

MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE

GEORGE F. EGAN, Salt Lake City

JOEL E. RICKS, Chairman

CHARLES R. MABEY, Bountiful

A. R. MORTENSEN

WILLIAM F. MCCREA, Ogden

LEVI EDGAR YOUNG, Salt Lake City

PUBLIC RELATIONS COMMITTEE GEORGE F. EGAN, Chairman

(Ex-Officio Member)

WILLIAM F. MCCREA

LAMONT F. TORONTO, Secretary of State

CHARLES R. MABEY

EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTIONS: The Society was or-

The Utah State Historical Society assumes no responsibility for statements made by contributors to this publication.

ganized essentially to collect, disseminate and preserve important material pertaining to the history of the state. To effect this end, contributions of manuscripts are solicited, such as old diaries, journals, letters, and other writings of the pioneers; also original manuscripts by present-day writers on any phase of early Utah history. Treasured papers or manuscripts may be printed in faithful detail in the Quarterly, without harm to them, and without permanendy removing diem from meir possessors. Contributions for die consideration of die Publications Committee, and correspondence relating Uiereto, should be addressed to the Editor, Utah State Historical Society, 603 East South Temple, Salt Lake City 2, Utah.

MEMBERSHIP: Membership in die Society is $3.00 per year. The Utah Historical Quarterly is sent free to all members. Non-members and institutions may receive the Quarterly at $3.00 a year or $1.00 for current numbers. Life membership, $50.00. Checks should be made payable to die Utah State Historical Society and mailed to the Editor, 603 East South Temple, Salt Lake City 2, Utah. Entered as second-class matter January 5, 1953, at die Post Office at Salt Lake City, Utah, under die Act of August 24,1912.



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Facsimile of the front and back °f Tithing Office script. The first redeemable in produce at the General Tithing Store House in Salt Lake City and the second at St. George. Courtesy Historian s Office, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.


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