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Utah's Ethnic Minorities: A Survey
Utah Historical Quarterly
Vol. 40, 1972, No. 3
Utah's Ethnic Minorities: A Survey
BY RICHARD O. ULIBARRI
ONE OF THE PET THEORIES of American history has been that of the American melting pot. This theory has been propounded with such fervor that only recently has it been shown to contain some serious inconsistencies. The fact of the matter is that the melting has only applied to those immigrants who came to the United States from Europe. There are in the United States and in the state of Utah significant numbers of people who have never been assimilated. These are the members of the Black, Chicano, American Indian, and Oriental minorities. There are other so-called minority peoples residing in the state, but they are minorities only in the sense that they are small in number. In the main, these other people have become part of the American melting pot process. True ethnic minorities in this country are those who, because of racial or cultural difference, are treated as a group apart or regard themselves as aliens here and who are, therefore, held in lower esteem and deferred from certain opportunities open to the dominant group. These are the people to be described in this historical survey.
The primary reason minority people have not mixed is the majority population's refusal to accept them because they are "different." All of them, for instance, have easily recognizable physical features such as skin color, texture of hair, stature, and facial features which set them apart from the majority. Another difference commonly shared is their non- European origin.
Japanese and Chinese Americans came to this country from Asia. Blacks were brought against their will as slaves from Africa. Indians, of course, were already here. Chicanos shared a European background on the side of their Spanish forefathers, but they also shared distinctive Indian cultural backgrounds. As a result of "different" backgrounds, these minorities have cultural traits unlike the norm for the rest of the country. Often these differing cultural traits have been taken as an affront by the majority society. Of critical importance is the fact that Indians, Blacks, and Chicanos have been conquered people, thus having suffered denaturalization and cultural isolation. Orientals, on the other hand, while not suffering this fate, did suffer severe immigration discrimination.
Another common trait of these minorities is that none of them shared in the American frontier experience except on the wrong end of the action. That is, they did not participate in a manner which brought them the benefits of that experience. Specifically applied in Utah, we see that here Indians suffered the loss of their lands to the early Utah white settlers at precisely the same time the land of the Mexican fathers of the present-day Chicanos was taken over by the United States government. Those Blacks who came during the settling of the Utah frontier came as slaves or servants, and Orientals came to stay only after the original settlements had been made, participating on the periphery as basic laborers. Incidentally, it should be stated that the experience in this regard was not unique but simply furthered a pattern developed elsewhere on the frontier of America's sweep westward.
The minority peoples in Utah are truly in the minority, for, while their number increased about sixty-three percent from 1960 to 1970, they still comprised only slightly more than six percent of the total population of the state in 1970. This contrasts with national figures which show minority groups comprising approximately fifteen percent of the total population of the United States. Chicanos form the largest minority group in Utah, numbering more than forty thousand persons or at least 3.5 percent of the total state population. Other minority groups in Utah comprise significantly smaller percentages of the state's population: Indians from various tribes, 1.1 percent; Orientals, 0.9 percent; and Blacks, 0.6 percent. The Chicanos, then, comprise a larger group than the other three minorities put together.
Most of Utah's minorities, with the exception of the American Indian, are concentrated along the Wasatch Front, particularly in the larger urban populations of Salt Lake City and Ogden. Blacks and Chicanos live in those communities which are close to the state's military installations where they most readily find employment.
The very small number of Chinese who reside in the state are concentrated in the densely populated areas where many are engaged in small businesses such as laundry and dry cleaning establishments and restaurants. Most of the Japanese Americans also live relatively close to the major population centers. Many of them, however, are engaged in farming activities, particularly in truck farms. Others own small business establishments, and the younger generations, now graduating from colleges, are entering the professions.
Most Indians still reside on the reservations; in San Juan County alone are found approximately half of Utah's total Indian population. However, in the decade of the 1960s, an important shift was noted as Indians moved from the reservations to urban areas. During that period, the total Indian population in metropolitan Utah more than doubled, giving evidence of significant migration.
BLACKS : SERVITUDE AND SERVICE
The Black population in Utah is extremely small. There were residing in the state only slightly more than six thousand five hundred in 1970, and nearly all of these were located in the urban communities of Salt Lake City and Ogden — near military installations and the fastdying railroad centers. Nevertheless, Blacks have made their imprint on the area. The first Blacks arrived with the earliest fur trappers who entered the region. Sadly, most of them remain nameless. However, James P. Beckwourth, a member of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company from 1823 to 1826, was one of the area's noted Mountain Men.
The Brigham Young Monument at the intersection of Main and South Temple streets in Salt Lake City and the This is the Place Monument at the mouth of Emigration Canyon contain the names of three Black men who entered the Salt Lake Valley with the vanguard of Mormon pioneers. These three Black slaves achieved an immortality along with other Utah pioneers. Their names were Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby. While they were the first Black slaves into the area, they were not the only ones, for there were many Blacks accompanying the Mormon parties on their journeys westward. A great number of the Mormons immigrated to the Great Basin from the southern states and brought their slaves with them. For example, the Mississippi Company in 1848 included fifty-seven white members and thirty-four Blacks."
Some Blacks came as free men and others as slaves. In the case of the latter, they often were the most valuable property a family had. Mormon pioneer John Brown listed in his autobiography an inventory of the gifts made to the church which included real estate valued at $775.00, a long list of livestock, farm equipment, tools, household articles, and one "African Servant Girl" valued at $1,000.00. The value of this slave girl constituted one-third of the entire gift.
By the ambiguity of the Compromise of 1850, Utah was the only western territory in which Blacks were held as slaves. According to the United States Census of that year, there were in Utah twenty-four free Blacks and twenty-six Black slaves. And the census of 1860 listed thirty free Blacks and twenty-nine slaves.
In 1851, the Utah Territorial Legislature passed an act protecting slavery in the territory. The law provided clearly defined obligations for both master and slave. These requirements were similar to those practiced in the South. While the slave trade was never legal in the territory, dealing in human bondage did take place. The legal practice ended, of course, with the conclusion of the Civil War. Many of the Black people at that time, both slave and free, were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and remained in the territory. Some Blacks in the state today trace their origins to these early pioneers.
Like other western territories, Utah has been the site of military defense installations, and Black men have played a significant role in establishing and maintaining them. In September 1884, war and the threat of war existed between the Ute tribes and the Mormon population. As a result, the Bureau of Indian Affairs sent to the Uintah Reservation an agent who recommended the establishment of a fort near the reservation for the "discipline and control" of the Indians. In August 1886, a site was selected at the junction of the Duchesne and Uinta rivers. Chosen to command Fort Duchesne was Major F. W. Benteen, the man who had saved what was left of General George Custer's army. Benteen's Ninth Cavalry troops from Fort Steele and Fort Sidney, Nebraska, were Black. Much disliked by the Indians, they received from them the name "Buffalo Soldiers" because of their woolly beards. Their task was to defend the frontier of eastern Utah, western Colorado, and southwestern Wyoming. A monument at Fort Duchesne reads:
The famed "Buffalo Soldiers" served for nearly twelve years at Fort Duchesne.
Another military unit of Black soldiers — the Twenty-fourth Infantry Regiment — was stationed at old Fort Douglas and participated with distinction in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. These were the men who swept up San Juan Hill past the faltering Seventy-first New York Regiment, and, along with the Black Cavalry, helped save the day for Theodore Roosevelt. Following the battle of San Juan Hill, they served as nurses in the yellow fever hospital at Siboney.
The Black population of Utah grew very slowly. While the entire population of the state at the turn of the century reached two hundred seventy thousand, there were only 678 Black residents, including approximately two hundred Black soldiers at Fort Duchesne. In the half century from 1850 to 1900, Blacks resided in Salt Lake, Uintah, Weber, and Tooele counties where they found employment with mines, railroads, and military establishments.
The period from 1900 to 1920 saw increased Black population growth. Despite the removal of some two hundred soldiers and their dependents from Uintah County, the Black population managed to double. Varied economic opportunities were available for them in Salt Lake City, in the coal mines in Carbon and Emery counties, and with the railroad in Weber County. However, population growth fell sharply in the period between 1920 and 1940. Employment — especially during the Depression — was extremely scarce, and Black people left the state in search of jobs elsewhere. The decline in coal mining in Utah's two coal counties presented particularly difficult economic conditions for Blacks, and by 1940, ninety percent of the state's Blacks lived in Salt Lake and Weber counties.
Beginning with the early 1940s, Utah's Black population increased much more rapidly than in previous years. Much of this growth resulted from increased employment opportunities with Department of Defense installations established during World War II — Hill Air Force Base and the Naval Supply Depot in Davis County, the Utah General Depot in Weber County, and the Tooele Ordnance Depot and Dugway Proving Grounds in Tooele County.
As elsewhere in the United States, Blacks in Utah have faced discrimination and prejudice. The historical record shows that even lynchings occurred in the state, as in the cases of Sam J. Harney, who was lynched in Salt Lake City in 1885, and Robert Marshall, June 18, 1925, who was hanged twice in one day in Price by some eighteen hundred men, women, and children. During the 1920s and the 1930s, the Ku Klux Klan was active in the state and, as elsewhere, Blacks were the chief target. While blatant bigotry has subsided in the present day, Blacks still suffer from a degree of segregation. Statistics show that the Black core areas for Salt Lake City and Ogden, where at least eighty percent of Utah's total Black population resides, are in zones peripheral to the business district, from which they find it very difficult to escape.
About seven census tracts in the central city area of Salt Lake contain about eighty percent of the city's Blacks, and in the central city of Ogden, five census tracts show about ninety-eight percent of the city's Black population.
Although Blacks have played a substantial role in the historical development of the state, it is obvious that they still have a long way to go in achieving equality in such areas as employment, educational opportunities, and adequate housing.
INDIANS : FIRST AND LAST CITIZENS
Another Utah minority which has played an influential role in the state's development, but which in many ways has further to go to achieve equality of opportunity to successfully compete in today's modern society, is the Indian in his various tribes throughout the state.
One of the obvious contributions of the Indian to the state of Utah is to be found in so many place names used throughout the state. The most familiar is the name of the state itself. In addition, the names of counties such as Piute and Uintah; towns such as Panguitch, Parowan, and Kanab; and names of mountains and valleys such as Timpanogos Mountain, the Wasatch Mountains, and the Pahvant Valley in Millard County reflect the state's Indian heritage. It is fitting that there has never been any general feeling by Utah residents to change those names, for the Indian tribes lived in the area long before any other people.
According to the best calculations, the history of the Great Basin Indians must go back to the ancient Desert Culture of nine to ten thousand years ago when nomadic bands migrated according to the season, hunted and gathered food, and sought shelter in caves and under overhanging cliffs. By 6000 B.C. these Indians had evolved a specialized material culture and received new ideas, including agriculture, from Mexico which made possible a more sedentary style of living and gave them some leisure time. Archaeologists have called this more advanced culture the Southwestern, or Pueblo, Tradition. The flowering of Pueblo Culture, which reached classical proportions by the eleventh century, produced, among others, the Anasazi Culture centered in the Four Corners area. The decline of the Anasazi in the late twelfth century, for reasons that are not entirely clear, led to the eventual abandonment of their great towns. Archaeologists believe that the Hopis of northeastern Arizona and the Pueblos of the Rio Grande Valley in New Mexico are the descendants of these "old ones."
While the Pueblo Culture declined, other tribes — notably the Shoshonean-speaking Utes, Paiutes, and Gosiutes of Utah, Arizona, and Nevada — continued on in much the same way as the early desert dwellers. In addition, Athapaskan-speaking Navajos came down from Canada to settle principally in north-central New Mexico shortly before the coming of white men into the area. They gradually extended their territory and influence westward and eventually north across the San Juan River into Utah.
Beginning with Coronado in 1540, Spanish influence over the Indians of the Intermountain West in the ensuing centuries brought great cultural changes to these tribes. Uniquely important was the introduction of horses which the Utes and Navajos, especially, exploited. Then, in 1776, the Dominguez-Escalante expedition provided the first comprehensive documentation of the Indians in Utah. Spanish traders and the fur men from Missouri and New Mexico came on the heels of the padres and their band of explorers, and, later, New Mexico caravan traders opened the fifteen-hundred-mile Spanish Trail between Santa Fe and Los Angeles through the country of the Utes and the Paiutes.
Further changes were wrought upon the Indians of the area at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War in 1848 when control of the entire area passed from Mexico to the United States. Even before that war was over, the Mormon pioneers arrived in 1847 to compete with the Indians for available territory. While the Mormons pursued a basic policy of peaceful coexistence, they nevertheless confronted the Indians for the limited available resources. The gold rush and the great move of other pioneers to the Far West brought large numbers of prospectors and pioneers over the lands of the Utah Indians.
The subsequent history of the Indians in the Territory of Utah followed the familiar pattern of the Indian elsewhere in America, that is, a story of confrontation between two cultures and the inevitable giving way of one to the other. Initially, the arrival of white settlers was not disturbing to Utah's Indians. The Great Salt Lake separated the Ute and Shoshoni bands which ranged over the Great Basin. But the food supply in the area was meager at best, and the Indian was accustomed to spending most of his time in search of food. In his own way, the Indian had worked out a solution to his economic problems and was getting along at least satisfactorily. However, when the whites came and moved south, selecting the best sites for their villages, they took the favorite spots and gathering places of the Indian. In so doing, the balance of the Indian economy was disturbed. Deer were driven back into the high mountains or were killed off by the superior weapons of white settlers. Other game became scarce and other food supplies were much reduced. Consequently, the Indians were crowded into the least desirable lands, and the action prompted resistance on their part — resistance which began at Battle Creek with the Ute Indians in 1850, followed by two major Indian wars in the state, the Walker War of 1853-55, and the Black Hawk War of 1863-68.
Brigham Young attempted to solve the problem of the dispossessed natives by creating farms where they might be trained to be self-sufficient. The attempt failed, however, and the people of the territory desired to have the Indians expelled as the only realistic solution. The final result, of course, was institutionalization on reservations. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln designated the Uintah Basin as a reservation for the various bands of Indians. Before the advent of reservations and before the white men came into the area, Utes had freely roamed in the territories of New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah and even into the present-day panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas. By 1886, however, all three Utes bands were consolidated under one agency at Fort Duchesne.
Meanwhile, in 1884, President Chester A. Arthur had issued an executive order making all lands in the state of Utah lying south of the San Juan River in its confluence with the Colorado a part of the Navajo Reservation. Subsequently, the reservation has been extended so that today Navajos have use and occupancy of southeastern Utah northward to the Bear's Ears and the present town of Blanding.
The Gosiutes, who had historically inhabited the region south and west of the Great Salt Lake, more or less isolated in one of the most arid and inhospitable regions of the United States, resisted government attempts to be moved to the Uintah Valley to be institutionalized with the Utes, or to Fort Hall with the Shoshonis. Ideas were even proposed for removing them to Indian Territory. All such attempts failed, and the Gosiutes finally were provided a reservation in Skull Valley in 1912 (extended in 1919) and also the Deep Creek or Gosiute Reservation, established on the border between Nevada and Utah in 1914. Today these federal reservations still exist in Utah along with tribal owned lands and Indian grant lands from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints.
Presently, great changes are occurring among some of the Indians of the state. Some are moving in significant numbers from reservations into urban areas to be absorbed in the work force and cultural milieu of the larger society. In many instances, there is an awakening of interest in the ancient Indian cultures among Indians themselves. Some tribal governments, such as that of the Utes in the Uintah Valley, are cooperating with federal agencies in transforming the reservation economically. Education is now very intensive, and most important is the rise of selfdetermination among many. This, coupled with a more realistic view of Indian aspirations by the federal government, indicates that after years of frustration, Indians will play the dominant role in determining the course of their own development.
JAPANESE: FROM SETBACK TO SUCCESS
In the face of similarly adverse conditions, another minority group, the Japanese, has played the dominant role in its development. The census of 1890 showed 4 Japanese in Utah, all male laborers. Within the next ten years the Japanese population increased to 417, of which only 11 were females. Most of this total were farm laborers and railroad hands working on section gangs. A few worked in the mines. This population gradually increased more than fivefold, so that by 1910 there were 2,110 Japanese Americans in the state. These people resided primarily in the Salt Lake Valley where they worked as farm laborers and farmers on a rental or share-crop basis. The population continued to grow gradually into the 1930s.
During the 1920s, many of the Issei (first generation Japanese Americans) worked in the mines within the state. At Bingham Canyon, eight hundred worked in the. world's largest open pit copper mine, and in central Utah, centered around the town of Helper, approximately a thousand Issei mined coal. They worked also in the smelters at Garfield, Tooele, and Magna. Issei contributed greatly to the truck gardening of Box Elder, Davis, Weber, and Salt Lake counties. Celery and tomato culture in particular are indebted to the industriousness of the early Japanese. The sugar beet industry also depended on Japanese labor.
By the late twenties and early thirties, areas in Ogden and Salt Lake City began to be known as Japanese centers where one could find new houses, small stores specializing in Japanese food, laundries, and a few hotels. Between 1930 and 1940, there was a decrease of Japanese population, primarily because jobs were no longer available for non-whites. Some of those who left Utah returned to California, and some returned to Japan.
"The largest influx of persons of Japanese ancestry took place during the war years of 1942-45. This influx was due to abnormal conditions, but nevertheless has left its imprint upon the Japanese population of Utah." When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, about one hundred twenty-seven thousand persons of Japanese descent lived in the United States. Of these, more than one hundred twelve thousand resided on the Pacific Coast. In the hysteria of the time, such a large number on the coast created unrealistic fears that their presence was dangerous to the security of the western United States. Consequently, their removal from the Pacific Coast was demanded.
At first, before mandatory relocation was affected, Nisei (second generation Japanese Americans educated in America) and Kibei (second generation Japanese Americans educated in Japan) were instructed to move out of strategic areas on their own. Almost five thousand did so, coming principally to Utah and Colorado during this period of voluntary evacuation. Since Salt Lake City was generally the first stop for those moving eastward, about fifteen hundred dropped out of the eastward stream and remained in Utah, adding to the more than two thousand persons of Japanese ancestry already living here at the time.
With the creation of Topaz in Millard County near Delta, Utah — one of ten centers under the War Relocation Authority — over eight thousand Japanese Americans were brought into the state between September 1942 and October 1945. For three years these imported residents comprised the fifth most populous city in Utah. Despite being forced to live under the most trying circumstances, residents of the center at Topaz, as well as those in the nine other centers, proved not only their patriotism but their industry as well. As strange as it may seem, during World War II the headquarters of the Buddhist Church of America was at Topaz, having been transferred from San Francisco.
Even before the conclusion of the war in the Pacific, the War Relocation Authority, recognizing that a serious mistake had been made, began to provide for the resettlement of Japanese out of the relocation centers. From the centers they went to those areas where there was the possibility for immediate employment. In Utah, the Tooele Ordnance Depot became one of the chief employers. By the end of 1944, three hundred new families had been added to the original Japanese families there, and many still live in that area. In all, some five thousand Japanese Americans settled in Utah after World War II. However, by the census year 1970, the population of Japanese Americans had once again decreased to probably not more than five thousand in the state.
Published daily from 1916 to 1933, Utah Nippo now appears twice weekly in Salt Lake City to serve the Japanese American community.
Extremely industrious, the Japanese are one of Utah's most successful groups. In Salt Lake City, the Japanese newspaper, Utah Nippo, has a circulation of about one thousand. Published twice weekly, it is quite effective in holding the community together. The most vibrant Japanese American organization is the Japanese American Citizens League, which can boast at least one member from nearly every Japanese family in the state. The various chapters carry out social and athletic programs, sponsor scholarships, and conduct youth activities. Religiously, the Japanese people of the state are aligned with the Japanese Church of Christ, the Salt Lake Buddhist Church, and the Nichiren Buddhist Church. Several hundred members affiliate with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The newest generation, the Sansei, is nearly a century removed from the first Japanese immigrants to this country, but the traditions of their forefathers continue to provide them with the cultural attributes that have assisted them in periods of duress.
CHINESE: LABORERS AND BUSINESSMEN
The history of the Chinese in Utah begins with the construction of the transcontinental railroad. Charles W. Crocker, one of the "big four" of the Central Pacific Railroad, recruited Chinese. More than ten thousand of them were working on the transcontinental railroad in 1868. Across Nevada and into Utah these crews laid up to ten miles of track a day. When the project was completed with the joining of the tracks at Promontory, Utah, in 1869, the Chinese moved to other railroad jobs or worked in mining communities.
Three major population centers in the state at the turn of the century, Salt Lake City, Ogden, and Provo, all had a number of Chinese laundries and restaurants. Several of these establishments which were operating in the railroad center of Ogden in the late 1890s and early 1900s continue to the present time. Park City, which once had a solid Chinese subculture, and other mining areas of the state attracted significant numbers of Chinese laborers.
By 1970 the Chinese population of the state was very small, probably not more than one thousand. Of this number, many were small business operators still managing restaurants, laundries, dry cleaning establishments, and other small concerns. The only Chinese organization in the state today is the Bing Cong Tong or Bing Cong Benevolent Association. A vestige of the organization that once brought fear into the hearts of the residents of San Francisco's Chinatown, the tong of today has mellowed and is basically a social organization which provides a place for Chinese to meet and to speak their native tongue. The organization has about one hundred members, all of them belonging to the older generation. Members of the older generation feel that younger Chinese in the state are losing their identification with the ancient traditions. However, it appears that there is enough left of the traditions of the past that the younger generations continue to be industrious and successful citizens.
CHICANOS: ADJUSTING TO URBAN LIFE
As noted earlier, Utah's largest minority group is the Chicano. This term is desirable above all others for it is the only term which includes all of the various sub-groups of Spanish-speaking peoples. Chicanos are the "children" of the cultural legacy of the Spanish conqueror and the Indian wives of the conquerors. Unlike the English who brought their families to settle in America, the Spanish came for gold, glory, or gospel. Consequently, they did not bring their wives and families, and those who chose to remain took wives from among the Indians. As a result, the culture of the Chicano has elements of its Spanish and Indian heritage as well as influences from the United States.
Chicanos are American, not Mexican, although many former Mexican nationals are included within the scope of the term. Along with Mexican nationals there are other subgroupings such as the "Spanish Americans" from New Mexico and southern Colorado and the Texans, many of whom came as part of the migrant stream every summer throughout the state. Also among the yearly migrant stream are those who have been called "wetbacks" because they have illegally entered the United States at some time to seek employment. Finally, there are a few "Californios." Sometimes called Chicanos, but inaccurately, are the Spanish-speaking Latin Americans. Whether or not they are really Chicanos would depend upon their own desire to be associated with and their acceptability to the Chicano community.
Within this definition, the first Chicanos were the "Spanish pioneers." In 1540, Captain Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, a member of the Coronado expedition, reached the Colorado River near the southern edge of the Great Basin but probably did not get into the present state of Utah. The first Chicanos to definitely enter the state were members of the Dominguez-Escalante expedition of 1776. This expedition, which was the first non-Indian penetration of the Great Basin, set down the names of Indian tribes and geographical features, most of which are current today. While the Escalante expedition failed in its major objective — establishing communication and transportation connections between Santa Fe and the California settlements — it did lead to the development of trade from the New Mexico settlements into the Great Basin region. It is impossible to determine how far northward Spanish trade with the Indians actually reached, but in its westward passage through Montana and Idaho, the Lewis and Clark party observed many signs of contact between the Spanish from Santa Fe and area Indians. The Utes and Navajos, particularly anxious for Spanish horses, often engaged in furnishing slaves and pelts to the Santa Fe traders. The slaves traded were usually Paiutes and Western Shoshonis taken by the Utes and Navajos in warfare.
This early contact led directly to fur trapping operations by traders coming from Santa Fe into the Great Basin. As a result, the Old Spanish Trail was established, finally creating a link between New Mexico and southern California. The passing of the fur trade, the coming of the Mormons, and the Mexican War of 1846-48 combined to bring an end to the old patterns which had attracted numbers of adventurers from Santa Fe to the areas surrounding the Great Salt Lake.
In many ways, the southeastern portion of the state is linked culturally to northwestern New Mexico and southwestern Colorado. San Juan County, particularly, contains many of the elements of the cultural patterns of those areas. Grand and Emery counties, too, have long had established populations of Chicanos, many of whom came from Colorado and New Mexico. Immigration of Chicanos from other portions of the Southwest and from Mexico did not take place to any appreciable degree until the turn of the century.
Some Mexican nationals who left Mexico during the Revolution of 1910 came into the United States. A number of these moved to Utah, settling along the Wasatch Front — particularly in Weber County — where they became employed with section gangs for the railroad. Others settled in the state's mining districts. In 1912, when Utah's mining centers were in the throes of labor-management disputes, Mexican miners were brought in as strikebreakers. Hundreds entered the state at that time. During the Depression of the 1930s, the mines suffered a setback, and Chicanos, like other minorities, were forced into other types of employment. Many became agricultural farmhands during that period.
The bulk of the Chicano population in Utah arrived after the beginning of World War II. They came not from Mexico but from the southwestern states of Arizona, Texas, California, New Mexico, and Colorado — principally southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. The reason was purely economic. Northern New Mexico and southern Colorado had no industry, and the war boom of military installations in Utah attracted Chicanos in large numbers. In 1944, the Tooele Ordnance Depot, facing an acute labor shortage, went to New Mexico to recruit personnel. Both Indians and Chicanos were brought to Tooele, and many still reside there. This migration has continued in the years since World War II. The area has proved to be a prime source of employment because of the fair employment practices of government installations.
An additional source of Chicano migration to Utah since World War II has been the transient migrant stream which passes through the state in the spring, summer, and fall months. These migrant workers provide a valuable source of labor for Utah agriculture. Most of them are either Texans or Mexican nationals who pass as Texans. In recent years, as urbanization and mechanization have decreased agricultural opportunities in the area, more and more members have dropped out of the migrant stream and have taken up residence along the Wasatch Front.
Historically, Chicanos have been tied to the land. However, automation has driven workers from the fields, and large farms have dealt a death blow to the small landowner. Not possessing the skills for urban living, Chicanos have gone through a serious transition period. One of the most critical problems is that of education. Less than thirty-five percent graduate from high school, and many less attend college. There are some indications that this may change. Quite a number of Chicanos are to be found throughout the state in skills training programs.
In summary, Chicanos, Blacks, and Indians have not been able to succeed economically and have encountered serious social dislocations. On the other hand, the Oriental races have evidently discovered a means of maintaining their identity and cultural backgrounds while surviving in the highly competitive system of the United States. With the civil rights reforms of the 1960s, added to the continuing pressure against bigotry and prejudice carried out by minorities and many sensitive whites, these groups may yet become equal citizens. Compared to many other states, Utah has had only a small percentage of minorities. Nevertheless, the task of providing full citizenship to minorities here has not been significantly different from other states in the Union, and much remains to be done.
Since understanding and appreciating the historical contributions of any people grants them dignity and self-respect, the recorded history of Utah's minorities provides a necessary step toward full citizenship status.
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