Utah HIstory: Retrospect and Prospect

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 40, 1972, No, 4

Utah History: Retrospect and Prospect

BYS. GEORGE ELLSWORTH

THE EDITORS OF the Quarterly have asked me to essay an analysis of the history of writing Utah's history, including how current historical writing compares with earlier works, where we are today, and where we ought to be going. This has proved a most difficult task. Rather than give a bibliographical history of Utah's historical writing, I offer a general outline, with a few references to names, general remarks, and suggestions, in the hope that this essay might stimulate further study.

It is said that a typical society goes through about five stages of treating its past. First is the period of activity of conquest and pioneering, the performing of the great and heroic tasks. Second comes a period when society looks back on the heroic or activist period. During the third period the society attempts to identify its heroes and place them in a special patriotic aura, with elaboration of their deeds, enshrining their portraits in gold frames. This adulation may induce intensive study, and reaction may set in and hence the fourth period, one of debunking the heroes and a series of criticisms of past historians. A fifth stage may be reached when the society seeks the real meaning, the essence of its history, the ultimate meaning of the past and its usefulness to the future as a value system that helps give meaning to life in the present and possible direction for the future.

Utah's histories have not followed this sequence exactly, though there is a general similarity. There was a generation of doers before much was done with historical writing. True, that for the pre-1847 explorers and Mountain Men there was little awareness of their own importance and few records were systematically kept. The Mormons, on the other hand, were history-conscious from the beginning. Historical records were kept by commandment, and compilations of documents and historical essays were produced. The second or look-backward stage did not come for Utah until many of the activist generation had passed away, during the 1880s and 1890s. Some heroes were identified, but for the most part, strange to tell, Utah did not identify many heroes other than Brigham Young. We have not really had a period of debunking, certainly not with the intensity known to other fields. We have not come to the fifth stage, that of seeking the real meaning, the essence of our history. In a way, all these stages are with us almost at the same time, but rather than conform the history of Utah's history to exact stages, let us see what stages historical writing in Utah has passed through.

Utah has an unusually strong tradition in fine history beginning in the nineteenth century. Within thirty years of settlement Edward W. Tullidge, Mormon convert from England, began his career as Utah historian, biographer, essayist, dramatist, and publisher. Tullidge was Utah's first historian of stature. While Tullidge rebelled against Brigham Young's leadership and took a leading role with the Godbeites, little or no indication or mention of these activities appears in his works. Surely no bitterness is to be found in any of his essays. His writings are both objective and defensive of the people of Utah. His Life of Brigham Young; or, Utah and Her Founders appeared in 1876, The Women of Mormondom in 1877, and the Life of Joseph the Prophet in 1878. The History of Salt Lake City came out in 1886 and was followed by Tullidge's Histories of Utah. Numbered volume 2 it leads us to think he considered the History of Salt Lake City as volume 1. He also edited and contributed largely to Tullidge's Quarterly Magazine, three volumes, 1880-85. Tullidge's works were based on available documents, interviews, and personal experiences. The range of subjects was wide. It is doubtful that much of his work has been improved upon, considering the scope, documentation, and the times.

Hubert Howe Bancroft devoted a full volume to The History of Utah in his series of histories of western states and territories. Begun in 1880, the work was finished in 1885, readied for the printer in 1886, and published in October 1889. Throughout the five-year period of preparation, Bancroft put his full force to work collecting manuscripts and copies of documents for the book. His heuristic and writing methods have already been told. Suffice it to say that Alfred Bates, "a scholarly and serious minded man," wrote most of the work, with Bancroft writing a goodly portion of it, while others on his staff may have made some contributions. Manuscripts and proof sheets were submitted to representatives of the Mormon Church for corrections, but little change was made in the writing, chiefly additions.

Bancroft's History of Utah remains a monument to him and fulfills his expectation that it would constitute the foundation on which future histories must be built. The extensive collection of books, newspapers, government documents, and especially manuscript materials from the Church Historian's Office and citizens in Utah constitute a foundation which will never be removed. Though the history is built on this foundation, the collection of manuscripts has not been fully exploited by historians. There is still much profit in using the manuscripts, and Bancroft's footnotes are guides to sources and topics still relatively untouched.

Viewed from today's research achievement we must say that Bancroft is weak on the pre-1847 period, that his summary of the history of the Mormons to 1846 is not bad, and that the bulk of the book which covers the period 1847 to the death of Brigham Young in 1877 is acceptable for general outlines. Chapters at the end of the book on church and state and social and economic life are useful to those who have not read extensively on these subjects. His footnotes and bibliography are amazing in their wealth of detailed citations.

Orson F. Whitney was the third of the distinguished early historians of Utah. In 1890 he was commissioned to write a state history. When business irregularities developed, the work was salvaged by George Q. Cannon and Sons. Writing was begun in May 1890 and the first two volumes were published in 1892-93. Volume 3 did not appear until January 1898 Hubert Howe Bancroft and the fourth volume (about three hundred fifty biographies) was out in October 1904. Whitney's History of Utah followed the style of many state histories of the time. His emphasis was on political, judicial, and legal history, with heavy use of documents, always centering around the lives of major political and ecclesiastical leaders. But the main thread of Utah political history was well worked out, and we are very grateful for the in-depth treatment and the publication of significant documents. Volume 1 devotes 280 pages to the coming of the Mormons; thereafter the volumes treat the history chronologically, year by year.

Once the four-volume work was completed, Whitney turned to write Utah's first school textbook: The Making of a State: A School History of Utah (1908). The major events in Utah's history were simply and directly told. In 1916 he condensed his longer work into a onevolume Popular History of Utah. This work is still a very useful tool.

Whitney wrote history that was both defensive of his people (he was ordained an apostle in 1906) and fair. I am impressed with the material he packs into his accounts and the evidence of wide reading, though we are aware today of different interpretations.

A very important chapter in Utah intellectual history, and for Utah history, opened when young Utah men went away to the universities of the nation and gained advanced degrees in professional fields. Some of these, majoring in history, returned to Utah to bring a professionalism to Utah studies heretofore unknown. Levi Edgar Young was the first of the group. Graduating from the University of Utah in 1895, he went to Harvard three years later for a year of study under Albert Bushnell Hart, Edward Channing, Ephraim Emerton, and William James. He later took a master's degree from Columbia University (1910) and studied at the University of California, Berkeley, 1924- 25, coming under the influence of Herbert E. Bolton. Professor Young taught history, specializing in Utah and western history, from 1899 to 1939. His students were legion and loyal to their inspiring teacher.

Andrew Love Neff completed his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1918, writing on "The Mormon Migration to Utah," and joined the University of Utah staff in 1919. He had studied previously at Brigham Young University and Stanford University. He devoted a great deal of time and energy to writing the early history of Utah, and had his life been extended he would have written, most likely, the definitive multi-volumed history of Utah. As it was, his death in the fall of 1936 cut this project short, and his finished manuscript was published posthumously in 1940: History of Utah, 1847 to 1869.

William J. Snow also studied at Berkeley, earning his doctorate in 1923 and writing on "The Great Basin before the Coming of the Mormons." This was published in part in the Utah Educational Review, 1926-27. But Professor Snow also studied at the University of Utah and the University of Chicago; he joined the Brigham Young University faculty in 1910 and spent thirty-eight years there. His students were also numerous and have distinguished themselves.

Leland H. Creer earned his doctorate at Berkeley in 1926 and went to teach at the University of Washington where he published his dissertation, Utah and the Nation, 1846-1861. When Professor Neff died in 1936, Professor Creer was chosen to fill the position at the University of Utah.

Joel E. Ricks was the leader at Utah State Agricultural College. He earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Utah in 1912, studying under Levi Edgar Young. He served as principal of Gunnison High School and president of Weber College. In 1922 he became professor of history at Utah State. He earned a master's in 1920 and his doctorate in 1930 at the University of Chicago. During the summers of 1924 and 1925 he became an intimate of Professor Frederick Jackson Turner who taught those summers on the Logan campus. Strong influences resulted. Professor Ricks also went to Berkeley to become acquainted with Herbert E. Bolton. Ricks's doctoral dissertation was on the "Forms and Methods of Early Mormon Settlement in Utah and the Surrounding Region, 1847-1877." It was published by Utah State University in 1964.

William J. Snow at Brigham Young University, Levi Edgar Young, Andrew Love Neff, and Leland Creer at the University of Utah, and Joel E. Ricks at Utah State Agricultural College were great intellectual leaders, historians, and teachers. They were also leaders in the Utah State Historical Society.

Other young Utahns followed the same pattern, specializing in other academic fields: Ephraim E. Erickson (Chicago, 1918, "The Psychological and Ethical Aspects of Mormon Group Life"), Joseph A. Geddes (Columbia, 1924, "The United Order Among the Mormons [Missouri Phase]"), Lowry Nelson (Wisconsin, 1929, "The Mormon Village, A Study in Social Origins"), Feramorz Young Fox (Northwestern University, 1932, "The Mormon Land System: A Study of the Settlement and Utilization of Land under the Direction of the Mormon Church").

Other historians have had less direct influence on Utah history but have been nonetheless important: LeRoy R. Hafen (University of California, Berkeley, 1924, "The Overland Mail to the Pacific Coast, 1848-1869") went to Colorado but upon retirement came to Brigham Young University; Thomas C. Romney (University of California, Berkeley, 1930, "The State of Deseret") went into the Mormon Church institute system as did Milton R. Hunter (University of California, Berkeley, 1936, "Brigham Young, the Colonizer").

The influence of Herbert Eugene Bolton, at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Bancroft Library, is obvious. Altogether that first generation of professional Utah historians was well trained and highly inspired by the great historians of their day. At Utah universities these professors taught courses in the West and Utah history, conducted seminars in historical method, and inspired a second generation of Utah historians.

In the meantime, other Utahns were performing essential and notable services to Utah history. With the coming of statehood, the subject of Utah history entered the public schools, and there has been a line of histories of Utah produced, among them some of the more distinguished efforts at complete histories. As mentioned, Orson F. Whitney's The Making of a State: A School History of Utah (1908) is still a fine work, based largely on his multi-volumed history. Levi Edgar Young published his The Founding of Utah in 1923. It is still a fine introductory account of early Utah social history. John Henry Evans, The Story of Utah, the Beehive State (1933) next came on the scene. It had merits of Whitney and Young and brought treatment of some subjects up-to-date. That same year the Department of Public Instruction made available its Utah — Resources and Activities, Supplement to the Utah State Courses of Study for Elementary and Secondary Schools. This collaborative work was pulled together by L. R. Humphreys of Utah State Agricultural College. The book is a rather remarkable accumulation of articles on a wide range of subjects dealing with Utah as of that date. It is still useful. Milton R. Hunter produced the next textbook used in the public schools: Utah in Her Western Setting (1946), since revised and retitled.

Utah has benefited in the field of local history by the efforts of several historians, non-professors, who have approached their task with professional skills and considerable dedication. These "amateurs" (defined as non-professionally trained historians) have produced more history than the professionals, and in many instances the work of the professionals has not always matched the work of the amateurs. In reality, all works must be judged singly on their own merits. Among these so-called amateurs are some of Utah's most noted historians.

Andrew Jenson, assistant Mormon Church historian from 1891 until his death in 1941, has influenced the writing of Utah history as much as any one person. Following the tradition of Joseph Smith's "History of Joseph Smith," with a chronological arrangement of documents, he compiled the "Journal History of the Church" and similar compilations for each ward, stake, branch, mission, and several special topics (such as the Mormon Battalion). Out of the background of his work in the compilation of these hundreds of volumes, he published his Encyclopedic History of the Church . . . (1941); a Church Chronology (1899); Historical Record, a periodical (1886-90); an Autobiography (1938); and a History of the Scandinavian Mission (1927). Anyone using the Historical Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints has become acquainted with and has been influenced by his manuscript histories. His Encyclopedic History and Church Chronology are reference works indispensable today to the study of Utah and Mormon history.

While Andrew Jenson laid strong foundations which many writers have used, others addressed themselves to broad treatments of Utah or Mormon history. Noble Warrum is best remembered for his Utah Since Statehood, Historical and Biographical (3 vols., 1919), a collection of chapters on political affairs and a variety of topics, still useful. Joseph Fielding Smith, Mormon apostle and official church historian, published the first edition of his Essentials in Church History in 1922, a work now in its twenty-fourth edition. A defense of the Mormons, it is important for many contributions.

Brigham H. Roberts, a Mormon Church leader, produced many works which must be used by the Utah historian notwithstanding the fact they deal primarily with Mormon history. His Comprehensive History of the Church ... (6 vols., 1930), besides being a defensive history of the church, is a political history of Utah as well. Volumes 3, 4, and 5 on the territorial period are appreciated by students who apply themselves to reading them.

J. Cecil Alter, non-Mormon, meteorologist, and lover of Utah history, produced significantly for Utah history. His Utah, the Storied Domain: A Documentary History ... (3 vols., 1932) brought together documents and newspaper extracts in a chronological order, supplemented with biographies, that made it a useful reference work. His Early Utah Journalism (1938) is a remarkable history of newspapers in Utah, another essential reference work.

The Daughters of Utah Pioneers, under the editorship of Kate B. Carter, has published monthly lessons, bound into annual volumes in three series: Heart Throbs of the West (12 vols., 1939-51), Treasures of Pioneer History (6 vols., 1952-57), and Our Pioneer Heritage (15 vols, to date). The lessons have touched upon a wide range of subjects and have been the means of spreading a popular knowledge of Utah's history among a great number of people. Besides these products from the Central Camp, the various camps in the counties have produced county histories, in some instances the only county histories, and in some instances the best in a field. Altogether here is a body of studies which should not be overlooked by anyone.

Utah history made a new advance during the Great Depression. That period saw the production of a great collection of source materials, books, and articles as well as the development of individuals into historians of national distinction. Juanita Brooks has told most of this in a somewhat autobiographical piece, "Jest a Copyin' Word f'r Word." You must read her article, but it can be said here that the transcription of scores of diaries and the recording of scores of interviews produced a vast body of materials; few people have gone deeply enough into the collection to appreciate the contribution of those personal records, Through the writing efforts of persons in that program there have come files and files of articles on a great variety of subjects. Unfortunately those materials are gathering dust, ill-housed and poorly cared for at this writing. Out of those writings, however, came Utah's volume in the American Guide Series, Utah, A Guide to the State (1941) —a volume packed with detail and fascinating information for anyone willing to search its every corner. It remains perhaps the very best reference tool on the greater portion of Utah's history. Inventories of archives in the state were also compiled but neglected by subsequent searchers. Town histories were also written. Perhaps the greatest achievement was the launching of the historical careers of Juanita Brooks and Dale L. Morgan.

Morgan, Brooks, and Nels Anderson cannot be called amateurs though they did not hold professional history degrees. Yet some fine historical studies have come from their typewriters. Nels Anderson wrote the first survey of Utah history in a generation when he produced his Desert Saints, The Mormon Frontier in Utah (1942), one of the best single volume treatments of Utah history and culture, though it does not treat beyond statehood. Juanita Brooks is the queen of Utah historians (there is no king). Her absorption with her native Dixie has given us many worthy works portraying life and times in southern Utah, especially in the pioneer period. Her Mountain Meadows Massacre (1950), the result of years of prodigious searching and study, is a classic in objectivity on one of the most difficult of topics. Her editing of the journals of John D. Lee (1955) and of Hosea Stout (1964) has drawn merited praise. Her biography of John D. Lee (1962) is perhaps the best biography we have of a Utah pioneer, though others might contend for the position. Her biography of Dudley Leavitt (1942) and bringing together the stories of her husband, Uncle Will (1970), have given us much pleasure and some insights.

While not a historian of Utah as a state, Dale L. Morgan has written extensively on Utah history and western American history and at his recent death was regarded as one of the leading historians of the American West. Of special interest to Utah are books for which he did most of the work but refused to take credit: Utah, A Guide to the State (1941) and West From Fort Bridger, The Pioneering of the Immigrant Trails Across Utah, 1846-1850 {UHQ, volume 19) by J. Roderic Korns. His "State of Deseret" {UHQ, volume 8) set a new standard for documentation of a unique political experience in Utah. His Great Salt Lake (1947) brought together the results of much of his study. His later contributions were in the field of the Mountain Men, with a definitive biography of Jedediah S. Smith (1953) and a documentary study of William H. Ashley (1964). Without this expertise in the study of the Mountain Men and overland emigrants during 1841-46, we would be hard pressed to write chapters on this fascinating period in Utah's history.

By the time of World War II, then, Utahns could go to several fine works for their understanding of Utah history. Nels Anderson's Desert Saints had just come out. Andrew Love Neff's History of Utah was available. On the shelves of many homes were the volumes of Whitney's History of Utah and B. H. Roberts's Comprehensive History of the Church. Joseph A. Geddes had published his dissertation, The United Order Among the Mormons (Missouri Phase), in 1924; Edward J. Allen had published his work, The Second United Order Among the Mormons, in 1936; and William John McNiff had published his dissertation, Heaven on Earth: A Planned Mormon Society, in 1940. The latter three works while not popularly circulated were available in libraries and were read by serious students who got a taste for sympathetic, detailed research and able reporting.

Another major chapter in Utah's intellectual history centers on the period following World War II when returning servicemen chose to accept educational provisions of the GI Bill of Rights and go on to gain higher degrees. In the field of history, those who were students of Young, Neff, Creer, Snow, and Ricks now had the opportunity for advanced study uninterrupted. By about 1950 several young men with doctoral degrees in history were back in Utah at the universities. At Brigham Young were Brigham D. Madsen and Richard D. Poll. At the University of Utah there was David E. Miller. Dello G. Dayton went to Weber, and S. George Ellsworth went to Utah State Agricultural College. A. R. Mortensen went to the Utah State Historical Society when the board decided upon a professional historian as director. Soon Everett L. Cooley joined him there as state archivist. Eugene E. Campbell was at the LDS Institute of Religion in Logan. While trained in economics, with his degrees in that field, Leonard J. Arrington, at Utah State, concentrated his energies on research in Utah and Mormon history and became closely identified with and a leader among the historians of the state,

The historians were not the only recipients of benefits under the GI Bill; many students were trained in other disciplines, often writing theses and dissertations on Utah, the Mormons, and western subjects. Altogether the scholastic output of this second generation of advanced degree scholars was considerable. These young professors turned to creating their own courses and seminars, training a third generation which has been even more creative and voluminous in its output. In sheer numbers we can count about seventeen hundred theses and dissertations on Utah and Mormon subjects (considered very broadly), of which about fourteen hundred forty have been completed since 1945, compared to about two hundred sixty written in the entire period before 1945. Yet few of these are truly significant, though helpful, and fewer still have seen any form of publication.

A very important and central part of the postwar story was the coming of professional historians to the service of the state in the persons of A. R. Mortensen as director of the Utah State Historical Society and of Everett L. Cooley as state archivist. Dr. Mortensen turned the Utah Historical Quarterly into a quarterly periodical with articles and book reviews, thus making possible an outlet for the increasing production of scholarly and popular articles on Utah history. Simultaneously the microfilm revolution struck, and various libraries began to acquire holdings of important materials on microfilm which would have been impossible to obtain and store otherwise. Materials in the Bancroft Library relating to Utah history were made available to Utah libraries through the courtesy and kindness of George P. Hammond, director of the Bancroft Library. The collection of typescripts of diaries, journals, and life sketches acquired during the WPA days was made available from the Library of Congress. Some of the territorial papers in the National Archives, as they were made available on microfilm, could be purchased by Utah libraries. Newspapers of the state, as they were put on microfilm, became available to every library.

University and private libraries in the state increased their manuscript and rare book holdings. Outside the state the great holdings were still the Bancroft Library, Yale University Library (William Robertson Coe Collection, for which Mary Withington wrote an excellent guide in 1952), Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, Harvard University Library, Wisconsin State Historical Society, and, a little later, the Princeton University Library (the Rollins Collection, headed by Utahn Alfred Bush).

The net result of the efforts of this second generation was the production during the 1950s and 1960s of a large series of significant books and hundreds of periodical articles. Leonard J. Arrington published his dissertation, revised, under the title Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (1958) and established an immediate reputation, confirmed by a long series of articles and other books on economic themes and Utah history. His bibliography in this book and in his numerous articles constitutes a great reference treasury for those who follow. William Mulder also published his dissertation, a classic study of Mormon immigration, Homeward to Zion: The Mormon Migration from Scandinavia (1957). William Mulder and A. Russell Mortensen edited extracts from the primary sources to produce the best book of "readings": Among the Mormons: Historical Accounts by Contemporary Observers (1958). Austin and Alta Fife, nationally recognized experts on Mormon folklore, brought many of their studies together in Saints of Sage and Saddle: Folklore among the Mormons (1956). Juanita Brooks had set the example of high quality research and reporting on Utah history in her Mountain Meadows Massacre {1950), followed by her editing of the John D. Lee diaries, Mormon Chronicle (2 vols., 1955), the biography John Doyle Lee: Zealot-Pioneer Builder-Scapegoat (1962), and the editing of another important diary: On the Mormon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout, 1844-1861 (2 vols., 1964). Another southern Utah historian quietly produced notable works in rapid succession — Andrew Karl Larson. His first book was The Red Hills of November: A Pioneer Biography of Utah's Cotton Town (1957), then a major work covering the history of Utah's Dixie: "I Was Called to Dixie": The Virgin River Basin: Unique Experiences in Mormon Pioneering (1961), and most recently his full biography of Erastus Snow: The Life of a Missionary and Pioneer for the Early Mormon Church (1971). David E. Miller, besides his significant work on the Mountain Men and explorers, gave us the Hole-in-the-Rock: An Epic in the Colonization of the Great American West (1959).

Perhaps the most significant "find" in Mormon history, which has led to discussion and reinterpretation of much of Utah's history, related to the Council of Fifty. James R. Clark and Hyrum Andrus came through with the first essays on the subject; it remained for Klaus J. Hansen to put it all together in Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History (1967). Norman F. Furniss showed what could be done in Utah history by using manuscript materials in the National Archives alongside sources in Utah in his study of The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859 (1960).

Mormon immigration was studied not only by M. Hamlin Cannon, Wilbur S. Shepperson, and William Mulder but by P. A. M. Taylor. His Expectations Westward: The Mormons and the Emigration of their British Converts in the Nineteenth Century is a version of his doctoral dissertation. Wallace Stegner produced The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail (1964) for the American Trails Series, concentrating on the experiences of the early years.

Gustive O. Larson has produced regularly, in articles as well as books. His Outline History of Utah and the Mormons (1958) and revisions have been a help to many students. Extended studies are brought together in his latest work: The "Americanization" of Utah for Statehood (1971).

Besides biographies of John D. Lee and Erastus Snow there has appeared a biography of Orrin Porter Rockwell: Man of God, Son of Thunder (1966) by Harold Schindler, a serious effort to get at a full biography.

These are a few of the major efforts to pull together a great deal of research on significant topics in Utah history. Many other books ought to be added to the fist — each reader may select those that appeal to him. That is one of the beauties of books.

While comparatively few authors put out books, many contributed the results of their research in the form of articles. Utahns published widely in national and state journals, but with the revitalization of the Utah Historical Quarterly after 1951, many found opportunity for outlet in those pages. A quick survey of articles in the Quarterly over the past twenty years shows us a little of the pattern of historical studies in the period. Nothing of consequence has appeared on the geology or geography of Utah, but two good articles on the prehistoric Indians of Utah were written by Jesse D. Jennings. On Utah's historical Indians little has appeared since 1951. The Bolton translation of the Escalante diary is the major effort on the Spanish. Good pieces have appeared on the Mountain Men by LeRoy Hafen, Dale Morgan, David Miller, and Charles Kelly. Overland emigrants crossing Utah between 1841 and 1846 have been dealt with in volume 19, a classic, while good pieces have also appeared, so the subject is somewhat covered.

Interestingly enough, very little has been published in the Quarterly on the coming of the Mormons and the first years to 1851. Exceptions: the Lorenzo Dow Young diary and Dale Morgan's "State of Deseret." Very little has appeared on the pioneer settlement of Utah, but what has appeared has been well done — pieces by P. A. M. Taylor, William Mulder, and LeRoy Hafen. On Utah in the 1850s only the Utah War and the Mountain Meadows Massacre have been treated, and those subjects have been well worked over.

It would appear that the Quarterly has done very well in picking up stories of the latecomers (the "Gentiles") to Utah, certainly a topic much neglected and still not adequately treated.

A great deal has been done on railroading, though mining has been hit less well. Excellent pieces have appeared on social and economic life in the latter part of the nineteenth century and similarly on the general theme of Utah's struggle for statehood, but the field remains relatively untouched. Nothing has appeared on Utah government under statehood, and not much on government in the territorial period. For the period from statehood to World War I there have been some pieces and some on broad topics, though most have been microstudies. Almost nothing has appeared on Utah during the 1920s and the Great Depression. We would have nothing on World War II, also, if it were not for the series on federal spending and installations in Utah by Arrington, Thomas G. Alexander, and others. Articles relating to recent years have concentrated on the Colorado River, reclamation, and defense installations.

II

But our editors have asked for a more thorough estimate of where we are and where we need to go — by way of research and essays on certain topics and themes. No two persons going through the wide range of Utah's history would come up with the same suggestions for additional research. I would suggest that most of what has been done can be done over again, better, that any topic in which a person is interested should be examined with thoroughness and written up with skill. A quick look through Utah's history, to me, brings up quite a few topics. The following paragraphs may be suggestive.

I am curious about the Escalante diary and the Miera map. After the expedition of 1776 what happened to the diary? Where was it lodged from time to time; where is it today; and who has done the work of verifying its authenticity and translation (though we seem not to worry about it since Bolton translated it). And the Miera map; or how many Miera maps are there? What is the relationship between the Miera maps? Who were the cartographers?

Another question closely related is, What is the history of the knowledge of the Escalante expedition? By what means and when was information about the Escalante expedition spread after 1776? The Mormon pioneers seem to have known about it, at least to some extent; whence came their knowledge?

The story of the Pioneer Company of 1847 is fairly well known. At least it is told in detail in Bancroft, Whitney, and Roberts. But little is known of the scores of other immigrant companies — up to five companies a season — from 1847 to 1869. The great story of the mass immigration from various corners of the globe, bringing converts from their native homes, across oceans, and overland to Salt Lake Valley, has not been told. It has been outlined, but the human drama involved has not been told. As suggested, the 1847 company story is available, and the handcarts story is known and told to us, but the rest is left to our imagination.

Perhaps the results are obvious, but it appears to me that there is a world of study in the acculturation process on the Mormon frontier: the fusion, the adjustment, the accommodation of a variety of cultural and national traits of immigrants meeting on the Utah landscape. William Mulder set a fine example with his study of the Scandinavian immigrants. Can studies be expanded to include all major groups?

Most accounts of land distribution in Utah during the months after July 1847 tell of the parceling out of "inheritances" in five-, ten-, twenty-, and forty-acre lots, according to the occupation and the need of the settler. After that, little is said about the inheritances of other settlers in other valleys. What about the land distribution system? What was the relationship between that early system and titles to land when the land office came, or when federal land laws were effected in Utah? What about treaties with the Indians for their lands? Do we know all there is to know about the water and timber "stewardships" in Salt Lake Valley in the first decade? And what of the railroad land grants in Utah and the relationship between these and the existing land laws and occupation under title?

Someone ought to write on Brigham Young among the people. Not every year, but surely an average of once a year, Brigham Young and a group of associates made short or extended visits among the settlements. From the Salmon River Mission on the north to the Muddy Mission on the south, Brigham Young visited the settlements. What was the pattern of activities at the site of meetings in the settlements? What was the pattern of travel between settlements? Such long trips gave ample opportunity to talk and to discuss plans and people, and meeting with settlers for days gave him a personal contact with most of his people and they with him. And what of the women who went along? What did they do? Caroline Crosby tells of the reception given by the women of Beaver to Brigham Young's company •— how the women insisted on doing the washing and ironing for the visiting women, if not for altruistic purposes, at least for a chance to see the latest fashions and take off patterns for themselves! The visits of Brigham Young were important as a factor in unifying the far-flung settlements of the Mormon kingdom.

Life and labor in the settlements, through the years, has not really been covered in all its aspects or from adequate and authentic sources. While Levi Edgar Young and others did well for Salt Lake Valley with hints of other valleys, in reality the pioneering experience everywhere has not been told. Milton R. Hunter generalized some features of settlement history (he called it colonization). Joel E. Ricks got much closer to the settlement experience, pointing out forms and patterns of settlements. But the whole story has not been told — nor has it been told very well for some valleys or regions. Southern Utah has been best covered — perhaps even better than Salt Lake Valley — what with the works of Andrew Karl Larson, Juanita Brooks, Nels Anderson (those last chapters in Desert Saints), and Gustive O. Larson. The History of a Valley — Cache Valley, Utah-Idaho does well, though it too quickly skips over the details after initial settlement history to suit the purposes I am describing here.

Another question: Was the Utah village pattern borrowed from the New England village or was it the expression of the City of Zion concept of Joseph Smith? Granted the two might be closely related, I believe that begs the question, and there ought to be a more realistic study. I believe the matter could be looked at again with profit.

Have you seen The Foxfire Book? Edited by Eliot Wigginton (1972), the book records how the people of Georgia performed the fundamental tasks of making a living. Chapters are on such subjects as tools and skills, building a log cabin, chimney building, making a chair, making a quilt, cooking on a fireplace, mountain recipes, preserving vegetables and fruit, slaughtering hogs, and so on.

Utah pioneers had many of the same tasks to perform, and there are people living today who can tell exactly how those tasks were performed. We could use such a book for Utah — describing how to do the simple tasks about the household, farm, and ranch — a how-to-do-it book for all the chores, as well as the arts and crafts. The Institute of American Design received from Utah a series of drawings and sketches, in color and black and white, watercolor and pen and pencil, showing rugs, weaving, tools, furniture — all sorts of arts and crafts. That gives us a visual impression of the product, but how were they made, with what tools and in what manner? We are saving physical remains but are failing to preserve the knowledge of names and functions and how to perform the tasks.

It has been my pleasure from time to time to give talks to various groups, and invariably they enjoy most my (our, sometimes my wife and I do a duo) presentation of lives of Mormon women known best to us at our household, based on their diaries. There were some great Mormon women. They left diaries. Mrs. Bancroft interviewed a few of them or asked Mrs. F. D. Richards to have them write for Mrs. Bancroft their experiences. From this and many other sources we know there were some great women. Their story has not been told; we have had only poor summaries to this point. Tullidge did something.

And whenever such talks are given I wince because I know there must be some great stories of the lives of non-Mormon women in Utah. What of the great Jewish women who braved such isolation and loneliness to be with their men in Utah? Helen Z. Papanikolas has done well on Greek women. What of many others? There must be records. There must be great stories there someplace. Until the stories are written from sound sources these people are not even known to us.

It is relatively easy to write on the beginnings of mining, the discovery of the precious ores, and the beginnings of the towns. Much harder, but much more interesting to most readers is the true life and labor in and around those mines, life in the towns, and then the history of the mines and mining companies. It is so easy to center on the wealthy owners, but the story of the operators, the workers, the townspeople has not come through yet. Recently some fine efforts are showing up.

A great deal of work has been done by the anthropologists on the prehistory of Utah Indians, and work has been done on the Indians from literary sources prior to 1847. Some work has been done also on Mormon-Indian relations, but little or no work has been done on the life of the Indians themselves in Utah after 1847 — their own cultural adjustments, their patterns of life, all treated from the point of view of the Indian without overmuch regard for white contacts. What of the history of the Indian tribes which remained relatively unaffected by white contacts and removals to reservations? What of the Indian farms of the 1850s? What of the history of the Indians on the reservations — again the social-economic-cultural history of the Indians, from their own point of view?

The history of the settlement of the Uintah Basin in 1905 and thereafter has not been recorded. And it needs to be told from both the Indian and the white points of view. What of the land deals in connection with this settlement? The Indians lost precious lands; the whites gained. There were adjustments from time to time. It all needs to be studied.

Similarly, the history of settlement of the Colorado Plateau area of Utah — Utah's great southeast — is comparatively unknown. The Mormon settlement needs to be told and also the coming of the cattle frontier and the subsequent conflict between the Mormon frontier moving into the area from the east and southeast. The expansion of Mormon settlement in most of Utah and the Mountain West was relatively uncontested, but by the time the Mormon frontier was moving into southeastern Utah and northeastern Arizona, an American frontier of cattlemen was there. Here there were serious conflicts new to the Mormon settlement of the Mountain West.

Back to the topic of Mormon settlement, it appears to me that there are some excellent institution-biography studies in the lives and services of bishops and stake presidents in the valleys and settlements. Bishops had a unique and important role in settlement history. They had ecclesiastical duties, true, but they were also temporal leaders, judges, and managers of much of the economic relations of their community with others through the tithing-in-kind system.

The social history of polygamous families has not been written. We have a few studies of polygamy by Samuel W. Taylor, Nels Anderson, Kimball Young, and Stanley Ivins. As good as it is to have these (I'm not sure about Young), we still do not have an adequate or correct picture of the varieties of experiences among polygamous families in Utah. It may be too late to get it fully; time is of the essence in getting any living memory (be wary!) and in collecting the contemporary written sources in diaries and letters.

For the student of political institutions there is the study of actual operation of government (s) in Utah. Medievalists have shown us that it is one thing to study the laws and generalize practice from the statutes, and it is another thing to look to the local level of actual experience. We have little by way of legal description of government in Utah, under the State of Deseret, the Territory of Utah, or the State of Utah. We have nothing that gets close to the experiences of communities, of the people themselves. This is a rich field.

And as much as has been done with the political conflicts (Mormonfederal controversies) we still lack studies of substance on the territorial officers, administrations, and relations among the officials and between the officials and the territorial legislature and the people.

While there have been three good studies of the Deseret News and one of the Salt Lake Tribune, I feel that we still do not have an adequate portrayal of those days of the anti-Mormon crusade at the time of statehood and of those years from 1896 to about the time of World War I when the Tribune changed its language. The editorial feuding between CO Goodwin of the Tribune and Charles W. Penrose of the Deseret News warrants full study.

The social history of Utah in the twentieth century is a field barren of studies of much consequence with few exceptions. How about the revolution in our ways of life — the coming of the telephone, the coming of natural gas (where it was used), the coming of electricity and its many manifestations, including streetcars (electrically operated). While the interurbans of Utah have received a thorough treatment by the interurban buffs, a fortifying study accessible to the reading public is in order. The coming of the automobile is a world hardly touched, yet the automobile has created as great a revolution in our way of life as any single invention other than electricity.

Even as the cattle industry needs a great deal more study, so does the sheep grazing industry. A history of the stockyards and meat-packing establishments in Utah would be welcome.

Perhaps more has been written on education in Utah than any other subject, what with so many master's theses in education. There are excellent studies in addition to the work of J. C. Moffitt. Yet there are gaps. Among the most important institutions in education in Utah were the LDS academies established between 1888 and 1911 when eight were founded. These institutions lasted only into the 1920s, but during their years they were perhaps the most important educational institutions in the state. It may be easy to tell of their founding and their ultimate transfer to the state, but there is a story of the life of those institutions: the faculty, the students, and the spirit of learning there. The evidence is strong that that generation had an unusual intellectual curiosity and openness of mind to all learning of high quality. Look at the names of the principals of some of those academies. Know that these men went on to the universities to be great educational leaders there too: Wayne B. Hales, Henry Peterson, Don B. Colton, William J. Snow, Hyrum Manwaring, Ernest A. Jacobsen, Henry Aldous Dixon, Joel E. Ricks, James L. Barker, Arthur L. Beeley, Ephraim E. Erickson, Joseph L. Home, Willard Gardner, Reinhard Maeser, J. Howard Maughan, Charles E. McClellan, Thomas L. Martin, Lorenzo H. Hatch, and many others.

Notwithstanding the work of Noble Warrum on World War I, we do not have an adequate essay descriptive of social, economic, and political affairs in Utah during World War I. Emphasis has been placed on the induction of military units, their service and release, war bond sales, and victory gardens. There is much more to the war period than this and even more to be done with the effect on Utah of the peace and the postwar disillusionment that characterized the nation. What effect had all this on the people of Utah? What of the Ku Klux Klan in Utah?

Utah suffered economic depression in many fields in the 1920s and in all fields in the 1930s. That story has not been told and it is one of the most significant periods, with the greatest implications for us all. Statistics will not do it. The daily fives of the people must be described. Perhaps the story is in those bundles of family letters in the back room. That oral history can do much here has been shown in a couple of efforts by graduate students. We are rapidly coming to the place where all this experience will be lost to us; we must act quickly and well.

Beginnings have been made on the story of reclamation and conservation in Utah, but the field has only been scratched. Similarly the whole story of the establishment and operation of Utah's national parks and monuments has been touched only superficially. The views must center on the Washington scene as well as the Utah scene. Perhaps irrigation has been studied sufficiently, yet there are many unanswered and obvious questions. We need a life of John A. Widtsoe as agricultural scientist and his relation to irrigation, dry farming, and reclamation efforts on state and national levels.

Notwithstanding the series of essays on defense installations in Utah prior to and during World War II by Arrington, Alexander, and graduate students — for which we are very grateful — we do not have a picture of Utah during World War II. We need to establish a balance by having histories of other wartime industries and businesses, particularly those on main street.

The story of Utah since World War II is an open field. Imagine: Bancroft began his enterprise just thirty-two-and-a-half years after that famous July 24, 1847. We are now over thirty-one years after Pearl Harbor, and there is no Bancroft in sight for the period.

There were and have always been several "worlds" in Utah, existing side by side from time to time. These culture worlds have not been fully defined or described. There may have been more than one Mormon culture world (as Mormon life in Salt Lake City, for example, was surely quite different from life in the distant settlements, despite elements of unity). There were the culture worlds of the mining camps, the Jewish community, the Greek immigrants, the federal officials, and so on. These worlds had their individual and separate outlooks on life and its purposes, their own social institutions.

Sometimes culture worlds recognize the existence of the differences (as witness the present so-called "generation gap"), but they seldom understand each other. It is the responsibility of the historian somehow to get inside those culture worlds and delineate, portray, and truly describe them. Some early Utah writers got close to the Mormon world. Helen Z. Papanikolas has gotten close to the world of the Greek immigrant. Yet an "outsider" does not feel one with the world being described. One may be able to put time, space, and general boundaries on it, but it takes more to portray a world so well that it gives a reader a vicarious experience of living in that world. The historian can play the role of the dramatist and so portray his story as to effect in his readers the catharsis Aristotle attributed to Greek tragedy — the purging of the soul of the audience through giving a vicarious experience. A general history of Utah may give the reader a sense of these worlds. They extend to the present day.

III

What are our opportunities and responsibilities for the future? We are in a better position today than we have ever been. A great work can be built on foundations now laid. Some libraries and archives are energetically performing their functions under professional leadership. Ambitious plans are afoot for many projects which will move Utah far toward the goal of historical writing worthy of her past.

But there are some specific needs before we can proceed toward the ultimate goals.

1. Utah needs a home for its state archives as a top priority; association with the Historical Society would seem to be a much more useful arrangement. For all the archives in the state we need written guides to the collections with calendars of papers and catalogues of groups of records. Holdings must be enhanced by continual acquisition of records, diaries, letters, photographs, and oral interviews.

2. For special manuscript collections in archives and libraries outside Utah we need the same. The Bancroft guide needs up-dating, and new guides must be written for the holdings of such libraries as at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Wisconsin universities, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Henry E. Huntington Library, and others.

3. We need bibliographies. There is forthcoming a Mormon bibliography, 1830 to 1930. We need a complete bibliography of significant works on Utah history, organized and arranged in a useful manner. In my office is my own collection of well over twenty-thousand titles classified for ready use, but it needs up-dating and checking against major holdings in the state. Just recently the College of Religious Instruction, Brigham Young University, published A Catalogue of Theses and Dissertations Concerning the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mormonism and Utah. We need other works of this magnitude.

4. Oral history is one of our greatest opportunities and needs. Oral history is not new; it is as old as history. But the recording devices are new, and a corps of workers could produce wonders for the future record of our history for this age that does not create diaries or make records of telephone calls. Some oral history projects are working; everyone needs to get into the act. The various agencies and parties in the state need to cooperate in these undertakings.

5. The publication of source materials is a high priority item. The great store of manuscript materials in the National Archives must be brought together for Utah and produced in a microfilm publication. From such a publication on film it may not be so difficult to move to publication in book form. The collection of manuscripts on microfilm is an essential publications program. We need to search everywhere in the United States for our Utah materials.

There are special groups of documents and papers which need to be published. The Executive Record Books of the governors of Utah territory, 1850 to 1896, is one good example. There are many other basic documents and groups which are fundamental to an accurate history. Publication costs are high for such undertakings; a companion need is a means to support publication.

All of this adds up to our primary need to have the sources collected, known to us, and available for use, combined with the need to know what others have written on any and all subjects and what its worth is.

6. We need to improve the quality of our output. We need to brush up on the fundamentals of historical research. While we follow the rules to a degree, we sometimes lack thoroughness. In instances we have been content with secondary sources or transcripts of primary sources, we have accepted our sources second hand. We have not queried the provenance of the documents. Too, we are content with one or two documents and usually rely on the first group of papers we meet. We are not thorough enough to obtain all extant testimonies, and we often fail to view our subject from the broadest points of view.

The literary quality of our product leaves much to be desired. Rarely is there a scholarly work of any literary merit. Too frequently an author is content with a first draft. We are not likely to have great history until we have great writing.

Utah has a history of epic proportions, but we have no historical accounts to match the achievement. There are several reasons for this, several factors which contribute to our low achievement (comparatively speaking, but matched against the great work that must one day be produced).

First, we have not lived long enough, perhaps, to give us perspective on the past. We lack maturity to look at ourselves and those who went before and see the whole in relation to all else. Even as the child moves from "my world" to "our world" of the family, he must move one day into "the world," not just being aware of the world but participating as a citizen of the world. Most of us do not move from the second into the third. For Mormons, historical maturity would mean the disposition and ability to honestly seek the whole truth and publish it fully and freely; to describe institutions, practices, past and present, freely; to see themselves as others see them; to appreciate the contribution and viewpoints of others; and to appreciate the difference between the truth of history and "my belief." For the non-Mormons, historical maturity would mean to appreciate the Mormons and their contributions; to collect, preserve, and write fully and truthfully about the many worlds in Utah. I have a feeling that recent Mormon scholars (in some instances) have leaned over backwards to be objective, to the point of watering down their account of the past. On the other hand, some Mormon writers have no capacity for getting outside their own environment and looking at themselves or their history objectively. In some instances, the same can be said of non-Mormon writers.

A major deterrent to the production of great literature is the want of freedom. In Hellenistic times (the centuries after Alexander the Great) it became customary for literary figures to be wary lest they offend the new god-kings, hence a large production of adulatory essays in praise of the rulers. The great age of Greek literature was gone, oratory was gone — there was no opportunity for the people to debate and discuss the great issues of the day. Those matters were in the hands of the god-kings.

Another deterrent is the lack of leisure. Ironically, in an age when we have the greatest number of time-saving devices and the means of obtaining sources and their reproduction, we seem to have the least leisure time to read, reflect, and write. The earlier Utah writers mentioned in this essay seem to have had a greater literary output than appears possible now. Their pace of life was different.

Then there is a tendency for us now to overdo microstudies. This is the law of specialization: we cannot know it all, so we delimit our studies and confine ourselves to the specific sources. Soon we are knowing more and more about less and less, and ultimately we wind up knowing everything about nothing. The multiplicity of little articles plagues the entire field. There is too great a temptation to bog down into little time periods with studies limited to selected factors. We are grateful for such studies, but the future need is to see the greater picture, both in time and in array of activities and related factors. Grants and subsidies have been a great boon to researchers in this past generation. But research moneys are continued only to those who produce, so the researcher is pressed to get something in print. This very situation has resulted in the preparation of too many half-baked ideas and repetitious reports. Too frequently an author presents his one idea in two or three forms and palms those variations off on editors. Such a tactic enlarges his publication list, but it does not add to human knowledge and only frustrates the researcher.

As of now we have neither epic history, biography, nor poetry. We need books over articles. We need articles which synthesize major topics and movements. We need books which treat large themes in the grand (broadly conceived) manner. Synthesis must cover longer periods of time, and the story must be put into the context of all other relevant events and influences.

At a pioneer day ceremony in the Greek Theater on the Utah State University campus overlooking lovely Cache Valley, one summer many years ago, I heard Elder John A. Widtsoe of the Council of the Twelve, and former president of the college, speak on the pioneer heritage of Utah. He said that when their history came to be written it would be by one who had the mind of a historian, the heart of a poet, and the soul of a prophet. I believed him right at the time, and have come to regard the statement even more true as years have gone on. Just when we will get a person of such a remarkable combination of talents and virtues, I do not know. I do not see him on the horizon.

The great works of the future will not only represent a synthesis of much human knowledge, they will portray eternal human values, the essence of human experience, universal truths. They will read with a vitality and a truthfulness that will make the epic story of Utah meaningful not only for Utahns but for people anywhere in the world.

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