Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 57, Number 3, 1989

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UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY (ISSN 0042-143X) E D I T O R I A L STAFF MAX J. EVANS, Editor

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STANFORD J. LAYTON, Managing Editor MIRIAM B. MURPHY, Associate Editor

ADVISORY BOARD O F EDITORS KENNETH L. CANNON IT, Sah Lake City, 1989 ARLENE H . EAKLE, Woods Cross, 1990 JOEL C . JANETSKI, Provo, 1991 ROBERT S. MCPHERSON, Blanding, 1989 CAROL A. O'CONNOR, Logan, 1991 RICHARD W . SADLER, Ogden, 1991

HAROLD SCHINDLER, Sah Lake City, 1990 GENE A. SESSIONS, Bountiful, 1989

GREGORY C. THOMPSON, Salt Lake City, 1990 Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, and reviews contributing to knowledge of Utah's history. The Quarterly is published four times a year by the Utah State Historical Society, 300 Rio Grande, Sailt Lake City, Utah 84101. Phone (801) 533-6024 for membership and publications information.

Members of the Society receive the Quarterly, Beehive History, and the bimonthly Newsletter upon payment of the annujJ dues: individual, $15.00; institution, $20.00; student and senior citizen (age sixty-five or over), $10.00; contributing, $20.00; sustaining, $25.00; patron, $50.00; business, $100.00.

Materials for publication should be submitted in duplicate accompanied by return postage and should be typed double-space, with footnotes at the end. Authors are encouraged to submit material in a computer-readable form, on 5 54 inch MS-DOS or PC-DOS diskettes, standard ASCII text file.

Additional information on requirements is available from the managing editor. Articles represent the views of the author and are not necessarily those of the Uteih State Historical Society.

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Postmaster: Send form 3579 (change of address) to Utah Historical Quarterly, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101.

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Contents S U M M E R 1989 / V O L U M E 57 / N U M B E R 3

IN T H I S ISSUE

203

A "TINY RIPPLE": THE GROWTH OF HEBER CITY AND T H E WASATCH WAVE, 1889-1920 EARLY M O R M O N AND U T A H H O L O G R A P H I C SCRIP

JESSIE L . EMBRY

204

NORMAN K.JOHNSON

216

RICHARD H . PETERSON

240

JOSEPH HEINERMAN

254

JESSE K N I G H T , U T A H ' S M O R M O N MINING M O G U L REED S M O O T ' S " S E C R E T C O D E " T H E C O N T R O V E R S I A L DEATH OF GOBO FANGO T O O E L E — W H A T IS T H E NAME'S ORIGIN?

H.

DEAN GARRETT

264

GEORGE TRIPP

273

CARMEN SMITH

277

T H E LOST WELL OF T H E M O R M O N BATTALION REDISCOVERED BOOK REVIEWS

287

BOOK NOTICES

295

T H E C O V E R With their summer vacation almost at an end, youngsters enjoyed the pool in Salt Lake City's Pioneer Park, Friday, September 1, 191L Shipler Collection, Utah State Historical Society Library.

© Copyright 1989 Utah State Historical Society

Books reviewed The Great Unknown: The Journals of the Historic First Expedition down the Colorado River ROY WEBI 287

J O H N COOLEY.

Trials of Discipleship: The Story of William Clayton, a Mormon ALLAN KENT POWELL

JAMES B . ALLEN.

288

BARBARA A. BABCOCK and NANCY J . PAREZO. Daughters

of the Desert: Women Anthropologists and the Native American Southwest, 1880-1980 NANCY J . TANIGUCHI ROBERT S. M C P H E R S O N .

290

The Northern

Navajo Frontier, 1860-1900: Expansion through Adversity ELIZABETH W . FORSTER and GILPIN. Denizens of the

JIM VLASICH

291

LAURA

Desert: A Tale in Word and Picture of Life among theNavaho Indians .. . . ALBINJ. COFONE

292

WILLIAM B . SMART.

Old Utah Trails .

DAVID CONINE

293

I n this issue Although it was settled thirty years earlier, H e b e r City was not incorporated as a town until 1889. T h a t same year saw the founding of the Wasatch Wave, a weekly newspaper that, according to the first article in this issue, served as the t o w n ' s booster, watchdog, a n d reporter of local news â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a role c o m m o n to country newspapers throughout the U n i t e d States. If group life necessitates

Cartoon by Alan L. Lovey, 1906.

This artist drew many prominent Utah political and business figures such as Smoot.

a means of communication it d e m a n d s as well a m e a n s of exchange, as the next article, a detailed study of holographic scrip, makes clear. T h e varieties of scrip illustrate the ingenuity of buyers a n d sellers, employers a n d employees in coping with the lack of specie in pioneer U t a h . A half-century later there was no lack of cash in U t a h â&#x20AC;&#x201D; m u c h of it in the h a n d s of m i n i n g entrepreneurs. A m o n g these Gilded Age moguls Jesse Knight did not r u n true to type, the third article asserts. For one thing he was a M o r m o n .

F u r t h e r m o r e , he eschewed political office and the dubious business practices and self-indulgent excesses of m a n y of his peers. A n enlightened capitalist, he was a major benefactor of Brigham Young University.

T h e final four articles in this issue deal with historical curiosities or puzzles: the code devised by R e e d Smoot a n d his colleagues to assure the privacy of telegrams and letters d u r i n g the congressional investigation of the U t a h senator; the controversial death of G o b o F a n g o , a black sheepherder, and the acquittal of his killer, a white cattleman; the origin of Tooele, U t a h ' s most enigmatic place n a m e ; and, finally, a c o n t e m p o r a r y field a d v e n t u r e to find the exact location of an obscure well in southern New Mexico used by the M o r m o n Battalion.

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Heber City, Utah. USHS collections.

A ''Tiny Ripple": The Growth of Heber City and the Wasatch Wave, 1889-1920

BY JESSIE L. EMBRY

The Wasatch Wave

205

A N IMPORTANT PART OF COMMUNITY LIFE in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was the local newspaper. One editor described the weekly as "the sweet intimate story of life" because it recorded marriages, births, and deaths. He added, "[If| by chance [you] pick up the little country newspaper . . . don't throw down the contemptible little rag with the verdict that there is nothing in it. . . . If you could . . . read the little paper as it is written, you would find all of God's beautiful, sorrowing, struggling, aspiring world in it, and what you saw would make you touch the little paper with reverent hands." To historian Daniel Boorstin the weekly newspaper was a symbol of the neighborhood community which "was slipping away" as the United States became more urbanized.^ A story by John D. Fitzgerald in More Adventures of the Great Brain illustrated the value of the local paper. In the story, Fitzgerald's father ran a weekly newspaper called the Advocate. John's brother Tom, who was the Great Brain, wanted to help his father with the paper, but his father insisted he was too young. To demonstrate that he was mature enough, Tom borrowed his father's old press and started his own newspaperâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; the Bugle. He drafted his friends and younger brother John as reporters and explained, " T h e only local news my father prints is what people . . . want him to print. . . . By the time the Advocate comes out . . . everyone knows it. . . . 1 want the news that will reveal the deep secrets in this town that the public is entitled to know."^ The first edition included the solution to a bank robbery and "deep secrets" such as a particular woman being destined to die an old maid because she was too picky. When the local residents who had been attacked arrived at the Advocate office to protest the Bugle'?, news, Tom's father consoled them and then told his son, " A good journalist doesn't deliberately hurt people just to sell newspapers. . . . It is true a good newspaperman seeks to expose evil when that evil is a threat to the community. . . . But when you print that Mrs. Haggerty's nagging drives her husband to drink, and all the other scandals in your local newspaper, that is an invasion of their privacy and subject to libel laws. Moreover, it performs no useful service for the community."^

Miss Embry is oral history program director at the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University. A version of this paper was read at Statehood Day ceremonies in Heber City on January 4, 1989.

1 Daniel J . Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience {^cv^ York: Vintage Books, 1974), p.

136.

2 John D. Fitzgerald, More Adventures of Great Brain (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1978), p. 88.

3Ibid., pp. 105-6.

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Heber City had a similar experience with a paper, the Heber Herald published by ten-year-old Abram Hatch, Jr., from 1890 to 1893. It was discontinued, however, not because of the type of news it carried but because the youthful editor complained of too many chores and too much homework. Hatch's source of news was often the same as the Bugle's though: "Ex-Editor Hatch, reminiscently recalled his boyish habit of eavesdropping among the gossiping members of the Whittling Club at the public hitching post in Heber. 'When I got both ears full I hurried back across the street and set it in type.' '"^ The Herald was the "competition" for those three years to the Wasatch Wave, the weekly newspaper that is still published in the county and which started the same year, 1889, that Heber City was incorporated. The Wave, like the Mount Pleasant Pyramid, the Richfield Reaper, the San Juan Record, and many other weeklies, provides local news and timely editorials. In the centennial year of the incorporation of Heber City and of the founding of the Wave, it is fitting to examine the role that the Wave has played in Heber, which was similar to the relationship between other communities and country newspapers in Utah and the United States.

A number of studies have praised the virtues of local papers. According to one, " T h e position of the country weekly newspaper is that of a pulsing, throbbing institution which reaches to the grass roots of the community social structure, reflecting its life, customs, and civilization." Although probably overstating, one professor of journaHsm in the early 1900s even went so far as to say, "Without its newspaper the small-town American community would be like a school without a teacher or a church without a pastor."^ The newspaper, like a teacher or a preacher, played an important role in promoting development and what the community's founding fathers would call progress. Yet despite the importance of weeklies in small communities at the turn of the century, "Newspapers have become so commonplace in the everyday lives of the American people that social observers and particularly historians have overlooked them as a vital institution within American society providing an indispensable serviceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the delivery of information and opinion."^ 4J. Cecil Alter, Early Utah Journalism (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1938), p. 84.

(Pages 83-87 give a history of the Herald and some quotes from the newspaper.) sThomas E. Bernhart, "Country Press Is an Intimate Press," The Newspaper and Society: A Book of Readings, ed. George L. Bird and Frederic E. Merwin (New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1942), pp. 35356.

6 Perry J . Ashley, ed., American Newspapers Journalists, 1873-1900 (Detroit: Bruccoli Clark, 1983), p. xi.

The Wasatch Wave

207

Around the turn of the century when the Wave was just getting its start, a whole set of literature about country journalism was also appearing. These books told the value of local newspapers, how to start and publish a paper, and perhaps more important to the local editor, how to write a good editorial. A 1926 study asked the editor to "understand the nature of community life" and "some glimmering of the part that he may play," concluding that "if he then develops his paper consciously toward those ends that seem to him more desirable, it is almost certain that his reward will be great. "^ Another account asked local editors to avoid "wandering afar in their editorial efforts and of neglecting the home field. . . . There are community problems that need solutions, and the editor can be of assistance in solving them."^ The Wasatch Wave, like other weekly newspapers in Utah, accepted the role of conscience for the town as well as the reporter of local news that "people told the editor to print." In the first edition, pubUshed on March 23, 1889, William Buys, Wasatch County and Heber City attorney, as well as "notary public, city surveyor, and civil engineer," penned.

In rafting the Wasatch Wave we realize it is but a tiny ripple upon the great ocean of journalism, but we sincerely hope and trust that it may grow and gather strength as it proceeds on its perilous journey. We are also aware that there are breakers in its course against which it may run and be dashed to pieces and the great commotion caused by the shock be scarcely perceptible upon the broad expanse of the vast literary sea.

That first edition included advertisements (with Buys listing his various businesses right under the masthead), a "History of Wasatch County" by John Crook, "Local Waves," Park City news, and an article on "How a Dog Should Be Fed." Editorials were not limited to one page; many of the articles about local events also included comments by Buys. For example, one article described plans to build a new flour mill in Heber City, and he expressed his views on the topic. Buys, like other country editors, seems to have "usually considered himself a weakling if he did not stand positively and aggressive for or against something, monitoring the thoughts and actions of the community with the dignity and severity of a Dictator."^ 7 Malcolm Macdonald Willey, The Country Newspaper: A Study of Socialization and Newspaper Content (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1926), p. 18.

8James Clifford Safley, The Country Newspaper and Its Operation (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1930), p. 230.

9 Alter, Early Utah Journalism, p. 9.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

From 1889 to 1920 William Buys, his nephew George Barzee, C. O. Glanville, Joseph A. Murdock, the Wasatch Real Estate and Development Company, and Charles M. Broadbent published the newspaper. Newcomers changed some editorial policies and the paper grew in lengthâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;especially carrying more national news and syndicated stories â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but the local reporting remained the same.^° The masthead of the first paper announced that it would sell for $2.50 a year, $1.25 for six months, and $.75 for three months.^^ (Hatch's Herald competed by only charging "25 cents for three months, 50 cents for six months, and so on!"^^^ In 1895 when Glanville and Murdock leased the paper it sold for $1.50 a year. In their first issue they explained, " W e hope by our endeavors to make the Wave one of the foremost among Utah's country papers, to merit your full patronage and support for [the] interests we all have in the . . . Utah territory and its people in general and . . . the upbuilding of Wasatch County and the advancement of its interest and those of its inhabitants in particular. "^^ As the town booster, nearly all of the Wave's editorials described ways to improve Heber City. Progress was defined as any type of forward-looking projects that would improve life in Heber and that would bring attention to the community. Especially valuable, according to the Wave, were civic improvements. Around the turn of the century, "Public utilities were glamorous, for they were among technology's most spectacular contributions to modern urban life: water for indoor plumbing, safe drinking, and fire fighting; gas and electricity for industrial power as well as heating, illumination, and the bright lights of the city; telephones for instant cross-town communication."^* Weekly newspapers as well as city governments promoted public utilities. As E . A . Little explained in The Country Publisher in 1917, for any movement "which promises to benefit the community," a "few well planned articles will give an impetus. . . . The editor can plant the seed, and with the help of the progressive men who are found in all towns, can cultivate the soil and encourage the growth of civic improvements."^^ "Through the editorial," a sociological study noted,

loibid., p. 80. ^^Wave, March 23, 1889. i2Alter, EMrly Utah Journalism, p. 84. i3l4^aj;^, J u n e 4 , 1895. i*J. Paul Mitchell, " T a m i n g the Urban Frontier: Denver during the Progressive E r a , " in Dwight W. Hoover and J o h n T. A. Koumoulides, eds., Conspectus of History (Muncie, Ind.: Ball State University, 1977), vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 27-28. i5(n.p.: The Editor Co., 1917), pp. 367-68.

The Wasatch Wave

* w

209

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Wasatch Wave staff, 1889. Left to right, front: George Barzee, Pearl Buys, William Buys; back: Ephraim McMillan, Daniel McMillan, foseph A. Murdock, Lucinda Buys, George A. Fisher. From How Beautiful upon the Mountains: A Centennial History of Wasatch County by William James Mortimer.

"the country editor may easily play the role of a public opinion leader for the community. Certainly countless community projects have been initiated and carried out through the efforts of the country weekly editor."i6

William Buys's obituary shows that he fit this mold: Whenever he went into a subject he went into it with all his might. No detail was too small to receive his careful consideration. He was one of the leaders in procuring the telephone, the railroad, the waterworks, the electric lights, in fact he was a leader advocate and indefatigable worker for every public improvement we have made since he took up his abode with us over thirty years ago.^^

Providing waterworks to Heber is an example of how the newspaper's encouragement provided public services to Heber. An editorial •^Charles P. Loomis and J . Allan Beegle, Rural Sociology: The Strategy of Change (Englewood Cliffs, N J . : Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1957), p. 421.

17 Wave, December 3, 1909.

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in the Wave]usi a month after it started, entitled "What We Need," reported if the springs just above town were "put in pipes to Main Street [they] would convey a head of 100 feet" which would be "sufficient force to throw the water over the tallest buildings." Rather than building artesian wells, the paper argued that for the cost of a few wells the town could lay pipes and bring water to homes. Each year editorials continued to appeal for waterworks. When Midway constructed its waterworks in 1896 the Wave argued that Heber needed them just as much. A resident pointed out that more people, animals, and plants had made the water impure and unhealthy. Other arguments were that some wells were " n o better than sewers. "^^ Even the Heber Herald carried comments about the need for waterworks. Noting that the city drinking water came from the mountains in the irrigation streams.

Hatch wrote, "Tuesday we saw a dead cow being drug through the streams and ditches. It may be called alright [sic]. We don't knowl''^^ The decision finally to build waterworks in Heber was a joint effort among the Wave, local citizens, the LDS church, and the town council. A 1899 editorial stated, " W e have a plan which we think the best, but whether the majority of the people will agree with us, of course, we do not know. We think the most feasible is that of issuing bonds. As a general proposition we do not favor bonding or indebtness of any kind, but in this instance we think it better than any other plan." In 1902 and 1904 the LDS church's high council talked about the need for water in town and approved passing a bond to cover the cost. In 1904 a waterworks committee canvassed the town, taking fiftydollar subscriptions for water, and a mass meeting was held on bonding issues. An election was scheduled for July 24, 1904, and the Wave ran editorials asking citizens to vote for the bond "and do your part toward making Heber a city second to none of its size in the nation." The bond passed 164 to 32.^o One of the newspaper's favorite topics was the railroad, first the need and then the service provided by the Rio Grande Western. Just shortly after Heber was incorporated and after the Wave's first issue, the Park Record reported plans to build a railroad up Parley's Canyon to Park City. The Wave editorized, "Let it be immediately completed to

isibid., April 20, 1889; May 15, 1896; January 22, 1897; March 27, February 26, 1904. i^Alter, Early Utah Journalism, p. 84.

20 Wave, September 29, 1899; High Council Minutes, Wasatch Stake, Historical Department, Church ofjesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah, April 16, 1902, March 12, 1904; City Council Minutes, Heber City, Utah, June 14, 1904; Wave, ]n\y 15, 29, 1904.

The Wasatch Wave

211

Heber,'' arguing that since Heber was on the Indian reservation border it would be an excellent shipping stop for supplies. In true booster style it added, "We have almost within the limits of the town, the finest sandstone quarries in the west and we believe the finest in the United States. . . . Had we a railroad here, this sandstone could undoubtedly become an article of considerable value." Editorials in October pointed out that the railroad through Heber would also help open mines, provide coal to Park City and Wasatch County, open up the Uinta Basin, shorten the route to central Colorado, turn the valley into a summer resort, and develop Heber as a manufacturing center. Although the "Local Waves" section announced that a survey had been finished to Heber, the railroad was not completed at that time, much to the disappointment of the residents and the newspaper.^^ Talk of a railroad through Heber City resumed in 1896 when a Rio Grande Western employee came to Heber and talked to Abram Hatch and other businessmen about securing a right of way through the valley. Talks continued in 1899 when twenty Heber citizens met with railroad officials. They asked residents to furnish the depot ground and to raise $2,500 to purchase the right of way. When the money was $700 short in August, the newspaper encouraged residents to "get behind and help" since their support was expected. By September the railroad was completed.^^ The Wave continued to be the railroad watchdog for the community. For example, in 1903 when the Sunday run was cut, the Wave editorized.

When the railroad was built into the valley by the Rio Grande Western the people here contributed liberally towards purchasing the right of way . . . and the company promised, or at least led the people here to believe that they would get a reasonable respectable service. For a time the company lived up to its implied agreement and we had an excellent railroad service with two trains a day, then one train was taken off. . . . This the people submitted to without a murmur. Now the Sunday train is taken off and we get no mail from Saturday morning until Monday.

The article pointed out the next move might be semiweekly or even weekly trains and suggested, since the service was so infrequent and so unreliable because of mud slides during the spring and snow slides during the winter in Provo Canyon, the mail might as well come on the stage from Park City since sometimes it got in before the train. In Feb21 Wave, March 23, October 5, 19, 26, 1889.

221bid., April 17, 1896, June 2, 30, August 11, September 29, 1899.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

ruary 1904 a 75-foot snow slide nine miles below Bridal Veil Falls uprooted trees 100 feet high and stopped train service indefinitely. The Wave asked why one train could not go to the slide, allow the passengers to hike over the snow drift, and then catch a train on the other side.^^ Despite these inconveniences, according to the Wave, Heber City appreciated the railroad because it brought increased prosperity and a market for goods. In 1915 the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad could boast that Heber shipped 360 cars of sheep, 280 cars of hay, 40 cars of cattle, and 60 cars of sugar beets annually.2* Although Heber City was incorporated as a town in 1889, the Wave continually encouraged the residents to vote to make it a thirdclass city. In 1897 an editorial complained, "It isn't Heber City but it should be. Heber has been a town long enough. . . . The town corporation has oudived its usefulness and should be laid on the shelf with other worn out machinery." Three years later another editorial said.

The Wave has several times referred to the subject of changing the town of Heber to a city, but no one seems inclined to take hold of the matter and make a move in that direction. It is, of course, nobody's business in particular but everybody's business in general, and generally in such cases no one comes to take the initiative. All, or nearly all, admit that a city organization would be much better than a town and that the change ought to be made but that does not do it.

Each article carefully spelled out the need for a petition by 100 residents and an election and also explained that a city had greater control over how it spent its money than a town, had better premises for providing police and sanitary facilities, and would not cost more than being a town. In 1901 an editorial quoted a Salt Lake Tribune article, supposedly by Heber resident J. W. Aird, "Heber City people who have been in the city lately are jubilant . . . that the initial steps" had been taken to make the town a city. "They believe that it has been in swaddling clothing entirely too long." The Wave added, "There is no reason why Heber should not be one of the best country cities in the state and double in population within the next ten years." Residents gathered petitions and voted in favor of cityhood in November 1901.^5 With all of its editorials the Wave was determined to make Heber the best town of its size by promoting progress. According to the August 14, 1896, edition.

231bid., November 27, 1903, February 26, 1904.

24Ibid., January 29, 1915.

25Ibid., September 2, 1897, August 24, 1900, September 6, 13, November 8, 1901.

The Wasatch Wave

213

Traveling men and strangers visiting the metropolis of Wasatch County pronounce it the best town of its size in the State, and better than a great many larger ones, but when she gets to be a railroad junction center with water works, electric lights, and other metropolitan improvements, all of which are in contemplation, Heber will shine as never before and give the larger cities of the State cause for envy.

But public utilities such as waterworks, new businesses such as the railroad, and promotions such as cityhood were not the only improvements necessary to make Heber the best town of its size in the nation.

The Wave had other requirements. On the first Statehood Day the paper reported that "the town had the appearance of the 4th of J u l y " with music, speeches, and the firing of guns. The paper was especially proud that in addition to speeches by stake president Abram Hatch on " T h e Admission of U t a h " and two talks on the role of women in the new state, music was provided by the Heber Brass Band, the Olson Orchestra, and local talented individuals. Two years later when the young men left to fight in the Spanish-American War, a brass band played to send them off. Because of the war, the Wave noted, "celebrations this year will have a deeper and more profound nature and band music wiU add to the spirit." The article added, "There is plenty of material in this town to make one of the best bands of its size in the state, and if this essential adjunct to all live and enterprising towns is allowed to remain defunct as it has for two years past, the citizens are wholly to blame themselves. "^^ Another essential ingredient for a town was a baseball team. In 1895 the newspaper asked, "What is the matter with the Heber base baUists? A few years ago we had a team here that was a credit to Wasatch County and the pride of the residents of Heber, These same men . . . with practice would soon make as strong a team as ever, and Heber would again be recognized throughout the territory as a baseball town not to be sneered a t . " In 1911 the paper pointed out, "There is nothing that will bring life and assumed prosperity to a community like advertising what it can do. Our boys have demonstrated that they can play ball and they should be encouraged in this if for no other reason than it adds life to the community." The article suggested the sport would also increase trade and give clerks a half a day off in "good pure air" and then concluded, "Look at towns where they do not have ball games during the summer months and find, if you can, any life in such

26Ibid., January 3, 10, 1896, May 20, 1{

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Utah Historical Quarterly

places. True there are some few people who don't like base ball but so are there some who do not care for other good games. The majority of the people do like base ball so let's have base ball."^^ Equally important was a dramatic club. In 1889 the Heber Dramatic Association performed The Social Glass, and the Wave reported the production was "done better than last winter" and added that the editors "hoped to see more of the Heber Association soon." When the Heber Stock Company presented The Celebrated Case in 1897, the Wave reported, "That the efforts of the company are appreciated and that the play was one enjoyed to the utmost was evidenced by the two large audiences that recently witnessed it and by the oft repeated and prolonged rounds of applause." Each major character's role was praised, and then the article concluded, " T h e company is by far the strongest organized in local dramatic circles for a number of seasons and we hope to see it continue to give the people first class performances." The newspaper did not give only compliments, however; a month later the Wave reported that the performance of Rio Grande was poor but hoped the company would not give up. The next year a new company, the Heber Dramatic Company, put on a show. The Wave said since all the actors were new, the performance was good. " T h e audience enjoyed it and will probably patronize the company again." Companies came and went. In 1901 the John S. Lindsay company gave "the people a genuine treat in the dramatic line," but by 1905 the Wave was supporting the organization of a new home dramatic company.^^ Most of all the Wasatch Wave, like many other small country papers, was proud of the community it served and the people it represented. For the Wave, as for many small town papers, the bottom line in every effort was progress. Besides promoting the growth of the community and working to make Heber a better place to live, the newspaper praised Heber's growth, virtues, and increased prosperity. In 1899 an article explained, 40 years ago Provo Valley [sic] was a howling wilderness, comparatively speaking. Where today is seen beautiful fields of waving grain was then seen only a dismal growth of . . . sage. The hardy pioneers came here and began the process of reducing the wilderness of sagebrush to places fit for the habitation of man. By slow degrees the parched and barren earth was made to yield a meager return for the labor expended upon it. Almost indescribable hardships followed the 27Ibid., J u n e 4 , 1895, March 10, 1911.

28lbid.,July27, 1889,January 8, February 5, 1897, January 7, 1898, October 11, 1901, December 22, 1905. '

The Wasatch Wave

215

paths of the pioneers to this valley. Many were the obstacles to be surmounted and many were the disappointments, . . . but by honest industry and patient toil the land was cleared, seed time and harvest time came and went, and the people began to thrive and others came to join the few who were here. As the seasons rolled around each one seemed better than its predecessor. The climate grew milder and was more uniform, the winters less harsh and intolerable. "29

Heber City, of course, has changed a lot since the early twentieth century and so has the Wave. Rather than simply four pages, it now stretches into two sections. Instead of $1.50 a year, it now costs 50 cents an issue. The small crimped type has been replaced by larger columns and photographs. There is much more advertising, including classified ads. With its readers having access to other papers, television, and radio, the Wave does not attempt to cover national news; it is truly a local paper. But some elements have not changed. As in the past, the local newspaper reports positive things going on around town, carries editorials, encourages city improvement, and praises the community.

It still has a goal to make Heber the best community of its size in the United States. An editorial on April 22, 1987, read.

We talk a great deal . . . about the importance of creating and sustaining an image. . . . An interesting problem exists that everyone knows about, and its solution might help foster an image that no one who cares about the valley could oppose. The problem is our litter and its solution could be the first step towards creating an image of Heber Valley as one of the cleanest valleys in the country. . . . There is something to be said for those who argue that the conditions of a community's landscape reflect the citizens ethics and inner character.

Especially during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Heber City was a typical Utah and American town, and its newspaper reflected its growth. Following the pattern of the good country newspaper, the Wave gave local residents a chance to see their names in print and encouraged civic improvements in the community. Heber City's growth was brought about partially because of the encouragement of the Wave, and the newspaper continues to survive because of the support of the local residents in Wasatch County. At the time of incorporation and for the next thirty years Heber City closely mirrored the experiences of other Utah and American communities. Even more so, Heber City and the Wasatch Wave exemplify that the "country town" and the "country newspaper," with aU their virtues, stiU exist.

29Ibid., September 29, 1899.

Main Street and First South, Salt Lake City, 1860s, shoiving early storefronts.

USHS collections.

Early Mormon and Utah Holographic Scrip

BY N O R M A N K. J O H N S O N

Today we think little of these basic necessities because they have been folded so completely into our cultural patterns. As with so many things we take for granted, it is difficuh to imagine life without them. The question, "How did early Mormons and Utahns satisfy their need for exchange media?" is a fascinating one. They did so in a number of ways, some of G R O U P LIFE DEMANDS METHODS AND MEDIA OF EXCHANGE.

Mr. Johnson is legal counsel for the Western States Water Council.

Holographic Scrip

217

which have been studied in detafl. This article focuses on an exchange medium that has received relatively little attention.

A. United States Coin and Currency The United States government minted its first regular issue coinage in the late 1700s. National Bank notes and greenbacks, or "Lincoln Skins" as they were called in Utah, the first United States currency, were put into circulation in the 1860s. Undoubtedly these exchange media circulated to some extent in early Latter-day Saint communities. Transient Mississippi travelers brought U.S. coinage into Nauvoo as did gold seekers and other immigrants who passed through Great Salt Lake City. The early Mormons even used a few foreign coins, but their circulation was very limited.

In the 1860s and 1870s some U.S. currency was available in Utah Territory, although references to its circulation at this early date are fairly uncommon. The Mormons traded with miners and U.S. troops at Camps Floyd and Douglas, earned money ferrying wagons, and received as pay some U.S. coinage for serving as federal officers and for carrying the U.S. mail. However, the demand for coinage far outstripped the supply.

One drain on the U.S. silver and gold coins which came into pioneer Utah was trade with merchants. William Chandless, an Englishman who traveled to Great Salt Lake City in 1856, observed: " T h e Mormons bought freelyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;nay, fiercely: the first stores were besieged from morning till night, and in ten days or a fortnight afl was sold and paid for in specie; for the merchants must pay the States for their goods in gold. Here was a drain established which still continues. . . ."^ Another continual drain on specie was the Perpetual Emigrating Company which was employed to finance the immigration to Zion of convert Saints. Ship passage, wagons, supplies, and other necessities had to be purchased from eastern dealers in cash, usually gold. " H a r d money" that came into Utah was usually needed more desperately outside the territory, and much of it found its way there. Leonard Arrington has stated, " T h e basic monetary problem in early Utah was the shortage of United States coin and currency,"^ B. Mormon Currency and Coin Another exchange medium among the early Latter-day Saints was Mormon currency and coin: Kirtland bank notes. Mormon gold 1 William Chandless, A Visit to Salt Lake . . . (London, 1857), p. 216.

2 Leonard J . Arrington, "Coin and Currency in Early U t a h , " Utah Historical Quarterly 20 (1952): 56.

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pieces, "white notes" or "Valley notes," Deseret Currency Association notes, co-op scrip, and such. Some have concluded that Mormon money was the sole means of satisfying the need for exchange media.

Often overlooked is the sporadic and temporary nature of the coin- and currency-producing efforts of the early Latter-day Saints.

No group effort by the Mormons to print currency or mint coins ever provided a long-term means of exchange. Indeed, with the possible exception of a few months, no Mormon money provided a stable means of exchange until 1849, when a relatively abundant supply lasted until 1851 or 1852. After that, little was available until 1858 when some currency circulated for one or two years. Thus in the thirtyyear period beginning in 1830 Mormon money circulated in significant amounts for no more than five years. Of course the need for exchange media was constant. Mormon money never satisfied this need.

During the 1860s and '70s and later some Mormon-related currency and a very few gold pieces circulated, but the amount was relatively small. By this time the amount of United States money in Utah Territory and neighboring areas had increased from the low immediately after the gold rush. Yet, because of immigration the population was increasing rapidly, with the accompanying drain of specie to pay immigration costs and to finance mercantile operations. The increase in economic trade and development in Utah stretched very thin the available specie.

C. Banking Activities Banking activities were closely tied to early Mormon exchange media. Many of the Mormon currency issues were made up of bank notes. Also, banking eventually allowed checks and drafts to circulate in place of currency. Furthermore, banks promoted accumulation of capital through savings accounts and provided loans to stimulate economic activity.

Early Mormon banking in Kirtland and elsewhere was temporary. In Utah, the first banks were the tithing houses. More will be said about these later. Although some freighting companies performed banklike functions throughout the West from the early 1850s on, formal banking developed slowly in Utah Territory. There were no commercial banks until the 1870s. A significant hindrance was the absence of land banks which flourished elsewhere in the West. Congress did not enact legislation to officially allow private land ownership in Utah until 1869. Another factor was the cohesiveness of the Utah economy, built on achieving self-sufficiency, which made commercial banking less nee-

Holographic Scrip

219

essary than it was elsewhere. Not until 1872 did the bulk of purchasing power in Utah come from checking accounts. After 1880 banking activities increased dramatically.^ As the use of checks became more prevalent, the need for other circulating media declined proportionately.

D. Barter The lack of exchange media and late development of banking led the early Latter-day Saints to do much business by barter. Actually, more exchange was done by simple barter than in any other way.

Wheat was a principal circulating medium in early Utah communities.

Among other items, eggs, potatoes, chickens, flour, sugar, butter, and most kinds of hardware were also almost universally acceptable for trade. However, payment in livestock was the usual method of satisfying church debts to merchants.'^ Daniel Jones, an early Mormon Indian trader, said simply, " . . . [I]n those days anything from a pumpkin to a petticoat was legal tender for some amount."^ The initial edition of the Deseret News, published June 15, 1850, in Great Salt Lake City, carried an advertisement that stated, "Wantedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;At Our Office: flour, wheat, corn meal, butter, cheese, tallow, and pork in exchange for the News." The December 11, 1852, issue said, "[Wanted] A few dozens of beaver, otter, mink, martin, wolf, fox, deer, antelope, sheep, and other light skins. . . . Everybody has something with which they can pay for the News." And, the September 22, 1863, edition of the Farmer's Oracle, published in Spring Lake, Utah County (near Payson), carried this impassioned plea from the editor/publisher: "[We] merely state our position to be desperate unless our patrons 'shell out' some wheat without delay. We promised to be quiet until after the harvest. The period is past and we are getting hungry. Let us have some wheat."

These are only a handful of the numerous references to barter among the early Mormons. Clearly the trade of goods and services was tightly woven into the economic fabric of the early Utah. Yet, barter had its disadvantages. Charles Walker wrote: Spent the day in collecting debts. It seems rather a curious mode of getting along, to gather a few things together; for instance travel a

^LeonardJ. Arrington, "Banking Enterprises in Utah, 1847-1880," Business History Review, December 1958, p. 334. * Leonard J . Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 145, 135; Chandless, Visit to Salt Lake, p. 219.

5 Daniel W. Jones, Forty Years among the Indians . . . (Salt Lake City, 1890), pp. 123, 124.

220

Utah Historical Quarterly mile, get 50 weight of flour, the same distance to get a bushel of potatoes, half a mile in another direction for a few pounds of meat. . . .

And so it goes, no money to [be] had for work. The circulating medium is cotton, corn, MoUases, or other produce, and [it] often takes as long to collect the pay as it does to work for it. Thus a poor man works to a disadvantage all the time.^

E. Holographic Scrip Often no exchange medium was available to the early Latter-day Saints. Leonard Arrington noted the "recurring mention in letters, diaries, and journals of currency shortages, even as late as 1880."^ To compensate the Saints exchanged goods and services through barter.

Yet, what did they do when a barter situation was close to being square but there was nothing left to trade? What if Seth owed Heber and Heber owed Lucus and Heber wanted the debt satisfied by having Seth pay Lucus? Or what if Ascel had goods or services to offer but needed something specific in exchange from someone not in need of what he had to trade? Just as important, what if a medium of exchange was needed in a non-barter situation but none was available?

The response of the early Mormons when other media of exchange were lacking and when they had bartered as much as they could was to take out a piece of paper and make their own money. This holographic scrip took the form of promissory notes, pay orders, and tithing scrip, among other possible types. Of course, they weren't really making money, because money is an exchange medium legally established as official coin or currency by a government entity. They were, however, on an individual basis making a money substitute akin to that which the church on a group level sometimes issued. This personally issued money was more widely used than any church, bank, or government issue. It was flexible. It could be written for any amount (in cash or a commodity) and could include repayment conditions as needed. It could be made to fit any situation between any number of parties. Also, it was convenient. The only limiting factors were paper, pen and ink or pencil, and general notions of trust between the parties involved.

1. Promissory Notes a. Handwritten Writing in 1856 of his experience among Mormons William Chandless said: " . . . no one . . . wifl consider a deficiency of spe-

6 A. Karl Larson and Katherine Miles Larson, eds.. Diary of Charles Lowell Walker, 2 vols. (Logan: Utah State University, 1980), 1:273-74. ^Arrington, "Banking Enterprises in U t a h , " p. 333.

Holographic Scrip

221

cie . . . trivial. . . . Want of specie produces barter, the direct interchange of one commodity for another; but, as far as possible, to avoid the obvious inconvenience . . . , promissory notes of one sort or another are in use. Labour, it must be remembered, is a commodity. . . ."8 One use of promissory notes was to tie up the loose ends in a trade. This practice did not differentiate Mormons from others. However, the frequency of its occurrence may have. As noted, barter was a mainstay of the early Mormon economy and commercial banking was a late development. Chandless said promissory notes avoided "inconvenience." Exactly what he meant is unclear. Perhaps he was referring to the difficulties described by the western humorist Bill Nye: In those days if you wanted to go to the theatre you took butter, eggs, chickens, potatoes, wheat, anything like that to the tithing house, and they would give you script [sic] for it. . . .

On one occasion, . . . I took a big fat turkey up to the tithing yard to sell for script and the tithing clerk had gone . . . so I had to go and get the young lady I had invited. . . . I carried the turkey into the window of the box office and asked for two balcony seats.

That clerk handed out the two tickets and two spring chickens in change and I had to sit there all through the performance with a chicken under each arm and the young lady . . . was quite peeved. . . .^

This apocryphal story illustrates a difficult problem. Today we think little of giving change or paying in exact amounts. In a barter economy this was difficult at best. Promissory notes made it possible.

A second use for handwritten promissory notes was to pay for goods, services, or real estate. In these instances the note was written by the purchaser for an agreed sum and presented to the seller in exchange for the goods, work, or title to the property. The note created a debt that was satisfied through future payment or trade. A third use for promissory notes was to make a personal loan. Such notes are used in the same way today when a person obtains a bank loan.

The handwritten promissory note usually stated, " I promise to pay X amount.'' The obligor signed the note. Other operative phrases such as " I promise to provide," " I will pay," or simply " D u e , " were also used. Promissory notes were nearly always dated. Some required interest on the outstanding balance. Others did 8Chandless, Visit to Salt Lake, p. 217.

9 Related in Alexander Toponce, Reminiscences of Alexander Toponce, Pioneer (Salt Lake City, 1923), p. 186.

222

Utah Historical Quarterly

S>^

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Figure 1.

not. In addition to a statement indicating the amount due, often in words rather than numerals, most notes also contained the figure in numbers, often in the upper or lower left portion of the document, offset by underlining, scroll work, or a box. The notes were usually written uniface, with the verso (back) left for endorsement or information relating to redemption. Handwritten promissory notes were most often completely in the hand of the obligor. However, they were sometimes prepared by a clerk and then signed by the obligor. A few examples of handwritten promissory notes follow.

A word about the illustrations.^° They represent the basic categories of scrip notes, as weU as important characteristics of the notes.

All are from the author's collection. Other specimens in the author's collection, dated 1836 to 1887, were written in Kirtland, Ohio; Clay County, Missouri; Nauvoo, Illinois; Atchison, Kansas Territory; Florence, Nebraska Territory; and Alta, Alta City, Big Cottonwood,

10The biographical information for those discussed is not footnoted. The data come primarily from Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia, 4 vols. (Salt Lake City, 1901-36); Edward L. Sloan, Salt Lake City Directory and Business Guide (Salt Lake City, 1869); Edward L. Sloan, Gazetteer of Utah, Salt Lake City Directory (Salt Lake City, 1874).

Holographic Scrip

223

E p h r a i m City, Fillmore City, Great Salt Lake City, K a n a b , Saint George, Salt Lake City, and Tooele City, U t a h Territory.

FIGURE 1

Actual Size: 6.5cm x 19.5cm Place: (Not stated, in or around Nauvoo, Illinois) Paper Color: Light Blue Ink Color: Brown Background: The obligor of this note was Hiram Kimball, Heber C. Kimball's cousin. Baptized a Mormon in 1843, he came to Utah in 1850.

The original obligee was William Pratt, brother of Orson and Parley Pratt.

He was born in 1802 and was an early convert to Mormonism. He served various missions with his brother Orson and came to Utah in 1852.

The note was penned in or near Nauvoo. The even dollar amount for which it was written indicates it may have been used originally to make a loan. As the endorsements illustrate, it is an excellent example of how handwritten promissory notes circulated as a medium of exchange among early Mormons. As written, the note evidenced that Kimball owed Pratt $50.

Pratt paid the $50 to Daltin who paid it to Outver. In the end, Kimball defaulted and the note was filed for collection in the Hancock County Court.

FIGURE 2 Actual Size: 6.5cm x 16cm Paper Color: Light Blue Ink Color: Black; Verso: Black, Brown, Pencil Background: This variable value note witnessed the intention of obligor John Shipley, one of Brigham Young's hired hands, to pay for the immigration to Great Salt Lake City of some of Shipley's relatives from England.

The note is made payable to the Perpetual Emigrating Company (PEC). This organization was established in 1849 to finance the journey to Zion of indigent Saints, first from areas in the United States, then from Europe, particularly England. " T h e method of making . . . (the PEC) fund a perpetual one," wrote B. H. Roberts, "was by requiring those emigrated by the fund to repay into its coffers the amount used in their emigration, 'with interest if required;' this to be used again in immigrating others." Thousands of immigrants secured passage under the fund.^^ Sometimes an attempt was made to prepay, rather than repay, the immigration costs. Holographic scrip played a major role in the operation of the PEC. In addition to the use illustrated, sight drafts, promissory notes for repayment of successful immigration, pay orders, and tithing scrip to cancel debts were also written.

Five months after this note was penned Shipley paid the tithing store $15 of the $100 debt, probably not in cash, although this is unclear. He later

11B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church ofjesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Century I, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City, 1930), 4:515.

224

Utah Historical Quarterly

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learned that his relatives were unable to immigrate. After a personal visit with Brigham Young Shipley's obligation to the PEC was cancelled.

FIGURE 3

Actual Size: 9.5cm x 20cm Paper Color: White, lined Ink Color: Black; Verso: Black, Pencil Background: Obligor Eli B. Kelsey was baptized a Mormon in the early 1840s and was a prominent businessman in Salt Lake City. He joined the Godbeite movement, a group of Mormons who became disaffected with church leaders, and was excommunicated from the church in 1869. Obligee Almon W. Babbitt served as president of the KirUand Stake from 1841 to 1843 and in 1853 became secretary of Utah Territory. In 1856 he was ostensibly killed by Indians near Fort Laramie.

The document illustrates two important characteristics of some handwritten promissory notes. First, it is an example of a note payable in a commodity. The document states no monetary value for the obligation owed, simply "3250 feet lumber." Another note in the author's collection requires

Holographic Scrip

225

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Figure 3. payment of one "A# 1 bull" or, in the alternative, "one milks cow." The second characteristic is that the verso of the document was used for a purpose which may or may not have been related to the face. Paper was scarce in Utah Territory in the 1850s, and one piece often served a dual purpose.

Another document in the author's collection contains a pay order on both sides. b . Partially Printed T h e uses of the partially printed promissory notes were essentially the same as those of the handwritten notes. O n e difference was the frequency with which the partially printed notes were used to purchase goods from merchants, some of whom printed their own specialized forms.

T h e characteristics of the partially printed notes were also basically the same as those of the handwritten notes, with the obvious difference that the notes were prepared on forms containing blanks for

Utah Historical Quarterly

226 V

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Figure 4.

the date of execution, the term of the note (often including, specifically, a due date), the a m o u n t , the interest rate if any, the n a m e of the obligee, the signature of the obligor, and other information. T h e r e were two basic varieties of printed forms. Some contained the n a m e of the institution or individual to whom the debt was owed. Others contained a blank for the n a m e of the obligee.

FIGURE 4

Actual Size: 8.5cm x 20.5cm Paper Color: White Print Color: Red Ink Color: Black, Pencil Verso: Blank Background: This note is an example of a form document used by a Salt Lake City business to allow purchase of merchandise in exchange for a promise to pay. In this case, ZCMI sold to Olive Woolley of St. George $57.75 worth of groceries in exchange for her promise to pay that amount within thirty days. Using the same form, a note could have been made payable to any business or individual. This obligation was settled by Edwin D. Woolley, Olive's father. Born in 1807, he joined the church in 1837 and served as the bishop of the Thirteenth Ward in Salt Lake City from 1853 until his death in 1881. Olive's son Spencer W. Kimball was the twelfth president of the church. This note required no interest on the outstanding balance. Most documents of this type required interest payments.

FIGURE 5

Actual Size: 8.5cm x 20.5cm Paper Color: Cream Print Color: Black Ink Color: Black Verso: Blank

227

Holographic Scrip

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Background: This note is similar to figure 4, with two major differences. First, it is printed on a specialized form that carries the n a m e of the institution to w h o m the debt is owed. Second, it requires a stiff 2 percent monthly interest on the balance. Like figure 4 it was m a d e payable to ZCMI.

2. Pay Orders a. Store Orders

William Chandless described the use of store orders in Great Salt Lake City: . . . A. who lives in the house of B., does some work as a painter for one of the stores; the trader gives him in return — not money, be quite sure, for he, the trader, has to keep close every cent that comes into his hands, or he'll never be able to buy more goods in the States next year; nor goods, for A. probably does not want any, being a single man: no; A. is given an "order on the store" for so much. A. gives this to his landlord B. who does want some things of the kind; B. takes it to the store and gets perhaps the whole amount, perhaps a part; in which latter case the amount taken is endorsed on the bill, and B. retains the bill for further use.^^

Store orders were generally used to purchase commodities and facilitate exchange involving such purchases between individuals, merchants and individuals, and merchants, individuals, and the church. The orders were also used to purchase tickets to attend social and theatrical events, to pay for services, and for other purposes.

This type of exchange required elaborate bookkeeping. In addition to his regular accounting, each merchant who wrote and/or ac-

^Chandless, Visit to Salt Lake, pp. 217-18.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

cepted store orders had to keep a credit/debit account for the participants in the store order system. In all likelihood such accounts were kept not only in dollars and cents but also reflected the commodities received or disbursed. For this system to function there must have been a high degree of famfliarity between merchants and customers.

This presented litde difficulty when Salt Lake City was young. As the city grew it would have presented more of a chaflenge. The 1849 Utah population was about 6,000; in 1852 it was 20,000; and between 1869 and 1880 the population of Mormons in Utah Territory and surrounding areas increased from about 80,000 to 150,000.

The circulation of an exchange medium depends on the faith of those handling it in the abflity of the obligor to repay it. This was more important for some pay orders than others. It was absolutely critical for store orders to be paid in stock or order because their value depended on the merchandise available from the business to which they were written. Again, William Chandless's commentary is helpful: The complications and inconveniences . . . as any one can see, are continually . . . great . . . in practice; so that money is at a premium, or orders are at a discount always. I recollect a man who brought a load of wood to S., my host, taking only, after much wrangling, and then most unwillingly, an order on a store for six dollars, though long before he had offered to take four dollars in cash . . . [the order] was on a rather small store . . . one on a large store with a great variety of goods . . . is most valuable.^^

Pay orders differed from promissory notes. Promissory notes were used to evidence the obligor's promise to pay the obligee. With a pay order the obligor directed a third party to pay the obligee and charge the obligor. Usually the obligor had received something of value from the obligee and had given him the pay order in exchange.

In some instances the obligor simply had authority to authorize the payment. The fundamental characteristic of the pay order, then, was that it was written by party A. (the obligor) to party B. (the obligee) requesting that party C. make payment to B. and hold A. responsible.

Usually a debit entry was made on A.'s account in B.'s books.

The store order type pay orders were almost uniform in size (about 8cm x 13cm) and format. Most were printed in Utah Territory and stated the place of issue. Prominent on the forms was a place for the amount of the order and its number, similar to the number on a i3Ibid., pp. 218-19.

Holographic Scrip

229

wjrA^ Salt Lake 0\i^f,.C:^^:?t:H.Ji/..'^.:. f86£

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Figure 6.

modern check. Also included were the n a m e of the obligor, usually preceded by "please charge the account of," and a space for his signature. T h e forms contained blanks for the n a m e of the obligee, the person or institution of whom payment was requested, the amount of payment, and the commodity in which payment was to be m a d e . Both transferable and nontransferable orders were issued. As printed, the verso of the store orders was blank. It was often used either to endorse the order to someone else or to record the a m o u n t taken initially by the obligee when the order was partially redeemed. T h e obligee then, as William Chandless noted, retained the order for further use.

FIGURE 6

Actual Size: 9cm x 13cm Paper Color: Off-white Print Color: Light Blue Ink Color: Black Verso: Blank Background: This order was written to Clawson and Caine. In addition to being a lessee of the Salt Lake Theatre, Clawson was a merchant. Folsom and Romney were contractors and builders who also sold building supplies.

Peter Reid, a machinist and the Salt Lake Theatre's second stage carpenter, was "the husky type . . . [who] ruled the stage with an iron hand. . . . he did good work and built scenery, some of which is still in use today [1928]. . . ."14 As printed, this store order was transferable by endorsement. Since it was payable in order, had Reid attempted to transfer it to someone else, its i*George D. Pyper, The Romance of an Old Playhouse (Salt Lake City, 1928), p. 130.

2JQ

Utah Historical Quarterly

value would have depended on the quality and variety of Clawson and Caine's goods. The order was printed on the press of the Deseret News. The cancellation on its face indicates it was redeemed all at once rather than over a period of time.

FIGURE 7 Actual Size: 8cm x 14cm Paper Color: White Print Color: Black, illustrated Ink Color: Black; Verso: Black Background: This document is an example of a mining camp store order. Bingham was located in the Oquirrh Mountains southwest of Salt Lake City. Rich mineral ore was discovered there in the 1860s. In 1869 C. H. Lashbrook was a general trader in Salt Lake City. By 1878 he had moved to Bingham where he dealt in groceries and liquors, with a Highland, Utah Territory, postal address. James Jackman was a miner and John Long a laborer.

The face of this order bears the place of issue. It was transferable by endorsement. No space was provided for the obligee's name; it was simply payable to the bearer. However, Long's name was included on the line intended for the description of how payment was to be made. The order was written for "ten 10# in Goods" to be charged to the account of the Frisco Mine. Long endorsed it to Holderman by signing it on the verso. Over eight months after the order was written Holderman redeemed it from Lashbrook's store.

Another type of holographic scrip used in mining camps, a type of promissory note, was the time check. It certified that a person had worked days at , a m o u n t i n g to . F r o m the a m o u n t in the last blank, board and other sums such as cash advanced and hospital dues were subtracted to arrive at a balance due, which was the value of the note. T h e notes were signed by a mine foreman or superintendent and evidenced the mine operator's debt to the miner. T h e notes circulated as an exchange m e d i u m between miners and were accepted in p a y m e n t for goods by merchants in the mining camps. b . Other Pay Orders As the following documents illustrate, a pay order was something like a personal check today. T h e person writing the order directed that payment be m a d e to the obligee. A major difference was that pay orders were not written against accounts held by financial institutions. R a t h e r , they were based on the good wiU or position of authority of the obligor a n d / o r the institution he represented to repay

Holographic Scrip

231

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them. The uses of pay orders were many: payment of employees, purchase of merchandise, transfer of funds between businesses, and even the procurement of supplies or mode of transportation on the plains.

Of course, the potential uses were as varied as the existing needs â&#x20AC;&#x201D; provided that the obligor was sufficiently well known to the party of whom payment was requested.

Although many of the pay orders exhibited some of the same characteristics as the store orders, the pay order format is the most varied of all the Utah and Mormon holographic scrip. The essential characteristics were the signature of the obligor or his representative, the name of the obligee (although some were simply made payable to bearer), the name of the person or entity of whom payment was re-

Utah Historical Quarterly

232

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quested, the amount, and the commodity in which the payment was to be made. Also essential were the words "please pay" or some variation such as "please credit," "please weigh out," or "wiU pay."

The date and place of issue were also usually included. Pay orders were usually written uniface, but the verso was often used for redemption annotations or for endorsement to another party.

Holographic Scrip

233

FIGURE 8

Actual Size: 21cm x 16.5cm Paper Color: Light Gray Ink Color: Brown, Pencil; Verso: Pencil Verso: Notation " J . Kesler" Background: George Bywater was born in 1828 in Wales. He was converted to the Mormon church and baptized in 1848. He served in various church positions in England from 1849 to 1854 when, "having been released from all his labors . . . with permission to gather . . . to Utah, [he] embarked with a company of Saints on board the . . . 'Golconda.' . . . He was appointed clerk of the company over the ocean, and commissary for that years' [sic] emigration. "15 The Golconda sailed from Liverpool on February 4, 1854, with Captain Kerr at the helm and Dorr. P. Curtis as the president of the company of 464 immigrants on board. Samuel W. Richards was the immigration agent who organized the company, i^ After crossing the Atlantic Ocean the immigrants arrived at New Orleans and traveled up the Mississippi River before beginning their overland journey. Bywater's company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on October 24, 1854, eight months after leaving Liverpool.

This pay order, then, was used on a Mormon wagon train in Kansas Territory in 1854. Rather than the words "please pay" it uses "please weigh" and "please send." The single document actually contains three pay orders as well as a note concerning administration of some of the affairs of the train.

FIGURE 9

Actual Size: 6.5cm x 19.5cm Paper Color: Light Blue, lined Ink Color: Brown, Black Verso: Blank Background: The date of issuance of this pay order and the position held by the obligee make it difficult to determine its history. Edwin D. Woolley was a long-time Salt Lake City bishop, merchant, and public official. On July 26, 1858, he opened a retail business called the Deseret Store across from the tithing store in Salt Lake City. However, he also served during the Utah War (1857-58) as the military storekeeper for the Nauvoo Legion. 17 Thus, this order was either written to authorize purchase against the inventory of Woolley's emporium or against the legion's commissary supplies.

Obligor John M. Woolley, E. D. Woolley's brother, was the bishop of the Salt Lake City Ninth Ward from 1856 until his death in 1864. Burr Frost 15Jenson, LDS Biographical Encyclopedia, 2:602. i^Frederick Piercy, Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Valley (Liverpool, 1855), p. 15.

17 Leonard J . Arrington, From Quaker to Latter-day Saint: Bishop Edwin D. Woolley (Salt Lake City, 1976), p. 369. See also the report of an address by Orson F. Whitney in Deseret Semiweekly News,]\i\y 4, 1901.

Utah Historical Quarterly

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Figure 9. was a blacksmith. The order was probably written to pay for smithy work performed either for John Woolley personally or for Nauvoo Legion cavalry horses.

FIGURE

10

Actual Size: 6cm x 13cm Paper Color: White, lined Ink Color: Black; Verso: Black Verso: Notation " 2 . 2 5 " Background: This pay order written to Thomas Williams paid for three dollars in theatre tickets for Gilbert Lindsay, a carpenter. Obligor John Lindsay was an actor. At about the time the order was written he was starring in Under the Gaslight. He had major roles in numerous Salt Lake Theatre productions. The theatre, constructed by church public works employees in 1861 and 1862, represented a community investment of approximately $100,000. It was the first theatre of importance west of the Mississippi River. The early Salt Lake City actors, directors, and producers were very prolific. For example, "[d]uring the month of March, 1869, there were produced twenty-six distinct plays and farces, with the elaborate scenic investiture, costumes and properties that made the . . . theatre famous."i^ The order was cancelled by hand. Another order in the author's collection written to purchase theatre tickets was cancelled with a Salt Lake Theatre Co. rubber stamp.

In the 1860s and 1870s admission to the theatre was commonly purchased with pay orders. The public works employees who built the theatre were partially paid in theatre tickets. The fact that handwritten scrip helped avoid inconvenience has been mentioned. Referring to the purchase of theatre tickets in 1863 George Pyper stated: At that time money was scarce. There was little or no medium of exchange, and patrons brought their fruits, vegetables, poultry or wares.

isPyper, Romance of an Old Playhouse, p. 166.

Holographic Scrip

235

1

Figure 10. and deposited the same in exchange for tickets. . . . Artemus Ward, records that one evening's receipts were: 'Twenty bushels of wheat, five of corn, four of potatoes, two of oats, four of salt, two hams, one live pig, one wolf skin, five pounds of honey in the comb, sixteen strings of sausage, one catskin, one churn . . ., one set of children's undergarments, embroidered, one keg of applesauce, a dog . . ., and a German silver coffin plate.'i9 Pyper opined that Ward, a humorist like Bill Nye, may have been exaggerating. Nevertheless, the description is useful. Like the Nye quote it illustrates a basic problem of Utah Territory's barter economy. The theatre box office, like the tithing store, faced tremendous challenges in dealing with the commodities patrons brought to trade.20 These difficulties were partially alleviated when store orders and pay orders were used. However, a new set of challenges was created because employees were likely paid in part with the orders, creating inequities related to which obligor owing the theatre carried the best or widest variety of goods or which was otherwise best able to pay.

The Ward and Nye quotes raise questions about why contemporary humorists found the Mormon system of barter so ripe for comment. Was it because the system was unique (unlikely) or because it functioned so poorly (also unlikely) or was it just one more matter of interest that made the Mormons an unusual lot? It may be that this humorous interest was kindled by the apparent incongruity between the emphasis placed by the Mormons on the culturally and aesthetically pleasing theatre experience and the folksy method of financing it.

3. Tithing Scrip T h e first tithing office was established in Nauvoo and replaced the bishops storehouses used in Kirtland and Missouri. In U t a h there

i9lbid., p. 99.

20A theatre broadside reproduced in ibid., p. 98, states that patrons could pay for tickets in cash or in " . . . Merchandise, Grain, and Home Manufactures . . . " which were "Received at Cash prices. . . . "

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was a central tithing house located in Salt Lake City and branch offices in outlying settlements of significant size.

The vast majority of tithing paid by the early Latter-day Saints, even into the beginning of the twentieth century, was in labor, livestock, and produce. This created an administrative challenge met in large part by operating the tithing house on an exchange basis: "Persons would bring in wolf skins and take out eggs; drive in a yearling and take out hay; unload a wagonload of wheat and get credit on the books which could be used in paying hired help. . . ."^^ The exchange system led to the credit/debit custom of saving at the tithing house by accumulating deposits in excess of tithing owed or borrowing by doing the opposite. This in turn led to the transfer of accumulated credits by way of tithing scrip. An individual with a positive balance in his account could transfer a portion of that balance to someone else by writing a tithing scrip note. Thus, one use for tithing scrip was to transfer accumulated tithing credits. Another was to allow an ecclesiastical leader to permit a parishioner in need or one who had, for example, participated in the public works program, to obtain commodities from the tithing store. Further, a person could exchange commodities for tithing scrip by taking the items to the tithing store, depositing them there, and, as opposed to accumulating credit, immediately receiving in exchange tithing scrip he could use to purchase other commodities or services.

Tithing scrip was written in two ways. It resembled either the pay orders or the store orders previously illustrated. The handwritten tithing scrip resembled the pay orders. Written by an individual or a church leader, it contained the name of the person to be paid, the signature of the obligor, and the amount of payment. If the example below is indicative, the date and place of issue were less important.

The note was usually written uniface. Notations concerning redemption and endorsement appeared on both the face and verso of the scrip.

The partially printed tithing scrip was written on a form that resembled those used for the store orders. In fact, the form-document tithing scrip was, in effect, the church's store order. It contained the amount in numerals and letters, the date and place of issue, the name of the obligee and the signature of someone representing the church as obligor. The name of the person of whom payment was requested and

21 Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, p. 143.

Holographic Scrip

'

237

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Figure 11.

the commodity in which payment was expected were also included. It was written uniface.

F I G U R E 11

Actual Size: 5cm x 10cm Date: Not stated, probably early or middle 1850s Place: Not stated. Great Salt Lake City, Utah Territory Paper Color: Light Blue, lined Ink Color: Brown, Red; Verso: Black, Brown, Pencil Background: This tithing scrip was issued by Archibald Hill, a clerk, to Sam Morgi(a?)n, good for $10 at the tithing store. Hill had likely accumulated a surplus in his tithing account and, by means of this scrip, transferred it, or a portion of it, to Morgin. Morgin used the scrip at the tithing store to purchase $2.40 in goods. The scrip note then became a due bill worth $7.60 which Morgin paid to the Perpetual Emigrating Company (PEC). Morgin had a debt to the PEC either for the cost of his own immigration or for the expenses of one of his relatives. The PEC lost the document and then relocated it and journaled it (or credited it) to Morgin's PEC account.

As with the pay orders, there was apparendy no standard format for this type of scrip. Any piece of paper signed by the obligor and communicating his intent to transfer some of his surplus tithing funds to the obligee would do. The partial redemption of the note and subsequent deposit with the PEC of the remaining value give an idea of the acceptance and general circulation of this kind of scrip.

Utah Historical Quarterly

238

c> . <rc^ 1^

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Figure 12.

FIGURE 12 Actual Size: 8cm x 13cm Paper Color: Cream Print Color: Light Maroon Ink Color: Black; Verso: Black Background: This is an example of partially printed tithing scrip which might also be called the store order of the church. A likely scenario leading to its issue is that Barfoot, desiring tickets at the theatre and having extra produce, eggs, or other commodities, deposited them at the tithing store and was given this scrip in exchange. Barfoot was a waterproofer (roofer) who later became the manager of the Salt Lake Museum. Williams was the treasurer of the Salt Lake Theatre and of ZCMI. Brigham Young, second president of the church, was the trustee in trust at the time this scrip was

Holographic Scrip

239

written. James Jack, who signed the scrip on the church's behalf, was Young's secretary and also served as a secretary in the tithing office.

The notations on the verso indicate that Barfoot redeemed the order over a period of time. He presented it initially to purchase $1.50 in tickets.

This bought two good seats. A " 1 . 5 0 " notation was written on the verso.

The value of the order decreased from $5.00 to $3.50. He then purchased 75 cents, $1.50, and 75 cents in tickets on subsequent theatre visits, leaving the order worth only 50 cents. At that point Barfoot had either to purchase a less expensive ticket or present another scrip note, or other medium of exchange, to buy one of the same value. This order, as printed, was not transferable.

CONCLUSION

T h e experience of the early Latter-day Saints was punctuated with challenges. M a n y were economic. O n e pressing concern was the need for exchange media. T h e M o r m o n s bartered and banked, they minted and printed some money, and they m a d e the best use possible of the United States eagles, half-eagles, cartwheels, and coins of lesser denomination that came their way. W h e n , as was often the case, they exhausted the means available a n d / o r had bartered as much as they could they scribbled a promissory note or pay order or a piece of tithing scrip. From Kirtland and Clay County to Nauvoo to the plains of Kansas and Nebraska territories their good will and good faith m a d e u p for the lack of specie and fueled a system of exchange based on promise of payment. In Salt Lake City and its sateUite settlements the system continued until modern-day banking caught u p with the M o r m o n s . As with so m a n y other necessities, the early Latter-day Saints satisfied their need for exchange media by using the materials at hand.

Jesse Knight. USHS collections.

Jesse Knight, Utah's Mormon Mining Mogul

BY R I C H A R D H . PETERSON

in the precious and related nonprecious metals mining industry of the late nineteenth century trans-Mississippi West, and very few of these were members of the Church ofjesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As Wallace Stegner aptly suggests, "mineral wealth . . . [was] generally, in the Mormon Country, the peculiar province of the Gentiles" (non-Mormons). Jesse Knight was a notable exception to this rule. Not only was he a Utah T H E R E WERE RELATIVELY FEW MILLIONAIRES

Dr. Peterson is professor of history at San Diego State University.

Jesse Knight

241

Mormon mining magnate, but "in the second decade of the twentieth century, he was probably the largest single holder of patented mining interests in the inter-mountain country."^ Yet, "Uncle Jesse," as he was affectionately known, is probably best remembered as the "patron saint" of Brigham Young University. His contributions to BYU from 1898 untU his death in 1921 amounted to over $500,000 and included the contruction of several campus bufldings, land, irrigation bonds, and a $200,000 endowment fund to be administered by the Knight Bank and Trust Company.^ As of the mid-twentieth century, whatever endowment the school had was largely due to the generous philanthropy of Jesse Knight. He also was active in the administration of BYU from 1901 until 1921, serving as trustee, chairman of the executive committee of the board of trustees, and vice-president of the board.

His wife, Amanda, whom he married in 1869 and with whom he had five children, shared her husband's interest in the institution. She established the Amanda Knight scholarships for deserving students and in 1898 donated seven and a half acres of land on Temple Hill near the campus to the Provo Fourth Ward of the LDS church. Known as Raymond Park in honor of her eldest son, the land subsequently was transferred to the university with Amanda Knight's blessing in 1904.^ What made such educational philanthropy and other extensive church-related charity possible? It is not enough to claim, as Jesse Knight once did, that he became a prosperous mining industrialist by virtue of divine guidance or "manifestation," which led him to discover and develop rich silver-lead properties such as the famous Humbug Mine in the Tintic Mining District near Eureka, Utah.* It took more than God's favor to become a successful mining entrepreneur in such an unpredictable industry. Various managerial skills were neces-

1 Wallace Stegner, Mormon Country (New York: Duell, Sloane, and Pearce, 1942), pp. 202-3.

2 Jesse William Knight, The Jesse Knight Family: Jesse Knight, His Forebears, and Family (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1940), pp. 73, 89-92, 96; and the Jesse Knight folder, Business Records and Family Papers of Jesse Knight, Brigham Young University Archives, Provo, Utah (hereafter cited as J K P ) . Also see Gary Fuller Reese, " 'Uncle Jesse,' The Story of Jesse Knight, Miner, Industrialist, Philanthropist" (M.S. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1961), pp. 36-52.

3 Knight, The Jesse Knight Family, pp. 28-29, 98, 103-104. Given his support of BYU and his administrative involvement, it is ironic that his daughter Jennie claimed that "Father used to say, 'It's all right so long as our children don't marry school teachers [emphasis mine] or Republicans.' " See the ms. biography of Amanda Knight by her daughter, pp. 13-15, box 168, J K P . Also see Keith L. Smith, " A History of the Brigham Young University â&#x20AC;&#x201D; The Early Years, 1875-1921" (Ph.D. diss., Brigham Young University, 1972), pp. 76-77. * Stegner, Mormon Country, pp. 200-201. Knight sold the Humbug to former Utah governor Simon Bamberger shortly before it played out. The story of divine inspiration regarding its discovery reportedly moved the disappointed buyer to cynically comment, "Jesse Knight might not have had a revelation when he found the mine, but he surely had one when he sold it." See Reese, " 'Uncle Jesse,' " p.

30.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

sary to turn potentially barren holes in the ground into profitable, paying properties. Based extensively on the Knight manuscript papers and correspondence in the BYU Archives, this article documents Knight's successful business practices and reveals, where appropriate, the extent to which they and selected aspects of his lifestyle differed from typical entrepreneurial norms within the western mining industry and big business in general.

Knight was born in the Mormon sanctuary of Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1845. His father, who died when Jesse was only a year old, was in charge of the first fifty teams to cross the Missouri River during the Mormon exodus to Utah, 1846-47. The premature death of his father left his mother, Lydia Goldthwaite Knight, with the awesome responsibility of caring for seven children. Thus, Knight's boyhood was spent in struggling poverty.^ According to his son Jesse William, "as a young boy, [he] knew nothing much but hardships such as herding cows barefooted, gathering pigweeds and sego roots as a help toward the family's meager food supply. His clothing consisted of coarse homespun cloth, sacks and madeover clothes of all kinds.' '^ His mother used a loom and the light provided by a flame from a greased rag in the evening to make clothes for her large family.^ Denied an opportunity for formal education, other than that provided by his mother. Knight went to work at an early age. When not working on his mother's farm near Provo, Utah, in the late 1850s, Jesse hauled wood, oats, barley, and other produce and materials to various destinations throughout the West, including mining camps in Nevada and Montana. Although he also was employed as a logger, most of his youth was spent in freighting and merchandising. When he was about twenty-five years old he invested his accumulated savings in a dairy ranch near Payson, Utah. The moderate capital return from ranching and freighting eventually formed the basis for his mining investments. While engaged in ranching in the 1870s he began to prospect the hills near Tintic. After some limited success in locating and selling claims in the area, he discovered the Humbug Mine in 1886.

Considerable time elapsed, however, before he had sufficient means to

5 The Mormon migration to Utah is ably described in Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964). For Knight's very early years see the Deseret News (Salt Lake City), March 14, 1921; Knight, The Jesse Knight Family, p. 25; and Orson F. Whitney, History of Utah, 4 vols. (Salt Lake City: George Q. Cannon and Sons, 1892-1904), 4:511-14.

6 Knight, The Jesse Knight Family, p. 25.

T Deseret News, March 14, 1921.

Jesse Knight

243

develop the claim. It took years of hard work, saving, and a $1,500 mortgage on his ranch before he and his sons were able to bring out the first load of ore. The second shipment of ore to the United States Smelting Company netted over $11,000. The mine proved sufficiently valuable that he refused an offer to sell it for $110,000.^ The Humbug formed the basis of the eventual mining fortune of a frontier farm boy who seemed to personify the rags-to-riches struggle of the characters developed by Horatio Alger in his many melodramatic stories of the period. Thus, despite the Mormon emphasis on the integrity of the group and communitarian ideals, it is understandable that Knight apparently believed, as did many other big businessmen of the era, in the cult of the self-made man and "rugged individualism."

Judging by the advice he gave a young man seeking employment, he saw industry and frugality in typical Alger fashion as essential to success in business: The best advise [sic] that I can give you and that which I think have been [sic] more valuable to young men than either giving or lending them money has been . . . for them to find work and save their earnings and in this way enter into whatever they chose to do either in a line of business or in obtaining an education. The men who have acompolished [sic] the most are those who have had to work at "Manual Labor." That is the way I got my start in life and without the desire to work one's chances in this life are not the best for success, and no matter what one msikes a success of thers [sic] always plenty of work to do to make that success continue.

The apparent contradiction between Knight's Mormonism and his capitalistic outlook may be resolved in part by the fact that nineteenthcentury Mormons, like seventeenth-century Puritans, stressed the importance of hard work and thrift in achieving success and salvation.^" As the Humbug proved profitable. Knight acquired other surrounding mines in the vicinity, including the Uncle Sam, Beck Tunnel, Iron Blossom, and Colorado. This undoubtedly was done to protect the Humbug from the legal challenges that plagued the industry, to maximize his control over the mineral-rich ore in the area, and to

8 Ibid.; Knight, The Jesse Knight Family, pp. 25-41; and the National Cyclopedia ofAmerican Biography, 51 vols. (New York: James T. White and Co., 1892-1969), 19:276; and Reese, " 'Uncle Jesse,' " pp.

22-24.

9 Knight to Victor T. Petterson, December 4, 1908, Knight Investment Company Correspondence, box 50, 1908-1909, file P, J K P .

10 For an attempt to place Mormonism within the New England Puritan social-intellectual tradition, see David Brion Davis, " T h e New England Origins of Mormonism," New England Quarterly 27 (June 1953): 147-68.

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secure and consolidate adjacent mines before they became too costly.^^ Knight's monthly income from the Humbug and Uncle Sam alone soon averaged $10,000. More impressive, the Iron Blossom paid $2,370,000 in dividends from 1906 until 1916.^^ Knight was thus well on his way to becoming a full-fledged millionaire after years of trialand-error prospecting in which patience and good timing more than divine intervention paid rich dividends for exploring the Tintic district.

In addition, his long-term success as a mining industrialist can be attributed in part to an enlightened labor policy in an industry notorious for disruptive strikes and other labor-management disputes. In fact, western mine workers became involved in some of the most radical of American labor unions, particularly the Western Federation of Miners, founded at Butte, Montana, in 1893 and the Industrial Workers of the World or "Wobblies," organized in 1905. Clashes between management and labor led to bitter strikes and often armed conflict at Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, in 1892 and 1899, at Leadville, Colorado, in 1896, at Cripple Creek, Colorado, in 1894 and 1904, and at other mining camps and were among the most violent in American labor history.

To avoid such confrontations and ensure maximum continuous production and profit. Knight set down reasonably generous rules for his workers in the company town of Knightville, which he established at his mines in 1897: He would raise wages without being asked; he would not run a boarding house and require [his employees] to patronize it, as often [was] done in other places; and [he] would arbitrarily take nothing out of their wages for hospital funds, insurance fees, . . . nor would he permit his superintendent to question any man as to his religion or politics. In return for these concessions Mr. Knight was to be free to summarily discharge men who were found spending their wages for drink and neglecting to support their families.13

11 Reese, " 'Uncle Jesse,' " pp. 28-29. Regarding the nagging problem of litigation, Knight, like other mining entrepreneurs, learned that out-of-court settlements often were preferable to protracted, expensive suits over contested properties. With this in mind, his lawyers arranged a compromised settlement between the Charm Mining and Milling Company and Knight's Ibex Gold Mining Company over disputed property. See Ibex Gold Mining Co. to E. W. Senior, March 11, 1910, Ibex Gold Mining Co. Correspondence, box 132, 1907-1921, file R-Z, J K P . i2Reese, " 'Uncle Jesse,' " pp. 28-29. He eventually sold the Uncle Sam for $500,000. See " W h o ' s Who and Why â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Knight Thoughts," Saturday Evening Post 89 (November 11, 1911): 27.

13 Whitney, History of Utah, 4:514; and Reese " 'Uncle Jesse,' " pp. 27-28. For a description of the model coal-mining town owned by Knight, see James B. Allen, " T h e Company Town: A Passing Phase of Utah's Industrial Development," Utah Historical Quarterly 34 (1966): 150-51. For a discussion of company-owned mining towns and some of their abuses see James B. Allen, The Company Town in the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966).

Colorado Consolidated mine staff and crew, ca. 1911. Some of the young men were reportedly given jobs by Jesse Knight to help finance their education. USHS collections.

Such concessions and restrictions helped to maintain a stable working environment and created in Knightville an atypical mining community without the saloons, gambling halls, and brothels that characterized mining camps throughout the West. In addition, Knight paid his men twenty-five cents more per day than the regular wages in other mines so they might rest on Sunday without a reduction in earnings. Such policies led to his temporary dismissal from the mine operators' organization in Utah until its members saw that there were advantages in following a similar plan of Sunday holidays.^* Knight took special interest in the health and safety of his workers. In 1908 he ordered his superintendent at Eureka to be particularly alert to the possibility of mine accidents: i*Knight, The Jesse Knight Family, pp. 43-44; Stegner, Mormon Country, pp. 202-3; and Reese, " 'Uncle Jesse,' " pp. 27-28.

246

Utah Historical Quarterly I enclose herewith circular letters to be delivered personally to each and every ass't, including shift bosses in our employment and under your direction. The letters are sent out with the hopes that it will bring forcefully to the minds of every man in authority, the necessity of giving the closest attention to all details that will minimize accidents to men in our employment.i^

A final example illustrates his benevolent labor policies. A worker who was hospitalized in September 1909 had his hospital bills paid by the Knight Investment Company, a holding company for Knight's many diverse enterprises. The company also paid a half of this worker's salary, or $1.25 per day for the month of September.^^ Such practices suggest that an employer could effectively manage his employees by compassion rather than by intimidation. A satisfied work force ensured greater effort and profit as opposed to the financial losses incurred by prolonged protests and work stoppages. It is likely that Knight's Mormon ethics, managerial good sense, and previous personal experience as a working miner shaped his enlightened labor policies. ^^ It took more than good labor relations to sustain success in the western mining industry. The expense of developing mining claims, which often proved unproductive, required large amounts of investment capital. In 1909 Knight had notes of several hundred thousand dollars outstanding with Zion's Bank and Trust Company. He made a practice, however, of never paying more than 6 percent annual interest on money he borrowed. He also required stockholders in his mining companies to pay an assessment of one-half cent to five cents per share, with one cent the most typical charge.^^ This was a fairly

15 Knight to Superintendent John Roundy, December 16, 1908, Knight Investment Company Correspondence, box 50, file Q-R, J K P .

16R. E. Allen, secretary of the Knight Investment Co., to C. A. Williams, September 14, 1909, ibid., box 51, file V-'Z. 17 It should be noted that not all Mormon mine owners behaved as generously toward their workers as Jesse. In a major strike at Eureka in the Tintic district in 1893 such Mormon minmg entrepreneurs as John Beck, Moses Thatcher, and Aaron E. Hyde adopted a hard-lme policy, mcludmg the use of strikebreakers and federal marshals. Apparently their Mormon ethics did not temper their managerial decisions; however, it would be a mistake to assume that this strike influenced Jesse's later progressive labor policy. It occurred three years before his profitable development of the Humbug. More important, perhaps, Jesse Knight was a Mormon with a uniquely generous personal spirit. It would be unfair to compare him with other Mormon mining leaders whose labor policies became embroiled in a community conflict with Gentiles in the Eureka episode. See Paul A. Frisch, "Labor Conflict at Eureka, 1886-97," Utah Historical Quarterly 49 (1981): 145-56; and Philip F. Notarianm, Faith, Hope, and Prosperity: The Tintic Mining District (Eureka, Ut.: Tintic Historical Society, 1982).

18See interest payments to the bank from the Knight Investment Co., 1909, box 48, 1908-1909, file A-B- Knight to Mrs. E. B. Weight (prospective stockholder), March 18, 1909, box 51, 1908-1909, file S; and R. E. Allen to the Salt Lake Stock and Mining Exchange, August 13, 1909, box 51, file S, Knight Investment Co. Correspondence.

Jesse Knight

247

common means of raising capital in western mining. In fact, Knight informed the superintendent of one of his properties in 1909, "Unless a corporation is so that we can assess it we consider it almost worthless."i9

Apparently, Jesse was not inclined to advertise his properties in local mining journals such as the Salt Lake Mining Review^ although other Utah mining magnates like Thomas Kearns took advantage of this promotional, capital-raising technique to attract prospective investors. ^^ Of course, the best advertisement was success itself and the reputation of the mine developer. The Chicago brokerage firm of Harry S. Lewis and Company informed Knight: We have a number of customers who are interested in Colorado, Iron Blossom, and other of the companies in which you hold the controlling interest, and we are free to say that most of our people were largely influenced in their investments by reason of the fact that you personally control and manage these properties. . . . You are looked upon as a practical miner and not as a stock manipulator. 21

Indeed, Knight claimed that he was "not in the business for keeping stocks up or knocking them down. I simply work for dividends. "22 If so, his ethics were a striking departure from the kind of fraudulent stock manipulation that characterized the profiteering practices of other mine owners, such as those who developed the Comstock Lode, where, according to one authority, "it was generally believed that the mines were worked in the interest of the stock speculators rather than the stockholders. "23 In addition to land or claims, labor, and capital, technical knowledge had to be acquired and effectively utilized to ensure long-term success, especially when working with ores in which precious metals were found in combination with base metals like lead or copper. Specialized geological and metallurgical information was often required.

Apparently, Knight corresponded regularly with the U.S. Geological

i^Knight to superintendent of the Mountain Lake Extension Mining Co., April 23, 1909, ibid., box 48, file C. An example of how extensive assessments could be comes from Nevada's Comstock Lode where from 1859 until 1875 assessments on the Crown Point Mine amounted to $2,575,000 while divid e n d s totaled $ 1 1 , 8 9 8 , 0 0 0 . See M y r o n A n g e l , History of Nevada with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers {\^^\; Berkeley, Calif.: H o w e l l - N o r t h , 1958), p . 6 1 6 .

20 S e c r e t a r y of t h e K n i g h t I n v e s t m e n t C o . to the Salt Lake Mining Review,

S e p t e m b e r 10, 1908,

Knight Investment Co. Correspondence, box 51, 1908-09, file S. 21 Harry S. Lewis to Knight, October 5, 1909, ibid., box 49, file L. 22Knight to H . S. Lewis, October 9, 1909, ibid., box 49, file L. 23 O s c a r L e w i s , Silver Kings: The Lives and Times of Mackay, Fair, Flood, and O'Brien, Nevada Comstock Lode (1947; N e w York: Alfred A . Knopf, 1967), p . 4 3 .

Lords of the

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Survey. In 1909, for example, he received the USGS mining production report for 1907 and a map of the western mining districts.^^ He also subscribed to the reputable Engineering and Mining Journal and as a member of the Utah Chapter of the American Mining Congress was in a position to benefit from innovations in mining equipment, metallurgical processes, and other technical developments.^^ New techniques and equipment were implemented only after careful study, however. Knight bought only proven machinery. In 1909 he wrote the manufacturer of a newly designed drilling machine, " I am not convinced of the success of the drilling machine. . . . Until this machine has done something more than experimental work, I would not care to take any chances other than the letting of a contract (i.e., to run a tunnel)."^^ In effect, caution rather than a gambling instinct was critical in making the technological decisions essential to success.

Knight was not known as a bold risk taker.

Many of the leading industrialists of the Gilded Age were totally integrated, self-sufficient personalities. This often carried over into the organization of their business empires. Whether they were in oil, steel, or mining, it was common to practice what business historians call vertical integration, whereby the services, supplies, and resources necessary to their major entrepreneurial endeavor were owned by them in one diversified corporation, such as a holding company, or controlled through separate independent companies. Jesse Knight was no exception. Not only did he own a number of mines, but he also controlled the auxiliary facilities necessary to their production. For example. Knight's Supply Company furnished his mines and reduction or smelting works with mechanical tools and railroad track. ^^ His Consolidated Power Company, organized in 1910, owned electric power plants that serviced his mines and the Tintic Smeker at Silver City, which he built in 1908. The Eureka Hill Railroad, constructed from his mines to the smeker, proved to be very profkable even after the smelter failed to satisfy his needs fully.^^ He also owned the Utah Ore Sampling Company, which operated facilities at Murray, Silver 2*U.S. Geological Survey to Knight, January 14, 1909, Knight Investment Co. Correspondence, box 49, file H .

25 See request for subscription, 1908, ibid., box 48, file E-F; and Knight, The Jesse Knight Family, pp. 95-96.

26Knight to Duncan MacVichie, March 2, 1909, Knight Investment Co. Correspondence, box 50, file M. 27 For Knight's Supply Company, see Inter-Mountain Selling Co. to Knight Supply Co., December 5, 1908, ibid., box 49, file I-J; and Knight to David Evans, August 11, 1908, ibid., box 48, file E-F. 28 R e e s e , " ' U n c l e J e s s s e , ' " p . 3 2 ; K n i g h t , The Jesse Knight Family, p p . 4 5 - 4 7 , 6 6 .

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Home ofJesse and Amanda Knight in Provo lacks the ostentation of many millionaires' residences of the period. Shipler photograph, USHS collections.

City, Sandy, and Park City, Utah. These plants assayed ore from his properties, such as the Beck Tunnel and Ibex mines, before it was smelted. This protected Knight from unscrupulous middlemen who could cheat him with fraudulent assays.^^ In sum, by controlling supply, sampling, smelting, milling, and railroad operations. Knight was able to minimize the potentially excessive cost or deceitfulness of dealing with independent outside suppliers of such services.

Many mining entrepreneurs, like other big businessmen, used the holding company as a convenient legal means of managing the diverse corporations they either owned or controlled. In 1906 the Knight Investment Company was formed for that purpose. Eventually, it controlled eighty corporations, including mining, sampling, smelting, railroad, and electric power companies. Knight sought to keep his many companies a family affair. Members of the family sat on the boards of directors and held stock in the various corporations either personally or as officials of the holding company. For instance, in 1910 nearly half of the Great Western Gold and Copper Mining Company's 1,000,000 shares were owned by Knight Investment Company. Jesse personally held ten shares, while his son J . William 29 Letters to Ibex Gold Mining Co. and Utah Ore Sampling Company, July 14, 1913, and March 29, 1915, Ibex Mining Co. Correspondence, 1907-1921, box 132, file R-Z; and Business Manager, Ibex Gold Mining Co. to John Smith, December 2, 1909, ibid., 1907-1921, box 132, file R-Z.

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owned over 2,600. Most important, the holding company, much like the early trusts, allowed mining magnates like Knight to coordinate the operations of what otherwise were sometimes competing firms.

This created a multifaceted, regional industrial empire that reflected the good managerial sense of the hard-working Knight, who remarked in a letter to his son Raymond: " I know you are considerably like me; put business ahead of pleasure always and simply make slaves of ourselves for business. But I suppose this is a pleasure [and] rather than anything else the reason why we do k."^° Simply putting business before pleasure was not enough to sustain success. Occasionally, Knight became involved in the political process to protect his economic interests. He had an opportunity to do so when the Democratic party offered him the gubernatorial nomination in 1908. He declined, however, eking business priorkies: At the present time my whole energy is being exerted in the ultimate success of the smelter and the mining business; and I feel that to make a success of these two important industries will be a far greater benefit to the State of Utah than would be my acting as its governor, should I accept the nomination and be elected. That position would take my time from an industry which is assuming no small proportions, and which has been my life-long ambition to make a success.31

Later, he confessed to a friend: " I would have accepted the nomination had I been sure they would have knocked me out, but I was afraid they might select me, and I did not want to be humilated [sic] for four years trying to be something that I could not be."^^ The absence of a prohibition plank in the Utah Democratic party platform provides an additional reason for his refusal to accept the nomination. ^^ In 1908 he also turned down an appointment by the American Mining Congress as honorary vice-president for the state of Utah on the basis of political inexperience: " I cannot accept the position as I am very much lacking in education, and have never had any experience in conducting public gatherings, and have never been in politics or anything . . . to give me . . . experience in any public way. . . ."^'^ 30Knight to Raymond, December 31, 1908, Knight Investment Co. Correspondence, box 48, file

i-J-

31 Knight to James Hamilton, Attorney, September 1, 1908, ibid., box 49, file H. 32Knight to J . L. McHatton, November 23, 1908, ibid., box 50, file M. ^^ National Cyclopedia of American Biography, 19:276. J . William, Jesse's son, was nominated and ran in his father's place but lost the election. See Reese, " 'Uncle Jesse,' " p. 85. According to the Saturday Evening Post, J . William Knight "changed his name for campaign purposes to Jesse Knight, Junior. . . . " See "Who's Who and Why â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Knight Thoughts," p. 27.

3* Knight to the secretary of the American Mining Congress, January 15, 1908, Knight Investment Co. Correspondence, 1908-1909, box 48, file A-B.

Jesse Knight

251

Despite his reservations about holding public office, Knight could not remain aloof from politics, particularly when his mining business was directly threatened. The Utah State Constitution stipulated taxation of mines on the basis of net proceeds. In fact, all property in the state prior to 1915 was assessed at about 40 percent of full value, except mines. They were assessed at the value of the net proceeds plus five dollars per acre for their land and the value of their machinery and buildings.^^ Knight protested a proposed constitutional amendment to tax mines at full assessed valuation rather than net proceeds.

A mine is unlike most other classes of property, such as land or factories, whose owners enjoy every year the use of the entire property.

To tax the unrealized and unknown values in a mine is to tax a man on property which is not in his possession and which, in fact, may not exist. Even suppsng [sic] it were possible to ascertain how much ore is located in a given mine, who can tell what it will be worth when it is taken out?36

He argued further that " n o particular class of property could be taxed out of existence" because of a constitutional provision. The proposed amendment was defeated in 1915.^^ On another matter affecting his business interests, Knight asked Rep. Joseph Howell of Utah to support a Congressional bill to establish a U.S. Bureau of Mines. He reasoned: " I think this bureau would be of as great benefit to the mining industry throughout the United States as is the Department of Agriculture to the farming industry of our country. . . ."^^ Obviously, shrewd mining capitalists like Knight tried to promote the positive use of government at the same time that they fought its potentially negative effects.

A more serious political issue arose over the congressional movement to reduce or eliminate a duty imposed on the importation of competing foreign lead, especially from Mexico. Thomas Kearns and Jesse Knight made their intentions known as important domestic lead-silver producers. When the price of silver declined during the depression of the early 1890s lead protectionism became more critical than ever before. In 1893, following a June layoff of workers at his Silver King Mine, Kearns asserted that if the tariff were to be taken ^^Deseret Evening News, October 15, 19, 24, 1918.

36lbid., October 12, 1918.

37lbid., October, 12, 15, 1918.

38Knight to Howell, Washington, D.C., April 7, 1908, Knight Investment Co. Correspondence, 1908-1909, box 49, file H. The Bureau of Mines was created in 1910 to gather statistics on mineral production and to ensure efficient mining, processing, use, and, later, recycling of mineral resources.

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from lead it would "knock them [the mines] out in short order" with the silver market depressed.^^ As a delegate from Summit County to the Utah State Republican Convention in 1895 he strongly supported maintaining the tariff. *o In 1909, when the mining industry again faced a possible reduction in the lead tariff. Knight telegraphed Sen. Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island that " a n y further reduction in [the] tariff on lead would necessitate the closing down of many mines and smelters and cause general panic in the West.'"^^ As chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Commktee, Aldrich was responsible for numerous amendments to the House-sponsored tariff bill of 1909 which proposed substantial rate reductions on many items; however, the controversial Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909 actually raised rates and removed items from the duty free list.

A strong supporter of the Democratic party, who had the honor of entertaining William Jennings Bryan at his Provo home. Knight was not afraid to exercise what influence he had to create a political climate favorable to his enterprises. When properly managed, government, like the more familiar factors of production such as land, labor and capital, was critical to entrepreneurial prosperity.^^ Jesse Knight is significant in western entrepreneurial history because in several important ways he was different from the typical "robber baron" capkalists of the Gilded Age. His success, like theirs, depended upon the skillful acquisition and management of such business variables as land, labor, capital, technology, and government services and the development of cost-efficient vertically and horizontally integrated enterprises. A Mormon, he owned more patented mining claims in the Intermountain West than his Gentile counterparts of the early twentieth century. He was not inclined to engage in stock manipulation like many other mining entrepreneurs and railroad barons. Moreover, his business methods, especially when dealing with his working men, were far more paternalistic and benevolent than those of the typical big businessmen of the era. While other com-

39 As quoted in Kent S. Larsen, " T h e Life of Thomas Kearns" (M.A. thesis. University of Utah, 1964), p. 34. *olbid., p. 36. *i Knight to Aldrich, March 29, 1909, Knight Investment Co. Correspondence, 1908-1909, box 48, file A-B. *2Knight's daughter Jennie described the family as "dyed in the wool Democrats." See the manuscript biography of Amanda Knight by her daughter, box 168, J K P , 13-14. Knight contributed $500 to the Bryan campaign fund on at least one occasion in 1908. See Knight Investment Co. Correspondence, 1908-1909, box 48, file D. For evidence that Bryan was a guest at Knight's home during one of his speaking tours see the ms. biography above, pp. 13-14.

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pany town and mine owners often exploited their workers. Knight treated his workers very fairly in the company town of Knightville, which he equipped with a meetinghouse, amusement hall, and school instead of the usual hedonistic conveniences of mining camp life.*^ Although his philanthropy was not unique for business elites of the period, his substantial, generous gifts to Brigham Young University, the Mormon church, and to many church-related projects — such as an agricultural community in Alberta, Canada—reveal a kindly, religiously motivated disposition.** Furthermore, his comfortable but unostentatious home in Provo did not rival the extravagantly garish mansions built by big businessmen from San Francisco's Nob Hill to New York's Fifth Avenue.*^ Nor did he aspire to high political office like mining kings George Hearst, James Fair, William Sharon, John P. Jones, Nathaniel Hill, Jerome Chaffee, Horace Tabor, William Clark, or Thomas Kearns — all of whom served in the United States Senate or "millionaire's club." Essentially more sensitive and modest than most business leaders during this age of ruthless capitalism and conspicuous consumption, he probably deserved the endearing nickname of "Uncle Jesse" — a rich but giving uncle. In fact, he believed that his money was "being shown to him for the purpose of doing good and building up the Church; he regarded the matter as a trusted stewardship."*^ Or, as he once said: " T h e earth is the Lord's bank, and no man has a right to take money out of that bank and use it extravagantly upon himself."*^ Few nabobs of the era would have been willing to make such an assertion. Although he strayed from the church in his early years and briefly affiliated with the anti-Mormon Liberal party in Utah, one must assume that his otherwise devout Mormon faith significantly prevented him from falling prey to the capitalistic corruption and self-indulgent excesses so common to business elites of the Gilded Age and the western mining industry. Jesse Knight might not have been the only Mormon mining magnate in Utah, but he left a memorable mark on the church and the educational and industrial development of the state.

*3See Knight, The Jesse Knight Family, pp. 43-44; and Stegner, Mormon Country, pp. 202-3. **Stegner, Mormon Country, pp. 204-5, discusses Knight's activities in Alberta, Canada. In addition to the traditional tithe, he also at various times loaned the Mormon church considerable sums of money. See Reese, " 'Uncle Jesse,' " pp. 69-73. *5 For a description of Knight's home and hospitality see the ms. biography of Amanda Knight by her daughter, box 168, J K P , 6, 13-14. *6 Knight, The Jesse Knight Family, pp. 39-40. *7 Whitney, History of Utah, 4:514.

Reed Smoot. USHS collections.

Reed Smoot's ^'Secret Code"

BY JOSEPH HEINERMAN

Mr. Heinerman is a writer living in Salt Lake City.

Reed Smoot's ' 'Secret Code"

~

255

I N MORMON HISTORIOGRAPHY THE CONTROVERSIAL R e e d S m o o t case

of the early twentieth century has been one of the most fascinating and interesting subjects to have been written about by both Mormons and non-Mormons.^ Many comments by the latter were very negative and cynical. At a gathering of the general assembly of the Presbyterian church held in Los Angeles in 1903 the Reverend Charles Thompson, referring to Mormon religious organization, stated: "It is not to be educated, not to be reformed â&#x20AC;&#x201D; it must be crushed. No other organization is so perfect as the 'Mormon' Church except the German Army. . . .

Its High Priest claims a senator's chair in Washington. Now is the time to strike. Perhaps to miss now is to be lost."^ J . M. Scanland in an article in one periodical charged: " T h e Mormon Church is communistic in principle, autocratic in its government, and its increasing strength is a menace to this republic because of its socialistic organization and polygamous teachings."^ The primary reason for the great public outcry and growing opposition in the form of anti-Mormon sentiments was that Reed Smoot, a member of the Council of the Twelve Apostles in the Mormon church, had been elected in January 1903 as a United States senator by the Utah State Legislature. One writer felt that to millions of evangelical Protestants, long suspicious of Mormonism, Smoot's choice was as shocking as the election of a Roman Catholic Cardinal would have been. Petitions demanding that the new Senator be denied his seat began to pour into Washington by the thousands.

Mormonism, so most of the petitions alleged, was a criminal organization which practiced polygamy while corruptly dominating state political affairs throughout the West.*

Although no evidence was found or presented to prove Smoot guilty of the charges against him, it had been the intention of Congress to put the Mormon religion on trial. In fact, Julius Caesar Burrows, chairman of the committee in charge of the Smoot case and a senator from Michigan, was not interested in Smoot personally but wanted to expose

iReed Smoot, born in 1862, was a prominent Provo, Utah, businessman who managed the Provo Woolen Mills and Provo Lumber Manufacturing and Building Company as was the main promoter for the Provo Commercial and Savings Bank. Later he held other positions in Salt Lake businesses and in politics was a staunch Republican. His call to the Mormon church apostleship in 1898 did not deter him from his political career â&#x20AC;&#x201D;the pinnacle of which he attained in 1903 when he was elected senator, serving with great distinction until 1933. He continued to serve in the Mormon apostleship until his death in 1941.

2 Deseret News, May 26, 1903.

3J. M. Scanland, "Mormon Power in America," Gunton's Magazine, February 1900, p. 131. *M. Paul Holsinger, "Philander C. Knox and the Crusade against Mormonism, 1904-1907," Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 52 Qanuary 1969): 48.

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the abominations of Mormonism.^ Echoing the popular sentiments of his day. Senator Burrows concluded: I have examined the numerous petitions which have been sent to the Senate, and I desire to say that the charges made in the petitions are not that Mr. Smoot is a polygamist but that he is a member of the hierarchy that dominates and controls the State of Utah, believes in and practices polygamy and polygamous cohabitation, and is, in fact, a criminal organization. That is the charge.^

The Mormon church leadership was likewise fully aware of the growing opposition confronting it because of Reed Smoot's election as Utah's senator. Church President Joseph F. Smith wrote in an editorial for the religion's official periodical: "Just now there seems to be a general, united uprising of the religious denominations against the Latter-day Saints. The excuse for the turmoil is the election of Hon. Reed Smoot to the Senate of the United States. . . ."^ And in a letter to the president of the Eastern States Mission of the Mormon church in New York, John G. McQuarrie, Smoot wrote: . . . the ministers will have to show their hand to get anywhere and then the people of the United States will know and realize that it is not a fight against Reed Smoot, but that it is a fight against the authority of God on earth and against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I am not worried in the least as to the outcome, for personally I want it to go the way God desires it. . . . If this gang wins in this fight you can depend upon it that it will be only a steppingstone to disbar every Mormon from the halls of Congress. . . .^

At this Stage of events Reed Smoot needed a good defense counsel to aid him in his congressional trials. A letter to Smoot from the First Presidency of the church contained this observation: . . . We have thought a great deal about your case, and are deeply impressed with the gravity of the situation.

In view of the momentous issues involved, and considering the fact that Mr. Carlysle has been employed to represent the Protestants, we think that some lawyer of equally high standing in the profession should be employed to represent you before the Committee. He should be a constitutional lawyer of national repute. . . . We think he should be a republican.

5Ibid., 48 n. ^William E. Smythe, " T h e Secret of Mormon Successes," Harper's Weekly, February 9, 1901, p.

164. improvement Era 6 (1903): 382.

8 Smoot to McQuarrie, December 16, 1902, Reed Smoot Collection, Brigham Young University Library, Provo, Utah. Hereafter cited as Smoot Collection.

Reed Smoot's ' 'Secret Code''

257

ANYONE LEAVING THIS STREAM FISH

VVITMOOT A

STORY W I L L O E

Smoot's attorney. Cartoon by Alan L. Lovey, 1906.

Our experience in the past has demonstrated that outside attorneys have but little conception of the real inwardness of our affairs. . . . For that reason we should expect to have Brother [Franklin S.] Richards go down and advise with such counsel. . . . We are not familiar with the members of the bar at Washington, and therefore do not feel justified in naming a person to fill that position. . . .9

About a month later Smoot wrote to Joseph F. Smith that "the question of the employment of an attorney is worrying me considerably and I hardly know what to do. I must decide by Monday. . . ."^^ Rejecting attorney Amasa Thornton and ex-governor Frank S. Black, both of New York state, and others, Smoot finally reached the decision along with Utah church leaders to employ Waldemar Van Cott

9First Presidency to Smoot, November 17, 1903, Smoot Collection.

10Smoot to Smith, December 14, 1903, Smoot Collection.

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of Salt Lake City who, "though outside the church . . . was respected and well known to the church people."^^ Smoot's primary opponents were prosecutor Robert W. Taylor, an Ohioan; Fred T. DuBois, a senator from Idaho and a long-time anti-Mormon advocate; and Frank J. Cannon, a former Mormon poIkically embktered against the church.

Despite the opposition against him. Senator Smoot always received firm and unwavering support from his colleagues in the Council of the Twelve Aposdes, and during the congressional investigations he had a "Church appointed task force whose able spokesman was James E. Talmage."*^ Qne resuk of the Smoot hearings, however, was the resignation of John W. Taylor and Matthias F. Cowley from their positions in the Council of the Twelve because they had been performing plural marriages in defiance of church policy. ^^ All in all, Smoot's apostolic colleagues supported him in his senatorial career. Another member of the Council of the Twelve recorded under the date of February 12, 1903, when church leaders convened in the Salt Lake Temple for their weekly Thursday meetings: . . . In view of Elder Smoot's early departure for Washington (namely next Monday) he knelt at the altar and received a special blessing in which the blessing and favor was sought for his success in obtaining a seat in the Senate of the United States congress. President [Joseph F.] Smith being mouth, i*

Six weeks later Smoot returned to Salt Lake City to attend the annual general conference of the church. In the regular Thursday meeting of the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve in the Salt Lake Temple k was reported that "his [Smoot's] reception in Washington [was] friendly. . . . [Smoot said:] 'A number of the Senators wanted to know if I was a polygamist and when I affirmed I was not, they said they were satisfied and would stand by me.' "^^ The entire investigative proceedings by the senatorial committee put great mental strain and physical stress on Smoot. The first year was especially trying to him. He complained to Joseph F. Smith:

l i s . N. Cornwall, The Van Cott Firm â&#x20AC;&#x201D;First Century, 1874-1974 (n.p., n.d.), p. 46. i2james B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), p. 441. i3Russel R. Rich, Ensign to the Nations: A History of the LDS Church from 1846 to 1972 (Provo, Ut., 1972), p. 474. i*Rudger Clawson Diary, February 12, 1903, Special Collections, University of Utah Library, Salt Lake City. isibid., April 12, 1903.

Reed Smoot's ' 'Secret Code''

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You will remember that I was suffering a little from indigestion while home during the holidays. On my return to Washington I was so crowded and so worried that it was impossible for me to eat my food and I lost flesh very rapidly. My indigestion increased till it was so bad and so painful that I could not sleep at night. Especially was this the case the last week of the hearings, and the day I went on the witness stand, I could hardly hold my head up.^^

E. H. Callister, a close friend of Smoot, expressed great concern for the senator's health: " T h e strain on you must be something terrific. . . . My fear is that you will break down in your health under the pressure. Be sure and take care of yourself. Your health is worth more to you than a thousand seats. "^^ In fact, the Smoot affair distressed many people. A further example of this was given in another letter from Callister to Smoot: . . . [Orson F.] Whitney wrote a letter to Joe Eldredge [at the Deseret News office] containing about as many falsehoods as could be crowded into the News but was approved by the First Presidency and that the article complained of was placed in the News by order of President Smith. I had Joe give the letter to Dave Smith to hand to his father.

Dave said he never saw his father so mad in his life. I hear that the dressing down Whitney received from Pres. Smith was terrific. He came down to Joe to make things right, and withdraw the letter. Joe said he looked pretty sick.is

Because of the increased opposition from influential antiMormons like Frank J. Cannon and Fred T. DuBois, correspondence between the Mormon apostle-senator and his friends and acquaintances was often written in code. The "very walls have ears," observed James Clove^^ in a letter to Smoot. " I gladly joined with them [those in the church office] in arranging a code. It is well to be on the safe side. "2° This code was especially designed to protect pertinent information that church officials in Salt Lake City sent to Smoot in Washington, D. C. In a letter to Joseph F. Smith, Smoot wrote: . . . The Eastern [news] papers last Saturday growled considerably because I send my letters in cipher, and to the great hierarchy at Salt Lake City. This shows to me that the telegraph book is leaking, and that if I did not send my telegrams in the code, that every newspaper

16Smoot to Smith, February 7, 1905, Smoot Collection.

17Callister to Smoot, November 23, 1903, Smoot Collection. isCallister to Smoot, November 28, 1905, Smoot Collection. i9James Clove, a longtime Provo, Utah, resident and a one-time postmaster for that area, was a close friend and confidant of Reed Smoot. Clove had an office in the Reed Smoot Building in Provo.

20Clove to Smoot, November 12, 1903, Smoot Collection.

2S0

Utah Historical Quarterly in America would have it next morning. I have been very careful with my letter-book and papers, and try to keep them under lock and key. . . . Tonight I have written to E. H. Callister that if I send him any cipher telegrams, he is to take them immediately to you and he is to tell the same to James H. Anderson. The reason that I do this is, that every year the Secretary of the Senate makes a report to the Senate, which is published, containing the names of the senders, receivers and the destination of all telegrams sent at government rates, and I do not care to have it appear that most of my telegrams go to Brother George F. Gibbs.21 You may also notify F. S. Richards, that I may send him cipher messages intended for you.22

In an earlier letter to Smith the Mormon senator had written: If you should read any of my letters to the Quorum [of the Twelve], I wish that you would be sure to tell them that all that I write about must be kept to themselves. Today I sent the following telegram in cipher to George Gibbs: "Have Franklin S. Richards come here at once. Keep departure quiet. Have him bring certified copy of trial of Moore before Judge Anderson also published conferences since April 1900. Hearing will be on constitutional grounds with the object in view of disfranchising all Mormons."

And in his coded message, Smoot's telegram to Gibbs read: Washington, November 14, 1903. George F. Gibbs, Salt Lake City, Utah. Ketch cherub consoling Talmud inherited numerally obsolute goutiness two week-hends bawled envenomed hinting calorific Richards hash handy chased panderism momentous algonquin. /s/ Reed Smoot.23

Coded messages were utilized primarily when telegrams were exchanged between Senator Smoot and church leaders in Salt Lake City. One telegram, dated March 10, 1903, from James Clove to Smoot, reads: "Senator Reed Smoot, Catena actual trice chariots judicial tangalize polygraph grand justicifiable solicited. Clove." And the handwritten decipherment (in which the deciphered words appear above the individual telegraphic words) says: "Perry Heath busy tribune charges. Judge Tanner polygamy â&#x20AC;&#x201D; grand jury solicked.

Clove. "24 And in another telegram, dated December 8, 1905, which George F. Gibbs sent to Carl A. Badger, the code reads: "Breviate begrudge feel zoanthropia and whimper olypionic sacrificed unmask 21 George F. Gibbs was the private secretary of Mormon church presidents Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow, and Joseph F. Smith and retired due to ill health during Heber J . Grant's presidency.

He died a year later.

22 S m o o t to S m i t h , N o v e m b e r 2 5 , 1903, S m o o t Collection.

23Smoot to S m i t h , N o v e m b e r 14, 1903, S m o o t C o l l e c t i o n .

2*Clove to S m o o t , M a r c h 10, 1903, S m o o t C o l l e c t i o n .

Reed Smoot's ' 'Secret Code''

261

melodizing welfare savoriness you puttying yahoo personally. George F. Gibbs." And the handwritten deciphered words under the typed telegram say: "Brethren beginning [to] feel [that] J, W. Taylor and [M. F.] Cowley should not be sacrificed unless required by Committee on Privileges and Elections [to] save you. This is from Geo. F. Gibbs personally. "2^ In the Reed Smoot collection in the Brigham Young University Library are two books containing code words and their deciphered meanings. For example, in the shorter, six-page work, "Cable & Telegraphic Code," Thomas Kearns, a former U. S. senator from Utah and an anti-Mormon mining magnate, was identified with the biblical name Uriah and also with the word taunting. James H. Anderson, a lay Mormon, was identified with the name Rollo and also with the word tensive. Members of the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve were identified with the names of Book of Mormon prophetic personalities: Joseph F. Smith was Moroni; John R. Winder, his counselor, was Helaman; Reed Smoot was Alma; John Henry Smith, an apostle, was Lehi; Matthias F. Cowley was Mosiah; and John W. Taylor was Ammon."^^ In the larger, twenty-four page "Code Book for Telegram" the following interesting code and words and their meanings are found: Waterproof stands for Mormon church; Watershed for the president of the church; Watersnake for church attorney; Whimperer for Committee on Privkeges and Elections, majority favorable; Whimperness for Committee on Privkeges and Elections, majority unfavorable; Whimper/ace for Committee on Privkeges and Elections, report favorable; and Whimperneck for Committee on Privileges and Elections, report unfavorable.^^ The code, which had been formulated by James Clove, George F. Gibbs, and others employed in the office of the church president, was expanded and utilized by Smoot for years after the congressional investigation was over. Referring to the code, Gibbs wrote in 1916 to Smoot: In order to simplify telegraphing by code, I would suggest that the arbitrary cipher be used as much as possible, and that the other cipher be used in connection with it, but that we use it in the same way as we use the little red book, that is, to send, count six words forward, including the word used; to receive, count six words backward, including the

25Gibbs to Badger, December 8, 1905, Smoot Collection.

26"Cable & Telegraphic C o d e , " pp. 4, 5. Smoot Collection.

27"Code Book for Telegram," pp. 3, 5. Smoot Collection.

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Utah Historical Quarterly word used. You doubtless know which book I mean â&#x20AC;&#x201D;the black covered book with the words "Cipher Book" on the outside cover. If we should have occasion to telegraph you, say, in about four days from now, I shall use it, and unless you know of any serious objection, I will continue to use it. . . . I believe it will be all right, especially if we use the arbitrary cipher as much as possible. I send you a few additional names to be [added to the list of codewords.]

The following short memo was appended to the preceding letter: Senator:â&#x20AC;&#x201D;You were under the impression that your litde red dictionary cipher instructed you to count five words forward and five words backward to send and receive. Please refer to it, and if you find it so, change the instructions to six words instead of five.28

The letter and memo are foUowed by a page which says on the top: "These additional names were added to cipher July 18, 1916." Listed underneath are seventeen code words and their deciphered meanings, including: Aumic for Gov. Wikiam Spry, Zygon for Prohibkion party, Zymosis for Republican party, Zywor for Prohibitionist, Zywund for Anti-Prohibkionist, and Zonitis for Democratic party. Below the seventeen words four more code words were added on March 24, 1917, including: Zygodon for Sen. William H. King and Zylow for Gov. Simon Bamberger.

The preceding examples illustrate the clever yet cautious resourcefulness Smoot and his coUeagues employed during their exchange of personal letters and telegrams. Akhough the code was conceived and used by the Mormons in an attempt to secure privacy for Smoot, k did not, regrettably, diminish the great stress he had to endure during the congressional hearings. As the investigation of the Utah senator was nearing an end Smoot wrote to Joseph F. Smith: No one knows what a strain I have been under for the last two years; batding every day against almost a solid wall of prejudice with virtually all the newspapers of the nation against me; surrounded by active enemies; furnished with the means to accomplish their schemes and plots; standing almost alone, trying to fight down the great powers arrayed against our people. I am thankful to God that I have been able to make some headway, and have won a great many friends, in spite of all the difficulties I have had to face. . . .^o

Writing to Heber J. Grant in England, Smoot mentions the viciousness of the opposition against him and the Mormon church: 28Gibbs to Smoot, July 18, 1916, p. 2. Smoot Collection. Italics in original.

29Ibid., p. 3.

30 Smoot to Smith, March 31, 1906, Smoot Collection.

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I doubt that there has been a time in the history of our people when the powers of darkness and evil have been arrayed against us as they are at the present time; but there has always been a ray of hope in the fact that President [Theodore] Roosevelt has been brave enough and true enough to stand by the right. He has not allowed the clamor of priests and the pleading of misguided women to swerve him from his duty as President of all the people. He has defended me on all occasions and has spoken of our people as he has understood them to be.31

In one encouraging letter to Smoot, Joseph F. Smith, writing in the third year of the congressional hearings, stated: We wish you to know that we recognize you as the central figure in this fight, notwithstanding the fact that our enemies are warring against the Church through you. . . . We uphold you in our faith and prayers to the end and that God our Heavenly Father will guide you by his Spirit and sustain you in times of need. . . .

If you can see your way to express my most sincere regard and admiration to President Roosevelt, and to Senators Foraker, Dillingham, and Proctor, and to any other of your friends, I would be glad for you to do so. I hold President Roosevelt in the highest esteem, as the President of the United States of the whole people and not a part of them onlyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Broad-minded, generous, honest, and fearless. God bless him! We pray for him constantly. Senators Foraker and Dillingham were the only members of the Committee who seemed to have a particle of human sympathy for us while there in the crucial test to which I was subjected and I love them for their humanity.32

For nearly four trying years Reed Smoot was constantly on a battlefield where each party used every stratagem conceivable to attain victory over the other. The "Smoot affair" struck a responsive nerve at church headquarters in Salt Lake City, starting an unparalleled change from pioneer isolation to cosmopolitan conformity that would have an impact even down to the present day. The church exerted a great effort to rid itself of the "anti-American" image with which the religion had been so uncomfortable. For thirty years Smoot served the state of Utah with honor and distinction. The many hundreds of telegrams and letters written in cipher by him and his church leaders and associates and the 3,427 pages of senatorial proceedings published in four volumes, document the importance of the whole Smoot episode to Utah and Mormon history and leave a unique legacy for future generations of Utahns to read about and ponder.

31 Smoot to Grant, April 22, 1906, Smoot Collection.

32 Smith to Smoot, May 18, 1906, Smoot Collection.

The Controversial Death of Gobo Fango

BY H. DEAN G A R R E T T

Sak Lake VaUey several blacks were members of the group. Later, pioneer blacks came as free people or in some instances as slaves of southern converts to the Church ofjesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Together with others of African descent who came as workers on the rakroad, these soon constituted a smak black community in nineteenth-century Utah. One member of that black community was Gobo Fango who left South Africa as a chkd and setded in the Salt Lake Vakey. He then lived in the Tooele, Utah, area and eventually moved to the Oakley, Idaho, area where he was kiked in 1886. His life is a fascinating, yet sad storyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and it remains a controversial story in Idaho and Utah today.

Gobo Fango was born in the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa about 1855. He was a member of a tribe ruled by Chief Creile. His early life was shaped by the events of the Kaffir wars that raged around him. As a result of the Kaffir wars and a concurrent famine, Gobo's young mother left her tribal home with her three-year-old son and a baby daughter and fled to a nearby farm owned by Henry Talbot.^ Her weakened condkion made k impossible for her to complete the journey with both chkdren, so she kept the baby with her and left Gobo in the crotch of a tree out of the reach of wkd animals.^ After she arrived at the farm, the Talbot boys rescued Gobo and took him into their farm family where he became indentured to the Talbots.^

W H E N THE M O R M O N PIONEERS FIRST ENTERED THE

Dr. Garrett is assistant professor of church history at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

1 " T h e Life of Henry James Talbot in South Africa," typescript, photocopy in LDS Church Library-Archives, Salt Lake City. The Talbot family migrated from England to South Africa in 1820, eventually settling in the Winterburg area where they cultivated a large farm. For his service during the Kaffir War, Talbot received a farm at Thorn River from the government. Gobo was found on this farm.

2 Some accounts say the girl was left with her brother and both found by the Talbot brothers.

3 Alan K. Makin, The 1820 Settlers of Salem Hezekiah Sephton 's Party (Wynberg, South Africa: Juta & Co., 1971), p. 112.

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The life of the Talbot famky changed radically when a famky friend introduced Henry to the Mormon religion. On December 28, 1857, he was baptized into the Mormon church. Six months later, his wife, Ruth, and their children were also baptized; however, no records indicate that Gobo was ever baptized a member of the Mormon church. Upon the encouragement of church leaders the Talbots sold their farm and moved to Port Elizabeth to await the opportunity to travel to Zion in America. That opportunity came on February 20, 1861, when they boarded the ship Race Horse and set sail for Boston, They had intended to leave Gobo behind with friends, but he complained so much they allowed him to accompany them. The family at that time consisted of Henry and Ruth Talbot, their fourteen unmarried children, their married son, Henry James Talbot, and his wife and child.* One account indicates that Gobo was hidden in a blanket and remained undetected untk they were out to sea.^ Except for a heavy gale in the Caribbean Sea and a collision with another vessel in Boston harbor, in which the Race Horse lost its bow, the trip was uneventful. However, the Talbots' arrival in Boston came at a very exciting moment in history, for five days earlier shots had been fired at Fort Sumter and the Civil War had begun. President Lincoln had issued a call for volunteers, and many men were enlisting in the army. Flags were flying, martial music was playing, and great excitement was felt everywhere.

In Boston the Talbot family and Gobo Fango boarded a train, traveling through New York and then on to Chicago. In Chicago they met their first challenge to their possession of Gobo. Certain people, undoubtedly influenced by the excitement of the war, accused the Talbots of owning a slave and apparently set about to give Gobo his freedom. According to one account, young Gobo, greatly frightened by the uproar, fled inside the train and one of the ladies of the company hid him beneath her crinolines while the angry emancipationist searched the train without success. To avoid a recurrence of the trouble, Gobo was dressed in girl's clothing and his head was covered with a huge sun bonnet. At awkward times a veil was added to make sure his black face was completely hidden.^

*Ibid., pp. 115-16. ^S. Austin Hunter to Edward C. Talbot, August 7, 1934, Grantsville, Utah, in Historical Data of the Talbot Family, Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University (hereafter called BYU Library).

6 Makin, The 1820 Settlers, pp. 115-16.

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The railroad ended at Joseph, Iowa. The immigrants then traveled to Florence, Nebraska, where they outfitted wagons and undertook their journey west to the Salt Lake Vakey, joining the company led by Homer Duncan. Arriving in Salt Lake in the fak of 1861, they wintered in the city. The fokowing spring they moved to Kaysvike, Utah, about twenty miles north of Salt Lake, and settled on a farm. Gobo remained with the Talbots and worked on their farm as an indentured slave.

Slavery was at this time stik practiced by some members of the Mormon church who were from the South. In Utah in 1860 there were 29 slaves.^ There was also a body of free blacks who had joined the Mormon church or who had settled in Utah for employment purposes. Between 1860 and 1870 the black population of Utah grew from 59 to 113. Some of this increase was due to the arrival of the transcontinental railroad.

As a slave, Gobo worked for the Talbots as a laborer and sheepherder. Life was apparently hard for him. He lived in a shed in back of the Talbots' house. One cold winter his feet froze, and he lost part of the heel on one foot. An acquaintance reported: "When he [Gobo] came to our place, his feet were badly frozen, and he was a cripple untk his death. My first recokection was always seeing him wrapping his feet with cloths, and later I remember he had boots. "^ She also remembered seeing Gobo take off his boot to show her brother his foot: " T h e heel was all gone, and he had wool in his boot so his foot would fit better."^ Gobo remained with the Talbot family untk he was in his teens. ^° Eventually the Talbots either gave or sold Gobo to the Lewis Whitesides family in Kaysvike.^^ A daughter, Ruth Whkesides Hunter, had a herd of sheep in Grantsville, Utah. Ruth's daughters spent ak of their time with the sheep and were not learning the domestic sciences. When she remembered that Gobo was with her famky in Kaysvike, she asked her husband, Edward Hunter, ^^ if j^g would obtain Gobo for her. According

7Ronald G. Coleman, " A History of Blacks in Utah, 1825-1910" (Ph.D. diss.. University of Utah, 1980), p. 54.

8 Mrs. Solomon E. Hale to Kenneth Larson, August 31, 1934, BYU Library.

9 Ibid. io"Henry James Talbot and Descendants," BYU Library. See also Martha Anderson, Black Pioneers of the Northwest, 1800-1918 {Seattle: Author, 1980), p. 219; Makin, The 1820 Settlers, p. 117.

11 Kate B. Carter, ed.. Our Pioneer Heritage, 20 vols. (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1958-77), 8:544.

12 At that time Hunter was presiding bishop of the LDS church.

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to Hunter's biographer, "Edward paid for Gobo, then immediately put him on the payroll, just as he did all the hired hands. Gobo regarded Edward as his benefactor and was very fond of him. . . ."^^ The legal sanction for slavery in Utah ended in the spring of 1862. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Some slave owners in Utah waited to release their slaves untk 1865 when involuntary servitude was abolished throughout the United States.^* It appears that if Gobo was in his teens when he went to the Whitesideses, he was sold to the Hunters after 1865.^^ The Hunters took Gobo to Grantsvike, where he helped herd sheep in Utah's western desert through the 1870s. During this time he was able to develop a sheep herd of his own.

A group of Mormon settlers, many of whom were involved in the sheep business, moved from Tooele and Grantsville to Goose Creek Valley, Idaho, as early as 1880^^ and began to irrigate and farm the land there. About that same time, Gobo, two of the Hunter brothers, and Walter Matthews went to Goose Creek to run their sheep on the desert. Gobo and Matthews also leased a band of sheep from Thomas Poulton and his sons.^^ At that time Cassia County, Idaho, where Goose Creek is located, was a "huge expanse of lush range lands and high mountains."^^ This area had attracted the attention of cattlemen from the Midwest and Texas who had already moved into the area with large herds of cattle. The first cattle arrived in 1871, and when sheepmen began moving into the same area, tension and conflict between the cattlemen and sheepmen arose. One report complained that "the sheep are getting so thick that they are eating the range out."^^ This problem was compounded by the drought that began in the summer of 1885 and continued for many years. "It was dry and hot," a local history states, "Snow did not pke up in the mountains. The grass turned brown, and the cattle and horses cropped it to the ground. "^^

13 William Hunter, Edward Hunter, Faithful Steward {Salt Lake City, 1970), p. 244. i*Coleman, " A History of Blacks," p. 54.

15Gobo was born in 1855. leWayne R. Boothe, " A History of the Latter-day Saint Settlement of Oakley, Idaho" (Master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1963), pp. 30-31. i^Virginia Estes, ed., A Pause for Reflection (Burley, Ida.: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1977), p.

158. i8David H. Grover, Diamondfietdjack: A Study in FrontierJustice (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986), p. 9.

19Edward Hunter, J r . , to his uncle, Edward Hunter Collection, BYU Library.

20Boothe, " A History of . . . Oakley, Idaho," p. 37.

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Due to the combination of overstocking and drought, the range was overgrazed. Since the catdemen had been in the area first, they claimed the range. The sheepmen disagreed, and a range war developed. Under pressure from the powerful catdemen, the Idaho Territorial Legislature passed an act known as the Two-mke Limit which prohibited sheep grazing within two miles of any possessory claim. "^^ As the range rivalry continued to grow the cattlemen issued their own edict that all sheepmen must leave the vakey by a certain time.

In this setting early in the winter of 1886 Gobo Fango was herding his sheep in the Goose Creek Vakey even though the deadline for leaving had passed. Apparently Gobo was close to the two-mke limit of a claim of catdeman Frank Bedke. Early one day Bedke and a companion rode into Gobo's camp and told him to leave immediately.

The Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman reported that Gobo challenged Bedke to produce evidence of ownership of the land on which he was herding. Bedke indicated that he didn't want to have trouble but wanted rather to be a friend. He dismounted his horse, caught Gobo off guard, and commenced shooting.22 The Deseret News account of the incident indicated that Bedke fired the first shot which "must have been aimed at his temple and carried away his eyebrow." The report continued saying Gobo was beaten about the head with the pistol and was then shot again in the head, "the buket entering at the back part of the head and ranging to the neck, where it stopped close to the jugular vein and not very deep from the skin." Bedke fired again, this time "the buket entering Gobo's side from the back and coming out near the navel. "^^ The newspaper account indicated that Gobo recovered consciousness before Bedke and his partner had gone very far and was able to overhear a conversation between the two concerning disposition of Gobo's gun which Bedke had taken. Gobo was eventually able to "crawl about four and a half mkes to the Walter Matthews home east of Oakley, holding his intestines with one hand. "2* A doctor from Albion was summoned to take care of him, but Gobo survived only four or five days, during which time he made out a wik providing for amounts of money to be given to acquaintances and friends, especially to the Hunter family. The rest was bequeathed to the Salt Lake Temple fund and the Grantsville City 21 Grover, DiamondfieldJack, p. 12. "^â&#x20AC;˘^Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman, March 31, 1887, p. 3. â&#x20AC;˘^^Deseret News, February 12, 1886, p. 3.

2*Estes, A Pause, p. 158.

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"needy, poor people." Mrs. Solomon E. Hale indicated that "he left me $125 in his will before he died, as also some of my other sisters. He left $50 to one of them. . . ."^^ Gobo was buried in the Oakley, Idaho, cemetery. Marking his final resting place is a headstone with the simple inscription: GOBO FANGO DIED FEBRUARY 10, 1886 30 YEARS OLD

Frank Bedke and his companion rode to Albion, Idaho, where Bedke reported the shooting to the sheriff. A trial was held, and Bedke pleaded "not guilty due to self-defense." His companion backed his story, and the first trial ended with a hung jury. Bedke was brought to trial again one year later. This time the jury's decision was "not guilty." The events of that trial were reported in the newspaper: Frank Bedke, who was tried at Albion a year ago on a charge of killing Gobo Fango, colored, the trial resulting in a " h u n g " jury, eleven voting for a conviction and one for an acquittal, has again been tried and acquitted, the first ballot of the jury showing 10 for an acquittal and 2 for conviction. Three ballots only were taken before an agreement to acquit was reached. The dying declaration of Fango was the most serious testimony offered. Judge Waters of Bellerue, Charles Cobb of Albion, and Ransford Smith of Ogden, defended Bedke. 26

The man who kkled Gobo Fango had traveled the world over as a seaman and had then settled in the Goose Creek Basin to raise cattle.

Frank Carl Bedke was born in Rieth, Prussia, Germany, on November 22, 1844. He had limited schooling in Germany, and at the age of sixteen he signed on as a sailor on a ship bound for New York. Bedke did not return to Germany, deciding instead to remain in the States. A family history states, "Near the end of the Civk War Frank Carl boarded a ship in Boston Harbor for San Francisco, saking around Cape Horn."^^ He spent about a year sailing the West Coast and then worked on mining claims. In 1868 he traveled to Montana on a prospecting tour and wintered in Bozeman. In 1870 he went to Cottonwood, Utah, and joined the gold hunt, remaining there untk 1877. After a short stay in Nevada he moved to Park City,

25 Mrs. Solomon E. Hale to Kenneth Larson. '^^Salt Lake Tribune, April 3, 1887, p. 2; Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman, March 31, 1887, p. 1. â&#x20AC;˘iTThey Called Me Bedke (Salt Lake City: Bedke Family Association, 1975), p. 16.

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Utah, where he sold milk to the miners. Then in 1878 he traveled to Grouse Creek, Utah, where he wintered 97 head of catde. In the spring he took the catde to Goose Creek Basin, Idaho, setding in the place now called Bedke Spring. He lived in a dugout and rode range for other operations untk he was able to establish his own.

Bedke arrived in the Oakley area about the same time as the Mormons from Grantsvike, Utah. A close-knk group, they were not, because of past persecutions, particularly open to outsiders. Bedke fek he was an outsider and did not fk in, but he was intent on staying in the area. When an Indian uprising occurred, he remained and coexisted with the Indians whke most of the other setders fled to Kenton, Utah, for safety.

Bedke married Polly Ann Mcintosh on January 2, 1882.2^ Polly Ann was born in Grantsville, Utah, in March 1863 to Solomon P. and Mary Harper Mcintosh. At the age of seventeen she drove a team and wagon from Grantsvike to the basin in Idaho with her family. Her marriage to Bedke was not viewed favorably by her family or the Mormon church, and this eventually led to her estrangement from both.

During the early years of their marriage the Bedkes and their Mormon neighbors found themselves in conflict. One cause was Poky's marriage to a non-Mormon. A second was the strong antiMormon feeling among other settlers in southern Idaho at that time. A third and perhaps more important source of conflict between the Bedkes and their Mormon neighbors was the dispute between the cattlemen and the sheepmen. The natural animosity of these two groups was amplified during those years because of the drought.

Despite these early difficulties, fokowing his acquktal in the second jury trial Bedke became a very successful and respected member of his community. One biographical volume stated that he was active and forceful in the affairs of the community and aided in promoting its welfare both as a private citizen and as a useful public official, serving faithfully as a school trustee for nine years [and was] a firm and zealous working Democrat in political faith, giving loyal and serviceable support to the candidates and policies of his party.29

During the latter part of his life Bedke was described as a man well prepared to meet all emergencies and perform every duty of citizenship with readiness and ability. He [was] a valuable element in the

28 Ibid. "^^ Progressive Men of Southern Idaho (Chicago, 1904), p. 57.

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progress and development of Cassia County, giving substantial and helpful aid to every commendable undertaking for its improvement and the comfort and convenience of its people. Among the enterprising and public-spirited citizens of the county, he is in the front rank, and is secure in the esteem of all classes of the people.3o

The death of Gobo Fango has inspired a voluminous amount of folklore and conflicting stories. The nature of Gobo's death is stkl strongly disputed by many of the descendants of Frank Bedke who feel that their grandfather was justified in kiking Gobo Fango. These feelings are based on several factors. They view Frank Bedke as a very independent, self-sufficient man who reacted to any challenge to his rights or livelihood. In the eyes of his family his reaction to the sheepmen, and especially Gobo, was right and justified because, according to their claims, Gobo was within the two-mile limit and refused to respond to commands of the lawful owner of the land. Second, the Bedke family finds it hard to believe that Gobo, so severely wounded, could have traveled four and a half miles to Walter Matthews's home and still be in a condition to testify to what happened. Gobo's account was given secondhand at the trial by those who claimed to have heard him speak it. Frank Bedke and his companion gave firsthand accounts.

The Bedke family also feels that contemporary newspaper accounts reflected the sheepmen's side of the story rather than what actually took place. Some believe that Gobo arrived at the Matthews home with $200 on his person^^ and ask how a black man at that time could have that much money when many people in the area were struggling for survival. One member of the Bedke family has suggested that it could have been blood money paid to Gobo to kik Frank Bedke.^^ Considering these factors, the Bedkes are proud of their grandfather for killing Gobo rather than possibly allowing his own life to be taken. They feel his actions were consistent with the type of behavior necessary to survive and maintain oneself in the environment of the frontier. The family points to his acquittal in the second jury trial as ample evidence of his innocence and the rightness of his actions.^^ Many questions remain unanswered, however, and are indeed unanswerable. The problem for the modern researcher of the death of Gobo Fango is the difficulty of looking back a hundred years, especially

30 Ibid.

31 No documents indicate that $200 was found on Gobo.

32 Interview with Bruce Bedke and Ann Bedke Woodhouse, Oakley, Idaho, July 7, 1987.

33 Ibid.

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when records of the event are so sparse. Much folklore and family traditions exist, but only a few newspaper articles and a secretarial account of the two Bedke trials are currently avakable. Ak of the original court records have been misplaced or lost.^* The probate records of Gobo Fango's estate indicate that the medical care rendered to him by the doctor was extensive.^^ Yet, despite his injuries, he was able to recount the detaks of his shooting and draw up a wik.

Why was there such a dynamic change between the first trial, in which there was a strong sentiment in the jury to convict Bedke, and the second trial just one year later, in which the jury acqukted him?

Did the emotions of the times, generated by the sheepmen versus the cattlemen conflict, dictate the outcome of the court cases? We know that Gobo Fango was kiked and that Frank Bedke did it. The question remains, why? Was it murder? Could it have been self-defense?

This frontier episode ikustrates the conflicts between segments of society in the West at that period of time. Gobo Fango was a black man in a white world. He was identified with Mormon sheepmen from Utah when they came head to head with strong-wiked, non-Mormon cattlemen from the Midwest and Texas. This was compounded by a preexisting animosity between Mormons and non-Mormons in southern Idaho in the 1880s. Regardless of why Frank Bedke puked the trigger, Gobo Fango was a victim of the times in which he lived.^^

â&#x20AC;˘i'^They Called Me Bedke, p . 2 9 4 .

35 Probate Records of Gobo Fango, Cassia County Courthouse, Burley, Idaho.

36 F o r a n a c c o u n t of a l a t e r conflict b e t w e e n t h e c a t t l e m e n a n d M o r m o n s h e e p m e n see G r o v e r , Diamondfield Jack, w h i c h details t h e m u r d e r of t w o M o r m o n s h e e p m e n a n d t h e trial, c o n v i c t i o n , a n d e v e n t u a l a c q u i t t a l of D i a m o n d f i e l d J a c k D a v i s .

Tooeleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;What Is the Name's Origin?

BY G E O R G E T R I P P

27, 1847, JUST THREE DAYS AFTER THE ARRIVAL of the main body of Mormon pioneers into the vakey of the Great Salt Lake, Brigham Young and sixteen other men crossed the Jordan River and fokowed the California immigrant trak west to the south end of the Great Salt Lake. The purpose of the trip was to examine and evaluate the soil, water, timber, and other natural resources of their new home.^ After bathing in the lake they continued westward into the north end of the Tooele Valley.^ The Mormons are credited with naming Tooele, but ever since the christening people have wondered where the name came from.

Capt. Howard Stansbury of the U.S. Topographical Engineers, who surveyed the valley of the Great Salt Lake (1849-50), reported, "this valley is called 'Tuika Valley' by the Mormons."^ The name was originally spelled Tuilla, but for some unknown reason it was later changed to Tooele.

Where the name Tooele came from has been a fascinating mystery ever since pioneer days. Several versions of how Tooele was named have been in circulation for a long time. Some of them are so farfetched that the only logical explanation for them has to be that some old-timer passed them off on an unsuspecting tenderfoot who accepted them as factual.

O N JULY

Mr. Tripp, a former president of the Utah Statewide Archaeological Society and a volunteer in the Antiquities Section of the Utah State Historical Society, is presently on a mission in Mexico for the LDS church.

1 Andrew Jenson, Church Chronology (Salt Lake City, 1899), p. 34.

2 See Albert Carrington's description cited in J . Roderick Korns, ed.. West from Fort Bridger: The Pioneering of the Immigrant Trails across Utah, 1846-1850, published as vol. 19 of Utah Historical Quarterly (1951): 136 n. 28.

3 Howard Stansbury, Exploration and Survey of the Valley of the Great Salt Lake (Philadelphia, 1852), p.

118.

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The "Englishman" stories fak into this category. When asked for his impression of the valley, an "Englishman" responded, " k ' s too hilly." In another version, the "Englishman" answered that " k ' s too willy" (too many wikows). Physically the vakey supports neither of the above tales. The vakey floor is so level that a Tooele farmer could spot stray livestock as far away as Grantsvike, and water is too scarce to support many wikows anywhere except along the banks of the valley's few small perennial streams.

Scarcely more credkable is the story that the original intent of the pioneers was to name the place Tule Valley because of an alleged abundance of tules or bulrushes growing there. As the story goes, the word tule was distorted by Thomas Bukock, Brigham Young's secretary, who rendered the word Tooele. It's hard to believe that a man of Thomas Bullock's competence would have had so much trouble with a simple four letter word.* Mormon Aposde Orson Pratt has been credked by some with naming Tooele after a then-Austrian (now Hungarian) town named Mattuglie. The g is softened so the the pronounciation approximates "Mat-too-el-eh." Andrew Jenson, assistant church historian, pointed out that this version of the origin of Tooele is impossible because Elder Pratt did not visk Austria untk twenty years after Tooele was settled and named.

There is considerable evidence that Tooele is of Indian derivation.

Inhi^hook The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U.S.A., Washington Irving refers to Indians known as Tooelians who lived in distant and infrequented parts of the country.^ The simkarity between the two words, Tooelians, and Tooele, seems more than a coincidence. Akhough Bonneville, as far as is known, never came closer to Utah than his headquarters on the Green River in Wyoming, he could have heard of the Tooelians from his lieutenant, Joseph Reddeford Walker, who passed through northern Utah on his way to California. Bonnevike may also have heard of the Tooelians from trappers or Indians who visited his camp. Regardless of how the Tooelians came to Bonneville's attention, his journal records that they were living somewhere in western American in the 1830s, about fifteen years before the arrival of the Mormons in Utah.

* Inventory of County Archives of Utah, No. 23, Tooele County {Ogden, Ut.: Historical Records Survey, 1939), pp. 12-13.

5 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961), p. 342.

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J. Lyman Fawson, a researcher for the Historical Records Survey, uncovered other versions of how Tooele received its name, including an affidavit of Eliza Rowberry Nelson, daughter of John Rowberry, one of Tooele's original settlers. Born in Tooele on February 29, 1852, she stated that while riding with her father on the overland stage between Tooele and Salt Lake City in 1867 she heard her father tek some Californians on the stage that an Indian chief named Tuika (or Tooele) had lived in the valley before it was settled and, although he was not living when the pioneers came, they named the vakey and the settlement after him.^ Fawson also contributed statements by Capt. Jack H. Ferguson, a retired army officer, who on two different occasions, first in 1918 and again in 1939, said that it was the belief among the Indians (Gosiutes) of Tooele County that a chief named Tooele (pronounced "Chooele," a name that constituted an expression of respect) had lived in earlier times.^ The Nelson and Ferguson statements have been challenged on a couple of points. Both indicate that Tooele Vakey was named after an Indian chief. Such an office was, however, unknown among the Gosiutes whose basic social unit, the family group, was limited in size by the severely restricted food and water resources of the arid valleys they occupied. The leaders of these bands were usually the father, grandfather, or uncle of the followers. The fact that chiefs (as the whites understood the term) were unknown among the Gosiutes does not, of course, rule out the possibility that the valley could have been named for the leader of a Gosiute band who lived in or near Tooele.

Others have challenged the possibkity that Tooele could be of Indian origin because of the letter / it contains, a letter that is unknown in the Shoshoni language spoken by the Gosiutes in Tooele Valley.^ Supporters of the possibility of a Shoshoni derivation for Tooele point to the name Pocateko, a leading Shoshoni chieftain for whom the city of Pocateko, Idaho, was named with its prominent / sound. Some have suggested that even though the true English / sound may not be found in the Shoshoni language, certain words or letter combinations to an untrained ear could be construed as having that sound. This possibility must have occurred to the compilers of the Inventory of County Archives who worked in Tooele County. In response to an inquiry made

^Inventory of County Archives, pp. 12-13.

7Ibid., p. 13.

8 Ibid.; personal communication from Wick R. Miller, Department of Anthropology, University of Utah.

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by them the Bureau of Ethnology suggested tu-ada (or tu-atd), which means black uncle, as the closest approximation to Tooele they could find.9 Florence Garcia, a resident of Salt Lake City, a fluent Shoshoni speaker, and a great granddaughter of Lkde Soldier, the leader of the first band of Indians the Mormon pioneers met after entering the Salt Lake Valley, when asked if she could think of any word or words that sounded anything like Tooele, suggested tuu-weeta, which means black bear.^o Robert Steele, a western Shoshoni, and at the time of contact a member of the Ibapah Gosiute Tribal Counck, agreed with Garcia, and added that a famky of that name were then living in Skull Valley, Utah.^^ May T. Parry of Clearfield, Utah, the daughter of Moroni Timbimboo, and the great granddaughter of Shoshoni Chief Sagawitch, agreed with Garcia and Steele that Tooele had likely been derived from tuu-weta (Shoshoni) or tu-wada (Gosiute). In addkion, when Parry asked her mother's opinion, she too was in agreement.^^ Finally, the author's son, a resident of Grantsville, Utah, asked his neighbor, Lawrence " L a r r y " Bear, a Gosiute Indian, about his family's surname and was told that up untk his father's time the family had gone by Tu-Wada, but since then the name had been anglicized to B e a r . 13

Based on the evidence uncovered and presented here, it appears that Tooele comes ultimately from the Shoshoni language of which the Gosiute tongue is a variant, and that Tooele County and Tooele City were named for the Bear family, some of whose members stik reside in Tooele County.

9 Wick R. Miller, Newe Natkwinappeh: Shoshoni Stories and Dictionary, University of Utah Anthropological Papers, No. 94 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1972), p. 5.

10Interview with Florence Garcia, Salt Lake City, 1963.

11 Interview with Robert Steele, Ibapah, Utah, 1963.

12Interview with May Timbimboo Parry, Clearfield, Utah, 1963.

13 Interview with Lawrence Bear, Grantsville, Utah, 1984.

Narrow entrance to the Lost Well made watering stock time-consuming for the Mormon Battalion. All photographs by Rock Smith.

The Lost Well of the Mormon Battalion Rediscovered

BY CARMEN SMITH

T H E L O S T W E L L MUST BE THE MOST PICTURESQUE ske on the entire two-thousand-mke Mormon Battalion trak!" I exclaimed whke reading the battalion diaries to my husband as we drove southward along the Rio Grande.

Mrs. Smith lives in Central, Arizona.

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Diarists described a cistern-like well, variously estimated at from twenty to one hundred feet deep and from thirteen to thirty feet in diameter, hidden on the north side of a deep, narrow ravine under a mass of overhanging rock one hundred twenty feet high where the battalion's leader Col. Phkip St. George Cooke, "sat for two hours untk all the mules and other animals were watered, cursing the men almost ak the time."^ Its discovery was critical to the execution of Cooke's orders. Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny, commander of the Army of the West, had ordered Cooke to California to assist him in the war with Mexico and en route to explore a wagon road south of the Gka River. Unfamkiar with the proposed route,^ Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, Paulino Weaver, and Antoine Leroux, the three most famous and best qualified guides sent by Kearny to Cooke, doubted that Cooke could successfully venture that route and had tried to persuade him to discard his wagons and fokow the known route taken by Kearny down the Gka River. But Cooke was obdurate. He would take the unknown route; he would lead more than three hundred men with an assortment of mules, oxen, and sheep some three hundred miles into a desert country and gamble their lives on the precarious chance of finding water.

For several days ak available guides, in a search typical of ensuing wide-ranging efforts to find water, had scouted westward. Meanwhile, the battalion remained on a riverbank some three hundred miles south of Santa Fe awaiting directions to their first campsite off the Rio Grande. Stephen C. Foster, interpreter for the officers of the Mormon Battalion, volunteered his services and on November 13, 1846, found a well-hidden waterhole fifteen mkes distant. The initial route determined, Cooke promptly ordered a march, and the battalion ascended a gravelly slope toward a high mountain to the west and to the waterhole that would be caked the Lost Wek. My husband, Omer Smith, and I had been fokowing the route of the Mormon Battalion from Fort Leavenworth westward, wanting to share as much as possible the experience of Omer's grandfather. Lot Smith, who at sixteen years of age was popularly credited with being 1 " A History of David Pettegrew," p. 83, photocopy of holograph, Utah State Historical Society Library, Salt Lake City. See also "Extracts from the Journal of Henry W. Bigler," Utah Historical Quarterly 5 (1932): 43.

2 " C o o k e " Journal of the March of the Mormon Battalion, 1846-1847," in Ralph P. Bieber, ed..

Exploring Southwestern Trails, 1846-1854 (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1938), p. 95. See also " G u y M. Keysor's Battalion Journal, 1846," unnumbered, but p. 15, photocopy of holograph, Utah State Historical Society Library.

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the youngest member of the Mormon Battalion. Our guides were the battalion diaries and the invaluable Mormon Battalion Trail Guide prepared by Charles S. Peterson and staff under the auspices of the Utah State Historical Society. Our purpose was to create a biography of Lot Smith, combining our research with the many stories cokected by Omer's father, who, as the posthumous youngest son of the Utah War hero of 1857, had yearned for knowledge of and acquaintance with the father he never saw.

We, too, had come down the Rio Grande. In the vicinity where the diaries recorded a turn westward from the river, we hoped to find the Lost Well campsite. Its location was not determined, only conjectured by the Trail Guide. Using the mkeage traveled and the descriptions of terrain from the diaries, it indicated the vicinity of Hatch, New Mexico, as the probable point of departure, specified Nutt Mountain as the high mountain, and recommended its east side as the site of the Lost Wek. We looked at Nutt Mountain. Despite its being the only high mountain in the vicinity, the evidence of the estimated mkeage in the diaries pointing to Nutt Mountain, and our high regard for the expert judgment in the Trail Guide, we could not envision the east side of Nutt Mountain as a possibkity. It appeared to us to have too much the same character as the smooth south side to sustain the rugged canyon description of the Lost Well.

Still, if we rejected Nutt Mountain, where else could we look for the Lost Well? Knowing we were within a few miles of the site increased our compulsion to find it; at the same time we could see no locale that quite met the requirements. Frustrated because we could think of nothing else to do, we returned home to Central, Arizona.

Who can explain the magic that compels one to search for that elusive, hidden treasure known to exist but defying discovery? During the ensuing months Omer and I came under the spell of that magic, and the Lost Well began to exert a charm quite apart from a biography of Lot Smith. We knew the site lay within a limited range in southern New Mexico only one day's march from the Rio Grande, but not untk the following fall could we indulge our obsession to search again. Omer invited his cousin Mike Steed and his wife. Fern, of Albuquerque to share the pleasure of the search. In preparation, we sent them topographical maps and copies of the Mormon Battalion diaries.

Omer and I reasoned that the logical first step would be to find the precise point where the Mormon Battalion left the Rio Grande to turn

2^Q

Utah Historical Quarterly

westward. Neither the Trail Guide nor the diaries enabled us to determine with any accuracy where the battalion left the Rio Grande. Then Omer thought of Cooke's journal which we had recently acquired.

Although Cooke's November 13 entry gave the direction after leaving the river, k, too, was inconclusive on the exact point of departure. We were facing defeat.

Idly, Omer read the entry for the next day and realized suddenly that Cooke gave the compass reading and careful directions from the Lost Wek to the next day's Whke Ox Camp, a known ske. By tracing the route backward from Whke Ox Camp, Omer could locate Lost Wek Camp. He calculated mkeage and directions, took a back azimuth from Cooke's compass reading, and estimated the distance traveled in the two days from the Rio Grande; then he put a red dot on the topographical map some six mkes north of Nutt Mountain. He could hardly wak untk morning to telephone the Sierra County assessor for the name of the landowner to ask permission to explore his ranch. We also telephoned the Steeds in Albuquerque, and on a fine day in December we were off with our son Rock who would take photographs.

We rendezvoused near Nutt Mountain and drove northward on State Highway 27 between Nutt Mountain on the east and Cooke's Peak on the west over a grass-covered plain. In the half distance antelope raised their heads to stare, undecided between caution and curiosky, running both toward and away from us. In the far distance mirages cut and separated the pale blue mountain ranges ringing the horizon.

After traveling northward from Nutt Mountain for ten miles, we turned off the paved road onto Mike Hall's SS Ranch and drove eastward toward the ranch headquarters through more beautiful cattle range. Hak told us of a very rough canyon a few miles farther east.

Having seen only a level plain, we were encouraged. When he told us there was no water in the canyon our hopes shriveled fast, for cattlemen know their waterholes almost as well as they know their chkdren.

Nevertheless, we asked for directions, and he sat on his heel to trace a map on the ground.

In our pickup trucks we fokowed meandering tire tracks through more smooth, wide plain. Farther eastward the rude track kept to the crest of a chaparral-covered, flat-topped ridge, and, when the ridge ended, dropped down a steep incline into a shallow wash.

We could see no immediate evidence of a rough canyon. But when the wash we started walking down began to deepen, our excitement

Lost Well

281

Above: Aerial view of the Lost Well site. Arrow shows approximate location of the well. Broken line shows dim trail beginning close to the well and rising to the right to the top of the hill, then left along the edge of the cliff. Right: Omer Smith, the author's husband, stands on overhang where Colonel Cooke sat to expedite watering the mules. Lost Well is directly below in crevice in foreground.

Wagon campground was on level spot at left edge of photograph. The next march was toward Cooke's Peak, the dark mountain in the background.

U

'mp^^

.

V*.

Lost Well

283

began to heighten. We came to a series of solid rock portals in close succession, higher than our heads. In the sand beyond each portal we saw the paw and hoof prints of animals that had jumped over successively lower stone thresholds no wider than a doorway. We jumped in the same manner.

Those portals opened on a sight that set us all talking at once. We entered a small, round, sand-filled basin enclosed with perpendicular rock walls towering over our heads. Remembering the rancher's remark, we did not hope to find water, and wondered if we might not be standing in the Lost Well itself, except it was not on the north side.

We stepped out of that enclosure into another basin of similar size and shape, and wondered again. Could those diarists possibly have been mistaken in their directions?

While we debated, Mike ranged more widely through the rugged canyon and after less than half an hour, called to us to come. We emerged from the enclosure to confront another of those tall, narrow stone portals, its threshold a nearly perpendicular slide of almost eight feet, water-carved in dense volcanic rock. We negotiated the slide and found ourselves in a wild canyon walled with towering bluffs and filled with huge, heaped up masses of convoluted rock.

We worked our way over twisted rock toward Mike who was standing at the base of the north wak, dwarfed by the bluff rising behind him. At his side we could see a narrow opening through high rock walls. When we stood at the opening of that defke, we looked into an enclosure approximately thirteen feet wide, almost under a high cliff, containing a cistern-like hole full of waterâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the Lost Well of the Mormon Battalion.

After we recovered from stunned surprise, we eagerly sought the pleasure of further discovery. Directly above was the outcropping where Colonel Cooke had sat and cursed the men. His perch had given him an eagle's eye view of the canyon while his sharp commands resounded in these bold humps and hokows and then echoed down this steep-walled canyon. Under his stern eye each man had brought a mule up to the threshold of this secluded wek, let it drink from water hand-dipped from the wek and poured into the depression below it,^ and then backed the animal out far enough to turn around to lead him back up the hikside and along the narrow trak skirting the cliffs edge.

Cooke's cursing became understandable. The tricky trail and the restricted access at the well presented real problems. He had to keep the 3 "Keysor's Battalion J o u r n a l , " p. 16.

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line of men and animals moving, threading the narrow, rough trail; at the same time he had to prevent bunching that would clog the trak.

Furthermore, he was in a race with approaching darkness. Already, the canyon was cast in deep shade by the low winter sun, and to dare this rough route in the dark would be to risk scrapes and bruises if not broken bones.

Having seen the wek, Omer was eager to find the wagon campground. We climbed out of the canyon on the north side and fokowed a dim trak. We skirted the edge of the cliff, looking down into the canyon for the source of strange bird caks, and saw the unfamkiar topside of birds in flight. As we reached the summit, we saw to the west the siltfiked level spot where the wagons had stopped.

We looked back at the course the teams of 1846 had traversed.

The little mules had had to struggle to get the wagons out of the canyon and up over this rocky summit; they would have been panting from the exertion when the teamsters stopped the wagons, unhitched the tugs, pulled off the warm leather harness, and unbuckled the cokars, sweat stained after the fifteen-mke upslope puk. They must have snorted gratefully to be relieved of the harness.

The crisp autumn air would have been redolent of their steaming sweat as they shook themselves and nosed the ground for a place to rok in the soft silt. I caught myself looking around for some evidence of their having been there.

The imagined sounds, smeks, and sights stik held me, but Omer wanted to find the campsite of the soldiers in the streambed. We reentered the canyon and wandered a short distance downstream from the wek, stepping over the two-holed gossip rock of some unknown Indian group harbored at one time in this wild canyon. We came to a heap of sand, apparently dug out from under a rocky outcropping by wild animals craving the disappearing water. Could this be the spot where the battalion boys knelt in the sand over a hundred years ago to fik their canteens and camp kettles for the evening meal?

The side hiks above us where the battalion had scrounged for anything combustible were barren of even smak bushes; we wondered that they had found wood enough to bok their soup.

In their campground, here in this small canyon, those tired and cold soldiers had gone about their evening chores in the frosty November night air, their calls and conversations floating through a pak of pungent wood smoke from little campfires scattered about in the canyon.

Left: Author sitting on side wall of enclosure. Cooke's perch was directly above right edge of photograph. Right: Closeup of narrow entrance to the well.

At one of those campfires Lot Smith, a lanky youth with redblonde hair and freckles — the young man who would become Omer's grandfather—had gathered with his hungry messmates around an iron kettle filled with boiling water thickened with a bit of flour and a meager amount of inferior beef.

For Lot Smith's grandsons the time to start homeward was approaching. Leaving the soldiers' campsite, we walked upstream for one last look at the Lost Well. We felt reluctant to leave that unbelievable water-filled grotto tucked between folds of rock drapery in a strange canyon. In this small canyon, first suddenly by volcano and then leisurely by water, nature had molded and then carved an awesome site.

When we arrived back at the ranch house, knowing that cattlemen keep account of the rainfall as carefully as money in the bank, we asked when the last rain had fallen. September 24 was the reply. That meant that during almost three dry months, September 24 to December 19, the Lost Well had maintained an abundant supply of water.

So well hidden was the waterhole that Hall had had no idea of its existence until we told him of it.* •*We later learned that Hall had been at the ranch less than two years.

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And we understood why, after Stephen C. Foster found the cistern that day in November 1846, the Mormons with conscious poetry and unknowing prophecy named the romantic site the Lost Wek. Although numerous Mormon Battalion diaries reported its existence, Foster's waterhole was to be the Lost Wek for more than one hundred years, again known only to the wkd animals marking the trails that long ago had given Foster's trained eye the clue to its existence.

AFTERWORD

After we found the Lost Wek, finding the point of departure from the Rio Grande was much easier and was further confirmed by finding the landmark butte exactly two miles upstream as described by one of the battalion diarists. Wikiam Coray states in his journal that the battalion "marched due west to a high mountain." Nutt Mountain comes nearer to qualifying as a high mountain than any other geographical feature in the vicinity of the turnoff. Yet perhaps because most of the battalion were unfamkiar with mountains of any size, they called a distant, elevated ridge topped by a long line of mesas a "high mountain." When they later encountered what westerners would term mountains, some of the diarists expressed the uncomfortable feeling that the high mountains might topple over on them.

Regarding the point of departure from the Rio Grande, a further, later search revealed that Cooke in his report to Kearny, February 5, 1847, wrote that he had turned short to the right, leaving the Rio Grande at a point called San Diego. Yet a map accompanying Cooke's published journal places the town of San Diego on the Rio Grande east of Hatch, New Mexico. The editor of Cooke's journal states in a footnote that "the battalion left the Rio Grande about fifteen miles northwest of the present town of Rincon, Dona Ana County, New Mexico." Rincon, meaning corner or turn, logically should indicate the river's turn eastward in the vicinity of Hatch, New Mexico. If Rincon were located at the turn of the river, the editor's statement would be correct. But the town is placed on later maps east of Hatch on the approximate site of San Diego as shown on the older map accompanying Cooke's journal. The question arises whether a mapmaker's error misplaced both Rincon and San Diego east of present Hatch. On the basis of information in Cooke's report and journal San Diego might be more properly located about fifteen mkes upstream from Hatch at or near the present settlement of Derry, and Rincon at the bend of the river.

The Great Unhiown: The Journals of the Historic First Expedition down the Colorado River.

By J O H N COOLEY. ([Flagstaff, Ariz.]: Northland Publishing, 1988. xii -H 207 pp. $21.95.)

In 1947 and 1949 the Utah State Historical Society did students of the history of the Colorado River a great service by collecting, editing, and publishing all of the journals kept by members of John Wesley Powell's two expeditions down the river in 1869 and 1871-72. These days, however, these two fine volumes are hard to find outside of libraries, and if you can find them in a bookstore, you can expect to pay a hefty price. John Cooley, a professor of English and director of environmental studies at Western Michigan University, has now done the same favor for a new generation of students fascinated by this epic voyage. In The Great Unknown he has once again brought together the voices of those hardy men from the 1869 expedition.

Cooley gathered all the accounts and then culled and edited the journals and letters written by the crewmen to make a day-by-day account. He has added an introduction that includes brief biographical statements about each of the crewmen. The main body of the text is organized much the same way Powell organized his 1875 report to Congress, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West by geographical sections of the river. At the start of each section Cooley provides a brief introduction describing the events to come in those particular passages. Then the accounts are arranged chronologically and al-

phabetically; the j o u r n a l s appear before the later accounts. An index and a selected bibliography are found at the end of the book. Finally, the work is topped off by some of the same engraved illustrations used in the original versions published by Powell in Scribners and his 1875 report. This was no easy editorial task, as Cooley admits in " A Note on the T e x t . " Some of the accounts were written on the spot; some up to thirty years later. To help clarify the inevitable discrepancies, Cooley has added footnotes throughout the text. His arrangement and obvious editorial skills have contributed to a very readable and handy volume with all of the versions of this controversial voyage in one place in one book.

For all this, however, I have to admit that I have some doubts about this book. It seems to be an example of a little bit of research. There are quite a few errors of fact, such as the mention of the "long stern sweeps" on Powell's boats â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the stern sweeps were a feature of the 1871 craft, not the 1869 boats. And Cooley's assertion in the introduction that the first two months of Jack Sumner's journal were lost with the Rowlands and Bill Dunn in A u g u s t 1869 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; S u m n e r ' s j o u r n a l down to the Uinta River was later rediscovered and published in the Powell Centennial issue of Utah Histori-

288 cat Quarterly. Cooley corrects this later in the text but obviously didn't go back and find the initial error. And finally, there is his statement that Separation was the last major rapid in Grand Canyon. Separation (now under Lake Mead) was a big rapid, but it turned out to be a lot easier to run than it looked. Not so with Lava Cliff, in actuality the last major rapid in the Grand Canyon. The men who stayed on the river had to run it before they reached the Grand Wash Cliffs. It is not mentioned, even though it had a prominent place in some of the journals.

These are nit-picky errors; but scholars of the Colorado River, and es-

Utah Historical Quarterly pecially of river-running history, are a nit-picky lot, perhaps because there are so few of them and they feel so passionately about their chosen subject. I'll wager I won't be the last person to point these out to Cooley. All in all, such minor lapses do not in any way detract from the main body of the book â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the journals and accounts themselves. Cooley's fine, insightful editing and collating of these diverse accounts have proven once again that the Powell Expedition in 1869 was the stuff of real drama.

R O Y WEBB

University of Utah

Trials of Discipleship: The Story of William Clayton, a Mormon. By JAMES B . ALLEN. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987. xii + 383 pp. $22.95.)

Trials of Discipleship is a most appropriate title for this excellent biography of William Clayton. Rather than presenting a traditional life story that follows a strict chronology, BYU history professor James Allen has chosen to highlight how William Clayton, as a disciple of Joseph Smith, met the challenges and trials of membership in the new Mormon religion. Clayton is presented as " a representative Latter-day Saint of the 'below-the-leadership' level," whose story is important for "what his life has to tell us about the early Latter-day Saint community as a whole" (p. x). As one reads the biography of Clayton it is difficult to consider his life typical because of his unique contributions and unusual experiences. Yet Allen argues convincingly that as a nineteenth-century disciple of Mormonism, Clayton was representative of those faithful believers who may not have agreed with every decision by their leaders but nevertheless avoided criticism and a show of disharmony at all costs. Clayton summed up his posi-

tion: ' T never oppose any measure started by the authorities, for in that neither I nor any member of the church can be justified. Opposition and division is the work of the enemy and I trust never to be found on that side in any degree" (p. 362). This willingness to put the church first characterized Clayton's life from his baptism in the River Ripple on October 20, 1837, at the age of twenty-three, until his death on December 4, 1879, at the age of sixty-five.

Clayton's forty-two years as a Mormon included missionary work in England before his departure for America in 1840; work as a clerk for Joseph Smith in Nauvoo; participation as one of the members of the original 1847 pioneer company; writing and publishing The Latter-day Saints Emigrants' Guide in 1848 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the best of all trail guides produced during the epic pioneering of the Far West; and the composition of M o r m o n d o m ' s most cherished anthem, "Come, Come, Ye Saints."

Book Reviews and Notices The trials of discipleship touch many aspects of Clayton's life and persist from his early manhood as one of Mormondom's first converts in England to his death as a respected pioneer. These trials included: leaving his young wife and child to serve a mission in Manchester; the love of a young lady not his wife; the crossing of the Atlantic and journey to Nauvoo; his unsuccessful attempts at farming; polygamy; health problems; alcohol; the lack of recognition by church authorities for his work; his lack of inclusion in the inner circles of the church (as was the case under Joseph Smith) once Brigham Young became leader of the Mormons; an unfortunate and short-lived mission back to his English homeland in 1852; family difficulties; interests and hobbies that seemed out of the mainstream of nineteenth-century Mormonism; and financial problems attributed mostly to his large family of nine wives and forty-two children.

As a polygamist Clayton appears as both victim and villain. Polygamy held the promise of allowing Clayton to marry a young lady, Sarah Crooks, of whom he had grown fond while a missionary in Manchester in 1840. Instructed by Joseph Smith to send for Sarah, Clayton found it a bitter experience when his Manchester friend rejected polygamy and left the church after her arrival in Nauvoo. But even before Sarah Crooks arrived, Clayton had taken a second wife, Margaret Moon, the youngest sister of his first wife, Ruth Moon. The second marriage was initially very difficult because Margaret was engaged to marry Aaron Farr who was away on a mission. Despite strong feelings for the absent Aaron, she consented to marry Clayton. Farr did not learn of the situation until he returned to Nauvoo to find Margaret unhappy with her decision, two months pregnant, but resolved to stay with Clayton. It might

289 be expected that bitter feelings would persist in the Farr family toward William Clayton, but in one of the ironies of Mormon polygamy, Clayton took as his fourth wife the sixteen-year-old Dianatha Farr less than two years after the confrontation with her brother Aaron over Margaret Moon.

Several chapters in the book read more like essays on aspects of Clayton's life than the usual biography. It appears that the source material encouraged the writer in this direction, and it was a fortunate choice. Instead of retelling Utah history through the life of his subject as many biographies of nineteenth-century Mormons tend to do, Allen uses the concluding chapters to explore Clayton's millennial expectations, how he reacted when they were not fulfilled, his interest in and experimentation with astrology and alchemy, and how Clayton made a living in Utah as a bookkeeper, investor, speculator, debt collector for the LDS church and as the first secretary of ZCMI. Allen acknowledges genuine respect for Clayton and a large measure of empathy for his problems. Yet in dealing with his subject, Allen usually attains the balance he seeks between those who would chronicle only the pleasing and noncontroversial and those who would overemphasize the sensational, bizarre, and negative. The result is the sketch of a devout Mormon, yet one whose shortcomings are easily recognizable. Although it was not in his nature to seek positions of authority in the Mormon church, Clayton longed for appropriate recognition from those leaders he faithfully served. Unequivocating in his belief in Christ, his life was touched by paranoia, melancholy, and alcoholism. A man with a strong sense of gratitude for the kindness shown him and a "huge capacity for love, affection, and concern" (p.

203), even these qualities were subor-

290 dinated when friends, like his fatherin-law Amasa Lyman, opposed church authorities. While James Allen's biography of William Clayton is not a comprehensive treatment of Clayton and his family, the author has crafted his study with the skill of a seasoned historian. His careful use of limited sources has produced a biography that cap-

Utah Historical Quarterly tures the shades of light and dark of this representative disciple and goes far to illuminate for readers the dichotomy of conformity and diversity found in nineteenth-century Mormons.

ALLAN KENT POWELL

Utah State Historical Society

Daughters of the Desert: Women Anthropologists and the Native American Southwest, 18801980; an Illustrated Catalogue. By BARBARA A. BABCOCK and NANCY J. PAREZO. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988. xii + 241 pp. Cloth, $39.95; paper, $19.95.)

Daughters of the Desert adds to the exuberant outpouring of literature on American women and their achievements. It focuses on forty-five females who worked in the North American Southwest (in the United States and Mexico), material originally assembled for a comprehensive exhibit. This illustrated catalogue, the introduction explains, forms only "part of an ongoing multi-faceted project which has also included a public conference, an oral history project and a prize-winning video tape, a scholarly conference and a book of essays. . . . " However, despite the putative wholeness of this wealth of projects, this book needs to be evaluated on its own merits as one of the more accessible components of the entire endeavor.

The greatest strength of the book lies in its illustrations, which help to recreate, in part, the absent exhibit. The authors are to be applauded for including not only textual material on the desert's daughters themselves but also photographs of the women in the field, their (often male) mentors, their students, some of their subjects of study, and selected artifacts from the original exhibition. A map included in the introduction clearly identifies all of the geographic areas and ethnic groups mentioned in the book.

The book's organization is a combination of thematic and chronological approaches. It is divided into three sections, entitled, " D i s c o v e r i n g the Southwest," "Understanding Cultural Diversity," and "Interpreting the Native American." This apparently tight organization breaks down upon closer examination. The first section is devoted to three recognized pioneers in southwestern anthropology.

The second section, covering eleven anthropologists, is subdivided by the cultures they studied: the Pueblo, Navajo, Papago, and Yaqui. The third section groups thirty-one women according to their academic disciplines: folklore, archaeology, poetry, and so on, although they, too, often studied the Indian groups mentioned above.

Within each subsection minibiographies of the women are arranged chronologically by birthdate; however, these essays usually begin with their first academic training. This shifting organizational structure destroys a sense of focus, but it does encourage the reader to browse and sample. As an exhibit, it must have been intriguing; as a reference work, its force is dissipated.

The authors have done what they could to make information on each of the women more accessible. The table

Book Reviews and Notices of contents includes an alphabetical listing of those featured in this study. A selected bibliography at the end of the book lists the women's published works.

Although the authors have had to make their selections from a much larger group, they do not share their criteria except to say that all those included began their careers before 1940.

Here the reader might look for the celebrated novelist and essayist Mary Austin and find her; one can search in vain for Sharlot Hall, Arizona's first historian and collector and curator of

291 Anasazi artifacts. Someone wishing to learn more about a particular female anthropologist of the Southwest â&#x20AC;&#x201D; or an artist or a photographer â&#x20AC;&#x201D; would simply have to consult the volume to see if she appears here.

Overall, Daughters of the Desert is more impressionistic than empirical. It offers a good starting point for the serious student; the uninitiated may be intrigued to learn more.

NANCY J . TANIGUCHI

College of Eastern Utah

The Northern Navajo Frontier, 1860-1900: Expansion through Adversity. By ROBERT S. MCPHERSON. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988. x + 133 pp. $22.50.)

Although much has been written about the Navajo Indians, more literature on America's largest group of native inhabitants continues to be produced. While it may seem that the subject has been explored beyond its resources, Robert S. McPherson proves that there are still some topics concerning this culture that are worth investigating. In The Northern Navajo Frontier, McPherson explores a region of the modern-day reservation that has heretofore been ignored, one reason being the fact that this was an area peripheral to the center of Navajo occupation.

Only when federal troops began to round the Navajos up for the forced march to the Bosque Redondo did this section begin to serve as a retreat for those who escaped. In addition, the Four Corners region was not central to Navajo activities and was, therefore, utilized by other Indians and Anglo settlers. Thus, many peoples were at work here, including Utes, Paiutes, Mormons and other settlers, cowboys, and miners.

Long Walk, with little or no authority to guide their future course, McPherson feels that they exerted much more control over their affairs, especially in this vacillating region. Unlike other Indian groups, the Navajos were able to increase the size of their reservation as their population expanded. Most of these additional areas were relatively uncontested, but the frontier region just south of the San J u a n River attracted a wide variety of speculators who sought to utilize its resources. For each of these groups the Navajos had a plan designed to enhance their own control. Intermarriage with Paiutes tended to negate their differences with the Utes who also had relatives within this tribe. While their relationship with the Mormons commenced on friendly terms, the Navajos sought to expel them when they attempted to control the area's resources. Other Anglos competed for water, land, minerals, and trade items only to find the Navajos more than capable of defending their claims.

While most writers have viewed the Navajos as a defeated people after the

Although this book opens up an area that is rather dynamic in terms of the

292 various interests involved, it also has some problems. Most significant is the size of the manuscript. It is less than one hundred pages long and part of it has already been published in the New Mexico Historical Review. Does this rather brief account justify another book on the Navajos? Actually, this reviewer feels that it does because the analysis is more than simply another book on an Indian tribe. This is a significant section of the Southwest because it is a caldron of cultural activity with no particular group in complete control. The ebb and flow of relationships between the various factions pro-

Utah Historical Quarterly vide fascinating reading. Perhaps a more detailed map could aid readers who are unfamiliar with the region.

Also, the author seems too concerned with justifying the role of the Mormons at times. Still, McPherson has made excellent use of the limited resources available, including interviews with Navajos and a look at their legends.

The result is a book that is informative and innovative. One only wishes that the author would have expanded it more into the twentieth century.

J I M VLASICH

Southern Utah State College

Denizens of the Desert: A Tale in Word and Picture of Life among the Navaho Indians. By ELIZABETH W . FORSTER and LAURA GILPIN. Edited and with an introduction by MARTHA A. SANDWEISS. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988. xiv + 140 pp. $24.95.)

What a wonderful book Denizens of the Desert is. The ease of the descriptions, the gentleness of the style, engage the reader immediately. Just when you thought it unlikely that a book on Native Americans, unmarked by ethnographic clumsiness would ever appear, here is salvation.

Elizabeth W. Forster and Laura Gilpin were two people whose contact with the Navaho emerged not by design but from a reluctant automobile.

In the fall of 1930, the car they were driving failed near Chinle, Arizona.

As Gilpin set off on foot to seek assistance, Forster remained with the car. Upon Gilpin's return with help, she found her colleague surrounded by a group of Navaho. That, although unknown to the women at the time, was the start of a beautiful relationship.

As a result of this encounter, Forster, a nurse, decided to remain on the reservation as a health professional. Gilpin, a skilled photographer, returned to her studio in Colorado Springs but came back regularly to

take pictures. The result of this fortuitous circumstance is a collection of letters and photos of unusual warmth and charm.

From the letters, one senses that for the Navaho nineteenth-century lifestyles lingered well into the twentieth century. Forster and Gilpin were genuinely touched by the openness of those they came in contact with. Like two argonauts on a journey of unknown parameters, the women were intrigued by cultural differences yet comforted by the familiar. The result is a heady concoction of thoughts and images portraying a people on the verge of great changes.

Perhaps what makes this work so engaging is the vividness of life as described by the authors. Their views were shaped during the Great Depression and forged in a time before extensive federal intervention in Native American affairs, a world war, and a proliferation of academic anthropological studies. The result is a book that is written in conversational tones rather

Book Reviews and Notices

293

than bumbling jargon and pedantic directives.

In 1935 Forster left the reservation to find other employment while Gilpin continued with her career in Colorado.

Their lives, however, continued to be entwined and along with that they felt a desire to publish a book on the Navaho that incorporated both their letters and photographs. Although ill health and the pressures of life would delay the reality of publishing until after their deaths in the 1970s, the notion of writing a book about their experiences was a force throughout their lives.

Old Utah Trails. By WILLIAM B .

Inc., 1988. 136 pp. $17.95.)

SMART.

Old Utah Trails represents the fifth publication in a series introduced by publisher Rick Reese as " a celebration of this vast landscape that stretches for 85,000 square miles across the state of Utah. The Series [portrays] in words and photographs the unique diversity of Utah's astounding landforms, colorful history, expansive natural areas, and vigorous people. . . . " The stunning photographs readers have come to expect in the Utah Geographic Series are abundant in this visually pleasing overview of the historic trails of early Utah explorers, mountain men, pioneers, and adventurers.

In his introduction, author William B. Smart describes a Salt Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau ad depicting Salt Lake as the "Center of the West." He also uses the examples provided by a recent Utah highway map and a 1948 highway map, both showing the radiating pattern of roads and highways that clearly establish Salt Lake as the center or crossroads of the West. When readers compare presentday maps with the map of the Old Utah Trails at the beginning of the

In a way, the book is as much about friendship as it is about the Navaho. It is a view of Native American life filtered through the emotion and experience of two women. Indeed, the thoughtful editing of Martha Sandweiss conveys both an appreciation of Navaho life that would surely have pleased Forster and Gilpin and a hint of the bonds of affection that linked the two women.

If the authors were around today, it would be a pleasure to meet them.

ALBIN J . COFONE

State University of New York, Selden

(Salt Lake City: Utah Geographic Series,

book, the relationship between historic travel and exploration patterns and today's road network will be evident. Although Old Utah Trails does not pretend to be a guide to Utah's historic trails, one of the real pleasures the book provides is the ability to see into the thoughts and journals of explorers and pioneers while viewing the very landscape they traversed.

Certainly, every Utah school child has some knowledge of the Mormon Trail, the Escalante Expedition, the Spanish Trail, Forty-niners, the Pony Express, and the Hole-in-the-Rock Expedition. Few of us, however, readily appreciate the profound influence these early explorers and pioneers had on shaping the present-day West.

Smart, the former editor and general manager of the Deseret News, has succeeded in combining his passion for exploring Utah's back country with a talent for describing Utah's early history. His first-hand observations of Utah's historic trail routes make his interpretation of the journals of early explorers and pioneers meaningful and exciting to the modern traveler-

294 explorer or the armchair Utah history buff.

As the author points out. Old Utah Trails is not intended to be the definitive scholarly work on the early expeditions and the pioneering trails in Utah.

It is, however, an excellent anthology providing highly readable, entertaining coverage of the major expeditions and missions that shaped the development of our state. Smart's knowledge of Utah's geography and landscape combine well with the excellent photography to make it possible for the reader to feel the joys and frustrations of the first pioneers to experience the awesome space and dramatic landscape of Utah. The wide-ranging descriptions of the land and the native population taken from the journals of Father Escalante, Jedediah Smith, and Mormon pioneers provide today's reader with the opportunity to understand the perceptions of the people that made Utah's history.

S m a r t ' s account of the tragic Donner-Reed Party, which descended Echo and Emigration canyons into the Salt Lake Valley in 1846, speculates about the cumulative errors that led to their ordeal of starvation and cannibalism in the Sierra. What if the Donners

Utah Historical Quarterly had not listened to Hastings's description of an easier route. . . . If snow had not come early to the Sierra Nevada that year? The what ifs of history are fascinating, and Smart seems to enjoy speculating. What if, he asks, the padres had returned to Utah Valley, as they promised the Indians they would, following the visit by Escalante in 1776? Smart asks us, "What if the Spaniards had colonized this valley and the other valleys Escalante was soon to see to the south? Would Utah's culture today be New Mexicostyle Spanish instead of Anglo-Saxon Mormon?"

William B. Smart has succeeded in providing the Utah Geographic Series with a versatile geographic history that is as much at home when used to supplement a travel guide as it is displayed on a coffee table. Next time you plan a trip across this state look up the Old Utah Trails description of the exploration of the area in which you intend to travel. You will see the landscape through the senses of the pioneering spirit we still celebrate.

DAVID CONINE

Hurricane, Utah

'Be Kind to the Poor": The Life Story of Robert Taylor Burton. By JANET BUR-

([Salt Lake City]: Robert Taylor Burton Family Organization, 1988. xiv -h 478 pp. $19.95.)

TON SEEGMILLER.

Burton is one of those secondechelon figures in Utah and Mormon history who in the last decade or so have gradually been receiving their historical due in anthologies, journal articles, and full-fledged biographies like this one. During his eighty-six years Burton led a remarkably varied life as a law enforcement official, legislator, businessman, militia leader, and church official. He was involved in the dramatic rescue of a pioneer handcart company and was, of course, a leading and controversial figure in the Morrisite War. This extremely handsome and well-written family biography provides an excellent model for others in the process of writing or publishing a family history or ancestral biography.

Copies may be purchased from Rulon T. Burton, 1935 E. Vine Street, Suite 340, Salt Lake City, U T 84121. Include $3.00 postage and handling.

Phoenix, the History of a Southwestern Metropolis. By BRADFORD LUCKING-

HAM. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989. xiv + 317 pp. $29.95.)

The first comprehensive history of America's ninth-largest city, Phoenix

looks at the forces that have shaped a metropolitan area destined to claim a population of more than three million by the end of the century. The book also examines what lies in the future for Phoenix and other Sun Belt cities where unchecked growth threatens to destroy the very quality of life that created them in the first place. This wideranging study encompasses the economic, political, social, and cultural history of the Phoenix area from the mid-1860s to the present. While charting the city's expansion, Luckingham also describes the challenges of such big-city issues as annexation, taxation, education, transportation, and discrimination against minority groups.

Among the Sioux of Dakota: Eighteen Months' Experience as an Indian Agent, 1869-70.

By D.

C.

POOLE.

(St.

Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1988. 287 pp. Paper, $8.95.)

First published in 1881, these memoirs depict the daily life of the agency as well as the problems Poole faced.

Despite his lack of insight into American Indian culture, he created a valuable record of Sioux customs and beliefs. A substantial and insightful introduction by Raymond J . DeMallie, director of the American Indian Studies Research Institute and professor of anthropology at the University of Indiana, places Poole's memoirs in their nineteenth-century context and explains the circumstances sur-

296 rounding the agent's work at the Whetstone Agency near Yankton in present South Dakota. This reprint makes an important and hard-to-find work on the Sioux readily available.

General George Crook: His Autobiography.

Edited by MARTIN F . SCHMITT. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986. xxiv + 326 p p .

Paper, $9.95.)

Crook spent his entire military career, with the exception of the Civil War years, on the frontier. Called the greatest Indian fighter and manager the army ever had. Crook also won the respect and trust of the Indians, in part at least because, as one Indian leader explained, he "never lied to u s . " A fierce antagonist. Crook nevertheless sympathized with the Indians' plight.

T h i s complex m a n â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the lowestranking West Point cadet ever to rise to the rank of major general â&#x20AC;&#x201D; penned the remarkable story of his life in a straightforward, readable, and accurate manner with plenty of detail

Utah Historical Quarterly and a strong western flavor. It makes a major contribution to mflitary history and to an understanding of the frontier period.

Daniel Boone, Master of the Wilderness. By J O H N BAKELESS. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. xx -i481 pp. Cloth, $35.00; paper, $12.95.)

StiU the definitive biography of Daniel Boone, Bakeless's work, first pubHshed in 1939, is also one of those rare works that combine exhaustive historical research with a vigorous and readable writing style. According to Michael A. Lofaro's introduction, " . . . before the [Davy] Crockett craze of the mid-1950s inspired by Walt Disney, Boone was far and away the country's twentieth-century choice as its favorite frontiersman. His stature was determined by his life rather than by the circumstances surrounding his death." Boone was, in fact, the prototype of the frontier hero whose spirit lives on in such contemporary fictional characters as Luke Sky walker.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY Department of Community and Economic Development Division of State History BOARD OF STATE HISTORY THOMAS G . ALEXANDER, Prove, 1990

v

Chairman LEONARDJ. ARRINGTON, Salt Lake City, 1989

Vice-Chairman MAX J. EVANS, Salt Lake City

Secretary DOUGLAS D . ALDER, St. George, 1989 PHILLIP A. BULLEN, Salt Lake City, 1990 ELLEN G . CALLISTER, Salt Lake City, 1989 J . ELDON DORMAN, Price, 1990 HUGH C . GARNER, Salt Lake City, 1989

DAN E . JONES, Salt Lake City, 1989 DEAN L . MAY, Salt Lake City, 1990 AMY ALLEN PRICE, Salt Lake City, 1989 SUNNY REDD, Monticello, 1990

ADMINISTRATION MAX J . EVANS, Director JAY M . HAYMOND, Librarian STANFORD J . LAYTON, Managing Editor WILSON G . MARTIN, Preservation Manager DAVID B . MADSEN, State Archaeologist PHILLIP F . NOTARIANNI, Museum Services Coordinator JAMES L . DYKMAN, Administrative Services Coordinator

The Utah State Historical Society was organized in 1897 by public-spirited Utahns to collect, preserve, and publish Utah and related history. Today, under state sponsorship, the Society fulfills its obligations by publishing the Utah Historical (Quarterly and other historical materiads: collecting historic Utah artifacts; locating, documenting, and preserving historic and prehistoric buildings and sites; and maintaining a specialized research library. Donations and gifts to the Society's programs, museum, or its library are encouraged, for only through such means can it live up to its responsibility of preserving the record of Utah's past.

This publication has been funded with the assistance of a matching grant-in-aid from the Department of the Interior, National Paric Service, under provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 as amended.

This program receives rmsmcial assistance for identification and preservation of historic properties under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The U.S. Department of the Interior prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, or handicap in its federally assisted programs. If you believe you have been discriminated against in any program, activity, or facility as described above, or if you desire further information, please write to: Office of Equal Opportunity, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C. 20240.