Tooele-What Is the Name's Origin

Tooele—What Is the Name's Origin?

BY GEORGE TRIPP

ON JULY 27, 1847, JUST THREE DAYS AFTER THE ARRIVAL of the main body of Mormon pioneers into the valley of the Great Salt Lake, Brigham Young and sixteen other men crossed the Jordan River and followed the California immigrant trail 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 'Tuilla 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.

The "Englishman" stories fall 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 willows). Physically the valley supports neither of the above tales. The valley floor is so level that a Tooele farmer could spot stray livestock as far away as Grantsville, and water is too scarce to support many willows anywhere except along the banks of the valley's few small perennial streams.

Scarcely more creditable 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 Apostle Orson Pratt has been credited 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 visit Austria until twenty years after Tooele was settled and named.

There is considerable evidence that Tooele is of Indian derivation. In this book 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 similarity between the two words, Tooelians, and Tooele, seems more than a coincidence. Although 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. Bonneville 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.

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 tell some Californians on the stage that an Indian chief named Tuilla (or Tooele) had lived in the valley before it was settled and, although he was not living when the pioneers came, they named the valley 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 Valley 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 possibility 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 Pocatello, a leading Shoshoni chieftain for whom the city of Pocatello, 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 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.

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. 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 family 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 addition, 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 "Larry" Bear, a Gosiute Indian, about his family's surname and was told that up until his father's time the family had gone by Tu-Wada, but since then the name had been anglicized to Bear.

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 still reside in Tooele County.

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