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The Wasters and Destroyers: Community-sponsored Predator Control in Early Utah Territory
Nauvoo Legion encampment, undated. Some members of this citizen army participated in the winter 1848-49 predator hunt, although the legion had not been reorganized in Utah at that time. USHS collections.
The Wasters and Destroyers: Community-sponsored Predator Control in Early Utah Territory
BY VICTOR SORENSEN
THIS EXCERPT FROM JOHN D. LEE'S JOURNAL records the first shots fired in one of the major battles of man's war on predatory animals in Utah Territory The following study of two community-sponsored predator hunts that took place during the early settlement of Utah—one in the Salt Lake Valley and another in Cache Valley—will provide a narrative of the hunts, explain why they took place, and explore why they were carried out in a particular fashion. In almost any historical event, multiple factors contribute to create and give meaning to what has happened In the case of these hunts, factors ranging from survival to hatred of predatory animals must be considered.
As the Mormon pioneers prepared for their second winter in the Salt Lake Valley, church leaders took steps to secure the community's livestock and foodstuffs against the uncertainties of frontier life in their new community. Early in December 1848, due to problems with wolves, foxes, ravens, and other animals, "it was considered advisable for rival companies to be organized to destroy the same."2 Entrusted to carry out this plan was the Council of Fifty. This body, made up of prominent leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was organized by Joseph Smith in 1844 to act as the political or civil arm of the kingdom of God. In conjunction with the leaders of the Salt Lake Stake, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and the First Presidency of the church, the Council of Fifty played a critical role in the pre-territorial government of Utah.
John D. Lee, a member of the council, recorded in his journal the proceedings of that group as it debated the issue of predator control:
To remedy the problem, Brigham Young appointed John D Lee and John Pack to be captains of two competing teams consisting of one hundred men each to make war on the predators. Thomas Bullock was designated as clerk to keep the whole affair in order.
On Christmas Eve 1848 Bullock and Pack went to John D Lee's home to make the proper arrangements for the hunt. They drafted the "Articles of Agreement for Extermination of Birds & Beasts" as well as a list of hunters who were to participate.4 In this document the rules and rewards of the hunt were defined:
The list of hunters is an interesting document in itself. Those familiar with Utah or LDS church history will recognize many of the names. Brigham Young, Willard Richards, and Heber C. Kimball constituted the First Presidency. Members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, leaders of the Salt Lake Stake, and other important men in the community are also well represented Significantly, thirty-five of the participants were members of the Council of Fifty, as were the clerk, both judges, and both team captains, leaving no doubt that this was a Council of Fifty affair.6
On Christmas Day 1848 the shooting began. News of the hunt must have spread by word of mouth because the "Articles of Agreement" and the list of hunters were not made public until that evening when John Pack took them down to the old fort to post them, along with a "Notice to hunters to have a Field Day on Monday next."7
Little detailed information exists to tell us how the hunt proceeded. John D. Lee, team captain, who kept an active journal during this time, makes no mention of any hunting activity personally. The only record forthcoming of personal participation comes from a man who is not found on the list of hunters. Thomas Bullock's journal entry for December 26 reads: "The brethren busy shooting the Crows ... in afternoon T.B. [Thomas Bullock] & R.C. [Reynolds Cahoon] go out on shooting foray, the Crows very wild secured 5 wings. ..." With Bullock and Cahoon serving as clerk and judge of the competition respectively, it seems odd that they would also be shooting Perhaps the early days of the hunt were something of a free-for-all. Writing from Salt Lake City on January 1, 1849,John L. Smith noted that "There is a general raid by the settlers on bears, wolves, foxes, crows, hawks, eagles, magpies and all ravenous birds and beasts."8 The fact that Bullock made at least a third "Agreement and list of Shooters" on December 27 shows that the hunt was still being defined.
Table 1 * See end of article
In reality the teams were never composed of 100 men each. The lists vary between 186 and 209 names, but only 84 men ever turned in hides and wings to be counted Most of the men on the lists would not have found time to participate, especially those with pressing duties in their ecclesiastic, civic, and personal lives. After all, the individuals did not volunteer; rather, their names were chosen by the organizers.
Many of the notables on the lists were probably there purely out of respect and the prestige of having them associated with one's team. Others may have felt like Hosea Stout who, upon learning that he was chosen to participate, "declined to accept the office not feeling very war-like at this time."9
Despite a lack of information about the details of the hunt, the final figures grimly attest that it was carried out with success. During the month of January one alteration in the rules did occur, according to Lee's journal:
March 1, the day appointed for counting the game, was clear and mild by all accounts. Thomas Bullock kept a record and a tally of the day's proceedings:
Table 3* See end of article
Lee protested that roughly two thirds of his men were not accounted for, "not having notice in time; but the greater part of Capt. John Pack's game was brought in on that day." Not ready to give in, Lee probably petitioned the Council to make the final day of counting March 5, for on March 3 the council voted that "those persons who had not already reported the amount of game they had killed in the late hunt, have the privilege of counting the same on the following Monday at the Council house."12
Things seemed to be getting a little out of hand at this point. Lee recorded that on the morning of March 5,
Bullock recorded it a little differently:
The "list" probably refers to the figures found in the Journal History, which gives a final inventory of the hunt's success as follows:
The hunt may have achieved its objective of destroying many animals the pioneers considered threatening to their welfare, but the agreed-upon festivities and vote of thanks never came to pass.John D. Lee noted:
Lee, regardless of his denial, does insinuate that Pack lost despite cheating by enlisting the help of Indians. In all fairness, Lee is suspect as well It was, in all likelihood, Lee who favored moving the day of counting from February 1 to March 1 and later from March 1 to March 5.17 Both moves were to his advantage And Tom Williams, who almost single-handedly put Lee's team on top, was a man who has been credited by one historian as being able to "steal anything from a hen on her roost to a steamboat engine."18 However, no insinuations. Actually, cheating and dishonesty have a long tradition in the predator control business. Early bounty laws had to be carefully constructed to prevent fraud by those who would try to collect on the same wolf more than once. 19
Regardless of who cheated whom, the promised dinner never took place due to the squabbling of the captains And the public vote of thanks was not forthcoming because of the "unsavory reputation" that Tom Williams had built for himself over the years. 20 With that, this particular episode in the "war of extermination" came to a close.
As the Mormon settlers continued to spread throughout the Intermountain West they often faced the same hardships that beleaguered the original pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley. During the late 1850s and early 1860s the first settlers moved into the Cache Valley some ninety miles north of Salt Lake City. Not long after their arrival problems with the fur-bearing residents of the valley resulted in another campaign to rid the area of predators Information about this Cache Valley hunt is very sketchy and is taken entirely from reminiscences recorded decades after the fact Even the year it occurred is subject to debate But enough information exists to allow for a comparison with the Salt Lake hunt
One source says the hunt took place "about 1868,"butthat seems quite late considering the valley had been settled for almost ten years by then.21 Thomas Irvine, a participant in the hunt, while not mentioning any date, places "the big wolf hunt" between 1860 and 1863 in his recollections of early events in the valley.
As in Salt Lake, the hunt in Cache Valley was competitive Two groups were organized by dividing the valley into North and South teams with Logan, the principal town, also being divided. A certain point value was attached to the targeted species as well. When the hunt ended there was to be a dinner and dance held at the expense of the losing team.22
Some confusion exists as to who led the teams Joel Ricks, Jr., lists Thomas E. Ricks as captain for the North and Moses Thatcher as captain for the South. Another source lists Thomas E. Ricks as captain of the South and Sylvanus Collett as captain for the North.23 The latter arrangement seems most likely for reasons that will be explained later The mention of Moses Thatcher suggests that he was involved in some way and gives more weight to an earlier date than 1868 for the event since Thatcher was serving a mission for the LDS church in England that year.
The hunt took place during the winter when wolves and coyotes could be more easily pursued in deep snow:
From the accounts, wolves and coyotes appear to have been the principal targets of the hunt, but crows and foxes are also mentioned, and it is quite probable that all predatory birds and animals were included. This hunt seems to have incorporated more team effort in driving the targeted animals into a concentrated area—a style known as a ring hunt—whereas the Salt Lake hunt was more of an individual effort, unless the "field day" called for by Thomas Bullock on January 1, 1849, was also a day for a collective effort to concentrate the targeted species.
Although there are a few differences, both hunts were carried out in a similar fashion. The Cache Valley hunt was likely modeled after the Salt Lake hunt. This was due, in large part, to the fact that Thomas E Ricks and his father, Joel Ricks, Sr., participated in the Salt Lake hunt, their names appearing on at least one of the two lists of hunters. The Salt Lake hunt was not a novel idea either. Community efforts to eradicate wolves and other predators have occurred since colonial times on this continent and had even deeper roots in Europe. Most of the participants in both of the Utah hunts had spent much of their lives on the American frontier where the side hunt, a type of competitive event in which points are earned for bagging certain species, was a popular pastime.25 The only thing that distinguished the Salt Lake and Cache Valley events from their larger American context was the level of organization. Collective organization, such as having captains of one hundred, characterized almost all Mormon endeavors, be it overland migration, constructing canals, or eradicating "noxious vermin."
These hunts occurred for a variety of reasons. Although some factors weigh more heavily than others, no single one can fully explain these events It was not merely a hatred of predatory animals, neither was it purely a means of survival. Only by evaluating a combination of beliefs and circumstances can we come to understand the hunts.
The Salt Lake hunt of 1848-49 was not the first time the settlers had waged war on the predators of the valley. During their first year in the valley Lorenzo Young reported, "I spread some strychnine about, and in the morning found fourteen white wolves dead."26 James Smithies, another resident of the valley in 1847-48, noted in his diary for February 22, 1848:
Mormon settlers were constantly on guard against predators, but the formal organization and timing of the hunt in 1848-49 may be attributed to the harshness of that notorious winter. The hunt differed from previous attempts at predator control in its scope and intensity. The shortage of food and relative destitution of most residents in the valley allow for a utilitarian analysis of this hunt, because many of the animals killed were also put to some sort of use. Priddy Meeks mentions some of the things that provided sustenance during these hard times:
Other extant accounts attest to the consumption of this unusual, but welcome, table fare.29 It seems that in the winter of 1848-49 one way to "keep the wolf from the door" was to kill and eat it.
The settlers extracted other resources from the hunts, including crow quills for writing and hides, for which a variety of uses could be found. Brigham Young suggested gathering some of the fox skins to make a sleigh robe for Col. Thomas Kane, who befriended the Mormons in more than one time of need And in a cash short economy, the Salt Lake Stake High Council's decision to allow wolf and fox skins to be turned in for a tithing credit of one dollar each made such hides legal tender for a time.30
Wolves and other predators were also direct competitors with the settlers for game animals. As early as the second and third years, big game was becoming scarce around Salt Lake Valley Hunters often had to travel many miles from the valley to find elk, deer, and antelope. Certainly the pioneers felt that killing off the competition would result in an increase in wild game It may have done just that had not the constant flow of new settlers and California-bound travelers and the continued subsistence needs of the local Native Americans placed such a strain on big game populations.31
Another avenue for analysis that cannot be overlooked is the military aspect of these hunts The use of words such as raid, campaign, war, and captain in relation to these hunts may seem merely descriptive, but evidence suggests that it goes deeper than that. Hunting has frequently served as military training Hunting societies are often warrior societies. Skills obtained through hunting have direct applications to the martial arts, be it in horsemanship or the handling of weapons. 32 The hunts in early Utah may have served the same purpose
Every adult male capable of bearing arms was required to be a member of the militia in Utah Territory. This being the case, everyone who participated in the hunts was also a militiaman. The Nauvoo Legion, as the Utah Territorial Militia was called, had not been officially reorganized in Utah when the Salt Lake hunt began. Had there been an official military organization the hunt may have been conducted by it instead of the Council of Fifty As it was, the hunt may have served as a selection process for the militia that was organized just weeks later. Most of the high-level officers were men whose names are also found on the list of hunters.33 More interesting and informative is the fate of the hunt captains, John Pack and John D. Lee. Commenting on the organization of the militia, Hosea Stout recorded the following in his journal:
It is clear that Pack and Lee were not considered fit for high-level military service due to the way in which the hunt concluded.35
In late February, before the hunt came to a close, the first bloody engagement between the Mormons and the Tumpanuwac Ute Indians occurred in Utah Valley. A company of men were dispatched from Salt Lake to pursue a band of Utes who had killed some cattle belonging to the settlers Five out of the seven men who were officers in this paramilitary organization are found on the list of hunters, including the commander John Scott.36
The direct link between the militia and these hunts is even more obvious in Cache Valley. There is reason to believe that this hunt was carried out by the cavalry regiment of the Cache Militia or the Minutemen, a mounted group of men that served as the front-line component of the valley's defense prior to the official organization of the Cache Military District in 1865. As noted earlier, the men were on horseback in this hunt More important, the only five names mentioned in connection with this event are also found on the militia muster rolls as members of the cavalry regiment Thomas E Ricks and Sylvanus Collett, two suggested team captains, were colonel and lieutenant colonel of that regiment, respectively, its highest-ranking officers.37
It is not implausible that the militia was used for such purposes. The militia had been called out to watch livestock and build enclosures for them in addition to their principal duty of defensive (and offensive) moves against the Indians. Grizzly bears, numerous during the early days in Cache Valley, also had skirmishes with the militia, albeit by accident more than anything else Thomas Irvine recorded that two grizzlies interrupted a militia drill near Logan. Someone had chased the bears onto the drill grounds and "bullets were soon flying in every direction." No casualties were reported on either side.38 At a muster on the Logan River in September 1869, militiamen sighted five grizzlies near the camp. The official record reported: "On the Morning of the 22n Lt. Col. Collett with about 22 men well armed and mounted, went out at daylight to fight them. . . ,"39 Although this might seem coincidental, all such evidence together suggests that predator control could and often did serve the purpose of military training
If hunting served as military training and as a means of survival, it also provided recreation and a chance to get together, both for the hunters and their wives at the planned post-hunt celebrations. The competitive nature of these hunts and the spoils of victory may be viewed purely as incentives, but frontier Americans would rate a chance for socializing very high on their list of priorities. Why else would Lee and Pack have been censured by the public for not carrying through with the dinner and dance even though their hunt had been a tremendous success in controlling predators?
Foremost in the Mormon pioneers' minds as a reason for having these hunts was the real loss they suffered in livestock and other foodstuffs. John D. Lee pointed out that thousands of dollars worth of grain and livestock had already been lost before the hunt and that many thousands of dollars in cattle were saved by having it Speaking of Cache Valley, Joel Ricks, Jr., said that 'wolves and coyotes were so thick in these first years, that sheep had to be watched and guarded constantly, and young calves were often killed." Indeed, pioneer journals attest to the fact that crickets were not the only animals eating precious food that the pioneers considered to be exclusively their own. 40 This was unavoidable The pioneers hunted out the majority of wild game in the region and then replaced it with domesticated animals that were often easier for predators to catch and kill. It is doubtful that settlers lost as much stock to predators as they did to bad weather, lack of proper feed, and Indian depredations, but to people who had brought their domesticated animals so great a distance and who had no ready means to replace them for some time, any loss was worth preventing. Besides, there was nothing they could do about the weather outside of prayer; and while they dealt firmly with Indians who stole or killed cattle, wholesale slaughter was rarely considered a viable option. Predatory animals, on the other hand, were prime candidates for a "war of extermination."
A final reason for these hunts may have been based on cultural perceptions. To the Mormon pioneers of the mid-nineteenth century, their new home—where the Rockies met the Great Basin—was a wilderness They did not have the luxury of appreciating wilderness and its biological diversity the way we do. They came to make a home, and wildness did not fit into their scheme of things—not wild land nor "wild" men nor wild things They had come to "make the desert blossom as a rose," and a "howling wilderness" stood in theway.41 Howling indeed. Thomas Bullock, just one month prior to the hunt, recorded:
This howling, a constant reminder of the wilderness they had been forced to take refuge in, was also a factor in precipitating the great predator hunts. The two reasons given by Bullock for initiating the Salt Lake hunt were depredations on livestock and foodstuffs and because "the citizens in Great Salt Lake City suffered so much annoyance from the wolves howling at night."43
The language used to describe predators and their behavior betrays the pioneers' deep hatred of them. From their perspective predators had no value; they were simply "wasters and destroyers." Wolves did not kill and eat livestock; they "destroyed" it. They made the night "hideous" with their howling, and the man who killed the most of these "ravenous birds and beasts" was deserving of a public vote of thanks. The Mormon pioneers were not alone in this sentiment. It was shared by all frontier Americans, probably by all people of all times who made a living from agriculture and stockraising.44
In the end, real and perceived threats that predators posed to the welfare and progress of young frontier settlements were the driving force behind these hunts. Recreation, military training, and utilitarian aspects were also contributing factors, although they affected the timing and the style of the hunts more than anything else
The impact of the hunts on predator populations was local at best. They came nowhere near their aim of extermination. Just one year after the Salt Lake hunt, officials thought it necessary to impose a bounty on predators in the area. 45 Nevertheless, the environmental changes that occurred in early Utah Territory as a result of decreasing natural predator populations is a subject deserving of continued investigation.
The Salt Lake and Cache Valley hunts were only the most intensive and organized campaigns in a war of attrition carried on for decades to come in Utah and elsewhere in the West. It is probable that similar hunts occurred in other regions of Mormon settlement, and it is certain that random predator control on a more individual basis was common.
There are those today who would consider the pioneers to be the real "wasters and destroyers." But as one writer of man's relationship with wolves has pointed out, "we forget how little, really, separates us from the times and circumstances in which we, too, would have killed wolves."46
NOTES
Mr. Sorensen lives in Hyde Park, Utah.
1 Robert Glass Cleland and fuanita Brooks, eds., A Mormon Chronicle: The Diaries ofJohn D. Lee, 1848-1876, 2 vols (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1955), 1:85.
2 Journal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hereinafter JH), December 7, 1848, microfilm copy in Special Collections, Merrill Library, Utah State University, Logan.
3 Cleland and Brooks, A Mormon Chronicle, 1:82.
4 Edith Jenkins Romney, ed., "Thomas Bullock Diaries," December 24, 1848, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City.
5 JH, December 24, 1848 The Articles of Agreement and its accompanying list are found in both the Journal History and in John D Lee's journals with only minor discrepancies.
6 D Michael Quinn, "The Council of Fifty and Its Members, 1844 to 1945," Brigham Young University Studies 20 (Winter 1980): 193-97.
7 Romney, "Thomas Bullock Diaries," December 25, 1848.
8 JH, January 1, 1849.
9 Juanita Brooks, ed., On the Mormon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout, 1844-1861, 2 vols (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1964), 2:338.
10 Cleland and Brooks, A Mormon Chronicle, 1:87.
11 Romney, "Thomas Bullock Diaries," March 1, 1849 The 84 people referred to on the list under "total killed" were, of course, total participants.
12 Cleland and Brooks, A Mormon Chronicle, 1:97; JH, March 3, 1849.
13 Cleland and Brooks, A Mormon Chronicle, 1:100.
14 Romney, "Thomas Bullock Diaries," March 5, 1849.
15 JH, March 5, 1849. This list does not give an accurate description of the biological diversity existing in the Salt Lake Valley at the time Coyotes were undoubtedly killed by the hunters but counted as wolves or foxes Ermine and weasels were probably counted as mink And terms as general as fox, hawk, owl, and eagle make no distinction for specific species.
16 Cleland and Brooks, A Mormon Chronicle, 1:100.
17 JH, February 20, 1849.
18 Juanita Brooks, John Doyle Lee: Zealot, Pioneer, Builder, Scapegoat (Glendale, Calif.: A H Clark Co., 1964), p 142.
19 William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), p 133.
20 Brooks, John Doyle Lee, p. 142.
21 M. R. Hovey, An Early History of Cache County (Logan, Ut.: Logan Chamber of Commerce, 1925), p 65.
22 Joel Ricks, Jr., "Some Recollections Relating to the Early Pioneer Life of Logan City and Cache County," pp. 7-8, 60, typescript, Special Collections, Merrill Library, Utah State University.
23 Hovey, An Early History of Cache County, p 65.
24 Ibid.
25 Cronon, Changes in the Land, p 133; James A Tober, Who Oivns the Wildlife?: The Political Economy of Conservation in Nineteenth-century America (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981), p 16.
26 Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Utah (San Francisco: The History Company, 1890), p 277.
27 James Smithies' Diary, February 22, 1848, microfilm, LDS Church Archives.
28 J Cecil Alter, ed., "Journal of Priddy Meeks," Utah Historical Quarterly 10 (1942): 163.
29 Church Educational System, Church History in the Fulness of Times (Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1989), pp. 342-43.
30 Romnev, "Thomas Bullock Diaries," March 16, 19, 1849; Cleland and Brooks, A Mormon Chronicle, 1:99-100.
31 David Rich Lewis, "Plowing a Civilized Furrow: Subsistence, Environment, and Social Change among the Northern Ute, Hupa, and Papago People," (Ph.D diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1988), pp 131-32.
32 Thomas A. Lund, American Wildlife Law (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), p. 5.
33 Hamilton Gardner, "The Utah Territorial Militia," pp 155-57, in Hamilton Gardner Collection, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City.
34 Brooks, On the Mormon Frontier, p 351.
35 Davis Bitton, The Redoubtable John Pack: Pioneer, Proselyter, Patriarch ([Salt Lake City]: Joh n Pack Family Assn., 1982), p. 107.
36 Gardner, "The Utah Territorial Militia," pp 145-47.
37 "Journal of Cache Military District," pp 5-11 , microfilm, Special Collections, Merrill Library, Utah State University.
38 "Utah Territorial Militia Correspondence, 1849-1875," microfilm, no 358, Special Collections, Merrill Library, Utah State University; Ricks, "Pioneer Life of Logan City and Cache County," p 8.
39 "Journal of Cache Military District," pp 98-99.
40 Cleland and Brooks, A Mormon Chronicle, 1:82 100; Ricks, "Pioneer Life of Logan City and Cache County," p 60; "James Smithies' Diary," February 8, 22, 1848.
41 Leonard J Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), p 43.
42 "History of the Salt Lake Stake," November 26, 27, 1848, microfilm, LDS Church Archives.
43 JH, January 14, 1850.
44 Barry Lopez, Of Wolves and Men (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978), p. 144.
45 JH,January 14, 1850.
46 Lopez, Of Wolves and Men, p. 138.
