Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 67, Number 3, 1999

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY (ISSN 0042-143X)

EDITORIAL STAFF

MAX J. EVANS, Editor

STANFORD J LAYTON, Managing Editor

KRISTEN S. ROGERS, Associate Editor

ALLAN KENT POWELL, Book Review Editor

ADVISORY BOARD O F EDITORS

AUDREY M GODFREY, Logan, 2000

LEE ANN KREUTZER, Torrey, 2000

ROBERT S MCPHERSON, Blanding, 2001

MIRIAM B. MURPHY, Murray, 2000

ANTONETTE CHAMBERS NOBLE, Cora, WY, 1999

RICHARD C. ROBERTS, Ogden, 2001

JANET BURTON SEEGMILLER, Cedar City,1999

GARY TOPPING, Salt Lake City,1999

RICHARD S VAN WAGONER, Lehi, 2001

Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928to 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, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101 Phone (801) 533-3500 for membership and publications information. Members of the Society receive the Quarterly, Beehive History, Utah Preservation, and thebimonthly Newsletterupon payment of the annual dues: individual, $20.00; institution, $20.00; student and senior citizen (age sixty-five or over), $15.00; contributing, $25.00; sustaining, $35.00; patron, $50.00; business, $100.00

Materials for publication should be submitted in duplicate, typed double-space, with footnotes at the end Authors are encouraged to submit material in a computer-readable form, on 3J4 inch MSDOS or PC-DOS diskettes, standard ASCII text file. For additional information on requirements contact the managing editor Articles and book reviews represent the views of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Utah State Historical Society.

Periodicals postage is paid at Salt Lake City, Utah

POSTMASTER: Send address change to Utah Historical Quarterly, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101

HAROLD SCHINDLER In Another Time: Sketches of Utah History First Published in the Salt Lake Tribune JEFFREY NICHOLS 285

DAN ERICKSON. "AS a Thief in the Night": The Mormon Questfor Millennial Deliverance . . .KENNETH W GODFREY 286

JEAN BICKMORE WHITE The Utah State Constitution: A Reference Guide .MICHAEL E CHRISTENSEN 288

PARKER M NIELSON The Dispossessed: Cultural Genocide of the MixedBlood Utes, an Advocate's Chronicle JOH N D BARTON 289

ROBERT H KELLER AND MICHAEL F TUREK American Indians and National Parks LEE ANN KREUTZER 290

JAMES P. RONDA, ed. Voyages ofDiscovery: Essays on the Lewis and Clark Expedition TODD I. BERENS 291

H.JACKSON CLARK Glass Plates and Wagon Ruts: Images of the Southwest by Lisle Updike and William

Pennington DREW ROSS 292

In this issue

The erudite Henry Adams, writing in 1895 as a member of the first generation of professional historians in America, voiced concern over history's reputation as an objective discipline. Noting that every person carries a predilection for error in the observation of basic facts behind an event and that this tendency toward error is compounded by people who write about that event, Adams then pointed to the possibility of errors within the facts themselves (being correctly stated but still leading to wrong conclusions) and to the reader's personal errors "The sum of such inevitable errors must be considerable," he concluded pessimistically

The first two selections in this issue stand as excellent examples of historians meeting the challenges of these errors and biases head-on and proving, in the words ofJ H Hexter, that indeed "truth about history is not only attainable but is regularly attained." The first article sorts through the pitfalls of yellowjournalism in early nineteenth-century Utah to analyze differences in popular perceptions of the Utes and Navajos The second treats the emotionally charged question, complicated by many conflicting sources, of child enslavement within two very distinctive frontier cultures. Both articles succeed admirably in elucidating the historical record and in vindicating the craft of history.

The last two selections in this issue present similar challenges. Here the difficulty is not with unreliable or incomplete sources but rather with sifting through the many existing ones, assigning relative value to them, and making an accurate assessment. Deciding on a southern or a northern route for Utah's primary highway to California was not a simple matter of cost analysis, miles, and topography in the 1920s; regional boosterism, political muscle, and personalities all added to the mix and need to be explained by a historian. Similarly, describing the busy life of one of Utah's favorite literary sons and summing up his niche also requires patience and reasoned judgment in dealing with the mountain of facts, anecdotes, testimony, and creations left behind Again, in both cases, we see historians rising to the occasion in splendid fashion Henry Adams, who died a decade before Utah Historical Quarterly was founded, can rest in peace Historians have thrived on his challenge

Automobile Club of Southern California sign-painting truck, probably in Utah (sign on hill advertises a business on Auto Row, Salt Lake City). Photo courtesy of auto club.

Of Papers and Perception: Utes and Navajos in Journalistic Media, 1900-1930

BY ROBERT s MCPHERSO N

NEWSPAPERS TELL STORIES. In their most basic form, they speak of current events of public interest in a factual manner. Or so it seems. Yet just deciding what events should be put in the paper, what topics "sell,"

Photos: Ute prisoners and their captors at Thompson Springs on their way to Salt Lake City, 1915. Left to right: Indian agent Lorenzo Creel, A. B. Apperson (D&RG superintendent), General Hugh Scott, SheriffAquila Nebeker, Poke, Jess Posey, Posey, Tse-ne-gat, unknown; USHS collections. Newspaper headlines, 1915; courtesy of author.

Robert McPherson teaches history at the College of Eastern Utah-San Juan Campus and is on the editorial advisory board of Utah Historical Quarterly. He expresses thanks to the Utah Humanities Council for providing him with the Albert J Colton Fellowship, which made this research possible

what language is used to describe an incident, and how an occurrence is interpreted are all highly selective acts individualized according to the correspondent writing the article, the editor publishing it, and the reader who reacts to its message. 1 Thus, newspapers are not merely the reporting of unbiased empirical information. They are a reflection of the ideas and ideals of contemporary society determining what is important and what sells.

Rural newspapers of the early 1900s are particularly good examples of this reflection of social values inherent in the communities that spawned them. In southeastern Utah, Moab's Grand Valley Times, later known as the Times Independent, is the only existing paper that has volumes going back to 1896. The Mancos Times, Montezuma Journal, and Cortez Herald from southwestern Colorado also helped paint a lively picture during this same period. Indeed, the economic bonds forged between settlements in Colorado and those in Utah along the San Juan River created a shared daily life that the papers at times reported more frequently than they reported activities taking place further north

One might ask how many Colorado papers made their way into southeastern Utah. There is no way of knowing, but freighting between the two areas was constant. There were also families, both Mormon and non-Mormon, who shared ties between the two regions. Certainly the Utah news reported in Colorado papers indicated an interest and a shared base of readers. For those familiar with the journalism of this time and place, it appears that newspapers provided a major medium for disseminating information, entertaining readers, and molding values.

Not all papers were successful. In Cortez, for instance, the Montezuma Journal spanned the years from 1897 to 1919, started up again in 1932, and then folded in 1942 The Cortez Herald informed the public from 1918 to 1931, the Cortez Journal from 1920 to 1932, and the Cortez Sentinel from 1928 to 1937, while the Mancos Times sold copy next door to Cortez from 1883 to 1940. This flurry of journalistic endeavors illustrates that it took more than isolation to ensure financial success. Newspapers came and went and merged for a variety of reasons, but in general, necessity dictated a popular form of journalism that sold according to the values, beliefs, and priorities of the communities that fostered them.

1 David Paul Nord, "Teleology and News: The Religious Roots of American Journalism, 1630-1730," TheJournal ofAmerican History 77:1 (June 1990), 9-38

The purpose of this article is to look at newspaper reporting in a very limited area, southeastern Utah, involving a clearly defined topic—the portrayal of Navajos and Utes between 1900 and 1930. This is not to suggest that a history of these people, or even an accurate evaluation of events, will emerge Rather, the questions to be answered are these: How were these two Native American groups viewed, and why were these perceptions so different? As a corollary to these concerns, what were the implied values of the reading audience?

This study is not, however, an attempt to bash newspapers of the past or to criticize the role of ruraljournalism. Nor does it attempt to look through twenty-first-century glasses to judge people of a different day by our current value systems, though some similarities do exist. This article also does not offer a full explanation of what actually happened, since the corrective results of further research in government correspondence, letters, journals, and diaries are not generally included. What it does attempt is a greater understanding of attitudes formed by the media and of the ways that reporters described events to their readers.

By 1900 the Navajos and Utes had gone through some of their greatest trials. Both had received reservation lands in 1868. The Navajos resided on a large territory that straddled the boundary between Arizona and New Mexico, with lands south of the San Juan River in Utah added in 1884. The Southern Utes, on the other hand, lived in southwestern Colorado on a land base that had continually shrunk since 1868 Efforts to expand their reservation in different directions, including land in San Juan County, Utah, met with fervent resistance.

At the turn of the century, these two tribes had generally settled into their present domains. The Utes had been forced to abandon

Utes in the La Sal Mountains, probably around the turn of the century; San Juan Historical Commission. Paiute Indians near Bluff, Utah; USHS collections.

their hunting and gathering lifestyle; the Navajos continued to have a pastoral and agricultural economy. On the borders of their reservations, however, both groups made use of the public domain, a practice that created serious questions about grazing, hunting, farming, and other land-use rights. The Navajos ventured across the San Juan River in search of grass and water while the Utes hunted in the Blue and La Sal mountains. There were even two composite bands, called Paiute as often as they were called Ute, that lived in Montezuma and Allen canyons, located roughly on either side of the Bluff/Blanding area.

A new century offered the possibility of a new outlook. Yet the seeds of discord and accord with the respective tribes were already sown. Instead of sympathetically understanding these cultures, their predominantly Mormon neighbors had already pigeonholed both groups. Religion, which played a central role in native and white cultures, helped determine the Mormon valuejudgments. For instance, the newspapers made only slight mention of Ute religious beliefs, perhaps because there was little pageantry involved in Ute religion. The only large Ute ceremonies were for the Sun Dance, which the government suppressed in the early twentieth century, and the Bear Dance held each spring. In the Bear Dance, men and women lined up facing each other and moved back and forth to the beat of drums and the rasp of corrugated sticks rubbed together. To most white spectators, these dances were a curiosity but offered little drama. Outsiders viewed the rest of Ute religious practices as a series of individualized rites that held no appeal, seemed simplistic in their approach, and did not correspond to their own Christian beliefs.

This was not so for the Navajo. Their complex ceremonies were graphic displays that fascinated white observers. Costumed dancers, sand paintings, intricate ritual performances, and herbal medicines caught the imagination of Anglo neighbors and fostered first a curiosity, then an empathy, and finally a tentative sense of compatibility with Mormon beliefs. The settlers sought an explanation for the perceived similarities between Navajo and Latter-day Saint tenets, and in doing so bridged hundreds of years of tribal history to "find" the Navajos' religious and historical roots in the Book of Mormon.

One of the most vigorous spokesmen for this view, Christian L. Christensen, had lived with the Navajos in northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah for more than forty years; he later contributed a number of articles about Indians to local papers. His views repre-

sented those of other sympathetic settlers like KumenJones, Albert R. Lyman, and James S. Brown, all of whom tried to expose the roots of Mormonism in the highly complex and formalized beliefs of the Navajo. Christensen, sharing this obvious tendency in his articles, wrote that the Navajos were "looking for the twelve great men ... to return to them soon and restore to them all their former greatness and blessings as promised them by their forefathers. ... [though] the younger generation does not believe in the traditions of their forefathers [because] the government has interfered with their former practices. ... " The statement correlates Christensen's understanding of Navajo beliefs with the Mormon emphasis on the twelve apostles.2

In another article, Christensen described Navajo medicine men as being divided into three "quorums," each comprised of twelve men, which presided as custodians of language and customs, botanical knowledge, and astronomy. He told of some of the laws important to Navajo beliefs and even attributed to the tribe the Hebrew practice of establishing a "city of refuge" for aperson who either accidentally or intentionally killed a tribal member.3 While there are grounds for certain elements of this interpretation, it was heavily salted with Mormon and Old Testament values.

Navajo mythology, as described by Christensen, sounded very much like the Bible There were three great "personages" who created the world, placed First Man in a beautiful garden, and left First Woman with him to provide children. He fathered a "Great Son" who killed his brother and became the "father of lies, war, bloodshed and contention." First Man and First Woman discovered they were naked after being beguiled by a serpent, and that is why Indians wore breechcloths. Eventually, the forefathers of the Navajo came from "beyond the great waters in great vessels,"

and

2 Times Independent [hereafter cited as 77], May 6, 1920.

3 TI, April 29, 1920

4 TI, April 22, 1920

Portrait of Navajos, not dated; USHS collections.

g-rew wicked

were chastised through the visit of a supernatural being.4

The parallels between this and Mormon doctrine evident that little are so discussion is necessary.

Christensen even told of a white man, William Keams, who married two Navajo wives, lived writh the Navajos and Hopis for forty years, and knew their traditions so well that when he read the Book of Mormon "he knew the book was a true account of that people."5 With this type of press coverage, the bonds of sympathy extended more to the Navajos than to the Utes, who, as far as the settlers were concerned, had few analogous beliefs.

Perhaps a brief pause at this point is necessary to explain the interchangeable use of the terms Ute and Paiute in the newspapers and writings of this period Southeastern Utah was the home of the SanJuan Band Paiute and the Weeminuche Ute, who shared a similar language base. SanJuan County, Utah, was a point of fusion where the two groups intermingled on the periphery of the main Paiute groups to the west and the main Ute groups to the east. Local whites often called this mixed band of Ute language speakers "Piutes" and "renegades," although the culture of the Weeminuche Utes was just as prevalent.

The clearest link connecting these Utes and Paiutes to Mormonism is reflected in Albert R Lyman's article entitled "A Relic of Gadianton: Old Posey as I Knew Him," which appeared in 1923, the same year the "Ute problem" was settled In it, Lyman chose Posey, a Paiute who became a symbol of all of the pent-up frustration of these early years, and painted him in terms of events depicted in the Book of Mormon. Therein, the Gadianton Robbers, an outlaw band formed through secret oaths and bloody misdeeds, preyed upon the righteous and sometimes not-so-righteous peoples. According to Lyman, Posey and his following descended from this line of thieves and cutthroats. The settler wrote:

From the time that his fierce ancestors, of the Gadianton persuasion, swept their pale brethren from the two Americas, his people had known no law, but in idleness had contrived to live by plundering their neighbors. Posey inherited the instinct of this business from robbers of many generations.6

5 TI, May 6, 1920

6 Albert R Lyman, "A Relic of Gadianton: Old Posey as I Knew Him," Improvement Era 26 (July 1923), 791

Christian Lingo Christensen with oneof his converts, Senoneska, in 1894; San Juan County Historical Commission

Thus, many of the events that surrounded the Utes' struggle to maintain their lifestyle were cast by at least some whites in the light of a cosmic struggle of good over evil that had started centuries before These Utes and Paiutes were seen as spoiled children, and they obtained an image of depravity and of having an "unyielding hatred of law."7

Those Navajo and Ute tribal ceremonies open to white spectators received similarly disparate treatment. Compare, for instance, the vocabulary in two newspaper articles describing a Navajo Fire Dance (part of the Mountain Way ceremony) and Ye'ii'bicheii Dance and a Ute Sun Dance and friendship dance. The Fire Dance was billed as "big doings" with 5,000 Navajos attending the "sacred ceremonial," which "to the white man [was] a most spectacular occasion an opportunity of a lifetime. ... " The Ye'ii'bicheii Dance received similar respect. Although there was some belittling of the Navajos' "queer antics," the greed of the medicine men, and some of the men's undressed appearance, the correspondent lauded the great "power of faith and imagination in these children of nature." He concluded by remarking that although three hundred were in attendance, "a more orderly crowd of people never got together" than these "red children of the desert."8 Both articles stressed the harmony, sincerity, and friendliness of the Navajos, while the authors, somewhat patronizing at times, showed respect for the activities.

With the Utes, it was a different story. For instance, in 1911 the Southern Utes held a friendship dance with groups of Paiutes, Navajos, Apaches, and Pueblos. Announcing it in the headlines as a "Big War Dance," the author delighted in describing the sharing of food as a "big feed" of crackers piled on a piece of canvas, canned peaches served in a bucket so that people could reach in and take their share, and lemonade drunk from tin cans in which swished "such miscellaneous articles as sticks, sand, dirt, etc. , whic h onl y jjte children dancing theBear Dance on Uintah-Ouray Reservation, 1924; seemed to give an USHS collections. added relish."9

The article concerning the

7 Ibid

8 MancosTimes-Tribune

[hereafter cited as MTT], October 31, 1919; Montezuma Journal [hereafter cited as MJ], September 30, 1904

9 MJ June 15, 1911

Sun Dance did not portray the Utes in as negative a light; but with a front page headline announcing "Chiefs Ban Ute Sun Dance Because Whiskey Causes Trouble," the reader's mind was already focused on the stereotype of the drunken Indian.10 Rather than evoking images of order and friendliness, the Utes had their dance of friendship turned into a war dance, and their sun dance became one more opportunity to raise the specter of alcohol and the Indian

The issue of Native Americans and drinking had long been of high profile An article titled "More Drunken Utes" found its way from Vernal, Utah, into the Moab paper; it described how eight Utes had been "howling and fighting like a pack of coyotes," had broken into a home occupied by defenseless women and children, and were so drunk that some could not ride out of town.11 One needs to ask why this seemingly insignificant bit of news from another region made its way into a local paper. The answer appears to be that it appealed to the sensational stereotype already established

One of the most effective means of fostering change among Native Americans was education. By 1915 the Navajos had a boarding school at Shiprock, and the Utes had one under construction at Willow Springs. The papers described the Navajo institution in glowing terms. The Shiprock school boasted more than thirty brick buildings; barns filled with cattle, sheep, horses, and hogs under the care of older students; and machine shops, boiler rooms, laundries, sewing facilities, dairies, carpenter shops, and blacksmith shops where the young people learned trades. Greenhouses bulged with more than one thousand varieties of plants, while basketball and baseball teams competed successfully against others from surrounding towns.12

What did one read in 1915 about the Ute dormitory? Work was moving along nicely in spite of someone shooting at the superintendent on three different occasions. The note he found on his door saying "We want no school. Utes kill dead" reinforced his suspicion that perhaps the Indians were not as anxious to sit in a classroom as their neighbors were. The article's title, "Indians 'Heap Quiet' Now," suggested the Utes' reluctance to "leave the blanket."13

Even in issues concerning health, there were differences in reporting In the fall of 1918 and the winter of 1919, as the influenza

10 M/,June 28, 1934.

11 Grand Valley Times [hereafter cited as GVT], October 5, 1906

12 TI, February 16, 1922

18 Cortez Herald [hereafter cited as CH], June 17, 1915

epidemic raged throughout southeastern Utah, traders and travelers told sympathetically of the plight of the Navajo. The whites estimated that three thousand had already succumbed to the flu and stated that "unless the disease is checked soon, it is feared the Navajo tribe will be almost wiped out."14

The Utes, on the other hand, drew the unfavorable headline of "Superstitious Utes" in an article that told how they refused to walk to the agency for supplies, feared that the medicine used to combat the disease was coyote poison, and fled their camps at the approach of a white man because he might be a doctor. The article concluded by saying, "It seems to be a very distressing time for all the Indians, whose ignorance is reinforced by the darkest superstition."15 Navajo medical practices were no more or less "enlightened" (by Anglo standards) than those of the Utes, but this point was rarely if ever made Through this short survey of white attitudes toward the Navajo and Ute cultures, one finds supposedly dramatic differences between the two Indian groups highlighted in the papers Newspapers often took a sympathetic slant toward the Navajos because the correspondents found similarities—either imagined or real—between Anglo and Navajo culture. This group of Native Americans, though curious and exotic at times, was on the road to assimilation and was accepted because of the tribes' supposed roots in Book of Mormon history. The Utes were not as fortunate. Although they encountered some of the same circumstances as the Navajo, few whites searched for similarities, established bonds, or showed sympathy. For most Anglos, the Utes were a dark remnant from a darker past.

Cultural differences, at times, can be overlooked in favor of economic growth and development. If one group of people has something special to offer another group, bonds of cooperation can be forged in spite of disparities. Fortunately for the Navajo, this was the case. Between 1900 and 1930 the trading posts in the Four Corners region flourished through their golden years Often staffed by men and women who understood Navajo culture, these posts were located on the SanJuan River or at strategic points along road networks in the interior of the reservation From the posts came ten-foot-long sacks stuffed with wool heading for Kansas City or other points in the East to be woven into fabric. Local entrepreneurs quickly seized upon this

14 GVT, January 3, 1919; MTT, December 13, 1918

15 MTT, January 10, 1919.

important commodity and integrated Navajo wool into their own stock before shipping it out.

Navajos were "progressive" in their attempts to better their product. Agents introduced different types of sheep to improve the wool crop, and as one newspaper reported, these "stalwart nomads of the Painted Desert have gone far afield to improve the strain of sheep which provide wool for the famous Navajo blanket."16 Even the federal government had short clips in the paper announcing its desire "To Stimulate Trade in Navajo Blankets."17

The government also protected the blanket industry when, as early as 1914, people from southeastern Utah urged Senator George Sutherland to take action to protect the Navajos, who were being cheated out of thousands of dollars because of imitation rugs Under a new plan, both the traders who accepted a rug and the superintendent from the part of the reservation in which the rug was produced needed to verify its authenticity.18

The weaving trade mushroomed in importance Newspapers reported this activity and boosted the trade When Addie Hammond from Moab entered the blanket business, she provided news releases telling how she had obtained "the most remarkable line of Navajo rugs and curios ever seen in Moab" and that, "in spite of the scarcity of blankets," hers were of "superior quality and quantity."19

There were other modes of boosterism One advertisement caught the eye with bold lettering asking, "Why a Navajo?" with smaller print saying, "Because the Indians are not all dead"; their blankets would be hard to find, but there were a few left.20 Another argued that "even the Navajos have 'caught on' to the mild craze . . .for blankets, pottery, silversmith work, etc. . . . getting double the worth of their wares from awe-inspired young ladies and classical-browed professors. "21 To add to the good press, some Navajos from San Juan County donated six beautiful blankets to the Red Cross in

16 77,January 21, 1926

17 GVT, August 25, 1911

18 GVT; March 20, 1914

19 77, October 23, 1919

20 GVT, February 11, 1910

21 MT, August 28, 1903

H. M. Peabody and Navajo weavers with blankets. Photo taken in Bluff, early1900s; courtesy of Western History Department, Denver Public Library.

1919 and had them presented in Monticello then in Salt Lake City. The Red Cross put the handicrafts up for bid and received fifty-three dollars for one that contained only six dollars of materials.22

The results of this burgeoning trade were salubrious As early as 1896, Colorado papers touted the effects of the SanJuan trading posts on the economy, claiming that freighting outfits "loaded out from Bauer Store [Mancos] often $1,000 worth of goods a day."23 By 1913 the Mancos Times-Tribune felt that trade "naturally gravitated to this area," with sometimes as many as six or seven heavily laden wagons groaning their way to the river This economic boon made Mancos the "recognized commercial and financial center" of Montezuma County. EvenJohn Wetherill, whose post was located in Kayenta, Arizona, preferred trading in Mancos to places in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Reasonable prices, available stock, and rendered service were, according to the paper, his reasons for satisfaction, though he also probably enjoyed returning to his family's old homestead.24

The Utes had little to offer along these same lines. During the late 1800s they had been heavily involved in the hide trade, and even before 1900 newspapers reported any hunting trips off the reservation as "slaughter" and decimation of the already-diminishing deer herds.25 Hunting as a way of life was, by then, totally impractical. Beadwork, a famous craft of the Utes, was not as useful or as stylish in appearance as Navajo rugs, while Ute farming efforts were on a subsistence level and failed to compete in the twentieth-century market economy with Anglo farmers, who had better land, equipment, and techniques Utes apparently had little to offer the progressive American.

Some people may argue that at the time only a small intellectual minority would recognize the difference between a Navajo and a Ute and that economic interests were not great enough to truly differentiate between Navajos and Utes when it came to matters of life and death However, if the conflicts and the reporting of them that occurred between 1900 and 1930 are any indication, the white population played favorites and decided who would be cast in the roles of "good guys" and "bad guys."

This was an era of yellowjournalism, steeped in the tradition of

22 TI, September 25, 1919

23 Ira Freeman, A History of Montezuma County, Colorado (Boulder: Johnson Publishing Company, 1958), 209

24 MTT; April 25, 1913; July 9, 1915

25 GVT, September 7, 1906; see also Robert S McPherson, The Northern Navajo Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988), 51-62

the Spanish-American War, the hysteria of World War I, the witch hunts of A. Mitchell Palmer, the prejudicial trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, and the roar of the 1920s Though many of these national events were tangential at best to the Four Corners region, the reporting style that appealed to human curiosity for the dramatic and sensational found its way into newspapers and stirred the emotions of readers. There is no mistaking the attitudes of the writers, readers, and players in the events concerning Navajos and Utes as they unfolded in the newspapers.

In fairness to the white settlers of SanJuan County, they had suffered at the hands of the Utes more than they had from the Navajos because the Utes had a stronger claim to lands lost through white settlement. Consequently, similar incidents within the different tribes were reported and handled differently. If each incident had been viewed uncolored by the local feelings of frustration, the Navajos and Utes might have drawn equivalent comments. But itjust did not happen that way

Take, for instance, murder. On November 18, 1909, tragedy struck on the Navajo reservation. At ten o'clock in the morning, trader Charles Fritz opened the door of the Four Corners Trading Post to a husky Navajo man named Zhon-ne of the To dich'iinii (Bitter Water) clan Zhon-ne had been looking for horses and decided to stop by, get something to eat, and transact some business at the store. Fritz fed the Navajo, who helped carry some wood from the pile outside then warmed himself by the fire while the storekeeper sharpened his saw. At this point, Zhon-ne decided to rob the trader, so after riding up on the hills to the east to see if anyone was coming down the road, the Navajo returned, waited for Fritz to venture to the wood pile, then killed him as he re-entered the post The Indian fired three times with a .22 caliber rifle, hitting the victim at the base of the skull, behind the left ear, and in the ear to ensure he was dead. Zhon-ne then stepped over the corpse; vaulted the counter; emptied the cash drawer of its $26.35 in coin, $18.35 in silver buttons, and a silver bracelet valued at $12.00; took a trail across the San Juan River heading toward the Carrizo Mountains; and arrived at his home, ten miles west of Teec Nos Pos, Arizona, after dark.26

By ten o'clock that night, an Indian had found the corpse and

26 Detailed information concerning Zhon-ne's activities comes from an investigative report sent by Charles W Higham to Hon U.S District Attorney, Salt Lake City, December 9, 1909, J Lee Correll Collection, Navajo Library, Window Rock, Arizona

had ridden to Shiprock to alert William T. Shelton, who, with an interpreter and two Navajo police, arrived at the scene of the crime just after daylight. By eight o'clock on the nineteenth, Zhon-ne was sitting before Shelton at the post, admitting his guilt.27

The agent incarcerated Zhon-ne in the Shiprock jail, but he preferred that the trial be held in Salt Lake City. He was also anxious to get Zhon-ne out of Shiprock since the prisoner had obtained a sharpened spike, threatened a guard during an attempted escape, and now had to be permanently handcuffed and watched byjailers. The prisoner recognized the consequences of his deed and realized that, as the newspapers claimed, he would be "hanged by the neck until dead, dead, dead."28

More than a year dragged by Zhon-ne took up new residence in Salt Lake City, had a severe bout with tuberculosis, and eventually pled guilty to the reduced charge of manslaughter Shelton feared that a diminished sentence, coupled with the fact that a similar incident— the recent killing of Richard Wetherill in Chaco Canyon—would cause whites to become increasingly prejudiced against other Indians accused of crimes. The court eventually sentenced Zhon-ne to eight and one-half years at the federal penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The punishment lacked the severity that Shelton desired as a warning to future troublemakers, but it was handed down because the prisoner suffered from an incurable tubercular infection that physicians believed would kill him within two years. 29

Although Zhon-ne sat passively through the trial and took little interest in the proceedings, once he arrived at Leavenworth his attitude changed On the way to prison, Zhon-ne took out a feather and stroked it carefully. Marshal Lucian H. Smith, who was accompanying him, placed the feather in the Indian's hat, but when the prisoner arrived at the jail, one of the guards took it away. Zhon-ne "let out a yell that could be heard for a half a mile" and was not happy until Smith convinced the guard to return it.30 Surprisingly, Smith would continue to be a friend to Zhon-ne. The prisoner responded well to the medical treatment he received at

27 Harvey Oliver, interview by Robert S McPherson on May 7, 1991, in possession of author Charles W Higham to District Attorney (Monticello), December 9, 1909; Shelton to Hiram E Booth, January 17, 1910; Shelton to William Ray, May 14, 1910; Shelton to Ray, July 21, 1910, J Lee Correll Collection, Navajo Library, Window Rock, Arizona

28 GVT, February 25, 1910

29 Shelton to Hiram Booth, April 8, 1911,J Lee Correll Collection; GVT, April 21, 1911 For a different account of the legal proceedings, see Frank McNitt, The Indian Traders (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1962), 324

30 GVT, May 5, 1911.

Leavenworth, completed three years of his sentence, then applied for parole. He asked Smith to speak on his behalf so that he could return to his aged parents on the reservation. No further information concerning Zhon-ne's release has been found, but his parole appears highly probable.31

Considering that awhite man had been killed, the reporting of this incident was handled in a mild manner. Headlines such as "Zhon-ne Not Terrified," "Navajo Given Light Sentence," "Feather Gladdens Heart of Dying Indian," and "Zhon-ne Asks Parole" tell the story as it was reported in the newspapers over a four-year period. Though the murder was actively condemned, reporters painted the criminal as an "ordinary looking Indian of twenty-five or thereabouts. . . . [who] was fat and sleek and looked contented."32 His ailments, attachment to the feather, request for parole, and dependence on Deputy Smith for release gave Zhon-ne a very human air, one that people could relate to.

Around the same time that Zhon-ne sought parole, another incident occurred, this time involving Utes. Although there had been numerous small conflicts before, this particular event made front page news for over six months. The problem started in March 1914 when a Mexican sheepherder named Juan Chacon camped with some Utes and Paiutes from the Montezuma Canyon area. Among them was Tsene-gat, also known as Everett Hatch. Chacon spent the evening playing cards and visiting around the campfire. A few days later he was found dead, and witnesses claimed Tse-ne-gat had killed him.33 Ten months later Tse-ne-gat, fearing that his life was in danger, had still not surrendered, so U.S.Marshal Aquila Nebeker, along with local helpers from Cortez, Bluff, Blanding, and Monticello, decided to find and arrest him. The newspapers set the stage for the approaching drama by saying that "Hatch has a notorious reputation as a bad man," "had defied several attempts to bring him into custody," was "strongly entrenched with fifty braves who will stand by him to the last man," and with his group had been "terrorizing" the people of Bluff.34 The headlines a week later could almost be predicted. In Moab, the Grand Valley Times splashed across the page, "1White and 3 Piutes are Killed," with a subheading of "Indians defy U.S. Authority— Entrenched in Cliffs South of Bluff, Renegades under 'Old Poke' Say

31 GVT, February 13,1914

32 GVT, February 25, 1910

33 For a detailed explanation of this event and others surrounding it, see Forbes Parkhill, The Last of theIndian Wars (N.P.: Crowell-Collier Publishing Company, 1961)

34 GV7; February 19, 1915

They Will Never Give Up." The Mancos Times followed suit with "Indians Resist Arrest; Joe Aiken Killed." Both papers tried to paint the picture of treacherous Indians, heavily fortified, waiting in ambush for the whites to approach. The "uprising" occurred when the seventyfive-man posse approached the Ute camp in the light of dawn A startled early-riser gave "whoops of warning" to awaken the others then opened fire. Initial volleys killed two Indians and one white (the other "killed" Ute was only wounded) as the posse implemented "Indian strategy of the kind that one is accustomed to read in the histories of early life in the West."35 Another group of Indians, hearing the commotion, came up from the SanJuan River, approached the cordon from the rear, and started firing. The whites and Indians called a truce, the engagement ended, and the Utes fled for the wide open spaces.

Reporters continued to use the language of war In an article named "All Quiet at Bluff," phrases such as "watchful waiting," "additional guns and ammunition," "Navajo spies," "renegade Indian band," "retreated to a strong position in the hills," "Nebeker is still determined," and "no other intelligence" maintained the heat under the cauldron of contention.36

At the same time, "Brigadier General [Hugh] Scott, Chief of Staff of the United States Army," was on his way to "attempt a peaceful settlement with the recalcitrant Piute Indians." The decision to send Scott was made only "after conferences between officials of the war department, department ofjustice, and the interior department." 3 7 What greater military dignity could be bestowed upon this small fray than to have Washington leaders conferring over its outcome?

To contrast the opposing sides, the Grand Valley Times spoke of the "Blanding volunteers" and the "Monticello boys" "stringing" back to their respective communities, while another article told of how "Old Posey" killed his brother Scotty, who wished to end the conflict. Posey was "sullen and refused to bow to law," while Scotty was "pleasant . . . and among the last tojoin with the outlaws."38

When Scott arrived in Bluff, he made it clear that he would try to settle the issue peacefully. A week later, when no concrete results had yet been obtained, headlines told of the Indians turning down a "Pow-

35 GVT, February 26,1915

36 GVT, March 5, 1915

37 Ibid

38 Ibid.

wow with Scott" with a subheading that "Cavalry May be Called in."39 A week later, however, Scott had "captured renegade Indians" by meeting with them, promising all twenty-three of them protection, and honoring the request that the four captives—Poke, Posey, Tse-ne-gat, and Posey's Boy—be brought to Salt Lake City for questioning. As the papers put it, "the redskins . . . had come to smoke a pipe of peace . . . with a representative of the Great White Father," and "he had succeeded."40

ByApril officials in Salt Lake released all of the prisoners except Tse-ne-gat, who went to Denver to stand trial. Before the Ute ever entered the courtroom, the Mancos Times-Tribune announced that the charges against him could not be proven; but when he was acquitted, the ire of the settlers in the Four Corners area reached meteoric heights.

Yellowjournalism continued to testify against the Indians. Articles and clips informed the public of the activities of Tse-ne-gat, Poke, and Posey, reinforcing negative images. Brushfire conflicts in 1919, 1921, and 1923 became important news and fanned the coals of disagreement. Even in the "off" years, when nothing newsworthy occurred, papers reminded people of the aggravation felt between the two races. A quick perusal of information concerning Utes for the last four months of 1917 shows the intensity of feelings.

In August the San Juan Blade, a short-lived newspaper published in Blanding, reported that "Ute Threatens Man With Gun . . . When Told to Move on; Utes Becoming Ugly." A later article derided John Soldiercoat, who lost his "superstitious fear" of the "mysterious paper talk," and Posey, who talked on a phone for the first time with "guttural grunts, inarticulate groans, and 'toowitchchamooroouppi' . . . [so] that [the] line was put out of commission for three weeks." Other headlines insisted that the "Utes Growing Ugly . . . [when they] Helped themselves to Farmers Feed and Defied Interference by the Settlers"; that a "Noted Indian Prepares for War [as] Old Posey Stored up Guns and Ammunition ... to Oppose Uncle Sam"; that "Indians Again Growing Bold" when three Utes jumped on a lone woman's car four miles south of town and frightened her with their aggressive actions; that "Ute Indians Hold up Blanding Boy" and took his watch; that "Ute Trespassers Made to Pay" when confronted with charges for grazing their horses in a settler's field; and that "Old Posey

39 GVT; March 19, 1915

40 GVT, March 26, 1915

May Stir up Trouble" because he "had assumed a surly and threatening manner and appeared to be gathering about him a number of renegade redskins."41

There were other articles and clips, some more inflammatory than others. Even those few that attempted to be partly complimentary, such as one that told of Utes hired to clear sagebrush, used such language as "Noble Redman Works Best on Empty Stomach."42 This tendency became so pronounced that an unsigned note in the San Juan Blade published on November 30, 1917, criticized the paper for "openly convicting itself ofjealousy and ignorance . . . [and] that the people of San Juan wanted the news instead of knocks."43

Yet the really pro-Ute journalism came from outside of the region and was sponsored by the Indian Rights Association (IRA) headquartered in Philadelphia. In November 1915, shortly after the Tse-ne-gat incident, M K Sniffen, secretary of the IRA, wrote an article based on his visit with the Poke and Posey bands, and his evaluation of the fracas flew in the face of the local oral and newspaper accounts. He pointed out that two-thirds of the posse that attacked the peacefully camped Indians were comprised of '"roughnecks' and 'tinhorns' to whom shooting an Indian would be real sport!" The Utes, who were not living on the reservation because of its undesirable conditions, had only protected themselves and their families, he wrote. Cattlemen seized upon the fight as an opportunity to move the Indians off the range lands; this action expressly contradicted the government's desire to allot the Indians individual tracts of land from the public domain to start the "civilizing" process by discouraging the Indians from living as a tribe. Sniffen concluded his remarks by writing, "The progressive Utes are now patiently waiting to see if the United States Government intends to give them 'a white man's chance.' Surely they have proved their right to it."44

Local papers reacted immediately. Far from helping the Utes' situation, Sniffen unwittingly polarized even more whites against the Indians and their advocates. For about a month in the early days of 1916, front-line attacks marched across the pages of the Cortez Herald. No kick was too low for this "Indian lover," who was "probably being paid a big salary for traveling over the country to fix up fairy tales

41 San Juan Blade [hereafter cited as SJB], August 24, 1917; October 5, 1917; October 24, 1917; November 2, 1917; December 21, 1917

42 SJB, October 12, 1917

43 SJB, November 30, 1917

44 M K Sniffen, "The Meaning of the Ute War'" (Philadelphia: Indian Rights Association, November 15, 1915), 1-7, Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City

about the persecuted red men."45 The papers argued that the members of the posse were really heroes who had risked their lives under "Uncle Sam's command." Writers insisted that if Sniffen wanted a crusade, he should investigate where the Utes got their high-powered rifles and ammunition, or who shot at the builders of the school on the reservation, or why the government had not yet built the promised irrigation ditches for the Indians.46

Antagonists accused Sniffen of shoddy investigative techniques, jumping to conclusions, and not understanding the real situation of the local people. But as they refuted all of his charges in one way or another, the papers laid bare many of the real problems facing the Utes and how few of these concerns had yet been addressed. By defending its frontal position, the white majority exposed its flanks to further charges

This volatile atmosphere could only result in a "final solution" for both sides, winner take all. It came in the form of what has been called the "Posey War" and the "Last Indian Uprising." Briefly, what occurred followed the same pattern as previous flare-ups, but this time the whites made a conscious effort to prevent the same results as the 1915 episode.47 Local people minimized the influence of outsiders, forces combating the Utes mobilized quickly so as not to give the Indians time to react, and the settlers did not release captive Utes until they signed an agreement promising to live on certain lands only.

All of this was accomplished because of a relatively insignificant affair that started when two young Utes robbed a sheep camp, killed a calf, and burned a bridge The culprits voluntarily turned themselves in and stood trial but then escaped from the sheriff's grasp. The people of Blanding moved quickly to apprehend not only the two boys but Posey as well, who by this time had become synonymous with all of the ill will felt by the whites He was the living metaphor for all Indians who seemed degraded or troublesome.

45 C77Januaryl3, 1916

46 C/7,January 27, 1916

47

Quarterly 53:3 (Summer 1985), 248-67

For a lengthier treatment of the Posey incident see Robert S McPherson, "Paiute Posey and the Last White Uprising," Utah Historical

Posey, 1921; USHS collections.

The newspapers had played a significant role in developing this attitude, making Posey the lightning rod waiting to be struck His name had appeared in either direct or indirect accusation with almost every negative incident that occurred in the past. People often cited his band of Utes as the culprits in a misdeed: Posey was said to have been the man who pulled the trigger on Joe Aiken, the white fatality in the 1915 fight; Posey reportedly killed his brother, Scotty, because the latter wanted a peaceful settlement of that conflict; and he killed his wife—by accident, he said, though many settlers refused to believe it was a mishap. While there were varying degrees of truth to many of these claims, tension over the years had increased. Posey also avoided living on the reservation and was such a colorful character that his threats, cajoling, and antics for food at a cabin door or out on the range often brought a strong negative reaction to what would normally have been forgiven.48 Thus, the 1923 "war" served as the catalyst by which evil could be exorcised.

The actual events of the war have been examined elsewhere, but the contemporary press described it in the finest tradition of hysterical World War I yellow journalism. The prose becomes too voluminous to recount in detail here, but glimpses of it show its general tenor On March 22 the Times-Independent noted that "Piute Band Declares War on Whites in Blanding" and that the county commissioners had sent a note to Governor Charles Mabey requesting a scout plane armed with machine guns and bombs. Supposedly, members of the posse had five horses shot out from beneath their riders (in reality, it was only one); the men feared that four of their number had been ambushed; and "the most disquieting feature is the fact that Old Posey, the most dangerous of all the Piutes, is in charge of the band."49

In reality, there was little going on in the "band" other than a massive exodus of Utes and Paiutes fleeing their homes to escape into the rough canyon country of Navajo Mountain; they understood all too well that their presence near white towns automatically involved them in the conflict, consequently making them a target. Posey fought a rear-guard action to prevent capture, was eventually wounded, and watched his people get carted off to a barbed wire compound set up in the middle of Blanding. A month later he died a morbid death from his gunshot wound.

During the "war" the newspapers reported that the state of Utah had put a $100 reward—dead or alive—on Posey, now charged with insurrection, a crime punishable by death. C. F. Sloane of the Salt Lake Tribune stayed in Blanding and fired off press releases with a thin veneer of truth covering a mass of outright lies. He had Blanding surrounded during "thirty-six hours of terrorism"; Indians in war paint riding the streets; Posey, "the red fox," forming a "mobile squadron"; a well-planned Paiute conspiracy that included a hold-up of the San Juan State Bank; and finally, "sixty men skilled in the art of mountain warfare awaiting the call to service."50

Reminiscent of the lively reporting of World War I, the accounts gave the town a military character: "Blanding since the outbreak has become more or less an armed camp. It wears the aspect of a military headquarters. The arrival and departure of couriers from the front is a matter of public interest."51

The citizens of Blanding were not fooled. Many of them kidded the reporters about their coverage of the incident, but this had little effect on what went out by telephonic relay. When one person asked a correspondent why he was not writing the truth, he gave a very simple answer: "We're not ready to go home yet, and if we don't keep something going, we'll be getting a telegram to come home." 5 2

Reporters made Posey's death just as dramatic as they made his life. One newsman said he had been killed in a cloudburst as the resulting flood swept him down a canyon. Another believed he had died of natural causes but said that, as far as the Utes were concerned, poisoned Mormon flour had done the job.53 The generally accepted explanation was that he had died from blood poisoning incurred by the gunshot wound. Regardless of the cause, the newsmen could report with finality that he had gone to the "happy hunting grounds"; they also mentioned that many of the Utes were content that Posey had "gone beyond," while the whites vied for the position of having the best stories to come out of the war.

When Posey's death was certain, some of the Utes took Marshal J. Ray Ward to where the body was located so that he could certify the death The law officer buried the corpse and disguised the grave—to

50 Salt Lake Tribune, March 21 to April 5, 1923

51 Ibid., March 24, 1923

63 TI, April 5, 26, 1923.

52 John D Rogers, "Piute Posey and the Last Indian Uprising," MS CRC-J6, April 29, 1972, Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, Harold B Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, 22

no avail. It was exhumed at least twice by men who wanted to have their picture taken with the grisly trophy. A forest ranger, Marion Hunt, claimed in the newspaper that he had found the body during a routine range examination a few days before Marshal Ward ever appeared on the scene. 54 It seems that everyone wanted to claim some part in the destruction of evil incarnate

With all of this negative press for the Utes, one might assume that the Navajos were peacefully living the life of "model" Indians. The majority did live a quiet existence of farming and sheepherding, but as in any society there were those troublemakers who seemed to revel in stirring up conflict. One of the most notable was a Navajo leader named Ba'ililii, who opposed Agent William T. Shelton and his plans for improvements in the Aneth area. Ba'ililii is still a controversial character.55 Some Navajos viewed him as a hero who withstood the inroads of white civilization in the form of Shelton's government policy. Others felt that Ba'ililii used witchcraft, thinly veiled threats, and outright force to coax and coerce a faction of Navajos and discourage them from sending their children to school, from using the government sheep-dipping vats located at the mouths of Montezuma and McElmo creeks, and from following the orders of Navajo policemen

As a medicine man and a notable figure in the community, he used his persuasion and personal influence to do everything he could to frustrate the adoption of practices he felt were counter to traditional Navajo culture.

On October 27, 1907, Shelton and his Indian police led Captain H. O. Williard and two troops of the Fifth Cavalry on a surprise attack of the Navajos' camp The soldiers killed two Indians, wounded another, and captured Ba'ililii along with eight associates

54 T7, April 26, 1923; GVT, May 17, 1923

55 See J Lee Correll, Bai-alil-le: Medicine Man or Witch?

Navajo Historical Publications,

Biographical Series no 3 (Navajo Parks and Recreation: Navajo Tribe, 1970)

Right: Ba 'ililii. Below: Ba 'ililii with followers and their captors. Ba 'ililii is seated, thirdfrom right; Agent Shelton is standing, sixthfrom left. From Clyde Benally with Andrew O. Wiget, John R. Alley, and Garry Blake: Dineji Nakee' Naahane': A Utah Navajo History (Monticello: San Juan SchoolDistrict, 1982).

deemed equally troublesome. The soldiers marched the malcontents to Shiprock, Fort Wingate, then Fort Huachuca, where they spent two years at hard labor.56

During this incident, there was very little newspaper coverage, even though the fighting occurred only thirty miles from Bluff. Reporters calmly told the story about the "Indian Battle in Southern Utah" in which "three [actually, two] persons were killed." The cause, according to the papers, was the Navajos' "disinclination to observe regulations So offensive became their actions" that Superintendent Shelton had sent for soldiers to serve as a "quieting effect."57

There were, of course, some major differences between the Posey and Ba'ililii affairs. In the latter, the agent took a strong hand, used the professional military, contained the problem on reservation lands, and ended the incident quickly. With the Utes, who interacted directly with the settlers, the conflict had simmered for years, and the actual fracas dragged on for over a month Yet an objective examination shows that each of these conflicts involved the same number of Native Americans killed and the same number of active participants. Each centered around strong-willed leaders who did not want to submit to encroaching white authority, and neither pulled into the fray the larger body of tribal members. And, to use a euphemism from today's military, both conflicts involved pre-emptive, surgical strikes

A big difference, however, was the press coverage, whose vitriolic reporting of Ute activities reflected public sentiment and attitude

When looking at the Ute and Navajo agency records, one gets the impression that between 1900 and 1930 there wasjust as much murder and mayhem in one group as the other; but to read the newspapers one would think there was only one set of problems confined to a single group

Perhaps this skewed perception was due to changes that were taking place Between 1900 and the early 1930s, dramatic events swept through the Four Corners region. Events that ranged from gold rushes and oil booms to increased tourism made southeastern Utah blossom as few had expected. At the time, the Utes were using much of the land in the public domain upon which white men's eyes were focusing These lands had traditionally belonged to the Utes, and

56 "Testimony Regarding Trouble on Navajo Reservation," U S Senate Document 757, 60th Congress, Second Session, March 3, 1909, 53-54; Shelton to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, January 10, 1907, cited in David M Brugge, "Navajo Occupation and Use of Lands North of the San Juan River," unpublished manuscript in possession of author

57 GVT; November 8, 1907

when whites encroached on them the Utes naturally reacted; the persistent low-grade irritation between the two cultures easily flared into conflict. As early as 1921, two years before the Posey incident, the papers noted that almost 200 applicants who had filed oil claims on "Piute Reservation" lands in San Juan County were being rejected because of Indian ownership.58 Following Posey's death, the government took the opportunity to solve the Ute issue by allotting parcels of land in Allen and Montezuma canyons to individual tribal members, then throwing the rest open for livestock grazing, oil and mineral exploration, and homesteading. Although the situation was complex, the end result effectively removed the Utes' claim to mineral development, forced them to stop roving, and encouraged them to start walking the road toward acculturation.

The Navajos fell heir to a far different situation. In exactly the same area, they added two tracts of land to their reservation—one in 1905 and another in 1933. Ironically, the exchange in 1933, known as the Aneth Extension, encompassed the lower third of Montezuma Canyon, which had historically been Ute territory.59 The Navajos also received the right to lease their oil claims for mineral development in return for royalties. Eventually, oil companies ranged through the Aneth area and the lands south of the San Juan River known as the Paiute Strip and paid substantial sums of money to the tribe for this privilege. The Navajos ended up holding a bag of riches; the Utes ended up losing some of the land that now provided those riches. To lay all of these events at the feet of yellowjournalism is to grossly oversimplify a series of complex issues that beg for a multiplicity of answers. However, to underestimate the power of public opinion in its many forms—newspapers, letters, petitions, lobbying, voting, and armed force—misses the point that actions spring from thoughts and emotions.

By the mid-1930s, as reasons for confrontation subsided, attitudes shifted. On a national scale, it came in vogue to be an advocate rather than adversary of the Indian. Policy switched from agent control to self-determination during the John Collier administration of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, some anthropologists became apologists, and historians wrote revisionist tracts that attempted to explain events through Indian eyes.

58 GVT, November 10, 1921

59 For a more detailed examination of the control of this area of the reservation, see Robert S McPherson, "Canyons, Cows, and Conflict: A Native American History of Montezuma Canyon, 1874-1933," Utah Historical Quarterly 60:3 (Summer 1992), 238-58

Even the newspapers took up positive themes. For example, the Times Independent carried a weekly column about various Indian tribes throughout the United States. The lives of famous chiefs became popular, as did reports of the comings and goings of archaeologists and anthropologists when they visited the Four Corners region to study Anasazi remains or Navajo culture. One article, entitled "Indian Not Given His Deserved Due," told of Native American contributions to U.S. culture. Another, called "The Indians' Memorial Day," featured the Southern Utes, among other tribes, in explaining how Native Americans paid homage to their dead.60

As the era of yellowjournalism against Indians came to a close, friction took on a new form, this time against the Navajos and their livestock in the form of livestock reduction. The Navajos watched, bewildered at the destruction of their herds of sheep, goats, horses, and cattle in the name of soil conservation and environmental sanity. Livestock reduction moved the Navajos from relative economic independence to dependence, but the newspapers felt little need to report the trauma as they centered on the larger story of the Great Depression. Aside from articles recognizing the past, the Indian was presently forgotten.

The heat and excitement of the newspaper articles written between 1900 and 1930 has cooled, as have the issues they reported. The papers are now filed away on dusty shelves or recorded on plastic microfilm, left for students of history to ponder. But they also remain as a memorial to the passions that shaped an era of important decisions, when Indians met whites in yellow journalism.

60 MTT, November 18, 1932; TI, May 28, 1931.

"Redeeming" the Indian: The Enslavement of Indian Children in New Mexico and Utah

BYSONDRA JONES

"Naked Children Playing, "photo byJack Hitlers, used by permission of National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Sondra Jones is an independent researcher living in Provo Her book on Indian slavery and Mexican traders will be published this year by University of Utah Press.

FRO M THE DAY CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS carried Indian slaves back to Spain after his first voyage of discovery, Europeans saw the enslavement of American Indians both as a profitable enterprise and—for the Spanish, particularly—as a means of bringing vast numbers of souls to Christ In the New World itself, traffic in captives was already an ingrained tradition among the Indians; not only did the earliest Europeans witness the use and abuse of war captives by the various tribes, they also saw that systematic raiding and warfare were integral parts of the "harvesting" of such menials.1 Europeans were quick to follow suit After all, a similar tradition already existed in Europe, where both Christians and Muslims virtually enslaved prisoners of war during the Mediterranean wars. Aristotle himself had declared that "persons whose customs were barbarous were natural slaves."2 Slavery—considered a humanitarian alternative to the outright slaughter of a conquered people—was an enterprise that was both punitive and profitable It was also an excellent tool for converting the heathen—or so the Pope had decreed. As this doctrine was pragmatically extended to the New World by profit-seeking Spanish conquistadors, Spain eagerly embraced the enslavement and forcible conversion of Indians as integral to its conquest of the New World. Many in Spain considered it "providential" that the discovery of America provided a "fresh supply of infidels"just as the country was completing the conquest and expulsion of the Spanish Moors in 1492.3 Consequently, missionaries were, by royal edict, a requisite part of every conquistadorial enterprise, and an active attempt was made to convert, civilize, and incorporate Indian laborers into the fabric of New Spain's social and economic structure. The political descendants of the Spanish, the Mexicans, continued in this tradition, finding that they had grown accustomed to and dependent on Indian labor

Compulsory Indian labor became pervasive and institutionalized in New Spain. Indian conquests who had survived the decimation of disease were heavily exploited in a series of regulated and unregulated

1 Descriptions of Indian slavery as practiced by all the colonial European powers can be found in Almon Wheeler Lauber, Indian Slavery in Colonial Times within the Present Limits of the United States (New York: Columbia University, 1913); Arrell Morgan Gibson, The American Indian (Lexington, Massachusetts: D C Heath and Company, 1980), 91-303; FrancisJennings, The Invasion ofAmerica: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975); Edmund S Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom (New York: W W Norton & Company, 1975), Chapters 1-3; and L R Bailey, Indian Slave Trade in theSouthwest (Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1966).

2 Cited in Gibson, TheAmerican Indian, 96

3 David J Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), 20-22

systems.4 Although explicit laws against Indian chattel slavery had been passed by 1589, the gathering of Indian slaves continued, and Indian labor systems were as often abused as were the Indian laborers themselves. It was difficult to regulate the practice of forced Indian servitude—especially far from the seat of government. Few local government officials cared about the laws or wanted to enforce them, since they themselves usually profited from the work of Indian captives.5 It was also difficult to control the practice where there was a great need for laborers, not only in mines but also in agriculture and domestic situations. Life was hard on the remote frontiers, and disease often claimed many of the family members who might otherwise have helped farm the land, herd the livestock, or work around the house. A shortage of labor, then, helped create a ready and ongoing black market for the Indian children who became a particular target of northern New Spain's slave traders.

Spaniards in the frontier settlements along the Rio Grande (today, New Mexico) acquired some of their captives through sanctioned and unsanctioned raiding expeditions against hostile tribes such as the Apache and Navajo. Other captives were purchased from Indian slavers such as the Utes and their cousin Comanches at annual trade fairs in Taos or Abiquiu or at established trade rendezvous. Captives obtained by the upper Rio Grande settlements met local labor needs and also supplied labor for the mines of northern Mexico.6

Most of the trade was reprehensible. Captives were usually taken violently in brutal raids in which their parents and relatives were killed Even "peaceful" trade was conducted under the threat of

4 The first of these systems was the direct enslavement of heathen conquests, allowed by papal decree for "enemies of Christ." Later, in the parceling of feudal labor estates known as encomiendas, a grantee was given rights to the labor of the serf-like Indians under his grant With the outlawing of encomiendas, the Spanish moved to the corvee labor of the repartimiento de indios, in which wage-earning Indian laborers were coercively apportioned to Spanish employers by government officials Though this system was also abandoned, the slave4ike, inheritable debt-labor of peonage and informal indentures still kept Indian workers tied to both vast hacienda estates and simple farms

By 1526 chattel slavery had been forbidden by Spanish law; by the mid 1500s compulsory Indian labor in mines had been abolished and the fief-like encomiendas forbidden; and by the late 1500s explicit Indian labor laws were being enacted Discussions and history of the institutional compulsory labor laws enforced in Spanish America can be found in Charles Gibson, The Spanish Tradition in America (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1968); Charles Gibson, Spain in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 143—58; Weber, The Spanish Frontier, 123—29; Bailey, Indian Slave Trade, xi-xv; Ruth Barber, Indian Labor in the Spanish Colonies (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1932)

5 See, for example, Weber, The Spanish Frontier, 127-28

6 Weber, Spanish Frontier, 127-28. For a more extensive summary of slave acquistion, see Sondra Jones, "History of the Indian Slave Trade in New Mexico," in The Trial ofDon Pedro Leon Lujan: The Attack against Indian Slavery and Mexican Traders in Utah (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2000)

reprisals against those who refused to sell their children.7 Indian captors could be callous and cruel, and Mexican traders sometimes trailed children like animals for sale. Eyewitnesses in New Mexico reported seeing young girls raped on the public square by their Indian captors before they were sold at trade fairs.8 In Utah—long a rendezvous area for the Utes and their Mexican trading partners—observers gave abundant testimony concerning the poor treatment of captive children. These human wares were often abused, neglected, and starved by their Indian captors until they were "so emaciated they were not able to stand upon their feet"; according to observers, they were sometimes tied naked in the snow with bonds so tight their hands became swollen, tortured for revenge or amusement, or killed outright when they became a nuisance.9

However, once they were transported to New Mexico and purchased into Hispanic homes, the treatment of young captives was almost always good. While adult captives generally underwent a period of "domestication"—meaning corrective, disciplinary abuse—before they were considered good servants,10 most children, being tractable, were well-treated by their new owners. Indeed, most who purchased Indian children seemed to consider them to be foster children, and they were reared as such.11

Children were not always stolen; some were sold to non-Indians by their own parents or relatives, particularly on the frontier, where Indians

7 Agent Garland Hurt noted in 1860 that the Utes considered the "Pi-yeeds" (Paiutes) to be their slaves When possible, they purchased Paiute children, or they stole them by force when "disappointed" in their trade In 1854Jacob Hamblin talked to one Paiute chief who was forced to sell his only daughter to Utes who threatened to take their trade by force if he did not Hamblin also witnessed the bartering between the Ute chief Sanpitch and the Paiutes for children the Paiutes had previously stolen from a more distant tribe Garland Hurt, "Indians of Utah," Appendix O in J H Simpson, Report of Explorations across the Great Basin (Washington, D.C., 1876), 461; Jacob Hamblin, "Journals and Letters of Jacob Hamblin" (typescript MS at Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, original diaries located in LDS church historical archives), 28-29, 31,41

8 Serrano to Viceroy, 1761, in Charles W Hackett, trans, and ann., Historical Documents Relating to New Mexico, Nueva Vizcaya, and Approaches Thereto, to 1773, collected by A F A Bandelier and F R Bandelier (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1937), 487

9 Utah Territory, "A Preamble and an Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners," and "An Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners," in Acts, Resolutions, Chapter 24, passed January 31, 1852, approved March 7, 1852; Brigham Young, "Testimony," given in First District Judicial Court (of Utah), January 15, 1852, United States v Pedro Leon, et at, Doc #1533, 11-14, microfiche; and Minutes of the FirstJudicial Court, Salt Lake City, Utah, January 15, 1852, located in Utah State Archives; S N Carvalho, Incidents of Travel and Adventure in theFar West:With Col. Fremont's Last Expedition (New York, 1859), 193

10 See, for example, Serrano to Viceroy, 1761, in Hackett, Historical Documents, 487; Eleanor Adams and Fr Angelico Chavez, trans, and comp., The Missions ofNew Mexico, 1776: A Description by Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez with Other Contemporary Documents (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1955), 252-53; Bailey, Indian Slave Trade, 128, and David M Brugge, "Navajos in the Catholic Church Records of New Mexico, 1694-1875," Research Report No 1, Navajo Tribe Parks and Recreation Department (Window Rock, Arizona, 1968), 129 Hispanic captives among the Navajo underwent a similar period of corrective abuse, after which their treatment became generally good For Navajo treatment of captives, see Brugge, Research Report 1, 117-34

11 Kirby Benedict, Chief Justice, New Mexico Supreme Court, in Congressional Joint Committee investigating the conditions of the Indian Tribes, May 2, 1865, as quoted in William J Snow, "Some Sources on Indian Slavery," Utah Historical Quarterly 2 (July 1929): 87-88

Utah Historical Quarterly

Paiute Indians sometimes lived at bare subsistence level, which at timesforced them to sell their children in order to survive. Lacking adequate arms and horses, Paiutes were often easy targetsfor Ute slave raids. Hitlers photo of Paiute wickiup, used by permission of NAA, Smithsonian Institution.

and settlers lived in close proximity

Some Indian parents bartered away their children because they saw better opportunities for them in the more prosperous non-Indian homes; such children might be sent off

with the admonition to learn much and return to their people later. Others were traded because they were simply a profitable and expendable commodity, because they were orphans and their relatives did not want to be bothered with them, or because their families suffered extreme poverty. This was sometimes the case with the Goshutes and the Paiutes, Shivwits, and Tonaquints of southwestern Utah and southern Nevada.12 One old Paiute in Utah noted that the tribe "could make more children but they had nothing else to trade for horses and guns."

13

12 For accounts of voluntary sales, see Juanita Brooks, "Indian Relations on the Mormon Frontier," Utah Historical Quarterly 12 (January-April 1944): 13-14; Jacob Hamblin, 'Journals and Letters of Jacob Hamblin," 27, 44;Jacob Hamblin, Jacob Hamblin: A Narrative of his Personal Experience (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1909), 32; letter from Jacob Hamblin printed in Deseret News Weekly, April 4, 1855; Juanita Brooks, ed., Journal of the Southern Indian Mission: Diary of Thomas D. Brown (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1972), 27, 60; Gwinn Harris Heap, Central Route to the Pacific (Reprint ed., Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1957), 223-24; and Garland Hurt, "Indians of Utah," 461-62. Descriptions of the poverty of tribes such as the Paiutes, Goshutes, Shivwits, and Piede Utes are many in the literature of early western travelers.

13 William R Palmer, from oral interviews, MS in possession of W R Palmer estate, quoted in LeRoy R Hafen and Ann W Hafen, Old Spanish Trail: Santa Fe to Los Angeles (Glendale, CA: Arthur H Clark Co., 1954), 281-83

Indian Slavery 225

But even the wealthier Southern Utes of Colorado occasionally bartered their children to Spanish/Mexican settlers; Chief Ignacio was said to have traded a son for a horse, and the United States census and other investigatory reports of the 1860s show a number of Utes who had been acquired from other Utes being raised in southern Colorado's Mexican settlements.14

In Utah after 1847, Indian children were purchased from slavers and relatives, as they were in New Mexico However, unlike the Hispanics of New Mexico, most of Utah's Mormon settlers did not have a deeply entrenched tradition of compulsory labor and forcible conversion, and their initial motivation for purchasing Indian children was not for the purpose of raising bonded servants but to rescue them from their captors. However, Mormons were familiar with indentured labor, which was an accepted practice in the states where Mormonism had its roots, and the concept of apprenticeship in order to learn a trade was well-established. Subsequent church expansion exposed Mormons to the volatile issue of slavery in controversial Missouri, and missionaries would soon bring southern slaveholders into the church as well. Slaveowners would be among the earliest Mormon pioneers, and black slaves were in the vanguard of settlers who first entered the valley of the Great Salt Lake in July 1847. By the early 1850s a number of settlers from the southern states and more than four dozen

14 United States Census, 1870, Colorado (Conejos and Costilla counties), 147-202

Also, D Gene Combs, "Enslavement of Indians in the San Luis Valley of Colorado" (M.A thesis, Alamosa, CO: Adams State College, 1970) Virginia M Simmons, The San Luis Valley (Boulder, CO: Pruett Publishing Co., 1979), 60, notes that Lafayette Head's 1865 list of Indian captives included 88 in Conejos and 65 in Costilla; of 24 Ute captives, 14 had been purchased from other Utes Ute informants told ethnohistorian Omer Stewart about Ignacio's trade; Omer C Stewart, communication with author, August 1977, and in "The Ethnography of the Eastern Ute" and "The Western Ute," unpublished manuscript notes prepared by Stewart (1973) for his co-authored article, "Ute," in Handbook of theNorth American Indians," vol 11: Great Basin, Warren L D'Azevedo, vol ed (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1986) This completed, succinct article erroneously implies that the eastern Utes raided the weaker tribes of central and western Utah; however, the active trade in Paiute and Goshute captives did not begin until after the Spanish contact with western Utes in 1776, and it was they, not the eastern bands, who raided these cousin tribes for slaves Nothing in the literature indicates that the eastern Utes ever made it a habit to raid the Utah tribes; in fact, traditions reported as early as 1765 (Juan de Rivera's journal) and modern Ute recollections of older traditions (Ronald McCook, communication with author, May 1999) indicate that not only did the Colorado and Green River gorges present formidable barriers to travel into Utah but there was also a superstitious dread that Utah was inhabited by dangerous, man-eating, supernatural entities. The central and southern Colorado bands did not travel into Utah if they did not have to, preferring to hunt and raid on the Plains, while the isolated northern Colorado bands, although they occasionally visited central Utah, were not located on the Spanish Trail and did little trading with the Mexicans.

The tradition of selling children is pervasive and certainly not limited to Native Americans. English children were once frequently sold into indentures when families could not support them and were often sold in order to pay for transportation to the Americas; the selling of girls into prostitution in Asian countries is well-known; and in the early twentieth century government officials of eastern U.S cities utilized "orphan trains" to rid their cities of surplus orphans by shipping them to the Midwest to "sell" or place them with foster farming families

African-Americans—more than half of whom were slaves—lived in Utah.15

Thus, Mormons were not opposed to slavery per se, and when as part of the Compromise of 1850 Utah was made a territory and given the option to vote on the issue of slavery, its legislature and courts acknowledged the rights of slave-owning residents and simply passed laws regulating the black slavery that already existed within the territory. Utahns were also under the mistaken belief that Indian slavery was legal in the Mexican territories ceded to the United States after the Mexican war and therefore legal in the new territories unless specifically acted upon. Indeed, Seth Blair, a southerner and the prosecuting attorney in a precedent-setting trial of Mexican traders in 1851-52, made a motion that the state pay the court costs by selling the Indian captives who had been confiscated and used as evidence in the trial.16 However, neither the court nor the legislature was willing to condone Indian slavery, even though the territory was willing to accommodate those who owned African-American slaves. Thus, the legislature passed laws against Indian slavery in mid-January 1852 while establishing regulations for the legal indenturing of Indian children to compensate Utahns who would continue to purchase them.17

Conversely, New Mexico, in an attempt to politically distance itself from the slave state of Texas, took legislative and constitutional stands against black slavery as early as 1848 and only wrote its own regulatory Black Codes in 1859 in response to the de facto extension of slavery throughout the territories with the Dred Scott decision.18 Thus, in an interesting and ironic twist of history, in Utah—where there was little compulsory labor of either African or Native Americans—both black slavery and bonded Indian servitude (indentures) were legal, while in New Mexico, where slave raids were endemic and the impressment of

16 Dennis L Lythgoe, "Negro Slavery in Utah," UtahHistoricalQuarterly 39 (Winter 1977): 40-54; Jack Beller, "Negro Slaves in Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly 2 (October 1929): 122-26; Utah State census (Utah and New Mexico), 1850 and 1860, including slave roles; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Negro Population 1790-1915 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1918), 1-6, 33-37, 55-57 For a discussion of the Mormon attitude toward black slavery and blacks in general, see Stephen G Taggart, Mormonism's NegroPolicy: Social and Historical Origins (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1970), 1-73

16 See Sondra Jones, "The Trial of Don Pedro Leon: Politics, Prejudice, and Pragmatism," Utah Historical Quarterly 65 (Spring 1997), 165-86; Utah Territory, FirstJudicial Court of Utah, United States v Pedro Leon et at, Doc #1533 [microfiche], Utah State Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah The judge decided that while black slavery was legal in Utah, Indian slavery was not—the captives were not sold but were given into foster homes, perhaps as indentured servants.

17 Utah Territory, "Preamble," and "An Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves"; for the regulation of black slavery, see "Act in Relation to Service," in Acts, Resolutions, and Memorials, 160 Utah was the only territory or state in the far West in which black slavery remained legal and in which black slaves were listed on the census rolls of both 1850 and 1860

,8 Warren A Beck, "New Mexico and the Sectional Controversy," in New Mexico: A History of Four Centuries (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962/1969), 139-47

thousands of Indians into compulsory service was rampant, slavery of any kind was technically illegal. However, in spite of such differences, both territories responded to the availability of Indian children for sale by developing similar systems for acquiring and placing these children into homes where they could, in an almost identical system of acculturation, be raised, educated, catechized, and worked alongside other family children. Thus fostered, they could also be converted to the Christianity and cultures represented in each territory, one a Britishbased Protestantism, the other an Hispanic Catholicism.

When the first Mormon pioneers arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley, they brought with them a burning sense of destiny: a belief that God had given them the western lands they would be subduing and had also given them the explicit mission of redeeming the Indians they found there and whom they considered to be the "fallen" descendants of a refugee branch of the tribes of Israel.19 Their patience with the Indians they found in Utah was sorely tried, however, when they discovered themselves unwilling participants in the well-established

19 Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 21:22-23; see Brigham Young, May 9, 1853, in Journal ofDiscourses (JD) (Reprint ed., Salt Lake City: 1967), 1:106-107, and Orson Pratt, Februay 7, 1875, in^D, 17:299-300, for examples of discourses on missionary work among the Indians

Santa Fe cathedral, 1880s. Courtesy ofNew Mexico State Records Centers and Archives, McNitt collection.

slave trade. As the new settlements were laid out almost on top of the traditional trade routes that had serviced the frontier Mexican market, Indian slavers saw the Mormons as a new, more convenient market. But the trade depleted the settlers' own limited stores, and they were disgusted by the practice itself. Not only did they abhor the cruel way that the Indians tended to treat the captive children but they also disliked the idea that the children might be sold into a condition "worse than African Bondage" with "beings scarcely superior to [the Indians]"—Catholic Mexicans.20 Additionally, the ongoing raiding perpetuated the intertribal warfare that endangered Mormon alliances with different tribes, threatened isolated settlements, and decimated and made timid the weaker tribes to which the Mormons hoped to send religious and agricultural missionaries.

In 1851-52 the new territory found a legal means of halting Mexican trade by invoking the newly extended 1834 Trade and Intercourse laws regulating trade with the Indians and using them against the Mexican slavers. But although they could forcibly expel the Mexican traders, Mormons were left with the Indian half of the trade. In May 1851 Brigham Young had already begun to urge his people to purchase Indian children, not only to redeem them from an abusive captivity and prevent their sale to Mexicans but also to raise them in "civilized," Christian Mormon homes. This, he felt, would be the most effective means of converting and raising up a "righteous" generation of Indians.21

It was, of course, not a new idea The difficulties of converting sedentary Indians, let alone "wild," nomadic ones, had been encountered by the missionaries in Spanish and Mexican provinces long before Brigham Young's time. Unable to stop or completely control the practice of capturing and selling Indians into servitude, Catholic church officials had been quick tojustify the practice as the only "practicable method of civilizing and Christianizing wild Indians," since Indians, being "bestial" and "half-animal beings," needed to be "subjected to forced labor" and "be forced to learn productive labor."22 This forcible Christianization was considered a "pious doctrine against pagans and heathens." In any case, unbaptized, "wild" Indians had no

20 Young to Legislature, January 5, 1852; Utah Territory, "Preamble," and "Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves"; Young, 'Testimony"; and Bailey, Indian Slave Trade, 168-69, 198

21 Brigham Young, Manuscript History (BYMH) MS, May 13, 1851, 846, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City; Brigham Young, address to the Legislature, January 5, 1852, quoted in the Deseret News Weekly, January 10, 1852

22 Hafen and Hafen, Old Spanish Trail, 260 Compare Weber, Spanish Frontier, 21, which states that Spaniards felt Indians were "inferior beings bestial deserving of slavery"; and Gibson, The American Indian, 96: "Recalcitrant Indians demonstrated their barbarous nature," and they needed Christian masters to teach them the crafts of "civilized life and lead them to Christian salvation."

rights in Spanish law, and like any conquered heathen or "foes of Christ," they could be—and were—sold into virtual slavery as prisoners of war, their time of servitude specified as a punishment.23

Subsequent Americans in New Mexico would continue to justify the enslavement of Indians with words familiar to apologists for black slavery. Bonded servitude, the argument went, benefited Indians because they were being civilized and converted to Christianity and were better cared for by paternalistic masters than they would be if left to struggle for survival in their native homes.24 United States government officials, for instance, were as quick to utilize Indian menials as their Mexican predecessors had been, and those who did not actually own Indian servants—and that was the majority—sanctioned or protected those who did. Even Indian agents owned Indian servants, and the Indian superintendent in New Mexico himself owned at least a half dozen.25

Although they attempted direct proselyting and agricultural missionary work, Utahns also came to agree that in the long run Indians were more likely to be "redeemed" through a modified form of child enslavement, with concomitant conversion and acculturation. Although the 1852 laws outlawed slavery, they formally legalized the trade in Indian children that Brigham Young had urged the year before by establishing an indenturing procedure so that Indian children were legally bound to a family, paying back their purchase price through labor until they were emancipated at their majority or after as long as twenty years. 26 Most children were taken into families and raised as foster children, and foster parents were expected to give the children the same clothing, education, work, and religious training that they gave their own children. However, as with any indenture,

23 Lauber, Indian Slavery in Colonial Times, 50. Bailey, Indian Slave Trade, xii; History ofNew Mexico: Its Resources and People (Los Angeles and New York: Pacific States Publishing, 1907), 386-87.

24 Ute agent Garland Hurt himself argued in 1860 that the "colored races" (in which he specifically included the Indians) had a "fixed and demonstrable" "mental inferiority" that rendered their elevation to the "equality" of the Caucasian race a "preposterous" idea; the only way to improve the state of the "aborigines" was to make them subservient through "coercion" in order to direct their energies into "channels of usefulness." He used the example of African slavery to demonstrate how "infinitely more happy and prosperous" blacks were because of the "controlling influence of the superior race." The treatment of blacks was also superior since they "swell[ed] the national revenue" with their work, while "misguided philanthropy" drained the treasury of millions in the impossible task of civilizing Indians who would have been better off being treated like African slaves Hurt, "Indians of Utah," 463-64

25 Graves Report No 11, in New Mexico Indian Superintendency papers, 1866, as cited in Bailey, Indian Slave Trade, 181-82 Both Kit Carson and Lafayette Head had a history of owning Indians Arguments for servitude are found in Beck, "New Mexico and the Sectional Controversy," 145-46 Opponents to peonage, however, argued that the system was worse than chattel slavery, with its cradleto-grave responsibility, since the owners had no obligation to their peons, and once their usefulness was over they could be discarded

26 Utah Territory, "An Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves." Historians L R Bailey, Gustive O Larson, and L H Creer all referred to the Mormon practice as slavery

these children could be, and often were, traded and bartered between families And occasionally they were purchased and carried for trade into other communities. In a frontier environment where the laborintensive establishment of farms relied on the many hands in a family, Mormons found—as New Mexicans already had—that an additional child (or servant) could be a welcome addition.

Brigham Young wrote the Office of Indian Affairs that "very many children are taken into families and have all the usual facilities for education afforded other children."27 He saw the concept of indenturing these children as "purchasing them into freedom instead of slavery; . . . not the low, servile drudgery of Mexican slavery, . . . but where they could find that consideration pertaining not only to civilized, but humane and benevolent society."28

However, despite Brigham Young's prejudicial view of Mexican religion and culture—typical of mid-nineteenth-century America— Indian children purchased into homes in New Mexico were fostered in much the same manner as they were in Utah. The New Mexican legislature noted in 1866 that Indian captives raised in New Mexican homes were, "according to ancient custom . . . constituted as adopted children of the persons under whose control they are, and they are treated by them as members of their own legal family, and many of them are as such adopted, and married, and enjoy the same guaranties as the legitimate children." Another witness noted that the children sold by the traders were not slaves but were "adopted into the family of those who get them; are baptized and remain and trusted as one of the family—The head of the house standing as Godfather." One California man argued in court that he had purchased an Indian boy from New Mexican traders "with the sole object of adopting the boy as a son and teaching him the principles of the Catholic religion; that when he should attain legal age he should be free," while another man in New Mexico complained his Indian son had been forcibly taken from him by "emancipating" American authorities, although "I did not have the boy nor did I pretend to have him in captivity other than as an adopted son, whom I raised as such. My family has regarded him as such and he is considered himself an equal member of the family." Investigators into the practice in New Mexico in the 1850s and 1860s found that, while there was some abuse, most families did treat their Indian children well and that the children so raised often

27 Brigham Young, Sept 29, 1852, in Report of the Commissioner ofIndian Affairs, 1852, 488

28 Deseret News Weekly, January 10, 1852

became very attached to their families and their families to them so that they were assimilated securely into the Mexican society The fact that most baptized children were noted in church records as adopted children rather than as servants indicates that the clergy expected them to be treated at least aswell as stepchildren or other fostered relatives.29

Spanish and then Mexican law had made Indian slavery as illegal in New Mexico Territory as it was in Utah Territory.30 Consequently, these Indian children—as well as older captives—were being sold into effectual indentures, although, as the witnesses were careful to note, there were no legislative laws regulating the practice in New Mexico as there came to be in Utah Territory; it was simply "ancient custom."31 Like the indentured, foster Indian children in Utah, these captives were working out the cost of their redemption, their "purchase" price—the theory being that they had been purchased out of captivity, although this fiction was applied to all captives, including those who had been stolen by their owners directly from their Indian families—and were to be eventually released or emancipated at their majority. Emancipation was also supposed to take place at marriage (most girls married at fourteen or fifteen, boys at eighteen to twenty), at the death of their godfathers, or, with older captives, after a certain number of years of labor.32

The treatment of Indian captives varied, of course, and the ideal was not always met in either Utah or New Mexico. Although Spanish/Mexican law did give rights of redress to Indian servants, Hispanic owners often abused fearful captives without giving them any recourse, found excuses to deny their marriage or emancipation, and

29 New Mexico Legislature toJulius K Graves, Special U S Indian Agent for New Mexico, January 30, 1866, Territorial Archives of New Mexico, reel 3, frame 205-206; Lafayette Head, "Statement of Mr. Head of Abiquiu in Regard of the Buying and Selling of Payutahs—April 30, 1852," Doc #2150, Ritch Collection of papers pertaining to New Mexico, Huntington Library, San Marino, California; Antonio Jose Rocha, testimony in court action, January 20, 1833, California Archives, Los Angeles I, 115, Beattie Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, California, as quoted in Hafen and Hafen, Old Spanish Trail, 269; Rosalio Colomo to General George W. Getty,June 23, 1867, as quoted in Bailey, Indian Slave Trade, 129; Brugge, "Navajos in Church Records," 100-103

30 In addition to Spanish laws against chattel Indian slavery, laws were passed in 1778, 1812, and 1824 specifically forbidding the traffic in Indian captives in what would become New Mexico and California See Bailey, Indian Slave Trade, 141-44; also #740, R E Twitchell, ed., Spanish Archives of New Mexico, vol 2 (Cedar Rapids, 1914), 263

31 Head, "Statement"; New Mexico Legislature to Graves,January 30, 1866; Steven M Horvath, Jr., "The Social and Political Organization of the Genizaro of Plaza de Nuestra Senora de los Dolores de Belen, New Mexico, 1740-1812" (Ph.D dissertation, Brown University, 1979), 45-47, 125-26

32 Head, "Statement"; for additional discussion of the treatment of fostered Indian children, see Frances Leon Swadesh, Los Primeros Pobladores: Hispanic Americans of the UteFrontier (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974), 22-23, 60, 40-43, 78-79, and Swadesh, "Hispanic Americans of the Ute Frontier from the Chama Valley to the SanJuan Basin, 1694-1960" (Ph.D dissertation, University of Colorado, 1966), 89-90, 194-95

Nicaagat (also Green Leaf or Nic-o-rod), a Goshute boy fostered by Mormons, ran away tojoin the Utes. Later he became a leader in the Ute uprising in Colorado, 1879.

From an A. Z. Shindler photo, 1868, used by permission of NAA, Smithsonian Institute.

left their religious and secular education incomplete However, abuses occurred in Utah as well There was occasional physical abuse, and census records show that, despite the educational requirement, foster Indian children were often not sent to school. Sally, the Shoshone girl purchased from Utes and raised in Brigham Young's home, learned domestic skills but was never taught to read or write. And Nicaagat, one of the White River Ute leaders in Colorado's infamous Meeker Massacre and Thornburgh Ambush in 1879, was a Goshute who, as a child, had been purchased by Mormons from Spanish slave traders As a young man he finally fled to the Utes to escape the ongoing beatings in his foster home.33

So what was the Mormons' purpose in purchasing Indian children?Juanita Brooks, who traced the histories of fostered Indian children in southern Utah communities, was of the opinion that the practice could only have occurred from altruistic motives—from an ardent desire to follow the prophet's advice to raise up a "righteous generation" of Indians by teaching them the Mormon version of Christianity. She felt that, while the "extra help given by the Indian child might pay for the expense of his board, . . . often [the children] were too young when adopted. Nothing short of religious fervor and a strong belief that these children were worth 'redeeming' could have prompted many of the adoptions."34

Yet, while no writers on Indian slavery in New Mexico would think of arguing that it was for altruistic or humanitarian reasons that Hispanics bought the children, their age at purchase and subsequent treatment (within the norms of the disparate cultures) were almost

33 United States Census, Utah, 1860 (on microfilm, FHL #805,314); Madoline C Dixon, These Were the Utes: TheirLifestyles, Wars, and Legends (Provo, Utah: Press Publishing, 1983), 104-107; Robert Emmitt, The Last War Trail (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954), 39-40. Emmitt includes in his sources for Nicaagat's background personal interviews with Saponise Cuch, who knew him personally These sources say that Nicaagat was a Goshute who was sold by Mexicans to a Mormon family named Norton and was baptized and raised in the Mormon church, and that Mrs Norton repeatedly beat him with a buggy whip until he fled U.S army officers killed Nicaagat by leveling his tipi with a cannon when he refused to surrender after the Colorado uprising

34 Brooks, "Indian Relations," 14.

identical to those of their Utah peers. Obviously, the children in both territories must have had an inherent value in and of themselves, a value greater than their immediate cost and labor potential, given the fact that they were often bought so young and were so fragile, frequently dying of disease in their non-Indian homes.35

The reasons for acquiring Indian children, then, varied. In Utah it appears that the primary reasons were indeed to protect or redeem captives, convert young Indians to American culture and Mormon Christianity, and only incidentally to acquire additional members of the family or servants. Nevertheless, a few Mormons do appear to have acquired children in order to transport them to other areas for trade. For example, George A. Smith, one of the leaders of the first missionary expedition to southern Utah, advised at least one of the settlers there on how much to pay Indian slavers for a child; a short time later Smith saw the man with a child and subsequently heard that he was traveling north with another two children lashed to the back of a mule.36

On the other hand, in New Mexico the primary reason for purchasing Indians does appear to have been the acquisition of laborers, although the desire to acquire a child simply for the sake of having a child cannot be discounted Most households owned at least one Indian captive, and Indian children were common. That the practice wasjustified in terms of converting the children to "civilization" and to Catholic Christianity would appear to have been a secondary consideration, a means of explaining or defending a practice no one could—or wanted to—stop.

In Utah the practice of purchasing Indian children originated as a natural response of the Mormons who had inadvertently fallen into the midst of the trade However, as the missionary opportunities such purchases presented became quickly apparent, the Mormons went out of their way to not only emancipate children from both Utes and Mexican slavers but to actively seek out opportunities to barter for them themselves. George A. Smith, for example, was not offered, but himself asked for, a child in compensation for an ox an Indian had stolen and butchered. Others asked Indians to locate children for them One of the duties assigned to Mormon missionaries sent to

35 See Brooks, "Indian Relations," 33, 37; Brugge, "Navajos in Church Records," 109-13.

36 George A Smith, December 1850, in 'Journal of George Albert Smith (1817-1875), Principal Residence during this Period (1850-1851) Parowan, Utah," typescript MS, Special Collections, HBL Library, Brigham Young University, 10-12, and March 12 and March 25, 1851, 46-50

work among the Indians was to "secure all the Indian children they could."37

The laws passed in Utah against the trade were directed at Mexican traders and were passed in hopes of shutting off the major slave market and bringing to a halt the Indian wars that were perpetuated by the slave raids. But in New Mexico just the opposite occurred. Spanish/Mexicans sometimes deliberately provoked not only intertribal warfare but also warfare between the settlements and the Indians for the very purpose of acquiring captives. Raids made in the name of military action justified the acquisition of captives who could be sold into the communities And individual, unofficial raids against Indian camps perpetuated ongoing hostilities.38

Another difference between the two territories lay in the use of adult Indian labor. While the treatment of Indian children sold and fostered by Mormon or Catholic parents was almost identical, the treatment of older captives was not. Although adult Indians (usually women or youths) were common booty in military raids by the New Mexicans, Utahns did not purchase or take older captives—except occasionally to redeem them from captivity, or as temporary prisoners of war—and consequently did not generally practice the "domesticating" abuse considered necessary for "breaking" or "taming" such older captives.39

Perhaps the greatest difference between the captives in New Mexico and Utah, however, lay in their final disposition, once they had been raised and emancipated, and in their ultimate position within the society into which they had been adopted. In New Mexico there were thousands of Indians who had been detribalized, raised as "generic" Indians, acculturated, and Christianized. These Indians were known as genizaros—a displaced people without family and without roots, the progeny of parents of different nations Because of their numbers, certain social mechanisms fell into play to accommodate their existence. Considered of a lower class, these genizaros gravitated to each other and tended to form enclaves. In some cases, govern-

37 George A Smith, December 1850, 'Journal," 10-12; Brooks, ed., Journal of the Southern Indian Mission, 40; Brooks, "Indian Relations," 9

38 See Brugge, "Navajos in Church Records," 39-98, 135, 146-50; Weber, Spanish Frontier, 127; and Bailey, Indian Slave Trade, 73-89, 98, 100-102

39 A few older captives were purchased in Utah simply to protect them from abuse or death at the hands of their captors, as was the case with a girl purchased in 1847 after a companion captive was killed On the other hand, for example, in New Mexico it was not unusual for a bridegroom to organize a slavehunting expedition for the sole purpose of presenting his new bride with several new servants See Horvath, "The Social and Political Organization of the Genizaro," 101, and Brugge, "Navajos in Church Records," 129

ment intervention sought out and utilized such civilized Indians to settle frontier buffer communities against nomadic Indians, as was done in the villages of Abiquiu and Cubero Other genizaros became guides, soldiers, or interpreters Although the majority of these Indians remained lower-class citizens, it was possible for them to gain wealth and status, with some even reaching the vecino status of a tithepaying citizen or marrying non-Indians and joining themselves and their children to the dominant society.40

The most important aspect of the existence of the genizaros was the fact that they did exist, that there was a social niche into which acculturated Christian Indians could fit once they had left the bonds of their informal indentures It might not have been the ideal position, but it was a place for them to belong.41 Such was not the case in Utah The practice of taking Indian children and raising them was short-lived in Utah, and the number of such acculturated Indians who survived childhood diseases and reached adulthood was relatively small. Consequently, there was no social niche into which Mormon genizaros could fit. There was little need for the Indian guides, interpreters, or soldiers needed in New Mexico, nor was there a group of like-raced or like-minded Indians with whom they could associate.

Few fostered Indian children in Utah married. While some of the girls were able to find husbands as plural wives with white Mormon husbands, often this occurred only after strong ecclesiastical "encouragement" had been applied to the potential bridegroom, and even then the women were generally ill-received by their white sister-wives. Others eventually married traditional Indians and left the civilization and religion in which they had been raised Some so married because they had been encouraged to become missionaries among "their own kind."42 Such was the case with Sally Young, who was eventually badgered by Brigham Young into marrying the Pahvant chief Kanosh, a staunch ally of Young, because she would be a useful tool in civilizing and Christianizing him and his tribe.43

In other cases women simply found Indian husbands when no other opportunities presented themselves, though some of their lives do not appear to have been very happy. At least one such girl lived

40 Swadesh, Los Primeros Pobladores, 42-47, 229 note 33; Swadesh, "Hispanic Americans of the Ute Frontier," 195; Horvath, "The Social and Political Organization of the Genizaro." Even as vecinos, genizaros were often snubbed as lower caste

41 See Horvath, "The Social and Political Organization of the Genizaro," 125-26

42 Brooks "Indian Relations." Brooks specifically follows the fate of fostered Indian children in southwestern Utah communities, where most adoptions of Indian children took place

43 Dixon, TheseWere the Utes, 104-107

among the Uncompaghre on the new Ouray reservation, though when she tried to sit as an interpreter at a council with a new Indian agent, she was summarily dismissed by the Indians. Sally is known to have wept over her marriage and removal from the Young mansion—though she had spent most of her time there in the kitchen—to the brush lodge and later rough log cabin her husband gave her. Eventually, she was murdered by a jealous native wife. These "white" Indian wives were often teased by their traditional camp-sisters for their "squeamishness," or they suffered from being unable to wear the corsets their backs had become used to. Many of the women found no husbands at all, however, and at least one chose to take white lovers in order to get herself the children she felt God meant for her to have even though no white man would marry her. Fostered Indian boys seldom, if ever, married.44

That many of these children felt estranged from both the white culture in which they were raised and the Indian culture from which they had been taken was most poignantly expressed by one dying girl who said "it had been a mistake for her ever to suppose that she could be a white girl. Indian children . . . should be left with their own people where they could be happy; when they were raised in white homes they did not belong anywhere."45

The consequences of Indian slavery in Utah were two-fold: war and acculturation. On the one hand, the very practice of harvesting captives for sale perpetuated intertribal warfare as well as Indian warfare in general. Utes continued to attack their traditional enemies, the

44 Brooks, "Indian Relations"; Dixon, These Were the Utes, 104-107; and Susa Young Gates, "Courtship of Kanosh, a Pioneer Indian Love Story," as quoted in Peter Gottfredson, History of Indian Depredations in Utah (1919; reprint, Salt Lake City: Skelton Publishing, 1969), 15-18, tell the story of Sally Young See also, Lawrence G Coates, "The Mormons and the Ghost Dance," in Dialogue: Journal of Mormon Thought 18 (Winter 1985): 89-111, showing statistics of the few Indians entering the Mormon temples, although Coates does not indicate how many of these visits were for the purpose of marriage.

E E White notes a Mormon-raised "squaw" among the Uncompaghre in Experiences of a Special Indian Agent (1893; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), 109, 113-14

46 Brooks, "Indian Relations," 37-38, 48

Sally Young Kanosh, Shoshone girl fostered by Brigham Young and married to Chief Kanosh. She was purchased in 1847 for a rifle. USHS collections.

Shoshone, and to raid vulnerable tribes such as the Goshutes and Paiutes. In Utah such preyed-upon weaker tribes were so heavily harvested of women and children that by 1860 Utah's Indian superintendent noted that they were in danger of complete extinction.46

In New Mexico the wars against the Apache and Navajo by the Spanish/Mexicans did not place these tribes in danger of extinction, but they did develop into a cycle of attacks and raids as each retaliated against the other for punitive and/or slave-gathering purposes; so many Mexicans were captured by the Navajo that a clan actually came into existence to accommodate them, the Naakai Dine, or MexicanNavajos. Many Spanish/Mexicans did not want to see an end to hostilities, which provided the opportunity and excuse to glean slaves; and even after Navajos were gathered onto the reservation at Bosque Redondo, Mexicans continued to lay in wait for unwary Navajos who might stray off the reservation—and to steal captives from the reservation itself. Many Navajos were even snatched by predatory slavers when they straggled behind their relatives on the Long Walk to the reservation.47

Indeed, evidence suggests that when Utah Territory expelled the slave traders from its boundaries in 1852—although slavers continued to sneak into the territory and spirit away a few captives undetected, and although the Utes undoubtedly took captives to New Mexico— most Mexican traders began to gather their captives from Navajo sources. New Mexican church records show an increase in the number of Navajo children baptized in the latter 1850s and early 1860s, just when there was a sudden drop in Ute/Paiute baptisms. At the same time, ongoing Navajo hostilities took a strong upswing. Ultimately, these hostilities led to the decisive and heavy-handed military action in which Kit Carson swept through Navajo lands and sent the Navajos to Fort Sumner in eastern New Mexico.48

In Utah, the expulsion of the Utes' Mexican trade partners led, unsurprisingly, to bitter resentment among the Indian slave traders. It was not that the Indians were not willing to trade their captives to the Mormons, or that the Mormons were not willing to take the children; the traders resented the fact that Mormons had grown unwilling to trade arms and ammunition for children. At the same time, frustrated Mexican slave traders and mountain men-turned-traders began to

46 Garland Hurt, "Indians of Utah," 461-62

47 Brugge, "Navajos in Church Records," 87, 90, 97

48 Ibid., frontispiece (statistical comparison of baptized captives by tribe and date), and 35

actively encourage Indian resentment against the new settlers in hopes that an uprising would drive the Mormons away. The Indians became increasingly hostile.49

By 1853 Wakara,

Wakara, a Utechiefand theforemost

the veteran horse and slave trader, and his kin had found an excuse to rise against the Mormons, and in a brief but bloody war the Indians and Mormons exchanged attacks and atrocities until Wakara agreed to peace after nine months of war. 50 With his death a year later the slave trade in Utah was all but dead as well, save for the purchasing of children from their own parents to be fostered in Mormon homes But even that practice would die out within a decade By the 1870s Indian slavery in New Mexico had also ground to a halt, buried in a flurry of laws against enforced labor. But by then the availability of "wild" Indians to be "harvested" had decreased anyway because of their relocation on reservations.51

But throughout the early history of both New Mexico and Utah, the practice of acquiring Indian children by capture or barter— reprehensible though the practice might have been—was actively pursued. Both Catholics and Mormonsjustified the practice by regarding it as a tool of conversion and civilization; despite popular belief to the contrary, the custom of purchasing and fostering Indian children in Christian homes in order to "redeem" them did not originate with the Utah Mormons or with their leader, Brigham Young. Considering

49 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Journal History, May 2, 1853, quoting from BYMH; Deseret News Weekly, December 15, 1853 Antipathy from former mountain men in: BYMH, May 13, 1849, 76, 77; and, for example, Orson F. Whitney, History of Utah, vol. I (Salt Lake City: George Q. Cannon and Sons, 1892-1904), 515

50 For example, B H Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church ofJesus Christ ofLatter-day Saints, vol 4 (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1930), 36-40; Howard A Christy, "The Walker War: Defense and Conciliation as Strategy," Utah Historical Quarterly 47 (Fall 1979): 216-35.

51 See Bailey, Indian Slave Trade, 175-87. These laws began with the abolishment of slavery in 1865 through the Thirteenth Amendment Laws against peonage and Indian servitude were passed in 1867 Ironically, after 1865 slavery was illegal, but indenturing and peonage—considered voluntary servitude— were not; new laws had to be enacted to counteract these forms of slavery

Ute slave dealer in Utah. Painting by Solomon Carvahlo, an artist and photographer who accompaniedJohn C. Fremont on hisfifth western expedition USHS collections.

their own practice to be an enlightened step in the progress of the Indian children they purchased and adopted, Utahns seem to have been oblivious to the existence of an almost identical practice, wellestablished and independently developed, in New Mexico.

Call it what you may—fostering, indentured servitude, or slavery—the end result of the practice was the wresting of children away from their parents and the conscious destruction of their traditional culture. But the new life they were given to replace the old was not necessarily a better life At itsworst it meant lifelong servitude and sometimes abuse, and at best it always meant separation from families aswell as prejudice and social dislocation both within Indian and nonIndian society While recidivistic Indians who returned to "the blanket" were more likely to make a place for themselves within the Indian society than within the white—as the experiences of Chief Nicaagat of the White River Utes and Chief Ouray of the Uncompaghre52 attest— these former captives were often no more readily accepted among their own people than they were among the non-Indians. With a foot in both societies, they were a part of neither, separated from their Euro-American neighbors by prejudice and from their Native American kin by training.

However, the desire to remake Indians into dark-skinned white men continued to be entrenched in theories of Indian "redemption" long after the Indian slave trade and the indenturing of children were curtailed. The later policy of forcibly removing Indian children from their parents—by kidnapping, at gunpoint, or by threatening to withhold supplies—and sending them to boarding schools was little more than an extension of the same philosophy that malleable children should be separated from the "detrimental" influence of traditionbound parents in order to "redeem" and train them as acculturated and productive Christian Indians

In the mid-1950s, primarily as a response to the lack of schools on some Indian reservations, the Mormon church in Utah reintroduced their own practice of fostering Indian children in a program that was

52 Ouray, the son of a Ute mother and Apache father, was raised in New Mexico, where he spent his youth as a sheepherder As a young man he returned to the Uncompaghre, where his non-Indian experiences and linguistic skills helped move him to a position of prominence at a time when the U. S. government needed Indian leaders with whom they could negotiate favorable agreements The "king-makers" in Washington ultimately appointed him "Head Chief of the Utes in Colorado The evidence strongly suggests that either he or his parents had been Indian captives (there would be no other reason for him to be raised among Hispanics) Some Utes claim it was Ouray himself who was the captive. See Thomas F. Dawson, "Major Thompson, Chief Ouray and the Utes: An Interview, May 23, 1921," Colorado Magazine 7 (May 1930): 113-22; and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe culture and history capsules posted on their tribal web page; and P David Smith, Ouray: Chiefof the Utes (Ouray, CO: Wayfinder Press, 1986), 34-36

more than an echo of the indenturing of Indian children a hundred years earlier. Although it has been discontinued now because of the expansion of public education, for more than forty years the Indian Placement Program placed school-aged children into Mormon families where, for nine months, they could go to school and—not coincidentally—be integrated into the white mainstream culture, work side by side with their white foster siblings, and be catechized into the Mormons' Christian religion. Though such students were not stolen or given away permanently but were voluntarily fostered, this acculturative fostering was but a short step from the original practice of purchasing and fostering children that had been initiated by Brigham Young in Utah and justified by the Spanish church authorities in New Mexico as one of the most "practicable" means of "redeeming" and educating a new, "righteous" generation of Indians.53 Echoing Brigham Young, Spencer W. Kimball noted in 1956 that the new Mormon fostering program was the "finest program conceived for the rapid and permanent advancement and progress of the Indian child."54

Such open acculturation of Indian children by non-Indians has virtually ceased today. Yet as increased communication systems, roads, public education, and mass and electronic media have brought mainstream American culture onto the reservation, many tribes continue to struggle to balance modernization with the preservation of traditional values and heritage. Meanwhile, Indian tribes across the country have reasserted their rights to their children and have begun to actively fight against the raising of them by non-Indians. Supported by Supreme Court decisions, many Indian tribes no longer allow their children to be adopted by non-Indians, and stringent limitations have been placed on even fostering them outside of Indian influences. Given the years-long history of the exploitation of Indian children and the subsequent rise in Indian nationalism, pride, and demands for

63 As a concept, the Indian Placement Program seemed promising; however, there were some parents who offered their children for the same reason that some had sold their children a hundred years earlier: to divest themselves of children for most of the year. Also, some children and parents exploited the system to acquire new sets of clothing each year from generous foster parents

The author, who spent eleven years living on the Navajo reservation, has found through personal observation, conversations, and interviews that—since baptism was a requirement for participation— children were often solicited and perfunctorily baptized by over-zealous missionaries in order to make them eligible In the white communities, many children became recipients of prejudice, could not adjust to their foster families, or were shy or unhappy as they faced unfamiliar surroundings yearly While many of the students bonded well with their foster families and now look back on the experience as a good one in the long run, at the time it was not unusual for children to hate it, and night after night many children cried themselves to sleep as they lay in strange beds

54 Spencer W Kimball, "The Expanding Indian Program," LDS Conference Reports, October 6, 1956.

self-determination, it is not surprising that tribal entities now emphasize the maintenance of an Indian identity over the seeming advantages of more affluent, non-Indian adoptive or foster homes.

It is the same struggle over the rights to a culture's own children—and the heritage they represent—that has been fought for centuries.

The Arrowhead Trails Highway: The Beginnings of Utah's Other Route to the Pacific Coast

BY EDWARD LEO LYMAN

I N 1918 HIGHWAY BOOSTER DOUGLAS WHITE stated that the old Mormon trail from Salt Lake City to St. George was destined to become one of the most important links in the transcontinental highway system. At the time, the proposition probably seemed far-fetched, particularly because of the progress being made on the Lincoln Highway,1 which promoters hoped would become the pre-eminent transcontinental route for the burgeoning automobile tourist industry. But as it turned out, White, one of the early supporters of the Arrowhead Trails Highway along the Mormon route, was prophetic: this rough track running from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City would indeed become a critical transportation corridor.

The Arrow Head Service Station in Pleasant Grove, ca. 1929. USHS collections.

A native Utahn, Leo Lyman teaches history at Victor Valley College, California, and is completing a book-length study of the wagon road from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles.

1 Charles Bigelow scrapbook, Dixie College Archives, St George, Utah The Lincoln Highway later became Interstate 80

Arrowhead Trails Highway 243

The idea for the Arrowhead Trails Highway was born in 1914 when businessmen from Las Vegas began to push for a highway through their town. The idea especially took off that year after wellknown "desert pilot" Charles H. Bigelow began to investigate a shorter route between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles by going through Las Vegas instead of through Ely and Tonopah, Nevada. Bigelow made three trips into the desert. In Salt Lake City he conferred with Salt Lake Railroad official Fred C. Wann, who pledged the community's support for the highway project Early the following year, Bigelow met with interested southern California businessmen at his hometown of Redlands to begin organizing efforts in support of the highway Thus the Arrowhead Trails Association was born.2

It was natural that southern Californians became the highway's primary boosters None of the western states were in the forefront of initial developments in American automobile travel, but early in the century, southern California began an unprecedented love affair with the automobile, and the region's auto enthusiasts soon became leaders in promoting good roads for tourist travel throughout the West and beyond. The Automobile Club of Southern California was pre-eminent in these efforts. Besides pressuring political entities responsible for highway construction and publicizing roads already completed, club officials also sought links from their region to the rest of the country. One of the most significant of the club's contributions was the promotion of a new highway to Utah at a time when the nation was beginning to appreciate the great scenic wonders of southern Utah's canyonlands. In order to develop roads within and beyond southern California, the auto club employed men in "scout cars." These men not only reported road conditions on known highways but also ventured into the virtually uncharted mountain and desert regions of the Far West in search of the most practicable routes. They gathered data needed for effective road maps, also produced by club staff members, and engaged a crew of road-sign painters to effectively mark the highways even in areas far beyond the boundaries of California. In the long run, the federal Highway Aid Act of 1916 would bring the national government into the process and assure completion of the vast interstate highway system But prior to that, many highways were laid out and

2 Redlands Review, February 1, 26,July 8, 11, 12, 1916; Washington County News, March 4, 1920; see also Edward Leo Lyman "Arrowhead Trails Highway:

Quarterly, Fall 1999,

California's Predecessor to Interstate 15," Southern California

for a more detailed treatment of the California portion of this story

The name "arrowhead" came from an arrowhead figure clearly visible on the mountain slope at San Bernardino. It is unclear whether vegetation was intentionally removed to form the arrowhead or whether it is a natural phenomenon

Utah Historical Quarterly

promoted by private business interests.3

After his initial meeting with the auto club, Charles Bigelow sought to more carefully define the proposed route within Utah Some citizens from Sevier and Sanpete Counties had made preliminary overtures promising to construct a highway from Marysvale halfway to Los Angeles.4 There is no evidence, however, that this offer was more than a daring effort by central Utah promoters seeking to bring the proposed highway through their area. Besides, Bigelow and his associates soon determined that a highway east of the central Utah mountains was not the shortest or most practicable route to Salt Lake City from Los Angeles. Instead, by the summer of 1916 they were seeking to establish working relationships with leaders of Utah communities on the west side of the mountains in Washington, Iron, Beaver, Millard, and Juab counties. The reaction of businessmen in Fillmore was probably typical. Millard County citizens had taken notice of the Redlands meeting, carefully considered correspondence from Arrowhead Trails Association president Mont B Chubb, and then promptly organized their own branch of the association They knew that communities east of the mountains, in Sanpete and Sevier counties, were lobbying for the designated route and that Millard and its west-side neighbors could "not sit supinely and wait" for the road selection. Eventually, the Utah Road Commission decided to favor both routes, the one on the east as the primary route to the Grand Canyon and the one on the west as the main roadway to southern California.5

3 RedlandsReview, August 20,1916, stated that initial support for Bigelow's efforts came from Studebaker Corporation, Goodrich Rubber Company, and the San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake City Railroad even before the auto club gave assistance Similarly, it was a delegation of Searchlight businessmen that prevailed in securing routing through their town See Las VegasAge, November 21, 1914, November 12, 1944

4 Redlands Review, February 1, 26,July 8, 11, 12, 1916

5 Millard County Progress, July 21, 1916; Edward Leo Lyman and Linda King Newell, History ofMillard County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1999); Salt Lake Tribune, November 18, 27, 28, 1921

Charles Bigelow, aformer racecar driver and the main road locator offuture Interstate 15, sits in the official Salt Lake—Los Angeles Arrowhead Trails automobile. From "William G. Moore, comp., Fun with Fritz, 1986.

Arrowhead Trails Highway 245

Not long after the formation of the first chapters of the Arrowhead Trails Association, Fritz Fisher, president of the Redlands Chamber of Commerce, suggested that a group of Californians drive automobiles over the proposed route to prove and publicize its feasibility. The group would also seek to organize more chapters and lobby for improvement of the highway. On September 25, 1916, three cars loaded with Californians embarked up Cajon Pass; they met Charles Bigelow, Los Angeles Times reporter F.V. Owens, and railroad traffic agent Douglas White en route Another added to the party along the way was Nevada state senator Levi Syphus whose parents had traveled over the route as Mormon converts withdrawing from the San Bernardino colony

After a difficult trip across the sometimes roadless Mojave Desert, where the group camped the first night out, the party finally reached Las Vegas. There, the men attended a meeting of the Arrowhead Trails Association.6 Continuing on, they wound through desert hills and canyons, including one that they named the Valley of Fire—the name stuck—and came to the small Mormon town of St. Thomas at the lower edge of the Moapa Valley, which has long since been inundated byLake Mead

The group then climbed over a divide and through a canyon sufficiently narrow and rocky to cause later observers to marvel that it was ever a main highway. At Bunkerville the group held a road promotion meeting and was treated to a melon and fruit feast across the Virgin River at Mesquite. After a difficult night drive over the Beaver Dam Mountains (long thereafter known as Utah Hill) in the southwestern corner of Utah, the party arrived at St. George early in the morning, exhausted after eighteen hours spent traveling only 150 miles.

The roads in Utah were generally better, and the promotional meetings held at St George, Cedar City, and Beaver—a town that also staged a dance in honor of the occasion—were equally successful. Southern Utah citizens were excited about the prospect of a good highway link to the outside world The Millard County branch of the Arrowhead Association dispatched nine carloads of boosters to greet the California association members, who hadjust visited Cove Fort, and to escort them into Fillmore There they were treated to a ban-

6 William G Moore, comp., Fun with Fritz:Adventures in Early Redlands, Big Bear and Hollywood with John H. "Fritz"Fisher (Redlands, Calif.: Moore Historical Foundation, 1986), 45-51

Along the Arrowhead TrailsHighway, counterclockwise from top: Charles Bigelow's Oldsmobile stuck in mud on main highway; California roadpromotion party visiting CoveFort; Nephi townspeople welcoming Californiatourin cars; hotel in Fillmore with questionable toiletfacilities; Wi Burke ofRedlands, California, and Douglas White, railroad industrial director, admiring view north of St. George. PhotosfromJohn Fisherphoto collectionpublished in William G. Moore, comp., Fun with Fritz: Adventure in Early Redlands, Big Bear and Hollywood with Joh H "Fritz" Fisher (Redlands, CA: Moore Historical Foundation, 1986). Related photo negatives can befound at Smiley Library, Redlands, California.

Arrowhead Trails Highway 247

quet provided by the high school domestic science department at the town's new school building

That evening the Utah state engineer made some remarks to the group. The featured speaker was Douglas White, industrial director of the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City Railroad, who stressed the hundreds of thousands of dollars that the road was expected to generate for southern Utah, southern Nevada, and southern California. He also observed that this new road would be shorter by at least eighty miles than the old route across central and eastern Nevada and that it was the only all-season roadway from California to the Intermountain West. Naturally, the consensus of the gathering was "to boost for the Arrowhead Trail."7

The California party made its way northward through Utah, holding promotional meetings at Holden, Nephi, Payson, and Spanish Fork, where the group was offered a public luncheon. When they reached Provo, the group was particularly appreciative of a "real hotel"; at three previous lodging places the toilet facilities had been less than ideal.8 Most of the party spent the evening in Provo discussing roads and road construction with a group of about thirty men. The party finally reached Salt Lake City where they stayed at Hotel Utah as guests of Governor Simon Bamberger and the local chambers of commerce. They had traveled eight hundred miles from Redlands, mostly over unimproved roads, but their letters home were enthusiastic. They noted the "glorious scenery" and that "everybody along the line enthusiastic Chapters [of the Arrowhead Association were] being organized over the line at every point. At some places the whole town turn[ed] out to welcome [us]."9

Later that fall, California association members were perhaps overoptimistic when they informed their Utah counterparts that they estimated ten thousand automobile tourists would travel the new route during 1917. Naturally, it was anticipated that most of these would spend money in towns along the way. Several communities, including

7 The Arrowhead: A Monthly Magazine of Western Travel and Development, September 1911, is a special issue of White's magazine promoting Millard County, Utah; copy in Special Collections, Harold B Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah

8 At St George, Fisher noted that the only toilet in their place of lodging was on a raised platform in the center of a sixteen-foot-square room with seven entry doors along the walls He recalled, "You nervously wondered which one of the seven you had neglected to lock." At Fillmore it was an opposite arrangement, with the toilet installed at the end of a downstairs hallway, cut off by a curtain hung from a pole There, Fritz stated, "When you heard someone approaching, you judiciously coughed." At Beaver, it was the overflow of a toilet in a room above theirs that caused some of the California group to discard damaged items soaked during the night See Moore, Fun with Fritz, 54-55

9 Moore, Fun with Fritz, 57

Fillmore, geared up for the tourist trade increase with impressive promptness. Within a short time, at least three business establishments, including a garage and a motor hotel, would be named Arrowhead in that town alone. For the next half-century as much as a third of Fillmore's income would be generated from tourists.10

The Automobile Club of Southern California maintained a low profile during the early promotion of the new highway Perhaps this was to prevent suspicions that the highway effort would benefit southern California most of all. Too, perhaps the club thought it wise—in order to avoid prematurely angering the communities along the old central Nevada route—to withhold official backing until government agencies had sanctioned the project. In fact, in 1917 the club was still engaged in a sign-placing project along that old route. Finally, in June 1918 the club magazine, Touring Topics, noted that its "pioneer car" crews had traveled over the Arrowhead Trail taking map and sign notes and that the organization would soon devote its attention to a sign-making project for the new route. These steps did much to assure the future acceptance of the infant highway.11

The key road locator, Charles H. Bigelow, was introduced to the public in a Las Vegas Age sketch describing him as an automobile enthusiast. He had enjoyed a notable career as an early West Coast racecar driver and had participated in several of the Los Angeles-toPhoenix desert races; in 1911 he had won a major road race in the San Francisco Bay area. Soon thereafter, he established a reputation as one of the best desert road locators in the American Southwest; he had helped locate the National Old Trails Highway—later Route 66—and rival ocean-to-ocean routes: from Los Angeles to Phoenix and beyond and from San Diego to Imperial, then to Yuma, and on to Texas.

12 Bigelow was also an effective publicist, offering news columns to local newspapers and taking reporters and photographers from the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Examiner with him on some of his exploration excursions On other occasions he was accompanied by movie cameramen working for the Hearst news syndicate.13

Although on several occasions the promoters stated that the proposed Arrowhead Trail followed "the route traveled by the old

10 Millard CountyProgress, September 29, October 6, November 10, 1916; Lyman and Newell, Millard County, 246-47

11 Touring Topics, December 1917, 9; May 1918, 15;June 1918, 15

12 Charles Bigelow scrapbook, including clippings from Los Angeles Times, November 1, 1908, Oakland Tribune, February 22, 1911, and San Francisco Chronicle, February 23, 1911, Dixie College Archives; also Las Vegas Age, May 13, 1916, which asserts that Bigelow had also blazed the other routes

13 Las Vegas Age, February 5, 12, April 1, May 13, 1916.

ARROWHEAD TRAILS HIGHWAY

Los Angeles to Salt Lake City

Mormons when they trekked across the desert with their oxen and unyielding [sic] carts and found away through themountains to[the San Bernardino] valley," theArrowhead Trail in fact followed that road only on each end.14 In hisexplorations, locator Bigelow doubtless skirted Death Valley as the pioneers did andmaybe then crossed Mountain Springs and passed thetown ofBlue Diamond to reach Las Vegas, buthewas toogood at hisjob to select that route for automo-

<»' Proposed and Associated Routes

Flagstaff

Mohave Yavapai /N. Meek. 1999

Map prepared by Norman Meek, California State University, San Bernardino.

biles, mainly because of its two steep mountain passes and several long stretches of soft sand. The locator initially preferred a route nearly parallel to the Salt Lake Railroad from Amboy to Kelso, Cima, and Manville, California, and then toJean and Las Vegas, Nevada But at the same time, Clark County, Nevada, officials preferred a route through Barstow and Silver Lake, California, then on to Jean. Both were superior to the route that had been in use for some eight years, which ran between Goffs and Needles, California, then north through Searchlight, Nevada After Las Vegas, the old Mormon road would be followed more closely.15

One family took that route apparently even before the National Old Trails section was improved with oil in 1916. About 1914, the Lafayette Morrison family moved from San Diego to settle in the new farming community of Woodrow, Utah, camping along the way. The first day, they traveled from Riverside to Barstow. A son, Ralph, later recalled "the trip up Cajon Pass was rather rugged but passible [sic] and we did OK getting to Barstow." They broke a driveshaft on the Franklin car, but fortunately a mechanic at Searchlight recalled a similar automobile burned and abandoned some miles out of town, retrieved the necessary part, made the repairs, and sent the family on toward Las Vegas. There they camped at a ranch that had a well, a spring, a pond of water, and a friendly proprietor who allowed camping On the next day'sjourney, Ralph remembered "one bad sandy strip of road" on which they encountered five or six cars coming from the other direction—a surprising number for that early stage, although most were probably Nevada people. The Morrisons assisted an oncoming automobile that got stuck in the sand, and the entire group worked together to get all the vehicles safely on their way

The family ordered meals at a hotel in Mesquite, and Ralph long remembered the greasy eggs that he could not eat, although he appreciated the bread, butter, and milk served. After waiting for more auto parts after a second breakdown at Littlefield, Arizona, the family arrived in St George, where they ordered another dinner at a little restaurant. The steaks appeared to the cautious mother to be "pretty old and smelled kinda spoiled," and Ralph was again disappointed. For the then-young man, one of the most memorable segments of the trip was the so-called Black Ridge between St. George and Cedar City, "over a terrible road." He also recalled difficulty with the

15

Lyman, "Arrowhead Trails Highway."

Arrowhead Trails Highway 251

road through the low pass just south of Beaver. As an older man, Ralph concluded, "Actually, while it was quite a trip and would be unthinkable to tackle it nowadays under those conditions, we were treated very well on the trip. People that we met in the little towns were very accommodating and if we needed help they helped us."16

During the spring of 1917, as the nation was adjusting to involvement in World War I, some opponents of the Arrowhead Highway— probably backers of the Lincoln Highway—informed the U. S. War Department that the infant Los Angeles-to-Salt Lake City road was simply an unproved paper project that should not be included in the national highway system then being worked out by the military. Arrowhead Trails advocates heard the allegation and immediately organized a timed one-car road race to demonstrate how fast the new route could be traveled. Naturally, Bigelow was one of the drivers; he was joined by Capt O R Bird and Sgts H A Baker and Roy Hamilton. Although the well-publicized trip was staged during a period of considerable rain and mud, it took but thirty-six and a quarter hours, including time out for meals and some remarkably quick tire changes by the sergeants. This was the fastest time ever recorded between the two cities, achieved despite a blinding storm that slowed the car for 150 miles. The drivers asserted that in normal weather and road conditions the trip could be made easily in about twenty-four hours. Convinced of the practicality of the Arrowhead route, the War Department changed its route priorities, although it designated the shorter Cima cutoff blazed by Bigelow rather than the common and marked route through Searchlight.17

Even though Arrowhead promoters did not encourage pleasure touring while the United States was involved in World War I, traffic increased over the route, as it did on the National Old Trails and Lincoln highways. In April 1917, 123 automobiles bound either for Los Angeles or Salt Lake City were helped across the bridgeless Virgin River; 200 passed the Indian farm at Santa Clara during the first three weeks ofJuly. The following year, 218 cars were assisted at the Virgin during April and 196 during the first eighteen days of May. It was estimated that up to 2,500 cars would use the roadway that year. 18

Residents along the highway clearly perceived the benefits to their communities of the increased traffic, and many participated in

'

18

16 Ralph S Morrison "Recollections," undated typescript in Great Basin Museum, Delta, Utah

7 Millard County Progress, June 11, 1917; Las Vegas Age, June 16, 1917.

Las Vegas Age, March 16, May 12, August 11, 1917, March 16,July 6, 1918.

Utah Historical Quarterly

volunteer work days to repair chuckholes and rake loose rocks out of the roadway. In mid-March 1918 some thirty-eight horse teams, with scrapers, ditchers, and other equipment, along with more than fifty other laborers from St. George, Santa Clara, and the Shivwits Indian Reservation, greatly improved one of the first stretches of the road within Utah. The previous winter, a crew of state prison convicts had worked, probably less willingly, in the Utah Hill vicinity; possibly the rip-rap rock-fill bridge still visible there on the now-abandoned road was built by these convicts Citizens of Santa Clara and Kanarra also donated a tremendous amount of labor to improving the highway in 1920.19

The communities took additional steps The Salt Lake Tribune noted that several towns along the Arrowhead route mounted beautification efforts to enhance community appearance as the expected traffic increases began to materialize.20 A column in the Beaver Press queried whether most local citizens realized how many tourists from Arizona, California, Nevada, and beyond passed through town. The paper noted that the community needed "better accommodations for these people" so that they would stay in town longer and "spend some of their money [there] instead of going to larger cities." Townspeople soon made substantial improvements in tourist housing and eating establishments, and Beaver thereafter remained more than able to garner its share of tourist dollars. Neighboring towns strove to do the same. 21

Despite the enthusiasm of the southern Utah counties and municipalities, state officials appeared more than a little slow in extending cooperation to the Arrowhead project. Finally, in September 1918, Governor Bamberger, state engineer George F. McGonagle, and deputy state engineer Ray Galbraith met with representatives of various counties through which the Arrowhead Trail ran and belatedly offered promises that Utah would do her part to

19 Las Vegas Age, February 12, March 16,July 6, 1918; Washington County News, January 8, 1920, March 22, April 5, 1923; Ezra Knowlton, History ofHighway Development in Utah (Salt Lake City: Utah State Road Commission, 1967), 198

20 Quoted in Washington County News, January 8, 1920

21 BeaverPress, July 11, 1919

Still-standing "rip-rap"fill bridge across a wash on Utah Hill, probably constructed by Utah StatePrison labor and used early in the existence of the Arrowhead Highway. Photo taken early 1990s by CliffordL. Walker.

improve the highway. They promised $15,000 in federal funds to construct a better bridge across the Santa Clara River and to build the highway across the nearby Shivwits Indian reservation. It appeared that even more money would be forthcoming. In early 1920 Arrowhead Highway pioneer Charles Bigelow not only predicted heavy traffic on the route but also stated that two million dollars raised by state bonds would soon be available for work on the Arrowhead Trail.22

The activities of the Arrowhead boosters had slackened during the war, but in the fall of 1918 they reorganized as the Arrowhead Development Association with Joseph H. Manderfield, the Union Pacific traffic manager who was tremendously popular in southern Utah, as president Each state chose a vice president Local promoter Joseph S Snow, from the prominent St George family, was Utah vice president, and E W Griffith, an original promoter of the road, was his Nevada counterpart. California later chose F.A. Wann, formerly of Utah and also a Union Pacific employee, for its vice president. Reportedly, association president Manderfield devoted much time to promoting the association and highway with the goal of getting its share of the 1919 travel traffic.23

By then, Congress had, through a series of new highway laws, improved the prospects for relatively poor, sparsely populated states like Utah and Nevada In July 1916 legislation provided for federal cooperation with states in construction of rural roads The U S Department of Agriculture was given responsibility for distributing the funds on the basis of population, area, and mileage of roads Initially, states were expected to match the federal funds. However, in 1919 Congress liberalized this requirement and increased the amount of federal money that could be spent per mile of highway. In 1921 Congress again reduced the proportion of matching funds expected from the states, to about twenty-six percent. This measure saved Utah from an almost impossible funding dilemma.

At a meeting of the state road commission on October 8, 1919, Charles Bigelow, who was now living in St George, was appointed special district engineer over road work in Washington and Iron counties

Several months later, Bigelow and fellow St George highway enthusiastJoseph Snowjourneyed to southern California to procure roadbuilding equipment. While there, they also arranged for what was

22 Las Vegas Age, September 14, 1918, February 14, 1920

23 Ibid., September 14, December 28, 1918,January 25, 1919

called "the heaviest advertising campaign yet of Utah and its scenic attractions" ever mounted. In order to garner a large share of the tourist traffic so rapidly proliferating in the California southland, they prepared pamphlets that included photographs, strip maps, information on tourist accommodations, and verbal descriptions of Utah. While no mention was made in the Utah newspapers of the Automobile Club of Southern California, it was known that the branch offices of that organization were given large numbers of these pamphlets to be circulated among motorists inquiring about tours in that region. At the same time, promoters like W. W. Wylie of Pasadena, who owned campgrounds at Zion and on the north rim of the Grand Canyon, were lavishing unrestrained praise on the canyons and other wonders to be seen in southern Utah.24

With hopes of receiving federal funds after the war, the Utah Road Commission planned projects related to the Arrowhead Trails that would have exceeded anyone's previous expectations. Highway improvements were projected for segments of the roadway between St George and Buckhorn (a spring between Parowan and Beaver), from Kanosh to Holden, and from Scipio to Levan; this would create a total of more than 150 miles of good gravel-surfaced roads All was in readiness to complete these segments, but then state officials realized that, even at a reduced percentage, it was not at all certain that they could meet the matching funds obligations.25 The central problem southern Utah faced was that the majority of the population, including state lawmakers, had never paid much attention to the portion of the state beyond the Wasatch Front, particularly in budget expenditures.

Additionally, there were people in the northern portion of the state, including W. D. Rishel, manager of the Utah State Automobile Association, who seemingly engaged in conscious efforts to belittle the importance of the Arrowhead route. 2 6 In the 1919 edition of the "Official Touring Guide" of the Utah State Automobile Association, there was no mention of the Arrowhead Trail Highway; in fact, only a dozen pages out of 180 even dealt with roads south of Nephi. A late November issue of the Salt Lake Herald featured an article discussing

24 Washington County News, October 16, December 18, 1919, February 5, 1920.

25 Official Touring Guide, Utah State Automobile Association, 1919, 157-69

26 Salt Lake Tribune, September 30, 1915, indicates how opposed the head of the Utah auto club was to the early efforts to promote the Arrowhead Highway This is in exact opposition to his daughter's later assertions in Virginia Rishel, Wheels toAdventure: Bill RisheTs Western Routes (Salt Lake City: Howe Brothers, 1983), 119-20, which argues that Rishel was the one who first recognized that the route was viable and that he had difficulty interesting southern Utah citizens This assertion is patently false

Arrowhead Trails Highway 255

the highways bringing traffic into the state. According to the article, the five highways funneling motorists into the northern Utah population and commercial centers brought just over 20,000 automobiles into the state during the first ten months of 1919, while the Arrowhead Trail carried only 1,244 non-local cars However, Jody Leavitt, who was employed at Mesquite to pull automobiles across the Virgin River, had figures indicating that he assisted 4,952 non-local cars that year, not counting those who got through on their own during low-water periods. This was a figure at least equal to the best of the northern Utah entrances into the state, even in the infancy of the Arrowhead. Yet newspaper readers in northern Utah had no way to know that fact.27

Equally serious was the condition of some southern Utah roads and the probability that they would remain poor through lack of proper legislative initiative. The San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City Railroad, soon fully incorporated into the Union Pacific system, passed within thirty-five miles of Cedar City, and most mail for a large portion of southwestern Utah was unloaded at Lund station. But the road from there to Cedar was a virtual quagmire impassable for motorized vehicles during the winter season. In early 1920, it could take more than a month for parcel post material to reach Cedar City from Lund, a fact that the Iron County Record termed "a disgrace to the state." Having virtually no contact with northern Utah during the harsh winter, some 30,000 people depended on prompt improvement of the road The irrepressible Charles Bigelow traveled from St George to Las Vegas to determine if the founder of an early freighting line,Joseph Milne, could get a truck over the Arrowhead route to deliver much-needed gasoline, medicine, and other supplies. All understood that with proper highway improvement southern Utah communities would seldom be similarly stranded in the future.28

But the situation first had to get worse. In mid-March 1920 Bigelow received notice from his superior, State Road Engineer Ira Browning, that all new state construction work in Iron and Washington County must cease This was because the two million dollars in state highway bonds could not then be sold at par, and state law prohibited selling them for the highest offer, which was $91 on each $100 of face value This meant that, even though the dedication of Zion National Park was approaching that year, most state officials

could see no way to assist the people in the southern end of the state to prepare for that event. However, another state road engineer, George McGonagle, suggested that the various counties interested in completion of the highway could take up some of the bonds until the market improved.29

In the meantime, Arrowhead promoters perceived still another attempt to thwart their efforts. The Salt Lake City press noted a meeting at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco held to plan fundraising through subscription and state expenditures to complete the interstate Lincoln Highway from Wendover, Utah, through the Sierra Nevada to the Pacific Coast. According to the San Francisco Examiner, a fund ofjust under a half million dollars was being raised "for the purpose of diverting travel from southern California to northern California." Some southern Utah newspapermen noted that officials of the San Francisco-based California State Automobile Association were active in this effort and alleged that some leaders of the Utah State Automobile Association, particularly director Rishel, were fully cooperative with such efforts. They raised a pertinent question: "Why is it that certain Salt Lake people work so hard for Reno and against the southern portion of the state?"30

In mid-June 1920 the Washington County News noted that in the recent Sunday editions of the Salt Lake City papers articles on the roads of southern Utah ignored the term "Arrowhead Trails Highway," preferring such verbiage as "road to St. George" and "Zion's Canyon highway" instead. The News also discussed a Salt Lake Tribune column by Wesley King proposing that the name "Arrowhead Trails Highway" be replaced with "Zion Park Highway." The News alleged that King's proposal—and the apparent acceptance of it by the papers—was part of an effort by agents of the northern California tourist industry "seeking to counter the interests of southern California."31

One advantage of the southern route that opponents could hardly deny was the superior scenery adjacent to the Arrowhead route This continued to be one of the most consistent messages of Charles Bigelow, who stressed the fantastic natural tourist attractions the new roadway would open to the public. Zion Canyon and the

29 Washington County News, March 25, 1920

30 Ibid., April 29, 1920

31 Ibid.,June 17, 1920. Similarly, the next year the Salt Lake Tribune, onJune 18, 19, 1921, published a full-page article and map showing Salt Lake City as the "Hub of Park Tourist Traffic," with what was labeled as the Zion Park Highway running through Cedar City all the way to Barstow, California Although some maps even in the 1940s still used the term Arrowhead Trails Highway, the name Highway 91 was being utilized by the 1930s

Arrowhead Trails Highway 257

north rim of the Grand Canyon were simply the foremost of these, wtith Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks also notable It is likely that the Union Pacific Railroad had the promotion of these excellent tourist attractions in mind, at least partially, when it lent so much support to early advocacy of the Arrowhead Trails Highway. Certainly, better access roads were essential to proper promotion of what could be called national scenic treasures

Despite the fact that the highway system was hardly adequate, in mid-September 1920 Zion was dedicated as a national park during rather elaborate proceedings chaired by Stephen T Mather, director of the national parks system Mormon apostle Richard R Lyman, a former member of the Utah Highway Commission, represented LDS church president HeberJ. Grant, and numerous political and business leaders were among the speakers, many of whom pled for better access roads to the parks. One of those, C. E. McStay of the Automobile Club of Southern California, candidly stated the fundamental fact that the typical tourist spent an average of twenty dollars per day if facilities warranted. The lack of such facilities was still a foremost challenge for southern Utah citizens.32

One of the most crucial segments of the Arrowhead Trails Highway in Utah was the abrupt grade down the Black Ridge near the rim of the Great Basin to the lower elevations of the state's Dixie In earlier pioneer days, wagons had to be lowered down this spot with ropes. County and state plans to improve this section had been rejected by engineers of the United States Road Commission, but in 1922 federal officials examined the site and submitted a plan that was accepted. At the end of the year the Utah Highway Commission approved a cooperative arrangement for improving the section and appropriated $47,787 from Washington County's portion of the road bond funds to cover the local portion of the cost. Early the next year, Senator Reed Smoot of Utah was able to obtain a $133,000 appropriation for construction of highways and bridges within Zion National Park.33 Yet there was still much road construction to be accomplished in the area

In the spring of 1923 the Provo Chamber of Commerce hosted a meeting that was well-attended by representatives of southern Utah counties. At the meeting a Scenic Highway Association was organized to promote the Arrowhead Trails route and neighboring potential

32 Ibid., September 16, 30, 1920.

33 Ibid., December 7, 1922, March 8, 1923

tourist attractions. Elias S. Woodruff, manager of the Deseret News and newly chosen secretary of the group, enhanced his popularity by stating that Utah had "more south than we have north" in the state, stressing that the greatest of its natural resources was "the scenery of southern Utah." There were certainly some businessmen from farther north who would have been unwilling to concede the veracity of such lavish statements. Nevertheless, the group organized at that time emerged as something of a nemesis to the longer-established Utah Automobile Association.34

The centerpiece of southern Utah's scenic attractions, Zion National Park, was further popularized in lateJune 1923 by the visit of President Warren G Harding, who was still well-liked as he took what proved to be his last trip (he died August 2 after returning from Alaska). In a brief address at St. George, the president complimented the citizens on the improvements made in the region's roads—which, everyone understood, still needed further work. After Harding was welcomed into the park by a combined brass band and chorus performance conducted by Professor E.J. Bleak, he enjoyed a horseback ride of several hours into the canyon. 35

34 Ibid., April 19, 1923 In August 1924, the Utah State Automobile Association filed a court injunction to prevent the new organization from using the name Auto Club of Utah, even though the Scenic Highway Association had won an earlier, similar lawsuit On August 28, 1924, the Washington County News asserted that the older organization was simply trying to throw obstacles in the way of "a body that will truly represent [the] state's interests."

35 Ibid., June 28, 1923

Warren G. Harding and his entourage taking a less-than-quiet horsebackridein southern Utah during thepresident's final trip before he died. USHS collections.

Arrowhead Trails Highway 259

In November 1921, at a well-attended regular meeting of the Utah Society of Engineers hosted by the Salt Lake City Commercial Club, R J Finch, chief regional engineer of the U S Bureau of Public Roads, urged the need for a Utah tax on gasoline, which was helping to solve the highway funding challenges in other states. Auto association director W. D. Rishel seconded the timely proposal. This recommendation undoubtedly stemmed not only from the crisis of the Utah Highway Commission having cut half its staff, particularly its engineers, in the previous year but also out of frustration with the consistent parsimony of the state legislature on such matters Two years later the same subject was recommended to members of a new legislature by Governor Charles R. Mabey. This time, the lawmakers complied with a tax of two and a half cents per gallon, one of the most important steps yet made for highway building in Utah.36 Still, although the state gasoline tax and federal assistance for highway construction were already in place by 1924, their ultimate success was not yet assured. And the bond funds that had earlier appeared so abundant had not fulfilled the needs in southern Utah.

Thus several other, seemingly drastic, methods of highway financing were attempted The first of these stemmed from an effort by the Scenic Highways Association to further improve the old road from Iron County into Washington County in order to make Zion and Grand Canyons more easily accessible. In the absence of sufficient state funds in hand, the Association decided to encourage citizens in the various counties along the Arrowhead Trail to underwrite the borrowing of $35,000 from banks situated between St. George and Salt Lake City. Each $1,000 note was to be endorsed by fifteen individuals who guaranteed its payment should the state not eventually appropriate the funds to repay this indebtedness. Salt Lake City and Utah County businessmen were prompt in providing their $10,000 portions, dramatically signifying that not all in that part of the state opposed developments along the Arrowhead Highway Fillmore raised its county quota of $2,500 injust twenty minutes. In Washington County, the only one in southern Utah to be assessed a full $5,000, $2,000 each was cosigned by citizens in St. George and Hurricane, with the remaining amount underwritten in the communities closer to Zion Park. This endeavor was referred to by a Washington County News writer as "a loan to the state road commission." The Utah legislature, perhaps with

a degree of embarrassment over a situation forced upon them by earlier negligence toward southern Utah, finally redeemed the obligation during their 1926-27 session. This generous and perhaps unique private initiative undertaken by civic-minded Utahns is a revealing commentary on the attitudes that persisted among many in the more densely populated portions of northern Utah. Certainly such a contingency was never required to provide for highway or other needs in that part of the state, which had clearly been better served by previous legislatures.37

An even more unusual highway fundraising venture was Governor Mabey's pilgrimage to southern California to appeal for $100,000 from the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the Auto Club of Southern California. Doubtless, as Utah highways historian Ezra C. Knowlton has suggested, the governor was encouraged by the offer of $50,000 from San Francisco Bay-area supporters of the socalled Utah-Nevada-California Highway Association, then promoting the east-west Lincoln Highway Half of this amount had already been delivered prior to Mabey'sjourney to the California southland late in 1923 As he confided to Stephen T Mather, who was still director of the National Parks Service and equally interested in southern Utah highway development, Mabey requested the funds "to help us finance the southwestern highways of Utah." He asserted to the federal official that if the money was forthcoming, of which he was confident, the state would not only be able to complete the Arrowhead Trails Highway, but it would also probably receive sufficient similar assistance to finance the highways to the region's national parks. As Knowlton has stated, "It is doubtful if any other governor in the nation ever went to such extremes in attempts to attain outside financial aid for state highways."38 The negligence by the Utah legislature that made this solicitation seem desirable was certainly related to the rivalry between the competing interstate highways, the Lincoln and Arrowhead. Most lawmakers clearly sympathized with the former.

It was the most obvious manifestation of northern hostility toward southern Utah highway and tourism development that ultimately prevented Mabey's fundraising efforts from reaching fruition. The governor had agreed to allow each of the rival California automobile clubs to place its road signs on the Utah highways they had pledged

37 Utah Highways, 1:9 (April 1924); Washington County News, April 3, 1924; Knowlton, History of Highway Development, 236

38 Salt Lake Tribune,January 22, 1924; Governor Mabey to Stephen T Mather, December 14, 1923, quoted in Knowlton, History ofHighway Development, 236-38.

Arrowhead Trails Highway 261

to help construct. This led to a series of "spirited" state highway commission meetings at which Utah Automobile Association members protested against outsiders placing signs with their colors and logos within the state. These extensive signing programs admittedly had the aim of guiding travelers toward California But Utah had itself failed to provide signs, and opposition to the effort appears to be the epitome of pettiness.

Eventually, after the Utah Highway Commission asserted an unusual degree of independence, and with the mediation of Elias Woodruff of the Scenic Highway Association and Randall L.Jones, a Cedar City agent of the Union Pacific Railroad, a compromise was reached. Both Utah Automobile Association and California organization signs would be placed on the same posts, with the Utah sign on top. In the case of the southern Utah highway, this duplication was necessary because the Utah Automobile Association persisted in refusing to mention the name "Arrowhead" even though it was favored by virtually all the citizens of southern Utah, southern Nevada, and southern California. Thus, the rival organizations each had maps and directional booklets utilizing their preferred highway names, necessitating both road signs to prevent added confusion.39

The real significance of this controversy was that the northern Utah antagonism doubtless alienated the southern California businessmen who had recently pledged to spend $100,000 on Utah highways In mid-January 1924 Utah road commissioner and future governor Henry H. Blood and chief state highway engineer Howard C Means rushed to the California southland to confer with representatives of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the Auto Club of Southern California to "correct erroneous impressions" that had arisen regarding the Utah highway project. While the Utah delegates found a good lasting cordiality toward Governor Mabey, there was clearly less willingness to commit financial assistance When they returned, all that the Utahns could report was that the question of money contributions, clearly rescinded for the moment, would again be raised at the proper time within the Los Angeles organizations. Apparently, that time never came, and the funds Mabey had once virtually secured were not forthcoming.40

Despite such setbacks, within another year the scenic highways of southern Utah had improved sufficiently that the official state publi-

cation, Utah Highways, boasted that the "state and the national government [had] made accessible [those] long unknown scenic splendors." By that time, more than two million dollars had been spent on highway construction in southern Utah. The Union Pacific Railroad had been equally active in establishing rail transportation to Cedar City and constructing hotels and lodges to house the throng of tourists expected to use the tour bus system tying these together For a state where many had essentially ignored its hinterlands for so long, this was indeed a notable series of accomplishments.41

While many of the tourists to the parks arrived by railroad, each of the other states involved in improving the Arrowhead Trails Highway continued the struggles to complete their portion of the roadway. Arizona could anticipate little benefit from constructing the segment of highway that ran from Mesquite to St. George, which just two decades before some federal officials had unsuccessfully attempted to give to Utah. At least one bond issue for constructing this Arizona segment failed, but nevertheless that state fulfilled her obligations to the neighboring states in a timely and impressive manner. Nevada, though it had a smaller population than Utah, never hesitated to expend the required funds for highway links to the outside world The greatest struggle in the Silver State was to persuade highway officials to bypass St. Thomas and adopt a route essentially following the railroad from Las Vegas to Moapa, then crossing the Mormon Mesa to the Bunkerville-Mesquite area. This was accomplished long before the creation of Lake Mead would have compelled that contingency.42

California's main bottleneck was the persistent negligence of San Bernardino County, the largest county in the nation, to adopt one of the shorter routes that Charles Bigelow had been recommending for a full decade. The route continued to run eastward toward Needles on the National Old Trails Highway—soon to be designated Route 66— then turned north to Searchlight, Nevada, and then back northwest to Las Vegas. This was eighty miles longer than the other proposed routes. Bigelow, along with officials from the states of Nevada and California, visited with San Bernardino county supervisors on several occasions urging the more direct routes Finally, when the state assumed responsibility for other county projects, there was no excuse

41 Utah Highways, 2:7 (May 1925): 1-2

42 Washington County News, October 27, 1921 Utah had declined ownership of the so-called Arizona Strip in the 1890s

Arrowhead Trails Highway 263

for further delay, particularly when the Automobile Club of Southern California had raised ten thousand dollars to assist in the highway shortening project. Slow as this project was to come to completion, California paved its segment of the Arrowhead Highway some years earlier than the other participating states.43

In the spring of 1926, H. C. Wilson, a staff photographer for the Salt Lake Tribune, drove an automobile from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles in twenty-five hours, including stops. A month later, Ab Jenkins, Utah's most famous land speed record-seeker, drove a Studebaker an average of 48 miles per hour to make the trip in sixteen hours and seventeen minutes, with no stops except for gasoline. These times certainly added to the popularity of the new highway.44

In 1920, Charles H. Bigelow had been proclaimed the "Father of the Arrowhead Trail" at a Cedar City convention of the Arrowhead Trails Association. In later life, Mesquite garage operator Howard Pulsipher recalled another view of this tireless promoter and road racer He remembered Bigelow as a "poor old man with only one leg who did more to establish that highway than all the officials." This hardly fits the contemporary view of Bigelow, who was not only one of the officials himself but was at one time robust and obviously influential in circles of power. However, he did injure his leg in an automobile accident near LaVerkin in 1920; perhaps the injury led to complications. And it is doubtful whether his employment as a highway engineer continued beyond that point amidst the financial chaos then surrounding Utah highway construction. Later in the decade, which is the time Pulsipher appears to remember, since his own business was not established until 1924, the fortunes of the highway promoter could have declined sufficiently to make him fit the description.

"This poor old man," Pulsipher recalled, "at his own expense and all alone would leave Salt Lake in his old Ford or Chevrolet with cans of gasoline, canteens, tire patching, fan belts, oil, springs and everything to bounce over the rocks and through sand and mud holes" to assist motorists in need on the road. He also persistently contacted individuals and groups along the way he thought might help improve the road by building a bridge, hauling clay to a sandy stretch, clearing rocks from a crucial segment, or grading a steep hill. It was said that he was always trying to get town boards and county commissions to assist as he worked his way toward Los Angeles and then returned.

44

43 Lyman, "Arrowhead Trails Highway," Southern California Quarterly, Summer 1999

Las Vegas Age, March 6, April 17, 1926

Pulsipher stated that this work continued for three or four years, and the road was "greatly improved" prior to its being designated Highway 91 Apparently, then, the irrepressible locator and leading promoter of the road stayed with what must have become an obsession long after he faded from the official limelight and from the newspaper coverage he had been so adept at garnering for his earlier efforts.45 Although Pulsipher's memoir implies that Bigelow lived in Salt Lake City, evidence suggests that Bigelow resided in St. George most of the remainder of his life and was ultimately buried there Still, the recollection of Pulsipher, who also assisted needy motorists on the alwaysdemanding Arrowhead route, is further indication that Bigelow should not be forgotten by the myriads of travelers who use his highway—whatever its current name.

In the ensuing years there would still be instances when northern Utah interests would be less than fair toward the southern Utah region in the realm of interstate highway priorities. This was particularly true during the delays in completing Highway 6-50 from Price to Ely after World War II.46 It was similarly apparent during efforts to have Interstate 70 pass westward from Salina through Scipio to juncture with Highway 6-50 in the Delta area and continue to San Francisco along the same latitude as the remainder of that interstate route.47 On the other hand, the traffic funneled from 1-70 further enhanced utilization of 1-15 and thereby helped fulfill—beyond his fondest dreams—Douglas White's prediction that it would be one of the most important links in the entire interstate system. Today the route blazed by Arrowhead Trails locators and promoters, now also utilized by a natural gas pipeline and electric power transmission lines as well as by the railroad and airlines, is truly one of the busiest transportation corridors in the nation

45 Howard Pulsipher, "Autobiography," typescript, Utah State Historical Society; Washington County News, January 15, May 20, 1920

46 At one point in 1948 citizens of Nevada became so frustrated with Utah's delays in completing its segment of the highway that they offered Utah a quarter-million-dollar loan, interest free, to speed the process of construction The Utah state attorney general weakly determined that, since he could find no statute authorizing such an action, he advised against the proposal A Fallon, Nevada, newspaperman alleged at the time that the political interests of northern Utah cared little for a highway that would enable travelers to cross the state without visiting or spending money at Salt Lake City See Lyman and Newell, Millard County, chapter ten; also Millard County Chronicle, September 20, November 1, 1945, November 27, 1947,July 14, 1949,January 5, 1950, October 18, 1951

47 In 1966 some central Utah and Nevada businessmen attempted to persuade Utah state and federal highway officials of the logic of continuing the east-west transcontinental roadway to connect with Highway 6-50 They had no success at all, partly because the communities which would benefit from the diverted traffic, both southward toward Las Vegas and Los Angeles and north toward Salt Lake City, benefited from the highway terminating where planned See Millard County Chronicle, February 23, 1967, December 10, 1970, April 15, September 30, 1971, February 17, 1977.

Samuel W. Taylor: Talented Native Son

BY JEAN R PAULSON

SAMUEL W. TAYLOR, UTAH-BORN WRITER and soldier, was facing two deadlines on a blustery October day in 1943 at Camp Shanks, New York. First, he and his ordnance company, along with thousands of other soldiers, were waiting to be shipped out to the European Theater of War Their departure was imminent

The second deadline concerned a short story that had germinated in his head a few days previously and was ready to be set down on paper. But where? He no longer had the luxury of sitting down before his typewriter at home, some 3,000 miles away at 1954 Stockbridge Avenue, Redwood City, California.

Photo: Samuel W. Taylor in his office. USHS collections.

A retired newspaperman living in St George, Jean R Paulson completed this article just before his death in August 1998. He acknowledged the invaluable assistance of Doug Paulson, Gay Dimick Taylor, and Sara Taylor Weston in the preparation of this work

Aha! The day room. There, by putting a dime in a slot, he could use the typewriter for half an hour. He did not stop to get change for fear that someone would get ahead of him, and he had a couple of dimes

For an hour, he concentrated on typing the story. He was about a third of the way through and the tale was coming to life when he heard noises behind him. Turning his head, he saw three GIs standing behind him, and all three were muttering to and about him

The typewriter went dead in the middle of a page.

"I'll give you a quarter for a dime," he said to the man behind him.

"No dice, Mac, I've got to write to my girlfriend before we get shipped. You've had your turn."

Sam persisted. "I'll give you fifty cents for a dime," he said, addressing all three men

"Get up and get out, Mac," the second soldier said.

Sam rose to his feet, hand still possessively on the typewriter, waving a dollar bill. He addressed the entire room. "A dollar for a dime!" No takers Reluctantly, Sam rose Well, he'd finish the story with a pen He sat down to write in his cramped hand. The pen went dry. But Sam had a pencil and a pocketknife, and he continued to write.

Then another obstacle presented itself. It was almost 10 o'clock and lights out The story still was not finished, so Sam went to the only place where lights were on all night and there was a place to sit, the latrine. He completed the story that night. The next morning, he smuggled the story out of camp to his agent in New York, who had it retyped and sold it to the Saturday Evening Post, where it appeared under the title, "Wing Man."1

The previous month, while stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, Sam had completed a short story while intermittently working. "I finished it while I was handing out clothing and supplies to a hundred and forty men," he said.2 The two episodes illustrate what has characterized Samuel Taylor's long and illustrious career as a writer: the two T's of talent and tenacity. He began his writing career while a student

1 Samuel W Taylor, Taylor-Made Tales (Murray, UT: Aspen Books, 1994, hereafter cited as Tales), 164 Before publication of Tales the author had obtained this story and others in the book through interviews and correspondence with Taylor. Hereafter, these letters are cited as "SWT to JRP."

Taylor had to use various creative methods to get his manuscripts into the normal mail system while he was in the U S Army because all correspondence from soldiers was subjected to army censorship Had he mailed the manuscripts on the post, he said, his stories might have been delivered to the publisher with numerous words or even paragraphs neatly cut out with a razor blade

2 SWT toJRP, February 2, 1992, and Taylor, Tales, 136

at Brigham Young University, starting with short stories and later expanding to novels, non-fiction books, three-act plays, and screenplays. Through it all, he remained one of only a handful of American writers who never deviated from freelance writing to take even a parttimejob. He made it solely as a writer.

His death from congestive heart failure occurred on September 26, 1997, at his home in Redwood City, California. Samuel Woolley Taylor had been born ninety years earlier, on February 5, 1907, a son ofJohn W andJanet "Nettie" Woolley Taylor Nettie, as she was called throughout her life, was the third of six wives of the colorful John W., and Sam was the twenty-seventh of his thirty-six children. Nettie, with eight children, had more than her share of the thirty-six.

Sam chronicled in his book Family Kingdom the life of one of John W. Taylor's six families—the union between his father and mother. John W. was one of the younger apostles in the LDS church during the late nineteenth century. He was a spellbinding orator, a fiery speaker who could electrify the Mormon congregations. He was also a speculator, a promoter, and a plunger. When he went into a project, it was with all his energy and optimism. Sam's mother and John W's five other wives were constantly on a roller-coaster ride with this charismatic man His interests ranged from land speculation in ranches and timberlands in Canada, to mines in Mexico, and to the development of towns and colonization projects. On two occasions he built mansions for Nettie and the children, but eventually the 'best homes in town' were lost due to economic setbacks, and most of the time the family struggled financially. The situation worsened in the 1890s when, in defiance of the civil law as well as a new church edict, he married his last three wives.3

John W was forced to resign from the Quorum of the Twelve in 1905 because of his disobedience to church policy From that point on, there was no need to hide anymore; no one was looking for him as a high church authority who was flouting the law. But he had spent years on the underground, duplicating the experience of his father, President John Taylor, who had died while in hiding from federal agents. The underground had been hard on John W.; the missed meals, inadequate medication, and stress eventually took a toll on his

3 Under increasing pressure, and realizing that in order for Utah to obtain statehood the LDS church would have to renounce polygamy, in 1890 Wilford Woodruff issued a "Manifesto" stating that the church would no longer practice plural marriage

health. In 1916 he died from cancer at the age of fifty-eight. His young son, Samuel W., was nine years old.4

Sam, certain that he was the favorite of the thirty-six children, remembered his father fondly. Such was his father's charisma, Sam said, that each of his six wives considered herself John W.'s favorite, and none of the six remarried These were days of poverty for Nettie and the eight children, both before and after John W.'s death Few avenues of employment were open to women at the time, and after her husband's death, Nettie decided to open a boardinghouse. With a small amount of cash she received through an inheritance from her family in Tooele, she purchased the old Brimhall House at 365 North First West Street, Provo, a house that had seen better days When she went to inspect the property, she had no key to the front door, so she crawled through a rear window. She promptly went through the floor boards. "But we fixed it up," Sam wrote later. "I don't remember when we didn't have a hammer in our hands."5

Boarders were allowed to drink coffee, but Sam was not, and he said later that the aroma of coffee was so beguiling that he would slip out of the house, walk a few blocks to a Provo cafe, and have his coffee. He always held the cup handle in his left hand, since he did not want to drink out of the same side of the cup that the "Gentiles" used He drank coffee for most of his life and retained the habit of holding the cup in his left hand.6

During those earlier boardinghouse days, the Taylor children were introduced to work wherever it could be found. Sam wrote in his autobiographical book, Taylor-Made Tales, that his mother bundled him up in a large coat so as to make him look older than his years and larger than his under-medium size and sent him to the Knight Woolen Mills, one of the few industries in Provo at the time He got ajob that

4 Samuel W Taylor, The Kingdom orNothing (New York: Macmillan, 1976), 190-374 In researching this book, Sam and his brother Raymond discovered that their grandfather had seventeen wives and perhaps more, not the seven "officially" attributed to him John Taylor remained underground for more than two years, moving from place to place to elude persistent federal marshals and deputies and, his health shattered, died while hiding at the Roueche farm home in Kaysville, Utah Deputies had once come to that home in search of him, but he hid in a pile of wheat in the granary This was one of numerous narrow escapes John Taylor took his final wife,Josephine Elizabeth Roueche, at this last hiding place She was twenty-six; he was seventy-seven

5 Taylor, Tales, 13, 61; J R Paulson, Interview Notes, April, 1994, hereafter cited as Notes;]. R Paulson, "Mormon Author Never Lacks Ideas for a Story," [Provo] Daily Herald, November 24, 1994, hereafter cited as "Mormon Author."

6 Paulson, Notes. In later years, Taylor was giving a talk before members of the Redwood City LDS Ward and waved a piece of paper. "This is a prescription which says I should drink a certain number of cups of coffee every day Wouldn't you like to know the name of my doctor?"

There is an ironic twist to Sam's taste for coffee In 1994, he and daughter Sara were guests at the author's home in St George, Utah At breakfast, he waved away an offer of coffee, saying, 'Would you like to hear a faith-promoting story? I am now allergic to coffee Can't stand it!"

paid seventeen and a half cents per hour. Always capable around machinery, Sam soon was able to weave, run the cards, and spin "And when my wages were raised to 35 cents an hour, I was hard to live with."7

"'Spinning was the elite job in a mill, and I had that to fall back on in case the writing business collapsed. And you know what? They no longer use the spinningjenny. So where does that leave me?"8

In later years, about the time he entered Brigham Young University, Sam got ajob as bookkeeper and night clerk at the Roberts Hotel, then owned by Mark Anderson. This was the time that my lifelong association and friendship with Sam Taylor began. I had been elected editor of the Y News, the semi-weekly student newspaper, and brought Sam on as a reporter. He soon became a celebrity with his column, "Taylored Topics." He offered a type of writing the students had not been accustomed to, and neither had the faculty When he wrote about unusual occupations students pursued to pay for their education, including bootlegging, he was called before the Attendance and Scholarship Committee and asked to name the students who were selling bathtub booze. He refused and was suspended. After several other such incidents, he dropped out of school in his senior year. 9

Sam was known for his quick wit, and he also enjoyed a good joke or story. His laugh could best be described as a head-back guffaw, which always tickled his auditors. Hearing it, people around him would smile, chuckle, or even laugh out loud along with him. In those BYU years Sam and this writer, along with Glenn S Potter, Frank Whiting, Allen Stephenson, andJohn M. Taylor, formed the Pi-P writers club and met periodically to critique one another's work. The group all tried to outdo one another with puns or a play on words. Many a poor pun was hatched in that atmosphere.10

Sam had built what he called his office, a one-room structure, on his mother's property, and it was here that he started his full-time writing career He had sold his first article, "Are You Aberrant?" to Psychology magazine Shortly afterward he had an article published in Writer's Disentitled "How to Write Articles to Sell."

7 SWT toJRP, December 9, 1987; Taylor, Tales, 108.

8 SWT toJRP, December 8, 1987

9 SWT toJRP, December 13, 1987; Taylor, Tales, 125.

10 At one meeting of the Pi-P's, the group was discussing H L Mencken, whose biting essays were published in the American Mercury magazine To one of Taylor's remarks, Paulson said, "Sam, you're mencken me sick!" He responded, "That sounds like H L." From then on, all members of the group would say "H. L.," whenever their conversation demanded an expletive; BYU students then, as now, could be censured for cursing aloud on campus

During his last year at college, Sam went into Dean Hoyt's office at BYU to borrow an adding machine. When he introduced himself, the secretary responded that she had been a devoted follower of his column since its inception in the Y News. The secretary was his wifeto-be, Gay Dimick Three years earlier she had won first place in the Elsie C. Carroll short story contest. While she arranged for Taylor to use the machine, he asked her name.

"Gay Dimick."

"Gay Dimick? I've been looking for you for three years!"

Taylor would later say, "And with that for openers, it only took five more years to con her into marriage."

Typically, Gay said later, Sam also said at that first acquaintance that he wanted to tell her what she had done wrong in her story. "It was part of his personality that he pointed out things that were wrong."11

After her graduation from BYU, Gay found ajob at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University By then, her romance with Sam Taylor was flourishing, and Sam later followed her. They were married in Palo Alto and settled into a house not far from her job. "It was a perfect location," Gay said. "I had only a mile to walk to work, and Sam had only a mile to walk to the post office."That was where, of course, he mailed his manuscripts and picked up any rejects or checks.12

The rate of pay for pulp fiction was low during the Great Depression, ranging from a half cent to three cents per word, so Taylor felt compelled to use all the time at his disposal. He was fond of telling of an incident that occurred when he and Gay were residing in Palo Alto Gay was entertaining a visitor in the kitchen, and during a pause in his writing he heard her say, "And that man in the corner with his face to the wall, pounding on his typewriter, is my husband, Samuel W. Taylor."13

He was writing then in a number of genres, for the pulp paper magazines were at their zenith. He wrote westerns, sports stories, action, mystery, and fantasies. He even tried his hand at confession tales—those "sin, suffer, and repent" stories so dear to the hearts of a certain segment of the American population. It was a hard dollar, and

11 SWT to JRP, April 3, 1988; Paulson, Notes. Taylor exaggerated the length of his courtship; Sam and Gay met in 1930 and were married August 6, 1934 They had become engaged in Salt Lake City's Liberty Park, near the spot where Sam's father and mother had been married while on a carriage ride in the park

12 Gay Taylor, "Why Am I Here?" in Dialogue, Summer 1991, 94

13 Paulson, Notes.

since the Great Depression showed no signs of letting up, it promised to stay that way.

One day Taylor made a discovery that was to change his life. He completed a routine story for Detective Fiction Weekly, one of his major pulp markets, but since that magazine had not yet reported on a previously submitted yarn, he sent the new one, "Memory Test," to Colliers. When it was accepted—at ten times the pulp rate—he learned a basic fact about the writing business. "The only real difference between a high-paying market and a penny-ante market," he would later say, "is the amount of money involved. Every market requires the best you can do."14

As a corollary to this insight, which came early in his career, Taylor went against the tide in his advice to would-be writers, advice he offered during his appearances as guest speaker at writing seminars and conferences. Many writers and teachers tell beginners to slant material for particular markets. Not Taylor. "Writers get too tied up in camera angles," he told participants in a meeting of the California Writer's Guild. "Forget style! Forget form! Go after those dramatic values! That is the secret."15

For Sam Taylor, the period of the late thirties and early forties was an era of prosperity. He could knock out a short story in a few days and sell it to Colliers or the Saturday Evening Post for a healthy fee. Serials brought in several times the amount paid for a short story, and later they could become books. Sam told me, "Colliers and the Post gave me $2,000 for a short story I could do in three days, Liberty, $1,500. Serials brought $13,000; book-length one-shots paid well."16

The dollar at that time might not have gone all the way across the Potomac, but it was worth several times what it is today. So now that sales to the slicks had improved their bank account, the Taylors found a two-and-a-half-acre parcel of land on which they could build and expand in what was then a rural area in Redwood City.

To most people, building a house means hiring a contractor, but not to Sam and Gay Taylor. Not only did Sam do most of the carpentry, plumbing, and bricklaying, but also the Taylors even made their own adobe bricks for the modest home Sam also learned how to set tile—no easyjob. He became so fascinated with the craft that after lay-

14 SWT toJRP, February 1976, and Taylor, Tales, 164

15 Paulson, Notes.

16 SWT toJPR, November 24, 1987

ing the dining room floor he tiled several other areas not called for in the plans

He had plans for an office about a hundred feet from the house, but the onset of World War II delayed this project for more than three years. In the early months after Pearl Harbor was bombed, there was great concern that Japanese submarines could enter San Francisco Bay. Even though a submarine net had been installed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge to catch any enemy submarines, it did not reach to the shore, and small mosquito subs would possibly be able to slip through close to the shoreline Taylor was called on to direct the installation of another net at the end of the bridge to protect the Bay Area from possible enemy attack by the Japanese mosquito subs He said, "I guess I was the only able-bodied man left in the area who could read a blueprint."17

Although Taylor was beyond the normal age for the draft, he was inducted into the U. S. Army in 1943. As a Private First Class, he received a base pay of $56 a month; this salary was augmented by his unusual skill at poker. Gay later said of that time, "We were short of funds, since we had just finished the house." She also said of his initial months in the army that "Sam was an enthusiastic soldier, and in no time at all was promoted to the rank of corporal, which paid $66 a month." His first duty station after boot camp was at Ft. Lewis, Washington, where he was assigned to issue supplies to fellow GIs in the 176th Ordnance Depot Company.18

The command saw him as officer material and sent him to Salt Lake City for a two-week period under the Army Specialist Training Program (ASTP). It turned out, however, that the ASTP had been discontinued, so Taylor and the other soldiers spent the two weeks marching on the parade grounds in close-order drill. His evenings, for the most part, were free. Gay said that he spent most of the two weeks doing research for an article entitled "The Dream Mine,"which appeared in Esquire and earned him $250. It was here that Sam made a decision on which would come first, writing or soldiering. Writing won. 19

When Taylor and his ordnance company left Ft. Lewis, they

17 SWT toJRP, February 1976

18 Gay Taylor to JRP, December 6, 1997 (hereafter cited as GT to JRP); SWT to GT,July 22, 1943, and Taylor, Tales, 135

19 Paulson, Notes; GT toJRP, postmarked December 11, 1997; and Taylor, Tales, 132 At this point in his military career, Taylor said he was enjoying military life and was looking forward to the possibility of a career as an army officer, hopefully in the intelligence service But the cancellation of training and the substitution of marching drills led him to the decision to continue focusing on a writing career.

went on a troop train to a then-secret base on the East Coast, which we now know was Camp Shanks, New York. There they were joined by thousands of other soldiers also bound for the European Theater. The trip from New York to England was anything but routine. When the troop ship, the Andes, embarked on November 6, 1943, it was overloaded with 5,000 servicemen who were literally stepping over one another. It wasjust too many people for one ship, and conditions were deplorable. One group of men slept on the top deck; the only place they had to get out of the weather was the latrine, where a crap game was kept going for almost the entire voyage Taylor wrote to his wife saying that he had nightmares about the ship being bombed and going to the bottom of the Atlantic with all 5,000 men

He also had trouble with the food Taylor was assigned to KP duty on one of the first days of the voyage. He noticed that the cooks used the same broom to stir the tea as they did to sweep the floor. After that he instantly lost his appetite. Normally, Gay said, "Sam could eat just about anything as long as it was clean and in small quantities." But "on the voyage, he subsisted mainly on Hershey bars," which, for servicemen, were three cents each.20

On arrival in England, Taylor was still in the ordnance company but longed to be where he could be writing most of the time. He once said he was in "a chicken outfit led by a chicken captain."21 He wrote a letter to the commanding general of the First Army, explaining to him why he would be of better service to his country in a public relations outfit. When he showed the letter to his captain before he sent it off, the captain advised him that it would certainly be rejected However, the letter went up through four layers of command and back down through four layers, with orders for Taylor to be transferred to the Army Public Relations Office.

By an odd coincidence, the Army Air Corps PR section was seeking a writer at that very time. Colonel Arthur Gordon, chief of the Air Corps Public Relations Office, had written to his friend, Carl Brandt, in New York City asking if he knew of someone who could fill such a position. Brandt just happened to be Taylor's literary agent. When both transfer offers came to Sam at the same time, the Army PRO gave Taylor his choice, and he chose the Air Corps unit. In February 1944

20 GT toJRP, November 27, 1997; Paulson, Notes.

21 SWT toJRP, November 4, 1987

he was transferred to Gordon's unit, USTAFPRO (United States Tactical Air Force Public Relations Office) , 22

One of Taylor's first assignments was to write a book, Fighters Up, with Eric Friedheim; many of the chapters of the book had been previously published as magazine articles in various periodicals The book sold well on the continent and to a lesser degree in the United States, but at least Sam's work did not go unnoticed, and at the end of the year he was asked to write the commanding general's report to the Pentagon. The report was so well received that he was asked to do the same task the following year. Completion of the book, the annual reports, and other outstanding work led to Taylor receiving the Legion of Merit, the army's highest non-combat decoration.

Taylor was soon made head of the magazine section.23 In this position, he went here, there, and everywhere interviewing pilots, GI heroes, generals, and anyone who had a good story to tell.

Taylor liked to say that the reason he received a field commission was that he had to interview both officers and enlisted men to carry the story of the war back to the United States, but an enlisted man had difficulty getting admitted into Officers' Clubs to conduct the interviews. However, the unusual honor of a field commission no doubt had been influenced by the fact that, in addition to the Legion of Merit and other recognition, he had been awarded three Battle Stars and the Bronze Star. His military record also showed that he had been selected earlier for the ASTP officer training program.

The day after Paris was liberated he and others ferried Ernest Hemingway, Mary Welch (who later married Hemingway) of Time magazine, Demaree Bess of the Saturday Evening Post, Drew Middleton of the New York Times, and a number of other well-known correspondents to Paris, where they were headquartered at the famous Ritz Hotel. The group's first luncheon at the Ritz was served up in firstclass fashion, in silver tureens. When they lifted the tureen lids, however, they found themselves staring at unappetizing cans of C-Rations. The "10-in-ones"—the army's best-quality field rations—had not yet arrived The writers called their experience "Camping at the Ritz."24

22 Paulson, Notes.

28 Ibid

24 Taylor, Tales, 138. The choice of the Ritz as the headquarters for the PR group may have been influenced by the fact that Hemingway had made the hotel and its famous bar his "watering hole" for a number of years prior to the war This is documented in several of the biographical works on Hemingway The biographies do not include this marvelous story of C-rations on silver platters, however, perhaps because Hemingway was being given a royal welcome by his old friends in the bar; he did not take meals with the rest of the PR group.

Sam was in his element in the Air Corps PRO. What an outfit! Its topnotch newspapermen and photographers included the chief, Arthur Gordon, who had been editor of Cosmopolitan. Taylor's roommate at a London apartment was the movie actor Ben Lyon, who headed the Radio Section. Sam rubbed shoulders at various times with Maurice Barrangon, Andy Rooney, and many other notables.25

The pursuit of one story almost cost him his life. He had gone to Paris for an interview and hitched a ride back to London headquarters in a plane transporting a general to England. But Biggin Hill airfield in East Anglia was covered with a heavy fog, and the plane smashed to earth, catching on fire. In giving details about this incident, Taylor said, "It's amazing what a person will do when death is staring him in the face I was scrambling around in that burning plane like an animal, trying to find a way out." Only two persons were killed in the tragic accident; both of them were ground crewmen who were in the wrong place when the plane pancaked in.26

Sam need not have worried. When he hadjoined the PR team he no longer was confined to a normal army barracks but found a place to live in London that had a charwoman to clean the room. The woman appeared to be conversant with spirits—a psychic. One day she said that he had a beautiful aura, that he had been born with a caul,

Ibid., 135

SWT toJRP,July 5, 1988; Paulson, "Mormon Author."

^arn Taylor inspects the charred wreckage of theplane in which he almost losthis life. The plane crashed during aflight from Paris to London. Photo courtesy of Gay Taylor.

and that he had a guardian angel She said, "You'll be safe, Yank; there are two people standing behind you who will help." He said he did not think much about the prediction until he walked away from that bomber crash.27

Those "two people standing behind" Sam had their work cut out for them. He came away from the war with five major decorations. He narrowly escaped capture—or worse—while visiting a bombed oil refinery near Strasbourg, which was behind the German lines. The bloodbath called the Battle of the Bulge swept bywithin three miles of his location—and at that time the Germans were not taking prisoners!28

Sam Taylor was always free with his suggestions, regardless of rank or position, Gay said. When the European war was in its waning months, he wrote a series of humorous stories, entitled "Take My Advice, Mr. President," that appeared in serial form in Liberty. Gay said she laughed out loud when she saw the title, which reminded her of an incident in California when she and Sam first saw the Golden Gate Bridge As they gazed at the magnificent scene, Sam said, "Now, what they should have done is. ... " She said his voice trailed off, and he added, "Well, I guess they did the best they knew how."29

"It wasjust a part of his personality," Gay said.

As the person in charge of the USTAFPRO Magazine Section, Taylor was able to arrange a trip back to the States for two weeks to confer with media representatives The Allies were nearing the final push to victory, and when Taylor arrived in New York City he discovered that returning soldiers were treated like heroes. With a chest covered wrth ribbons, he found that it was difficult to pay for his own bill at a restaurant. On one occasion, when civilians were making do with dry toast because of wartime rationing, a waitress brought him a piece of bread on a plate then bent to whisper in his ear, "There's a pat of butter under the bread, Soldier." Gay met him in New York, and they had a welcome reunion during his off-duty hours.30

On VE Day, Taylor and others were in the beer hall in Munich where Adolf Hitler had launched Nazism. Sam "liberated" a Nazi banner, with the staff and finial, which he later donated to the Hoover War Library at Stanford.31

27 SWT toJRP, November 18, 1987; Taylor, Tales, 151.

28 In a letter to JRP dated November 4, 1997, Gay Taylor said that during the time of the Battle of the Bulge "I didn't have a word from him for a month I lost 20 pounds and a good deal of sleep."

29 Paulson, Notes.

30 SWT toJRP,July 24, 1987; Taylor, Tales, 145

31 Paulson, Notes.

After the close of hostilities in Europe and a cross-country rail journey from New York to his California home, Sam found two letters from the Pentagon that had been forwarded to him from his last post in Germany. General H. H. (Hap) Arnold, commanding general of the Army Air Corps, and General Ira C. Eaker, deputy Air Corps commander, had both written to commend Sam for the last article he had published while in the service. This Colliers story, "What a German General Thought," contrasted statements made by General Arnold with statements made by Nazi General Bayerlein during interrogation. The article positively impacted public perception of the role that air power played in the European victory, and the Pentagon had been abuzz for days after the magazine hit the streets. 32

When he had returned to New York on terminal leave, Sam was met by two agents of Walt Disney, who offered him ajob. In fact, two years earlier, a few weeks after he had been drafted, Sam had received a letter from Walt Disney with ajob offer. His brief reply at the time had been to express his regrets and inform the film maker, "I am presently fully employed by the government." Now settled again in Redwood City, he began working on the movie script for The AbsentMinded Professor, a fantasy based on two stories published in Liberty that had attracted the eye of Disney.33

In this story, the inventive Taylor came up with a substance called "flubber" that powered a gravity-defying automobile. Flubber, he suggested in the original story, was a substance vastly superior to rubber and would be useful in the war effort. He adapted the story and the substance into a screenplay for the Disney movie starring Fred MacMurray. His script was nominated for an Oscar for the best screenplay and won an award from the Screenwriters of America for the best comedy screenplay of 1961.

Thirty-six years later, the Disney Studios remade the film, calling it Flubber. On the Monday following Thanksgiving Day, 1997, ABC News reported that Flubber had been the most popular of all movies over the Thanksgiving weekend, grossing thirty-six million dollars A week later, Paul Harvey's News and Comment radio broadcast reported that it also outgrossed all other movies the following weekend. Several months prior to release of this film, Taylor had met with the star, Robin Williams, to talk with him about the script while the film com-

32 Gen H H Arnold to SWT, October 18, 1945; Gen I C Eaker to SWT, October 18, 1945, in possession of Gay Taylor.

33 SWT toJRP, November 7, 1984, with enclosure of speech given by SWT in September 1979.

pany was shooting on location in San Francisco. Williams mentioned the joy his family had felt while watching The Absent-Minded Professor and assured Taylor that he was working to maintain the integrity of the story.34

Settling into work after more than three years of war, Sam was prepared for an era of productivity. Premature streaks of white accented his wavy dark hair, but he was in prime condition, prepared to tackle books, plays, articles, motion picture scripts, or any other writing project that came along. While overseas he had used odd moments to draw plans for his office and was looking forward to building it.

Unfortunately, wartime strictures were still in effect, and building materials were not available. He could not work in the living room or bedroom, for his daughter, Sara, was then two and a half years old, and the bond between them was so strong that she would hardly let him out of her sight. There also was another child living in the home: Elizabeth, the daughter of Gay's sister A year younger than Sara, she would remain with the Taylors for some five years.

So Sam used the furnace room, a four-by-eight-foot alcove in the north side of the house, still empty because of the shortages. His desk would just exactly fit in the space but could not be moved in because of the angles involved. Faced with this obstacle, he cobbled together an ingenious hinging device for the legs and made the desk fit.35

As he built his house and office and made landscaping improvements, he used power tools that he also made himself A combination power tool that he made from scratch, which served as a drill press, power saw, and sander, was used in the Walt Disney picture The Hound Who Thought He Was a Raccoon. It is still operable and in his workshop. Gay later said, "Sam could fix anything and make anything. He was a genius in more ways than one."36

In this postwar period, Sam wrote six days a week, compensating for this sedentary work with strenuous exercises, long walks, work on his office, and golf—which he faithfully played three afternoons a week, rain or shine He wrote the thriller The Man with My Face while sitting in that furnace room alcove, face to the wall. The story

34 Sara Weston, tape recording of graveside memorial service for SWT, Provo City Cemetery, October 3, 1997, hereafter cited as Memorial Service The producers of Flubberwere planning to replace the basketball game scene with something they thought would be more up-to-date, but, according to Weston, Williams convinced them to keep it as an essential element of the story

35 SWT toJRP, November 24, 1987

36 SWT toJRP, November 18, 1987, and July 5, 1988; GT toJRP, December 19, 1997

appeared first as a six-part serial in Liberty magazine. According to the magazine's editor, it was the best serial the magazine ever had published, and he defied his fellow staff members to tell how the protagonist would get out of his predicament Later, the story was published as a book in 1948 and then made into a motion picture. In 1989 the book was republished in England as part of the Black Dagger series of mystery books. The story was of an ordinary American who returned to his suburban home after work and found himself in an extraordinary situation, face to face with a man who looked, talked, and walked exactly as he did and who had arrived home on the earlier train. The mystery built from that point. But in making the picture, Hollywood changed the entire tone of the story, setting it in Puerto Rico. Thus handicapped, the movie was only of fair quality.37

About this time Sam completed a three-act stage play, entitled The Square Needle, that was produced in the spring of 1951 in Hollywood and San Francisco with a talented cast of veteran performers that included Victor Jory, Donald Woods, Alan Hale, Jr., and Marjorie

Lord The play was based upon the antics of soldiers who, despite the rigors of war, lived more luxuriously than their fellow servicemen. Socalled "operators," these soldiers avoided living in normal barracks by various devious means. Some of the elaborate schemes they worked to garner their special status came from actual situations Sam had known of during his time in the service The play was optioned for by Broadway, but the option was never exercised.38

A number of Taylor's stories have been made into motion pictures, and he also contributed original material to Hollywood He wrote scripts for Disney, Columbia, MGM, Warner Brothers, and independent producers. He also produced scripts for the popular Bonanza television series and the Alfred Hitchcock Presents mystery series.39

One of the novels which came out of the postwar period was called Heaven Knows Why, a lighthearted fantasy about Mormons and

37 SWT to JRP, November 7, 1984, with enclosure of speech given by SWT in September 1979; Samuel W Taylor, The Man with My Face (London: Chivers Press Black Dagger Crime Series, 1989)

38 John Chapman, ed., The Best Plays of 1950-1951 (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1951), 35, 41 In the late '40s Taylor and Paulson collaborated on another three-act play, a mystery comedy; they worked together every Monday—Paulson's day off—in Taylor's office This was the first time in many years that the two had lived close enough to see each other regularly The setting for the play was a radio studio One change Paulson and Taylor made from the usual mystery was that they had the corpse fall into, rather than out of, the closet The play, like many other projects writers spend considerable time on, was never published or performed.

While they were writing it, a friend was living temporarily at the Taylor place. One noon, when the writers went into the house for lunch, they were greeted by the young man "Have you finished it?" he asked "Not yet." "I see All work, and no play." It was impossible to avoid a battle of puns when you were around Sam Taylor

39 Memorial Service

the afterlife. It first appeared as a serial in Colliers as "The Mysterious Way." When the book was published, however, it was greeted with stony silence by LDS people, who were affronted by seeming ridicule Gay said that Sam "got out of the doghouse" with his fellow church members when a Brigham Young University professor, Richard Cracroft, wrote an article in Sunstone in which he praised the humor of the book. Cracroft has used this book and other Taylor works in his university classes.40

In addition to fiction, Taylor was commissioned to write a number of nonfiction pieces. One was the company history of a business that invented and manufactured a gas chromatograph. Sam said this piece provided material for an article that sold to both the Saturday Evening Post and Reader's Digest—but neither published it. His comment was, "What a crazy business this is!"41

In mid-century, a cloud no bigger than a writer's plans was to sig-

40

41 SWT toJRP, February 1976

Sam Taylor with cast of hisplay The Square Needle before it opened at Las Palmas Theatre in Hollywood. From left: Donald Woods, James Flavin, Taylor, Alan Hale, Jr., Marjorie Lord,Frank Cady.

SWT toJRP, December 9, 1994; Richard H Cracroft, "Freshet in the Dearth: Samuel W Taylor's Heaven Knows Why and Mormon Humor," Sunstone, Summer 1980, 31.

nal the demise of an era. That cloud was television, and it soon lured Americans from the printed page to the tube. Both the pulps and the slicks were on their backs, feebly waving their paws in the air. So Sam adjusted to the trend Although he spent some time in Hollywood, getting work there was an iffy proposition. Besides, he lived in Redwood City, and batching it in an apartment near the studios with a couple of other writer friends was not the way Sam wanted to live his life. He tolerated such arrangements for short periods but soon turned to nonfiction, particularly that based on Mormon history.

While Sam Taylor wrote primarily for the outside world about his people, and while some Mormons resent objective literature about their culture, he has been tossed bouquets among the brickbats. In reprinting one of his articles in the book Among the Mormons, editors William Mulder and A. Russell Mortensen said, "No talented native son knows Utah better than Samuel W. Taylor, or writes about it so gaily and so aptly." Kenneth B. Hunsaker of Utah State University, in a survey of Mormon literature, listed Family Kingdom as "best Mormon biography" and Heaven Knows Why as "best Mormon novel."42

Sam wrote a number of serious biographies, including Family Kingdom, The Kingdom or Nothing, and a two-volume collection, TheJohn Taylor Papers. These were busy times, and it is small wonder that in addressing a writers group in San Francisco, Sam said: "Writing is not a profession, it is not a craft, it is a disease. But if you've got to have an ailment, I can't think of a better one." He gave talks before various groups of writers in California and repeatedly made this point: "The novice or amateur writer seems to think his words are etched in stone, and that the first draft must not be changed The professional writes and rewrites, revises and polishes." Sam used unusual gestures as he spoke, whether with one person or before a crowd. He would swing his arms dramatically, especially when illustrating a writing problem and solution, and move his hands in a fascinating pattern to lend emphasis to his concepts.43

Among the books Sam wrote were a mystery entitled The Grinning Gizmo; a story about contemporary plural marriage, I Have Six Wives; and one concerning the uranium boom called Uranium Fever, or No Talk under a Million. He wrote this last-named book in collaboration with his older brother, Raymond, who expected to make his fortune

42 SWT to JRP, November 4, 1984; Taylor, Tales, 173; SWT to JRP, November 7, 1984, with enclosure of speech given by SWT in September 1979; Taylor, Tales, 174

43 SWT toJRP, November 7, 1984, with enclosure of speech; Paulson, Notes.

by mining uranium. In company with Tom McGowan, the two made a motion picture about the pursuit of riches in uranium.

The decades after the war were productive for Sam although he frequently was forced to alter his writing time because of the flow of visitors. There were would-be writers, old friends, and established writers or editors—or a combination of the three. And there were frequent visits from men and women practicing polygamy. The Taylors were friendly and courteous, and one day they served dinner to a group of adults who filled the modest-sized dining room and two dozen children outside on the lawn

Sam never used "writer's block" as an excuse to rest but pounded away, and if the piece did not turn out to his satisfaction, he rewrote until it was right. One day a young man who wanted to be a writer came to his door and asked permission to sit in a corner of the office while Sam worked. Sam endured about five minutes of this then courteously showed the man to the door. He later said, "I'd rather have had a boa constrictor in the corner."44 Until his fatal illness, Sam maintained a daily schedule, and in the 1990s he produced some autobiographical material such as the paperback book Taylor-Made Tales and a collection of some of his wartime series, Take My Advice, Mr. President. Sam's attitude toward the LDS church also changed after publication and acceptance in LDS circles of Family Kingdom and Nightfall in Nauvoo, which recounted the events leading to the historic Mormon pioneer movement to the West He became an active member of the Redwood City Ward, was ordained an elder, and worked to convince lapsed Mormons to rejoin and become active He became Elders Quorum president and later served as ward membership clerk At the same time, he continued to analyze the church and its doctrines and appeared at a number of sessions of Sunstone and Dialogue gatherings in Salt Lake City.45

In all, he published more than seventeen books. When asked for a list several years ago, he said, "The number is indefinite because some appeared under pen names, and I'll say no more about them." In regular correspondence over the years, Sam almost always ended

44 Paulson, Notes.

45 Though Taylor made jokes about having been a "lapsed Mormon" through part of his life, he not only received priesthood ordination but also prepared for and participated in LDS temple ceremonies Taylor and his wife and daughter went through temple sealing procedures prior to Sara's marriage Apparently, these facts never came up in the conversations between Taylor and the author; at least Jean Paulson never mentioned it to Doug Paulson, his son and personal assistant Doug Paulson confirmed the fact of the temple sealings with Sara Weston after the author's death As a teenager visiting the Taylor home, Doug had often heard Gay telling Sam she did not want to be just a "ministering angel" in the hereafter

his notes with the Biblical term Selah, frequently found at the end of some of the Psalms. To anyone who has corresponded with Sam, this will strike a familiar note.46

He produced special projects such as the script for an industrial film for U.S. Steel; material for a book on the nation's highways, Freedom of the American Road, issued by Ford Motor Company; a section of a California school text; a book on the trucking industry called Line Haul; and Vineyard by the Bay, a history of Mormonism in the San Francisco Bay Area He also created a TV series for NBC and did the pilot scripts.47 For the BYU Motion Picture Department Taylor wrote a screenplay based on the life ofJacob Hamblin; it was intended as the first full-length feature by BYU and was designed for distribution through commercial theaters. He also was commissioned to write a screenplay based on the legend of Porter Rockwell, which he completed in the late '80s Neither of these screenplays has been produced.

In a recent tribute to Taylor, Levi S. Peterson, noted Mormon author, said, "Taylor's personality, as it appears in his writings, is experienced, skeptical, a little cynical, always funny, and always cogent His style reads easily and finds its felicitous metaphors among the speech of ordinary people."48

At the graveside service for Samuel W Taylor, his daughter, Sara Weston, explained the presence of prunings from Sam's favorite trees on their property; he had lovingly protected each sprig of a new tree on his acreage if he found it first. She admitted that others in the family had been trained to pull up any such volunteer sprigs, yet forty of

46 SWT to JRP, February 1976 Webster's New WorldDictionary, Second College Edition (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), defines "selah" as "a Hebrew word of unknown meaning at the end of verses in the Psalms; perhaps as a musical direction, but traditionally interpreted as a blessing meaning 'forever.'"

47 According to Sara Weston and papers in her possession, two of the series ideas that Sam pitched to NBC were Peculiar People and Bad Boy. Peculiar People was to be a "series based upon people who are 'peculiar' in two ways First, they have done things of exceptional interest The subject of the first segment is a little old lady who deliberately set out to become a millionaire in order to finance her work with delinquent boys Another segment is the story of a Samoan longshoreman who makes a precarious living on the San Francisco docks while raising millions of dollars for charitable purposes A third is the story of the man who guided the Mormon Tabernacle Choir through the years during which it became a national institution

"The second way in which our people are peculiar is that they all have an abiding faith in Deity and try to live their lives accordingly This, frankly, is the underlying motive of the series, to present interesting people of achievement who try to live according to the rules of their faith."

Bad Boy was set in the nostalgic period of the turn of the century Some story ideas: to thwart the baptism of the no-good man who wants to marry his mother, the Bad Boy tricks the entire household into believing that Sunday is Saturday; and, when traveling with his prospective stepfather, the Bad Boy convinces authorities that he has been kidnapped and brought to the big city to be trained as a pickpocket.

48 Levi S Peterson, "In Memoriam: Samuel W Taylor," Sunstone, 21:3 (August 1988), 11 Peterson had interviewed Taylor before the 1994 Sunstone Symposium in Salt Lake City This brief article is an insightful tribute to SWT.

those he staked and declared untouchable remain, still subjects of his protection. As Taylor's remains were prepared for burial, Sara made sure he had a notebook and ballpoint pen tucked into his shirt pocket because, she said, "He had never been without them in life." In the last weeks of his life, Sara told the graveside audience, Sam had expressed his concern about facing a premature death, because he had "one more story to tell." She concluded by saying, "Perhaps we will have a chance to hear that story in a later existence."49

Selah.

49 Memorial Service

In Another Time: Sketches of Utah History First Published in the Salt Lake Tribune. By Harold Schindler. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1998. xii + 199 pp. Cloth, $34.95; paper, $19.95.)

In Another Time collects forty short sketches and twelve longer pieces that originally appeared as feature articles in the Salt Lake Tribune from 1993 to 1997 as part of its commemoration of Utah's statehood centennial. The late Harold Schindler, a veteran Tribune journalist and historian, has produced a useful and very entertaining volume for the general public

The book is divided into three parts, with the twelve lengthier articles titled "chapters" and the sketches following the chapters, resulting in a roughly chronological framework As these are discrete pieces, they do not (nor were they meant to) make up a coherent narrative, but a reader with a good working knowledge of Utah history can easily follow along and will find much of interest

The collection begins with a description of the peoples who used Danger Cave for some 11,000 years. The bulk of the book is predictably weighted toward people and events of the nineteenrfi century, particularly the western emigration and the early Mormon settlement of Utah (areas of Schindler's special interest and expertise) A handful of sketches toward the end address early twentieth-century subjects. Familiar characters from Utah's history abound: John Doyle Lee, Mark Twain, Joe Hill, John Baptiste, and, of course, Brigham Young Male subjects appear far more frequently than do females The

author's journalistic strengths are notably evident in the sketches, where he can tell a single, clear story in detail The pieces about the lynching of Sam Joe Harvey, R. B. Marcy's emigrant handbook, and the early history of prostitution stand out as colorful and well-told.

Some of the longer chapters work less well, as they tend toward a brief recitation of disconnected events. "Territory in Transition," for instance, covers the closing of Fort Crittenden, the Pony Express, Governor John Dawson's short and troubled term, the territory's non-participation in the Civil War, the Morrisite schism, the founding of Camp Douglas, and the Bear River Massacre in eight crowded pages. This tendency is reflected in the sometimes awkward, headline-style chapter titles.

As these pieces had their genesis as newspaper articles, they are designed for a general audience and do not specifically cite sources, although some references are given Schindler includes a page of "suggested additional reading," and he seems to have relied extensively on the works of Dale L. Morgan. A skilled and experienced researcher himself, Schindler includes a wealth of detail to buttress his blunt, direct, and often humorous interpretations. At the same time, he iswell aware of the limitations of his evidence, particularly in his careful description of the Mountain Meadows Massacre,

where he generally follows Juanita Brooks. Among the most satisfactory aspects of the book are its look and ease of use Schindler and the Utah State University Press have produced a handsome volume with more than 100 drawings, photographs, and maps and

an excellent index. In Another Time should find an eager audience among general readers with an interest in popular, well-written western and Utah history

JEFFREY NICHOLS Westminster College

"As a Thief in the Night": The Mormon Questfor Millennial Deliverance. By DAN ERICKSON (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998. vi + 278 pp. $34.95.)

"Anyone who wants to understand the early Mormon mind and how their [sic] cosmology influenced Mormongentile interactions," Dan Erickson asserts in his book "As a Thief in the Night," must examine the early Mormon belief in an imminent millennium, and Erickson's book does just that. While Robert N. Hullinger argues that the crux of Mormonism is its answer to skepticism and its defense of faith in Jesus (Mormon Answer to Skepticism, [St Louis: Clayton Publishing House Inc., I960]), Marvin S Hill found at the core of Latter-day Saint history a quest for refuge and a flight from American pluralism (Quest for Refuge, [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989]). Kenneth H. Winn believes that Mormonism emerged as "a potent movement decrying the religious anarchy created by the 'priestcraft' of the major denominations and, implicitly, the growing inegalitarianism ofJacksonian Society" (Exiles in a Land of Liberty, [Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989]). Erickson, in contrast, argues that the best way to understand the Latter-day Saints is to study Mormon history within the framework of its millennial aspirations The Mormons were, he asserts, "a people commissioned to build a literal kingdom of God on the American continent to prepare for the imminent return of the promised Messiah. Thus, the history of the

Mormons can best be seen as "a millennial passage, ambiguous, evolving, always waiting, anticipating, and eventually capitulating to the dominant American society."

Well-documented (it appears that Erickson has mined every smidgen of ore from the Mormon millennial mine) and well-written, the book romps through American millennialism, the doctrinal roots of Mormon millennial expectations, and early Mormon millennialism It even finds millennialism at the very core of the Mormon experience in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois Latter-day Saint involvement in such historical events as the Utah War, the anti-polygamy campaign, the gathering, and even the Civil War, Erickson argues, is best understood when viewed through glasses tinted by millennialism. He does not believe that early Mormonism was more concerned with preparing a place to which Christ could come than with the time of his advent Nor does he accept the view that Latter-day Saints shifted their millennial expectations and focused, instead, on building temples and redeeming the dead. In fact, Erickson finds millennial fever reaching new highs as church members approached the twentieth century, only to decline as new leaders were chosen and the new century dawned Realizing that Christ would not return and deliver them from their enemies, these men

molded Mormonism into a religion of accommodation

Erickson's conclusions come from a mountain of evidence, and his footnotes reveal that no stone has been left unturned in his search for facts to support his thesis When Mormonism began the Saints believed that the second coming was nigh, but as their eyes turned to the twentieth century, "the Saints' deliverance remained on the horizon, further from sight than ever before." Thus, their quest for deliverance was filled with frustration, disappointment, and failed hopes, he concludes

Though this book represents fine scholarship in many respects, it does have some deficiencies. Erickson seems to believe, or implies at least, that all nineteenth-century Mormons held the same opinions with respect to the coming of the Lord My own study of Latter-day Saint history has led me to conclude that some Mormons were less enthusiastic about millennialism than were others, and for many it had little, if any, appeal Many anchored their faith, instead, in doctrines such as faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, eternal marriage, priesthood authority, and missionary work and in making the desert blossom as the rose, building a Zion society, and doing temple work

Not all church leaders believed that Christ's return was imminent; instead, some held the view that the gospel must be preached to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people before the Messiah would return. The Jewish people, Mormon scriptures clearly taught, would have to gather to Jerusalem, the Lamanites needed to be converted, and temples must dot the earth before the second advent would take place Serious students of Mormon scripture learned that there was much work left to be done before the King of Kings and Lord of Lords came to reign for a thousand years. In

spite of the book's impressive bibliography, the complexity of Mormon millennialism is not fully probed and explained.

Erickson, too, at times, cuts too wide a swath as he leads readers through the Mormon past Some historians would question his characterization of the Book of Mormon as being an antiMasonic text (57), while others would seriously doubt that Mormon millenarianism "must be identified as a major souce of animosity felt toward the Saints," (58), or that apocalypticism was the predominant early Mormon cosmology (66) Millennialism was not the principal cause of "the new outbreak of anti-Mormonism in Hancock County, Illinois in 1845" (145); nor is it accurate to write that in the West the saints "would patiently await Christ's call to usher in his millennial reign" (147) Missionaries, hardly waiting patiently in Utah, were sent to preach to the nations of the earth, and in those early territorial years these emissaries of Mormonism traveling east passed wagon trains of Saints headed west. Brigham Young and other Saints were convinced that Zion's future lay in the tops of the mountains where Mormons could become an ensign to the world Latter-day Saints constructed solid homes and planted oak and other trees Only a few believers thought this kingdom building to be a waste of time because the new Jerusalem was soon to be erected in Jackson County, Missouri.

There are a few minor mistakes, too, that tend to mislead readers For example, Thomas B H Stenhouse was not the church's Eastern States Mission president when he wrote The Rocky Mountain Saints, as Erickson implies Instead, at the time he wrote, he had been excommunicated from the church (163). Charles W. Penrose was not an apostle in 1879 (188). Moses Thatcher, in a letter to John Taylor, denied that he had said some of the

things attributed to him in his talk in Lewiston, Utah, in 1886; Erickson seems either to be unaware of his denial or to disbelieve Thatcher (197).

In spite of these few flaws, "As a Thief in the Night" reveals much about early Mormon millennialism and, together with Grant Underwood's The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), provides a solid base for understanding this aspect of Mormon his-

tory Readers can only hope that Erickson will write a second volume detailing millennialism as it existed among Mormons in the twentieth century, because I believe that many Latter-day Saints, during the last hundred years, have clung to their faith that the time of His coming is nigh, even at the door

KENNETH W GODFREY Logan, Utah

The Utah State Constitution: A Reference Guide. By JEAN BICKMORE WHITE (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1998 xxvi + 231 pp $75.00.)

"Utah's constitutional history can only be understood by recognizing the unique circumstances of the state's founding and its turbulent, divisive territorial history," writes Jean Bickmore White Few other people could make this statement with such authority and none with more White has written extensively on Utah's constitution; as author of a recent (1996) work, Charter for Statehood: The Story of Utah's State Constitution, and several other related articles, White brings a wealth of knowledge to the writing of the present book

The Utah State Constitution: A Reference Guide, is the thirteenth volume in a series, Reference Guides to the State Constitutions of the United States The book begins with a brief but insightful history of the Utah Constitution. It then provides a complete text of Utah's current constitution with an article-byarticle, section-by-section commentary on the changes that have been made to the constitution since ratification In addition, there are an annotated bibliography on Utah historical sources, a table of cases, and an index. The book is an important and very informative analysis of the state constitution. In this and in her previous book, Charter For Statehood, White has definitely con-

tributed mightily to the history of the state of Utah.

As informative as the book is, the history buff or casual historian is better off reading CharterFor Statehood rather than this work But for the serious historian or one interested in a particular article or section of the constitution, this is the place to go The commentary on each article and particularly on each section is excellent. The commentary is a short paragraph or lengthy essay, depending on the amount of changes made to the article or the number of court cases that have dealt with the article For example, Article I Section 6 deals with the right to bear arms. The original section simply stated, "The people have the right to bear arms for their security and defense, but the legislature may regulate the exercise of this right by law." White points out that "Utah has a strong anti-gun-control movement that opposes most restrictions on the right to own firearms" and that Utahns approved an amendment reflecting this concern in 1984 by inserting the right of individuals to bear arms The amendment now states, "The individual right of the people to keep and bear arms for security and defense . . . shall not be infringed. ..."

A second example is Article I

Section 9, dealing with excessive bail and fines—cruel punishments This section has not been changed since ratification, but White spends almost two pages discussing court cases that have addressed the issues of this section. She points out that in 1986, in State v. Bishop, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that "the minimum mandatory sentence for sodomy on a child did not violate this section or the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution." She also shows that, in State v. Gardner in 1989, "the Utah Supreme Court held that the death penalty under Utah law meets the requirements of the state and federal constitutions."

The book was published before sev-

eral constitutional amendments were approved by Utah voters in the November 1998 election, but Professor White does mention these propositions and indicates that they will be on the ballot

Serious readers of Utah history and those interested in the significant changes to the constitution over the years will find this work an enlightening and delightful book. Professor White has done a fine job, and I compliment her for her work. I enjoyed reading it and am confident that many others will, too

MICHAEL E CHRISTENSEN Utah Foundation

The Dispossessed: Cultural Genocide of the Mixed-Blood Utes, an Advocate's Chronicle. By PARKER M NIELSON (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998 x + 338 pp $34.95.)

In this disturbing and provocative study, Salt Lake City attorney Parker M Nielson chronicles the termination of the mixed-blood Utes from the Northern Ute Indian Tribe. He outlines how the termination process, initiated by Utah Senator Arthur V Watkins, was visited on the Utes in a singular action by the U.S Congress and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the only partial termination of any tribe in the nation. Termination for the mixedbloods meant loss of both tribal membership and any further claims upon the Bureau of Indian Affairs, similar to the impact of the termination policy upon other tribes in the 1950s But for the mixed-blood terminees the losses went much further than being cut off from government assistance.

Nielson, with first-hand information gained as legal representative for the terminated Utes, details how the separation of the terminees from tribal membership proved devastating as they were misrepresented, lied to, tricked,

and cheated out of their cultural and financial heritage His condemnation of everyone involved—including the U.S Congress, the BIA, the Ute Tribal Business Committee, the Ute Tribe as a whole, First Security Bank and its officers, the Federal Securities Commission, fellow attorneys, residents of the Uintah Basin, federal judges, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, even the United States Supreme Court, makes for an interesting, if one-sided, read Perhaps those tarred the blackest in this myopic view are the Mormon church and its members. Nielson launches a diatribe against Mormons at every possible turn, even when it takes a leap of logic to see the church's remote involvement This study focuses so narrowly on what happened to the mixed-blood Utes that it becomes avictimization story with the Mormon church as the scapegoat, leaving many of his meritorious points shadowed under clouds of animosity and bias

The author's writing is contrived and

often awkward. He uses metaphors that have little to do with his point, and throughout the work jumps from idea to idea with little or no transition. He frequenuy jumbles chronology in a way that will confuse readers unacquainted with the sequence of events Repeatedly, he adds first-person information in the form of thoughts and hopes of the terminees that he was not privy to He overlooks, until the epilogue, the fact that one-third of the Northern Ute Tribe is still full-blood Uintah Utes who maintained tribal membership.

Nielson offers a good outline of the Eisenhower-era termination laws aimed at forced assimilation of Native Americans However, without a prior understanding of U.S. reservation policy, the Spanish Fork Treaty, the Dawes Act, the Indian Reorganization Act, the Termination Act, and the 27%-63%

split of non-dividable assets between the terminated mixed-bloods and the rest of the Ute Tribe, many readers will be lost and confused This book, though valuable for its specific detail and its personalization of this reprehensible chapter in Native American history, is not likely to be the final word on the subject As a moving case study with specific detail of how congressional action affected individuals in an arbitrary and heartless way, it is recommended to anyone interested in Ute history and Native American history of the twentieth century. However, when Nielson is finished, only the mixedbloods and he alone stand untarnished in this shameful misdeed.

JOHN D BARTON

For eighty-three years, the National Park Service (NPS) has tried to balance its mission to "preserve and protect" with the often-conflicting mandate to provide for park use by the general public NPS managers struggle with the conflicting demands of tourists who want more roads and campgrounds and environmentalist groups who object to such developments; "wise use" advocates who oppose "locking up" park resources and wilderness advocates wanting to preserve more; recreationists demanding natural quiet and solitude and others lobbying for snowmobiling and off-road driving; and entrepreneurs boosting park tourism and residents worrying about the resulting impacts on their community While listening to the loud, politically amplified voices of the "greater" public, the NPS has his-

torically overlooked or ignored those of Indian peoples.

Keller and Turek's research shows just how intricately park and tribal histories and interests are intertwined. It is a sad surprise, for instance, to learn that most of the country's "crown jewel" parks were carved largely out of Indian reservation lands over the objections—and to the detriment—of the tribes who lived there. Treaty rights were revoked, homes demolished, families disrupted, and prime real estate exchanged for marginal lands In one case, a tribe was even forced to give up reservation land wanted for a park in exchangefor land it already owned. That little-known history casts a cold shadow over an agency that generally basks in warm, popular regard.

This volume traces Indian/park relations for numerous NPS units, including Olympic, Glacier, and

Utah StateUniversity Uintah Basin Branch Campus

American Indians and National Parks. By ROBERT H. KELLER and MICHAEL F. TUREK. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998 xxii + 319 pp $40.00.)

Everglades, and the Southwest's Pipe Spring, Grand Canyon, and Mesa Verde As with most histories of U.S./tribal relations, these are largely stories of conflicts, misunderstandings, good intentions, broken promises, dispossession, and paternalism. The presentation is not entirely negative, though: wherever possible, the authors set this thorny crown with gem-stories of genuine cooperation, friendship, and mutual respect between park and Indian people Although the authors clearly have a point of view, their work is well-researched, objective, and nonjudgmental. They do not make the National Park Service a whipping boy, nor do they present tribes as stereotypical victims or environmental Eagle Scouts Rather, the NPS is shown as a bureaucracy with conflicting missions, disparate management styles, inadequate funding, and uncoordinated policies; tribes are shown as communities of individuals with different opinions, internal political battles, and very real economic needs.

Of particular interest to this readership will be Chapter 5, "Paiutes, Mormons, and Water." Here, Keller and Turek recount the complicated, convoluted history of Pipe Spring and

the Kaibab Paiute Tribe. Mormons are rightfully proud of Brigham Young's policy of dealing humanely with Indian people, of feeding the hungry and clothing the naked Paiutes, on the other hand, tell of bounties offered for Indian scalps and other brutalities On this foundation—and on Kaibab land—the NPS established a national monument that would be torn by conflicting water claims, church involvement, and tribal interests. This chapter certainly exemplifies the difficulty of sorting out what is fair and right in park management

American Indians and National Parks will likely be an eye-opener notjust for the general reader but for park managers at all levels. The book's final chapter is a particularly thoughtful synthesis of park/Indian relations, changing policy, and new attitudes Any thoughtful reader of Keller's and Turek's history will be compelled to cast off any image of "Indians as artifacts and scenery" and see them as complex people with legitimate interests in our national parks.

LEE ANN KREUTZER Capitol Reef National Park Torrey, Utah

Voyages ofDiscovery: Essays on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Edited with introduction and afterword by JAMES P. RONDA (Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1998 xiv + 351 pp Cloth, $45; paper, $19.95.)

In only a few years Americans will be celebrating the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Although the explorers in their quest did not enter the confines of the Great Basin, the story of their two-year continental journey profoundly affected the settlement of the entire West Voyages of Discovery embodies the voices and visions of those who made the journey, observed its passing, or have studied it

in depth and therefore are qualified to bear witness to its significance.

Under the able editorship of James Ronda, eighteen monographs or documents that have appeared during the last fifty years addressing the subject of the Lewis and Clark expedition have now been republished in this single volume Contained between its covers are articles by such Lewis and Clark luminaries asJohn Logan Allen, Bernard DeVoto, Donald Jackson, Gary E

Moulton, and Ronda himself, augmented with the contributions of other scholars in the fields of ethnography, science/technology, and literature. Composed as it is of individual essays and documents, this book can be picked up, read, and set down at random without sacrificing comprehension

Ronda's work is appropriately captioned and presented in six logical parts: Genesis, The Corps of Discovery, The Journey, Mutual Discovery, Homecoming, and Looking Back. Part One examines the extent to which faulty concepts of North American geography contributed to Thomas Jefferson's mistaken belief that the fabled Passage to India would be discovered during the course of the expedition Part Two probes the question of how the Corps of Discovery transformed itself from a factious rough frontier infantry company into a cohesive nomadic community. Part Three addresses the questions ranging from how the explorers determined which river among converging channels was the true Missouri to how scientific measurement of the land was conducted Part Four is devoted to reminding the reader that the encounters between the Corps of Discovery and the native inhabitants of the West were times of mutual discovery. Part Five has for its focus the aftermath of thejourney-the mixed results and the question of how the achievements and failures of the expedition should be presented to the

public Part Six is a selection of essays that trace the history of Lewis and Clark scholarship Concluding the volume is a sympathetically written afterword by Ronda that addresses the larger meaning of the epic enterprise. By making available this collection of essays and documents to a larger audience, Ronda has made a worthwhile contribution to Lewis and Clark scholarship. Moreover, his skill in selecting the premier essays and documents makes his contribution even more valuable Mute testimony that would seem to bear out this statement can be found in the most recent and, perhaps, most popular single-volume narrative history of the Lewis and Clark Expedition published to date, Undaunted Courage . . . , for in it Stephen Ambrose cites six of the eight authors and eight of the eighteen essays/documents selected by Ronda for republication in Voyages ofDiscovery. Complete with maps, illustrations, and a helpful index not available in the original form, this book merits a place in the libraries of Lewis and Clark enthusiasts as well as those of scholars of the American West The Montana Historical Society Press is to be commended for making this publication available in both hardbound and paperback at a price the public can afford. Perhaps a sequel would be in order.

TODD I BERENS

Santa Ana, California

Glass Plates and Wagon Ruts: Images of the Southwest by Lisle Updike and William Pennington. By H.Jackson Clark. (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1998. xvi + 200 pp. $29.95.)

Most traveling photographers operated like lone wolves. It is rare to find two who could pair their ideals of art and business so as to operate in tan-

dem Bucking that tradition, William Pennington and Lisle Updike were a magnetic pair They met in Texas and established themselves in Durango

near the turn of the century. Their partnership, known as the Pen-Dike Studio, operated with the family man, Pennington, in the studio and darkroom while the wanderlust-driven Updike roamed the land in search of family, business, and ranch images

That division of duties seems to have been the basis of their success

This is an intimate history Rather man having to reconstitute the life of a dead photographer from newspaper accounts and diaries, the author, the late H.Jackson Clark, knew these men like family. In fact, his grandfather built their special-order photographer's wagon. As historian Duane A. Smith points out in the foreword, "This gives the book a personal flavor that cannot be achieved in any other way."

They both knew and loved photography from a young age; each owned his first camera by the age of ten. Lisle Updike was an "ambitious and impatient youth" who set out to make a living with his camera at the age of twelve. He was operating his own studio at age sixteen! He was a selfdeclared photo-historian "who recorded the images of time." William Pennington, fifteen years Updike's senior, grew up working in darkrooms of photography's dry plate era.

The book's narrative is assembled in thirteen chapters, which are tightlywoven vignettes of their life and times

The eighty-seven photographs span the first third of this century, from 1904 to 1934 They are arranged in two segments, the first showing the photographers' early years and the second showing their work with Native Americans of the Southwest.

The book documents an interesting era in the history of photography. After the introduction of the Kodak in 1888, photography became a common hobby. In his own journal, Charles Savage noted that instead of taking photographs, "business is changing to developing and finishing views for ama-

teurs." To survive, photographers had to offer different services While their images indicate that these two remained creative as traveling photographers, the book does not explore uiis change, nor does it explore the business or the technical aspects of their photography I do feel that some of the compositions suffer from the invention of the Kodak in that they have a snapshot feel to them In particular, a series of images of a trip in the San Juan Mountains are more personal or experimental than they are exceptional lens work.

The images in the second "gallery," however, are the most fascinating The portraits of the Zuni, Acoma, Jicarilla Apache, Ute, Yuma, Navajo, and Cocopa people are without question the mark of achievement for these photographers. Interestingly, in this section these two photographers seemed to have reversed their roles. Pennington, the studio man, took portraits that carry a Curtis-esque romanticism and are sometimes rigidly posed Yet Pennington showed an ability for stunning landscapes Of special note is his moody image of Mesa Verde's Cliff Palace, which captures the logic and symmetry of the construction within the hold of the cliff and canyon. Another, "Relating an Experience," shows Pennington's ability to integrate people and landscape This image blends a distant mountain into the story you imagine to be told by the two men in the foreground

On the other hand, Updike's portraits have a documentary style that shows that the photographer got to know his subject and tried to convey something about the person. The portraits show people at ease with the man behind the camera Updike's documentary talent is apparent in the series on the Zuni where he photographed them drilling turquoise, grinding cornmeal, cutting buckskin, carving Kachina dolls, and carrying water.

This biography reveals a unique photography operation in an unlikely era, but its emphasis lies in the echo— it treats these two photographers with an intimacy similar to that which they

strove for in their images And that's as rare a match as the two photographers were.

DREW ROSS Salt Lake City, Utah

mmmm Book Notices

Traveling the Lewis and Clark Trail. By JULIE FANSELOW (Revised ed.; Helena, MT: Falcon Publishing, 1998. viii + 266 pp. Paper, $14.95.)

Recommended by Undaunted Courage author Stephen Ambrose as a necessary companion on an exploration of the Lewis and Clark route, this guidebook can just as easily serve as a motivating force—inspiring armchair travelers to actually make the journey In two weeks, the author says, motorists can retrace the route with plenty of time for lingering and enjoying

While modern travelers must rely on imagination and the captains'journals in order to "relive" the expedition, the route apparendy offers plenty of Lewisand-Clark experiences. Here is where the book shines It points out historical sites and museums, state parks, foot trails, and river trips; the author has uncovered all the sites and experiences connected to the trail, and she tells what happened at each. Without such a guidebook, the traveler would miss much. How else, for instance, would one know how to find and climb Spirit

Mound? This hill stands on private land in Vermillion, South Dakota, and is one of the few places where "today's traveler can know with certainty he or she is standing in the exact spot the explorers stood" (71)

On a less exalted but equally helpful level, the book also lists lodging options, campgrounds, and restaurants along the trail. Maps and photos supplement the text

The Atlas of North American Exploration: From theNorse Voyages to the Race to the Pole. By WILLIAM GOETZMANN and GLYNDWR WILLIAMS. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. 224 pp. Paper, $24.95.)

What this volume necessarily lacks in depth it certainly provides in breadth

As the American continent is a huge and varied territory, so is—naturally— the story of its exploration through the centuries The sweep of exploration presented here shows how, through die determination of Caucasian explorers

and their native guides, the continent unfolded to European consciousness piece by piece Modern and historical maps and illustrations clarify and enrich the text Yet the book's summarized accounts tend to make one long for something more meaty: a journal or in-depth narrative or, better still, an on-the-ground exploration of the regions so briefly described here

Indian Summers: A Memoir of Fort Duchesne, 1925-1935. By VIRGINIA CARLSON PARKER (Logan: Agreka Books, 1998. Paper, $17.00.)

At first glance this little volume could be easily dismissed Apparently selfpublished, the book suffers from some stylistic and organizational lapses But this collection of essays is nevertheless engaging Parker is a fine writer, for one thing Her keen eye and her memory for detail vividly evoke time and place.

150 Years of American Painting, 1794-1944. By LINDA JONES GIBBS (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998 196 pp $50.00.)

For more than fifty years, a collection of paintings gathered dust in a dark room on the Brigham Young University campus With the construction of the Museum of Art came the unveiling of some seventy-three of those canvases, which are now on permanent display. From the Hudson River School painters to American Impressionists to Maynard Dixon's portraits of the depression, this exhibit boasts a broad range of art inspired by American history, social issues, and ideals.

The beautiful full-color plates of this book are accompanied by text written by curator Linda Jones Gibbs Engaging and informative, the text deals not only with the usual formal issues of color and composition but also probes deeper meanings in the paintings, the sources of the artists' inspiration, and the culture from which the art has sprung The result is a richer experience with the art and a broader understanding of American culture For example, we learn that Maynard Dixon's paintings of the depression were influenced by his wife, Dorothea Lange. Looking at his social realist paintings in the context of this book, we understand what he meant when he said that art should be "human rather than arty."

Parker explores the people and events of the Basin both as she experienced them and as she later came to understand them Particularly poignant are her associations with the Utes, whom her parents treated equitably but regarded as inferiors, and her awakening to the truth of white-Indian relationships. But no less engaging are the portraits of other Basin personalities, such as the Chinese merchant Wong Sing, or the descriptions of childhood work and play

The author has supplemented memory with significant research into sources that include interviews and primary documents The result is a satisfying portrait of an unusual community

So Much to BeDone: Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier. Edited by RUTH B. MOYNIHAN, SUSAN ARMITAGE, and CHRISTIANE FISCHER DUCHAMP (2nd ed.; Lincoln: University of Nevada Press, 1998 xxi + 354 pp Paper, $16.95.)

Sarah Ann Prince, who in 1873 moved to Holbrook, Arizona, had a "receet" for doing wash: "bild fire," "shave 1 hole cake lie sope" into water boiling in the wash tubs, sort, scrub, boil, "take white things out of keetle with broom stick handel then rench, blew and starch," spread towels on the grass and rags on the fence, water the flowers

with the rinse water, scrub the porch with the soapy water, turn the tubs upside down, then "goput on a cleen dress—smooth hair with side combs, brew cup of tea—set andrest and rock a spell andcount blessins" (243).

If the washday list is a recipe, this volume of women's writings isa cookbook for understanding lives on the western frontier And what an assortment of dishes! Among the writers represented here area suffragist, awoman forced to sell engravings on the street to support her family, a Piute Indian, a colonist at Horace Greely's experimental community in Colorado, an Italian-born nun, the Cattle Queen of Montana, the wife of an Indian agent, anda Mexican-born Californio dispossessed of her land by conquering Americans.

The women's voices areasdiverse as are their circumstances and personalities Some of the writers put on cultured airs while others assume a tone of good-humored bravado. Still others are able to express a full range of emotions No wonder, then, that these pages are full of so many responses to frontier life, including resilience, loneliness, resignation, domestic contentment, domestic exasperation, wonder, and enthusiasm.

Utah historians happen to be among the book's finest Anne F Hyde's writing on the Rocky Mountains sheds light on the profound ways that the extractive industries have influenced communities and attitudes in this region And in her essay on the Great Basin, Elizabeth Raymond discusses the role that aridity has hadin shaping patterns of development and thought in the human landscape.

Unfortunately, in its attempts to be inclusive and eclectic, the book contains some less-insightful essays. Yetthe editors' willingness to include many styles and topics demonstrates the viability and energy inherent in the field of regional scholarship

A GreekOdyssey in theAmerican West. By HELEN PAPANIKOLAS (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,1997 327 pp Paper, $17.95.)

Many Wests: Place, Culture, and Regional Identity. Edited by DAVID

M. WROBEL

and MICHAEL C.

STEINER

(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997 xxi + 386 pp Cloth, $45.00; paper, $19.95.)

A variegated compilation of essays, Many Wests addresses issues of region and subregion—a rich butlargely unexplored territory for western scholarship Asa body, the essays demonstrate that geography, environment, peoples, events, cultures, economies, and perceptions allintersect to create place.

Two essays of particular interest to

This remarkable book works on many levels It reveals the immigrant experience in an intimate way, showing the Greek culture that the immigrants clung to, the responsibility they felt toward their families in Greece, and the challenges of making a newlife in America. Thebook also works in showing historical events through the eyes of those who lived them And it works literarily, with satisfying descriptions and narratives

But most of all itworks in its sweeping portrait oftwo people—the author's parents It describes their childhood in Greek villages, the conditions that induced them to emigrate and the circumstances that brought them to the West, their marriage—agreed to after one afternoon's acquaintance—their clashes, their frail oldage, their love Papanikolas spent years interviewing her parents; she then created her narrative byweaving into their stories her own memories and extensive research.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Department of Community and Economic Development Division of State History

BOARD O F STATE HISTORY

RICHARD W SADLER, Ogden, 2003 Chair

CAROL CORNWALL MADSEN, Salt Lake City, 2001 Vice-Chair

MAX J EVANS, Salt Lake City Secretary

PAUL ANDERSON, Salt Lake City, 2003

MICHAEL W. HOMER, Salt Lake City, 2001

LORI HUNSAKER, Brigham City, 2001

KIM A. HYATT, Bountiful, 2001

JOEL C. JANETSKI, Provo, 2001

PAM MILLER, Price, 2003

CHRISTIE SMITH NEEDHAM, Logan, 2001

Ross PETERSON, Logan, 2003

PAUL D WILLIAMS, Salt Lake City, 2003

ADMINISTRATION

MAX J. EVANS, Director

WILSON G. MARTIN, Associate Director

PATRICIA SMITH-MANSFIELD, Assistant Director

STANFORD J LAYTON, Managing Editor

KEVIN T.JONES, State Archaeologist

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 materials; 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 Park Service, under provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 as amended

This program receives financial assistance for identification and preservation of historic properties under Tide VI of me Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 The U.S Department of the Interior prohibits discrimination on die 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