Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 39, Number 1-4, 1971

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UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

BOARD O F STATE H I S T O R Y Division of Department of Development Services M I L T O N c. ABRAMS, L o g a n , 1973

President D E L L O G. DAYTON, O g d e n , 1971

Vice

President

C H A R L E S s . P E T E R S O N , S a l t L a k e City

Secretary DEAN R. B R I M H A L L , F r u i t a , 1973 M R S . J U A N I T A B R O O K S , St. G e o r g e , 1973

J A C K GOODMAN, S a l t L a k e City, 1973 M R S . A. c. J E N S E N , S a n d y , 1971 THERON L U K E , PrOVO, 1 9 7 1 CLYDE L . M I L L E R , S e c r e t a r y of S t a t e

Ex

officio

H O W A R D c. P R I C E , J R . , Price, 1971 MRS. ELIZABETH SKANCHY, M i d v a l e , 1 9 7 3 M R S . NAOMI W O O L L E Y , S a l t L a k e City, 1971

ADVISORY BOARD O F E D I T O R S THOMAS G. ALEXANDER, PrOVO S. GEORGE ELLSWORTH,

Logan

M R S . H E L E N z . P A P A N I K O L A S , Salt Lake City LAMAR P E T E R S E N , S a l t L a k e C i t y

M R S . PEARL J A C O B S O N , Richfield

HAROLD SCHINDLER, Salt Lake City

DAVID E . M I L L E R , Salt L a k e C i t y

JEROME STOFFEL, L o g a n

ADMINISTRATION CHARLES s. P E T E R S O N , Director J O H N J A M E S , J R . , Librarian

T h e U t a h State Historical Society is a n organization devoted t o t h e collection, preservation, a n d publication of U t a h a n d related history. I t was organized by publicspirited U t a h n s in 1897 for this purpose. I n fulfillment of its objectives, t h e Society p u b lishes t h e Utah Historical Quarterly, which is distributed t o its members with p a y m e n t of a $5.00 a n n u a l membership fee. T h e Society also maintains a specialized research library of books, pamphlets, photographs, periodicals, microfilms, newspapers, maps, a n d manuscripts. M a n y of these items have come t o t h e library a s gifts. Donations a r e encouraged, for only t h r o u g h such means can t h e U t a h State Historical Society live u p to its responsibility of preserving the record of U t a h ' s past.

MARGERY w . W A R D , Associate E d i t o r IRIS S C O T T , Business M a n a g e r

T h e primary purpose of t h e Quarterly is t h e publication of manuscripts, p h o t o graphs, a n d documents which relate o r give a new interpretation to U t a h ' s unique story.

Contributions of writers are solicited for t h e consideration of t h e editor. However, t h e editor assumes n o responsibility for t h e r e t u r n of manscripts u n a c c o m p a n i e d by r e t u r n postage. Manuscripts a n d material for publications should b e sent t o the editor.

T h e U t a h State Historical Society does not assume responsibility for statements of fact or opinions expressed by contributors.

T h e Utah Historical Quarterly is entered as second-class postage, p a i d a t Salt Lake City, U t a h . Copyright 1971, U t a h State Historical Society, 6 0 3 East South T e m p l e Street, Salt L a k e City, U t a h 84102.

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HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

WINTER 1 9 7 1 / V O L U M E 39 / NUMBER 1

Contents WARREN MARSHALL JOHNSON, FORGOTTEN SAINT

BY P . T . REILLY

3

FUNCTION AND FUN IN UTAH-DANISH NICKNAMES

BY JAMES BOYD CHRISTENSEN

23

UTAH'S SENATORIAL ELECTION OF 1899: THE ELECTION THAT FAILED

BY STEWART L. GROW

30

NEGRO SLAVERY IN UTAH

BY DENNIS L. LYTHGOE

40

GERMAN AND ITALIAN PRISONERS OF WAR IN UTAH AND IDAHO

BY RALPH A. BUSCO AND DOUGLAS D. ALDER

55

REVIEWS AND PUBLICATIONS

EDITOR

CHARLES S. PETERSON

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

THE

COVER

73

Margery W. Ward

The first page of Warren Marshall 1882 Journal

Johnson's

Books Reviewed

CARMER, CARL, The Farm Boy and the Angel,

BY F A W N M . BRODIE

73

GREENWAY, JOHN, ed., Folklore of the Great West: Selections from Eighty-three Years of the Journal of American Folklore,

BY L O U I E W . A T T E B E R Y

74

BURT, OLIVE W., Negroes in the Early West,

BY H O W A R D K A N E T Z K E

75

A M E S , C H A R L E S E D G A R , Pioneering the Union Pacific: A Reappraisal of the Builders of the Railroad,

BY GERALD D. N A S H

76

MATTES, M E R R I L L J., The Great Platte River Road: The Covered Wagon Mainline Via Fort Kearny to Fort Laramie,

BY DAVID E . M I L L E R

TANNER, ANNIE CLARK, A Mormon er, An Autobiography,

77

Moth-

BY MARIA S. E L L S W O R T H

78

AMERICAN WEST E D I T O R S , comp., The American Heritage Book of Great Adventures of the Old West'',

BY R I C H A R D W . SADLER

79

KAROLEVITZ, R O B E R T F., This Was Pioneer Motoring: An Album of Nostalgic Automemorabilia,

BY S T A N F O R D P . DARGER

79

BRUNVAND, JAN HAROLD, The Study of American Folklore, An Introduction,

BY T H O M A S E. C H E N E Y

80

Warren Marshall Johnson, Forgotten Saint

BY P. T. REILLY

1929, Heber J. Grant, president of the Church of IJesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, addressed a joint session of the Arizona N T H E SPRING OF

Work of this n a t u r e is never a one-man enterprise. Seven of W a r r e n Johnson's children participated in oral discussions which were quite valuable: Mrs. Elizabeth Colvin, Jeremiah Johnson, F r a n k T. Johnson, Mrs. Lydia Spencer, Price W. Johnson, W a r r e n E. Johnson, a n d Joseph S. Johnson. Manuscript material written by Mrs. M a r y E. J u d d , Mrs. Polly A. J u d d ,

4

Utah Historical

Quarterly

legislature regarding a name for the recently completed bridge across the Marble Gorge of the Colorado River. He recommended that the structure not be called the Lee's Ferry Bridge and noted that Lee occupied and operated the Ferry for a short time only, being succeeded by Warren M. Johnson, whose name might much more appropriately be applied than the name of Lee. 1 There was considerable justification for President Grant's statement because during the first half-century of Mormon domination of the historic river crossing Warren Johnson was the proprietor for over forty percent of the period, in contrast to Lee's span of less than six percent. 2 It might be said that Jacob Hamblin explored this gateway for Mormon colonization, John D. Lee settled it, and Warren Johnson made the place bloom. The names of Hamblin and Lee have touched history beyond their life spans, while Johnson was an integral component in the pioneer transportation system which has ended. And yet Johnson's green pastures, his ready hospitality, and his great faith provided material succor and spiritual courage to the pioneer colonists who ventured into the inhospitable Arizona desert across the Colorado River. He was known throughout the far-flung Mormon settlements and his name was recorded with affection in many pioneer journals. The colonization of the nineteenth century has changed and two great bridges with their attendant paved highways now bypass the one place which provided access to the river for pioneer wagons. Today Johnson has been forgotten except by his family, and his labors have been absorbed by passing time.

Warren Marshall Johnson was born July 9, 1838, at Bridgewater, New Hampshire. His branch of the Johnson family is traced from Thomas, one of three brothers who landed in the Boston area about three years after the arrival of the Mayflower. He was raised a Methodist and received his early education at Bridgewater and Boston.

Frank T. Johnson and Jeremiah Johnson was especially helpful. Grandchildren who contributed information and material are Mrs. Eletha Jacobsen, W. Dart Judd, Mrs. Laura Mulliner, Mrs. Abbey Nelson, and Owen Johnson. The author acknowledges his debt to all of these people and thanks them for making this sketch possible.

Archival material was graciously provided by the Historian's Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Utah State Historical Society, and the University of Utah, Salt Lake City; Brigham Young University, Provo; Dixie College, St. George; University of Arizona, Tucson; and Northern Arizona University and the Recorder's Office of Coconino County, Flagstaff, Arizona.

Mr. Reilly has been researching Lee's Ferry and the Colorado River since 1947. He is writing a book on the Ferry and surrounding area.

1 Arizona, Legislature, Journal, 1929, 9th sess., p. 373. see also the Salt Lake Tribune, March 9, 1929.

2 Jacob Hamblin led the first Mormon exploratory party to the mouth of the Paria in November 1858. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and James S. Emett sold the ranch and the ferry to the Grand Canyon Cattle Company on August 18, 1909, and September 11, 1909. Arizona, Coconino County, Recorder, Deeds, Book 355, pp. 285â&#x20AC;&#x201D;86.

Warren Marshall Johnson

5

Delicate and sickly, Warren frequently was under a doctor's care.

He had a bad case of ulcers and nearly succumbed in the winter of 1865-66. The doctor gave him less than a year to live but said he could extend his span somewhat if he moved to a milder climate.

During the spring of 1866 two of Warren's friends yielded to the lure of gold and determined to travel overland to California and try their luck at mining. Young Johnson was asked to join them and he decided that a trip west might benefit his health. The three men left Boston on horseback early in May 1866.

Apparently they followed the Oregon Trail and late in July reached southern Idaho. Here Warren Johnson's ailment flared up, and the attack was so intense he decided to seek a doctor. Qualified medical knowledge was infrequently encountered in the West during this period and the men were advised to head for Salt Lake City.

This leg of the ride was quite an ordeal for the sick man, but he managed to reach Farmington and the home of Dr. Jonathan Smith.

Unable to travel farther and not wishing to delay his companions, he urged them to continue, planning to follow when he felt better. But Johnson never reached California.

As the sick man convalesced in the home of Dr. Smith, the good simple food and devout environment did more for his ailment than the medicines prescribed. Warren and Dr. Smith's oldest daughter, Permelia Jane, were mutually attracted and it is said that when he found Mormons did not have horns he began to study their gospel. Convinced he had found the true religion, he embraced the teachings of Joseph Smith with all the fervor of one who has just made a great discovery. From this time on, life began anew. On the thirtieth of September 1866, Warren M. Johnson was baptized at Farmington by Henry Hatlis. 3 On July 7, 1867, he was ordained an elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and was sent with others to support the Muddy Mission in southern Nevada. 4 As colonizations went, the Muddy was one of the roughest that confronted the Mormon pioneers. Searing summer heat, sudden floods, constant wind, blowing sand, and tormenting Indians harassed these settlers as in no other place. The only building materials at hand were tule, willows, and adobe. The bottom land had to be cleared and ditches dug 3 M a r y E. J. J u d d , "History of Warren Marshall Johnson and Family" (original, Eletha Jacobsen, O g d e n ; typescript in possession of a u t h o r ) .

4 Ibid.

6

Utah Historical Quarterly

to bring life-giving water long distances in the traditional Mormon manner.

This was the environment confronting Warren Johnson when he arrived at St. Thomas during the late summer of 1867. Being single and comparatively well educated, his talent was recognized and he became the school teacher and a leader in the community. When the authorities of the church were presented at the concluding meeting of the Southern Mission Conference on June 5, 1870, Warren Johnson was listed as "President of Elders on the Muddy." 5 In his spare time the man to whom the Boston doctors gave a year to live worked a small farm.

Warren had some unfinished business in Farmington and returned there in 1869. On October 4 he and Permelia Jane Smith were married in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. The couple then returned to St. Thomas and the school teacher resumed his classes.

When the Isaac E. James survey in the summer of 1870 determined that the settlements of the Muddy were well inside Nevada, Brigham Young approved their abandonment and in February of 1871 the colonists followed the recommendation of a scouting party and moved nearly en masse to Long Valley, arriving there March 3. 6 Led by Bishop James Leithead the faithful flock settled at a location called "Berryville" and promptly renamed it "Glendale" after the bishop's home in his native Scotland. Warren Johnson and his bride accompanied the colonists and Warren carried on the same duties that he had performed in St. Thomas, except that he added the jobs of bookkeeper and clerk in a store owned by Joseph Asay.

Warren and Permelia had their first child, a girl whom they named Mary Evelette, on May 6, 1872. At last it appeared that they could settle down to raise a family.

One of Warren's older pupils at St. Thomas had been Samantha Nelson. Born at San Bernardino, California, in 1853, she had returned to Utah with her family when Brigham Young recalled that mission during the war scare of 1857. The Price William Nelsons had answered the call to the Muddy Mission in 1865; now they had resettled at Glendale and once more she attended school directed by her former schoolmaster.

5 James G. Bleak, "Annals of the Southern U t a h Mission" (typescript, Brigham Young University), Book B, 45, lists Warren Johnson as president of the elders on the Muddy.

6 L . A. Fleming, " T h e Settlements on the Muddy, 1865 to 1871: 'A Godforsaken Place,' " Utah Historical Quarterly, 35 (Spring, 1967). 147â&#x20AC;&#x201D;72. K a n e County Daughters of Utah Pioneers, comp., History of Kane County (Salt Lake City, 1960), 372.

Warren Marshall Johnson

7

On October 28, 1872, Warren Johnson married his pupil Samantha Nelson in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. Daniel H. Wells is said to have performed the ceremony.

The couple returned to Glendale and Johnson acquired a home for his new bride. He had forty acres of ground and soon obtained an interest in the Glendale Co-op. After the first hard year the little settlement began to thrive and the Johnsons viewed the future with optimism.

Unknown to the struggling people at Glendale, events had already taken place in the rocky wilderness about sixty-five miles to the southeast which would affect the lives of the Johnsons for three generations.

John D. Lee and two of his wives, Rachel and Emma, along with their families had settled at the mouth of the Paria during the last days of December 1871, calling the place "Lonely Dell." 7 In carrying out President Young's policy of controlling the land by possessing the water, Lee in April 1872, had filed claims on the fine springs at House Rock and Jacob's Pools; the following month he settled Rachel at the latter place, and from that time on divided his labor between the two ranches. 8 His efforts were exhausting, help was always short, and he literally pulled himself up by his bootstraps in two places at once. An inferior man would have been extended to prevail over the environment of either locality, much less both at the same time.

7 Robert Glass Cleland and J u a n i t a Brooks, eds., A Mormon John D. Lee, 1848-1876 (2 vols., San Marino, 1955), I I , 178-80.

8 Ibid., 195.

Lee's Ferry on the

Colorado.

Chronicle:

The Diaries of

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Utah Historical

Quarterly

Lee needed a man cast in his own mold but it did not seem likely such a man was available. On December 23, 1872, Jacob Hamblin sent young James Jackson and a Paiute to assist with the ferryboat then nearing completion. 9 The young man was the son of Alden A. M. Jackson of St. George; he possessed a fair education, had been on the Muddy Mission, and had voted against its abandonment. Now he was on another mission and Jacob assigned him a plot of about ten acres of sandy, less choice land than Lee's holding but adjoining it on the northwest.

June 16, 1873, was a tragic day for Lee. The Colorado was in flood and its surface was heavy with drift. T h e combination of a rising river and a continuing build-up of driftwood which lodged against the craft finally tore it from its moorage and sent it down the canyon. Lee had been busy at the ranch and his diary gives no indication that he had checked the condition of his ferryboat until it was too late. The loss was a major blow to the colonization effort and it undoubtedly injured him in the eyes of church authorities.

To make matters worse, Lorenzo W. Roundy informed him that a troop of soldiers was expected to arrive at the Ferry in about three days and had threatened to hang Lee and all of his children. So once again he sought an area more remote. Lee swam his horse behind the skiff and headed for the Indian farms on the Moenkopi, some seventy miles on into Arizona. O n the twenty-seventh he met Jacob Hamblin at Willow Spring and it was decided that he would stay at Jacob's recently established farm at "Moweabby" (Moenave).

The rumor regarding the soldiers was a false one but it was an effective means of getting Lee away from the river crossing and deeper into Arizona. In two months he had traded his ranch at the Pools for Jacob's farm at Moenave. 10 John L. Blythe built a replacement ferryboat that fall and ferry service was restored with its launching on October 15. 11 Lee crossed on the Blythe ferry November 6 but characteristically made no comment in his diary since he had not taken part in its construction. He was upset, however, and later addressed a letter to A. F. McDonald inquiring whether the authorities intended to disassociate him with the Ferry. In a reply dated January 28, 1874, Brigham Young and George A. Smith confirmed Lee as the intended ferryman, and he provided ferry service whenever he happened to be at the Colorado crossing during the next eight 9

Ibid., 217.

Ibid., 289.

11 James H. McClintock, Mormon Settlement

10

in Arizona (Phoenix, 1921), 92.

Warren Marshall Johnson

9

months. This was not often because until May 6 his residence was at Moenave.

Up to 1899 all ferries at this crossing were oar-driven and at least two men were required to propel the boat. Proper handling decreed that one man be experienced, and with Lee absent much of the time Jackson's presence was essential.

But on March 10 James Jackson succumbed to the effects of exposure on Buckskin Mountain, and the following day was lowered into a grave on the west edge of his land claim. This was the first burial in what ultimately became a twenty-plot cemetery.12 Today his resting-place is not identified with an engraved headstone but may be recognized as being near the middle of the east row and is covered with large rocks â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the only one so marked. 13 Jackson's death caused a labor problem at Lonely Dell. Emma and her family were without male help when John D. Lee was arrested at Panguitch on November 7, 1874. The oft-repeated Lee family legend of Emma's saving herself and her children by sleeping in the camp of a Navajo band whom she thought had planned to kill them apparently alerted church officials to the danger of her isolated position, and they began to ponder the problem of a capable replacement. Until an official appointment could be made, Jacob Hamblin and his son Lyman occupied the post and tended the ferry for trade-bent natives.

Back in Glendale Warren Johnson had been appointed presiding elder and his second family was enlarged by the birth of a daughter, Elizabeth, on April 26, 1874.

Early in 1875 Warren was chosen first counselor to Bishop Howard O. Spencer of Long Valley, thus becoming the only official of this ward living outside of Orderville. 14 Soon thereafter, Johnson responded affirmatively to Bishop Spencer's request that he take over Lee's Ferry on a temporary basis. Taking his first wife Permelia and baby Mary to Lee's Ferry, he arrived there March 30, 1875.15 He took up the ten-acre land claim of James Jackson and immediately went to work on the little cabin to make it liveable, the front door and table having been used to make the deceased owner's coffin. Then he was initiated into the constant job of repairing the dam across the Paria and bringing water to the dry fields. Even a minor flood 12

Bleak, "Southern U t a h Mission," 239.

This grave was pointed out to the author by Frank T. Johnson in 1965. " D U P , History of Kane County, 3 1 7 - 1 8 .

13 Bleak, "Southern U t a h Mission," 399.

13

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down the long tributary would wash out the flimsy structure, and without water the essential garden withered. There was much work to be done, most of it strenuous and in such quantity that by nightfall he was exhausted. In April alone he crossed fifty-two Indians, who at this time constituted the bulk of traffic since few white men had business across the river.

W h e n W a r r e n Johnson rode out of Boston in 1866 he departed with the spirit of adventure and the hope that a milder climate would improve his health. T h e comfortable, sheltered world he h a d known became a thing of the past, and his response to the new environment proved to be the real measure of his intelligence and true strength. T h e long ride had been rigorous but he h a d toughened progressively with each trial and hardship. A major physical crisis h a d been overcome in Farmington and it was there also that he took a great spiritual step. T h e ordeal on the M u d d y and the first bleak year at Glendale required more than physical endurance; without faith and fervor to nourish their morale, survival for the colonists would have been impossible. Now Johnson faced the sternest test of all, and by any standard of measurement his response was an excellent example of h u m a n achievement.

W a r r e n did not naturally possess the knowledge, skills, and strength for the jobs he h a d to perform, but he acquired them. Not only did he adapt to the harsh conditions of his new home but he thrived, and provided help and comfort to the less fortunate who passed his door.

It appears that Johnson soon agreed to take the job on a permanent basis, but there is no record to bear this out. T h e best indicator of the length of his first stay at the Ferry is a report m a d e to the authorities at St. George in which Johnson stated he had crossed 522 Indians between April 1 and November l. 16 This is clear evidence that he was on the job when George Q. Cannon read his name in the general conference at Salt Lake City on October 10, 1875. 17 His official notification was dated the following day and it specified he was called to a life's mission at Lee's Ferry, Arizona, to act as ferryman. H e also was to preach the gospel to the Lamanites and administer to them. In recognition of the fact that Johnson was already there, his residence was listed as Lee's Ferry. Interestingly, on October 9 President Brigham Young had added Johnson's 10 Ibid., 428. Of these 497 were Navajos, 24 were Moquis (Hopis), and there was one Paiute. " Card file on Warren M. Johnson and "Journal History," October 10, 1875, both located in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Historian's Library, Salt Lake City.

Warren Marshall

Johnson

11

name as a missionary under James S. Brown, then preparing to build a way station at Moenkopi. 1 8 Permelia was expecting another child and she wanted the birth to take place in Glendale where more help was available. Since Warren had to dispose of his holdings and settle his business there, it was expedient to return again early in November. T h e baby was born on December 3, 1875, and named Melinda.

It is evident that Lee, now imprisoned in Salt Lake City, was comforted by the promised presence of Johnson and regarded his maturity as an improvement over the youthful James Jackson.

While Lee was advising E m m a regarding the division of labor at the Ferry, Johnson was winding up his affairs at Glendale and preparing for a total move to the Paria. Only one thing delayed him â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the imminent birth of Samantha's second child. This occurred on February 24, 1876.

Warren Johnson departed Glendale with both his families only four days after the birth of a son, Jeremiah.

A storm front descended when the travelers were between Glendale and K a n a b , and knowing that Buckskin Mountain would be heavy with snow, Johnson rented rooms for his families in the home of Zadok K n a p p J u d d while he went on with his load in company with some wagons of Lot Smith's colonists, then beginning to trail into Arizona. This was a wise precaution because the snow continued and double-teaming was required. Also, he would be busy with the ferry operations and would have more time to settle his families after the emigrants had crossed the river.

Permelia and Samantha remained at the J u d d home most of March before a break appeared in the wagon-stream, allowing Warren's return to K a n a b . Baby Jeremiah was blessed there on M a r c h 23, 1876, and a few days later the ferryman moved his wives and four children into the stone trading post at the Colorado crossing. Here he added the job of Indian trader to his duties of ferryman, farmer, stockman, laborer, and general handyman. By the first of April, Johnson had begun his life's mission at the place which was destined to make his name a household word to all who passed over the long trail to Arizona.

Travelers frequently commented about two controversial features â&#x20AC;&#x201D; ferry fees and the rough road called "Lee's Backbone." Both problems originated with the establishment of the ferry and long continued to chafe emigrants.

18 James S. Brown, "Journal of James S. Brown" (original, Louetta Brown Tanner, Salt Lake City; typescript, George S. T a n n e r ) , October 9, 1875.

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J o h n D. Lee had established a variable ferry fee that depended on the customer and what traffic would bear. A charge of $3.00 per wagon and 75 cents per animal had been more or less set when he crossed the first wagons of Horton D. Haight's ill-fated colonization effort on April 23, 1873. 19 These charges were taken in supplies, although those who were short of food could pay with notions or any item of utility. Fees for Indians and Gentiles bracketed the missionary charge, with one-way native travelers paying a blanket, buckskin, or even piny on nuts. NonM o r m o n prospectors paid the highest fees, usually in gold coin or greenbacks or trade in the form of hand tools and supplies. I n one instance Lee ferried three prospectors and six pack animals for $8.00 in gold. 20 After Lee's imprisonment Johnson continued the same general policy under E m m a Lee's direction except that numerous complaints resulted in Emma's cutting the price to $1.50 for ferrying a wagon and team of two animals, and 50 cents additional for each extra span. President Young stated that this was a reasonable price, but apparently it applied only to missionaries. 21 In 1878 it was reduced to $1.00 for a wagon and team and 25 cents for extra animals.

Lee's Backbone was a rugged, barely passable means of left-bank egress which surmounted the lower formations of the Echo Monocline.

T h e broad cove south of the crossing is surrounded by strata which follow the natural incline of the fold, and any traveler heading south had to climb the ledge, then make an abrupt descent to reach the rolling plateau and continue his course. T h e only alternatives were to bridge the Marble Gorge, cut a new road in the shale between the ledge and river (which would be over a mile and a half long), or blast a short quarter-mile of dugway along two hundred feet of vertical limestone. With the alternatives clearly impractical, Lee, in January of 1873, chose the ledge as the most expedient route under the circumstances. O n April 4 St. George Stake President Joseph W. Young and Bishop Edward Bunker officially backed up this opinion. 22 T h e road, which dismayed strong men and struck dread in the hearts of pioneer women, was about two-and-a-half miles long. It left a flat on the left bank at its westernmost edge and ascended a narrow wash. Just before the tributary became boxed, the track took to the bare 19 Cleland and Brooks, A Mormon Chronicle, 236.

-"Ibid., 317.

21 Letter from Brigham Young to Lot Smith, July 20, 1876, in Lot Smith Letter Box, L.D.S. Church Historian's Library.

22 Cleland and Brooks, A Mormon Chronicle, 232.

Warren Marshall Johnson

13

rock bank to ascend the constantly rising ledge. It crossed several drainage channels gouged wagon-deep into naked bedrock, and here drivers lightened their loads but still had to double-team. Near the crest of the ledge the road was grubbed out of a narrow shelf; the outer rut no more than a foot or two from a precipitous 500-foot plunge to the rim of the gorge. Most women and children walked here, hugging the inner rut.

At the crest the track swung south, then southeast. Abruptly it cut due east to head a rock-strewn alcove, made a hairpin-180 degree turn, and descended a rocky spur sloping west. The descent of 350 feet was made in about four-tenths of a mile. In 1878 the objective Joseph Fish toiled all day to traverse the route and said it was the worst road he ever traveled.23 Its problems not withstanding everyone commuting between Utah and Arizona by this route was forced to use it during early years.

After Lee's execution on March 23, 1877, Emma remained at the ranch in the mouth of Paria Canyon. Through her late husband she held squatter's rights to the farmland and the ferrysite, although the church owned the boats. Warren Johnson remained the responsible power behind all phases of the operation. He lived with both of his families in the fort-trading post, and when Gentiles appeared the diminutive Samantha was passed off as Permelia's oldest daughter. This subterfuge worked until Samantha began to show her pregnancy in the spring of 1878 and Johnson moved her inside the canyon where she would be less conspicuous. There on the banks of Paria Creek on August 3, 1878, was born Frank Tilton Johnson, Samantha's third child and the first white baby, not a Lee, to be born at Lee's Ferry.

Completion of the St. George Temple in April 1877 increased traffic between Arizona and Utah, with many Saints able for the first time to perform their temple work. Solemnizing marriages drew the faithful to St. George in such numbers that the Mormon Road became known as the "Honeymoon Trail." During this period the Lee's Backbone section of the track was castigated as never before, and the protests were not unheeded. A sufficient number of church leaders had traveled the road to know that criticism was valid and when Erastus Snow, Ira N. Hinckley, L. John Nuttall, and Jesse N. Smith visited the Little Colorado settlements in the fall of 1878 the situation received a careful examination.

These authorities decided that a revision was feasible and they selected a location where a quarter-mile long dugway could be built with minimum effort, also a new downstream crossing which could be used 23 Joseph Fish, "Joseph Fish J o u r n a l " (original, H a n n a h Fish Bushar, Enterprise; xerox, University of U t a h ) , December 20, 1878.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

eight or nine months of the year.24 Neither was ideal; the dugway would be steep, narrow, and expensive since blasting would have to be done, while the crossing was at the foot of the long rapid and would not be useable in high water. However, the new crossing's prospects were enhanced by a strong eddy below the fan from the right-bank tributary wash which offered a slight upstream current for about half the width of the river.

Warren Johnson applied for the establishment of a post office at Lee's Ferry and the request was granted on April 23, 1879. The oath was administered and Johnson's bonds signed by Frihoff G. Nielson, justice of the peace at the northeast Arizona town of Sunset.25 Since her husband's death Emma Lee had grown increasingly desirous of leaving Lonely Dell. On May 16, 1879, she sold her interest to John Taylor, trustee for the church, through agent John W. Young.

Warren Johnson was one of the witnesses and affixed his name to the deed. It is significant that Emma sold all of the property except the ten acres claimed by Johnson, which was the old Jackson land claim.28 John W. Young placed the ferry under the nominal responsibility of Joseph L. Foutz, to be assisted by Warren M. Johnson. Foutz was an 1877 settler at Moenkopi and was there more often than at the Ferry.

On November 30 Erastus Snow placed Warren Johnson in complete charge, as he had been acting in that capacity since Emma's departure.

Snow made the major decisions affecting the Ferry, while Howard O. Spencer and James Leithead of Long Valley aided on lesser matters.

When Kanab Stake had been organized on April 8, 1877, Spencer was chosen first counselor to President L. John Nuttall and he directed the brethren at the Ferry during Nuttall's frequent absences.

Feed was short at Lonely Dell in the summer of 1880, so Johnson built a trail up the steep slope to tap virgin range west of the ranch. 27 There was fairly adequate grazing on the sand dunes rising above the bench, also a running spring of good water. But the drive was long and Johnson's work began before daylight and ended after dark. He was never through and rarely had time to clear and level more land for 24 Letter from L. J o h n Nuttall published in Deseret News (Salt Lake C i t y ) , September 14 and October 30, 1878. Jesse N. Smith did not r e t u r n with Snow, Hinckley, and Nuttall for the last examination.

2o Frihoff G. Nielson, " J o u r n a l of Frihoff G. Nielson" (microfilm, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff), J u n e 10, 1879.

88 See W a r r a n t y and Q u i t Claim Deeds Transcribed From Yavapai County, Coconino County, Arizona, Recorder, Book 1, p. 23.

-' T h e promontory to which this trail ascended was named Johnson Point on July 23, 1969. See U.S., D e p a r t m e n t of the Interior, Board on Geographic Names, Decision List 6903.

This was the first commemoration of Johnson's name on the topography.

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15

lucerne. Clearly he had to have help if the ranch were to thrive and travelers be provided with ferry service.

Twenty-one-year-old David Brinkerhoff had become Warren's brother-in-law in October 1876 when he married Samantha's younger sister, Lydia Ann Nelson.

As he was energetic, dependable, a good farmer, and adaptable, he appeared to Johnson as being the man he needed. Consequently, Warren began a campaign to persuade David to join him at the Colorado crossing. Leithead and Spencer lent the weight of their prestige to his arguments, and Brinkerhoff succumbed to the perEmma Batchelder Lee, suasion in the spring of 1881, sold seventeenth wife of John his farm in Glendale, and moved D. Lee, sold her interest his family to Lee's Ferry. By this in Lee's Ferry in 1879. time each of Warren's wives had four children, and David's wife and three children raised the permanent population to six adults and eleven children.

Even the ferryboats which escaped mishap had a rather short life span as the soft, unpainted pine absorbed moisture and became waterlogged after two or three years. The need for a new ferry was apparent before Emma Lee sold out and several discussions had taken place between Snow, Nuttall, and Leithead as to size and improved design. These men understood the economics of moving large loads, but unfortunately knew little about the Colorado River. Moreover they failed to consult the ferryman who would propel the craft with 12-foot sweeps across the sometimes strong current. The officials finally settled on a boat 14 by 40 feet, along with an embryonic plan of hanging a manila rope across the river to prevent downstream drift. Timbers were freighted from John Seaman's sawmill at Upper Kanab, while Bishop Leithead was sent to the crossing in the fall of 1881 to supervise the work.

Construction dragged along until December. After launching it was apparent that the boat was too large and clumsy to be used except at the

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lowest water, and even then only when there was no wind. Obviously with such a large craft rope could not be substituted for a cable, and it was never hung. Consequently, the new boat received little use, forcing Johnson to make most of his crossings with the skiff.

Late that summer the long-delayed plan to install a lower ferry, which would eliminate the difficult pull over the Lee's Backbone road, finally bore fruit and Erastus Snow sent quarryman Archibald McNeil to construct a dugway at the place which had been chosen in 1878. The job was completed in December and the unwieldy craft was run down the river and put in operation at the new site.

Within three months the tricky current-change had torn the sweep from Johnson's grasp, breaking his left arm at the wrist. The accident incapacitated him for the hard physical work at both river and ranch, and the full burden now fell on David Brinkerhoff. Under these circumstances Warren thought it would be wise to take care of a matter which had been on his mind for a number of years â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a visit to his parental home in New England. He credited his present health and well-being to his acceptance of the gospel of Joseph Smith and felt obligated to make similar benefits available to his family and friends. He had corresponded with B. F. Cummings regarding his genealogy and he also desired to make some personal research in this field.

Erastus Snow granted him permission to make the trip provided the Ferry was left under the responsibility of David Brinkerhoff. This arrangement was agreeable and Warren departed Lee's Ferry April 12, 1882.

Johnson returned to Salt Lake City from his mission in the East in time to attend the October conference and spent ten days with church authorities discussing his mission and plans for the Ferry. He rejoined his families November 7.

The results of Warren's past labors were in evidence when he returned, as there were five tons of tithing hay on hand. Even so it was planned to increase the planting of lucerne, and after preparing all unused land near the cabins they began clearing a large flat up the canyon. This was the beginning of the Upper Ranch, but the task was large and was not completed for several years. David had rooted a large number of grape cuttings and these made a nice vineyard when they were transplanted in the spring. More fruit trees were obtained to expand the orchard in both variety and quantity.

To overcome the chief objections to the Lee's Backbone road, Johnson laid out a bypass of the roughest part and began construction in

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17

March of 1885. By mid-May it had become too warm for pick and shovel work but he had a good start and his revision would eliminate nearly the entire first mile of the old road where double-teaming was required. This Johnson cut-off was not completed for wagon use until 1888.28 Meanwhile Warren had convinced the authorities of the practicality of a single-wagon ferryboat for the upper crossing; it was constructed and ready for use when the high water of 1888 arrived. 29 As an outgrowth of difficulties between Lot Smith and A. L. Farnsworth, plus the fact that the bishop of Tuba City Ward and some of his polygamous brethren were moving to Mexico, David Brinkerhoff left the Ferry to become bishop at Tuba City early in 1886. His departure was a heavy loss to his brother-in-law, and his replacements, while good men, rarely remained more than a few months.

Warren's families were very close and he longed to gather them under one roof. This desire saw a measure of fulfillment in July of 1886 when he and his hired hands began hauling foundation rocks for a twostory house. He purchased a load of lumber from Seaman's sawmill and engaged a carpenter, William James Frazier McAllister of Kanab. McAllister came to the Ferry that fall after completing some water troughs for the V T Cattle Company in House Rock Valley. He worked until he ran out of lumber, but got the house framed, the siding and roof on, and the doors and windows fitted. He promised to return when additional lumber arrived.

Most of the Johnson children had never been away from Lee's Ferry and their only touch with the outside world came from travelers. They beheld a Negro for the first time when wagons belonging to a Mr. Clevenger arrived early in May 1886. Clevenger's wrangler was John A. Johnson, a black man.

Some time later a traveler arrived from the south with a camel, and the wondrous beast remained a subject of conversation for many days among the awed children.

When Apostle Wilford Woodruff was faced with renouncing polygamy or seizure by federal officers, he announced, "As an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, I will not desert my wives and children and disobey the commandments of God for the sake of accomodating the public clamor of a nation steeped in sin and ripened for the damnation of 28 Warren Johnson Road Account Book (original, J. S. Johnson, Kanab; photocopy in possession of author).

29 Allen Frost recorded in his diary that he crossed on this ferryboat March 26, 1887, en route to Arizona. Allen Frost, "Diary of Allen Frost 1838-1901" (photocopy, Brigham Young University).

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hell!" 30 He then went into the "underground" and traveled surreptitiously to out-of-the-way places. In the spring of 1879 he had paused at Lee's Ferry on his way to the Little Colorado settlements and had been impressed with the intense, earnest man who kept the Ferry and labored for Zion in this isolated location. In 1882 the acquaintance had ripened in Salt Lake City, and subsequently the men exchanged letters in regard to the crossing.

After 1887 John Taylor was dead and Woodruff was president of the church. Following the presentation of the Manifesto on October 6, 1890, the church president remembered the quiet Saint at the Ferry and advised him to separate his two families, preferably keeping one in Utah and the other in Arizona.

In November of 1890 Johnson made inquiry of L. John Nuttall â&#x20AC;&#x201D; now in permanent residence in Salt Lake City â&#x20AC;&#x201D; as to the availability of his Kanab house and lots. After a series of offers and counteroffers Nuttall on January 16, 1891, finally accepted Johnson's bid of $350.00 for his Kanab property. 31 Samantha now had nine children, seven of whom had been born at Lee's Ferry. She departed on April 27, 1891, with twelve-year-old Frank 30

Deseret News, April 1, 1879. 'n L. Tohn Nuttall, " T h e Journals of L. Tohn N u t t a l l " (original, Brigham Young University; typescript, B.Y.U., 3 vols.), I l l , 228, 230, 240, 249.

Lee's Ferry looking for the ferry.

upstream.

The "x" marks one end of the

cable

Warren Marshall Johnson

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driving her wagon and Almon Draper handling the other. Jerry remained behind to work with his father. In a few days disaster â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in the form of diphtheria â&#x20AC;&#x201D; struck the Ferry. Warren Johnson's own words tell the story: Lee's Ferry Ariz July 29/1891 President Wilford Woodruff Dear Brother It has occurred to me that you ought to know how affairs are going at this place, which is my excuse for intruding on your time, which I know is fully occupied with other affairs.

Last spring I divided my family, according to your counsel, a portion of them moving to Kanab for the purpose of schooling my children. In May 1891 a family residing in Tuba City, came here from Richfield Utah, where they had spent the winter visiting friends. At Panguitch they buried a child, and without disinfecting the wagon or themselves, not even stopping to wash the dead child's clothes, they came to our house, and remained overnight, mingling with my little children, and the consequence was in 4 days my oldest boy of my first wife, was taken violently ill with fever and sore throat.

We knew nothing of the nature of the disease, but had faith in God, as we were here on a very hard mission, and had tried as hard as we knew how to obey the word of Wisdom, and attend to the other duties of our religion, such as paying tything, family prayers &c &c, that our children would be spared. But alass, in 4y2 days he choked to death in my arms.

Two more were taken down with the disease and we fasted and prayed as much as we thought it wisdom as we had many duties to perform here.

We fasted some 24 hours and once I fasted 40 hours, but all of no avail for both my little girls died also. About a week after their death my fifteen year old daughter Melinda was stricken down and we did all we could for her but she followed the others, and three of my dear girls and one boy has been taken from us, and the end is not yet. My oldest girl 19 years old is now prostrate with the disease, and we are fasting and praying in her behalf today. We have become better acquainted with the nature of the disease, than at first, and we are strongly in the hopes she will recover, as two already have, that came down with it. I would ask for your faith and prayers in our behalf however. What have we done that the Lord has left us, and what can we do to gain his favor again.

Yours in the gospel Warren M. Johnson 32

Warren constructed the coffins and his wife made the burial clothes for the first three children, but friends arrived from Kanab to help with Melinda. All four children were buried in the same row, south of the James Jackson grave.

32 Letter from Warren M. Johnson to Wilford Woodruff in Warren M. Johnson Letter Folder, L.D.S. Church Historian's Library. Jonathan died May 19, Laura Alice June 11, Millie June 15, and Melinda July 5, 1891.

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Samantha never returned to the Ferry, and at Kanab on September 9, 1895, she gave birth to her tenth and last child, a girl whom they named Elnora.

In the late fall of 1895 it was decided that Warren Johnson's mission had ended and that the remnants of his first family should also have the opportunity for schooling and church activity. Accordingly Warren rode to Kanab to arrange for a property exchange. Land surveys had not been made in this part of the country and property transfers were guided by church authorities.

On December 12 Stake President E. D. Woolley took Warren Johnson to inspect a ranch west of Fredonia which was comparable in value to the one at Lee's Ferry. The property met with Johnson's approval and on the way home they stopped for a load of hay. When they were about a half-mile south of the state line the rack tipped, throwing both men to the ground. Woolley landed on his feet but Johnson came down heavily on the base of his spine. 33 This unfortunate accident marked the beginning of a decline in the fortunes of the Johnson family. Warren's back never healed. For the rest of his life he was paralyzed from the hips down.

President Woolley went to Salt Lake City and placed Johnson's case before the First Presidency on February 5, 1896. An appropriation of '^'Deseret

Evening

News, December 28, 1895.

Looking straight across Lee's Ferry. The two stone cribs are anchorings the steel cable (now removed), and the Ferry cabin is at the right.

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Warren Marshall Johnson

21

$100.00 was made for the injured ferryman, and President Woodruff suggested continued aid. He was taken to Salt Lake City for examination on July 12 but his physical condition was regarded as being too poor to risk an operation. In view of his long and faithful service at the Ferry he was made a ward of the church. 34 Until it became definite that he would remain an invalid, Johnson had postponed making a deal for the Ferry. His twenty-year-old son Jerry attended to the ranch and boats, assisted by Al Huntington and Alex Swapp. Finally on November 8, 1896, Warren and Permelia Johnson sold their interests for $6,500 to Wilford Woodruff, trustee for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The deed conveyed about thirty-two acres of lucerne; six acres of orchards, vineyards, and garden; and one and a half miles of ditch. 35 Dee Woolley had recommended James S. Emett to succeed the injured ferryman, and Johnson acquired Emett's promising Cottonwood Ranch in the complex deal.

Even though he was bedridden, Warren still made the decisions for his families. It is difficult to believe that a man of his judgment, knowing he was crippled for life, would choose to pioneer in the rugged northland, but in January of 1900 he decided to sell all Johnson holdings and migrate to Canada. On May 1 he left Kanab in the bed of a wagon driven by Permelia, while Frank, Samantha, and her four youngest children remained to sell the property and come along later.

After a layover in Salt Lake City and consultation with church authorities, their objective was changed to the Big Horn Basin in Wyoming. They arrived at Camp Shoshone late in July, and in September Apostle Abraham Woodruff directed the drawing of land by lot.

Jerry completed a one-room log cabin in November and the entire family moved in for protection from the sub-zero temperatures.

Early in 1901 Frank began to dispose of the property at giveaway prices. There was little money in the country and exchange was made for stock, wagons, and food. On July 17 the last of the Johnsons with three wagons left Kanab, driving about a hundred head of cattle. Following a hard trip they arrived at Byron, Wyoming, on September 7.

Warren traded part of his stock for a ranch thirty-five miles away near the confluence of the Graybull and Bighorn rivers. The settlement became known as Coburn (now Graybull) and Johnson was presiding elder. On December 17, 1901, he received the appointment of postmaster.

34

C a r d file on Warren M. Johnson in L.D.S. C h u r c h Historian's Library. '' Arizona, Coconino County, Recorder, Deeds, Book 4, p . 228.

3

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The winter of 1901-2 was severe, even for that country, and most of the Johnson cattle failed to survive. It was no less harsh for humans, and they narrowly escaped starvation.

Warren Johnson's health began to fail and after several weeks of intense agony he died at the ranch on March 10, 1902. He was buried at Coburn but in later years reinterred at Byron.

Despite his long contribution in maintaining the key link on the emigrant trail into Arizona, the name of Warren M. Johnson was the last of the Mormon proprietors of the Ferry to be commemorated on the region's topography â&#x20AC;&#x201D; small recognition for the man who did so much for so many during the Mormon settlement of Arizona. 36 86

See footnote 27 for the geographical feature which bears Johnson's name.

"On the 19th [1878] we drove ten miles which brought us to the Colorado River a little below the mouth of the Paria. The next day we went a little above the mouth of the Paria and spent the day in crossing the river. This was what has been known as the Lee ferry. John D. Lee having come to this place when it was first established and lived here for some time to get away from the Marshals. At the time of our crossing Warren Johnson resided here and tended the ferry. He was a good careful hand and did all that he could to assist and accommodate the emigrants, the boat however, was not a very good one and leaked quite bad. One wagon and team Was taken across at a time. The fare of $1 for a wagon and 25^ a head for horses. This was half fare, or what was termed missionary rates. The river at the ferry was 240 feet wide and in the center was quite deep. In later years the ferry was moved some distance up the river and the boat was run on a cable." (John H. Krenkel, ed., The Life and Times of Joseph Fish, Mormon Pioneer [Danville, Illinois, 1970], 184.)

Perty Pete • Hell Roarin Johnson Andrew Ah Ha • Otto by Yingo Absolutely Mortensen • Danish Pete Yo Peep Hole Soren • Alphabet Hansen John Shiner • Hardscrabble Olsen Ray Tight • Rich Hans Toe Paddy Nielsen • Charley Slobberboos Chris Tallerass • Pinchy Chris

Function and Fun in Utah-Danish Nicknames

BY JAMES BOYD C H R I S T E N S E N

is O F T E N expected by editors and colleagues that a theoretical frame of reference be presented with a paper, the writer followed the worst, but all too common, academic tradition of searching for a frameO I N C E IT

Dr. Christensen is chairman of the Department of Anthropology and director of the Social Science Program at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan.

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work of theory on which to hang this presentation. It was decided it might support the premise that the Swedes were correct in their derogatory comments on the Danes. However, as the writer was reared in the Danish tradition of this particular case of North Sea Tribalism, his cultural blinders made it necessary to reject this hypothesis. It was then decided the paper supported the basic premise that people tend to call other people by names.

Beginning in the middle 1850s, and for approximately two or three decades following, large numbers of converts to the Mormon church came to Utah from Scandinavia, in fact the immigration continued until well into the twentieth century. While they settled throughout the intermountain area, in one section of central Utah, Sanpete County by name, the Scandinavians, and particularly the Danes, were the predominant ethnic group, and in some settlements, the only one.

In these communities the profusion of Christensens was equalled by a comparable abundance of families named Petersen, Jensen, Thompsen, Nielsen, Sorensen, Andersen, Christiansen, Larsen, Olsen, Madsen, Rasmussen, plus a healthy number named Fjelsted, Beck, Tollstrup, Lund, and a few others that escaped the common "sen" or "son" suffix. This was further complicated by the common use of Peter, Nels, Hans, Jens, Christian, or Andrew as given names.

The problem derived in part from the Scandinavian pattern of naming. Though patronymic, surnames were not always inherited through successive generations in Denmark. For example, a great-grandfather of the writer was Lars Nielsen, while his grandfather was Jens Larsen. In this pattern the son's last name was his father's first name, with the addition of "sen" (son of).

Thus there was a high duplication of surnames and Christian names, and it was common for two or more individuals in the same town, or contiguous towns, to have identical names. For example it was necessary to differentiate between three Peter Jensens, thus Creamery Pete, Danish Pete, and Sorrel Pete; between two Chris Larsens, thus Chris Staff en and Pinchy Chris. It was required that the writer be identified by nickname on occasion. Prior to military service he was Boyd Christensen, one of two by that name in the high school. Thus the writer was Boyd Nickolai and the other Boyd Tight, both being inherited nicknames. Nicknames had the function of aiding in accurate identification, plus permitting the Danes to indulge in their particular brand of humor.

Comments on Utah Danish nicknames were made by Hector Lee in an article on the phenomena in Ephraim, a town in central Sanpete

Utah-Danish

Nicknames

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County. 1 T h e present p a p e r is based primarily on data from south Sanpete County in an area known as Gunnison Valley. This valley, where the writer was born a n d raised, h a d a population of under 2,500. T h e writer also lived in E p h r a i m for two years, a n d has chosen some nicknames from there because they are more graphic or explicit t h a n those from Gunnison Valley. Some used here a p p e a r in the list from E p h r a i m published by Lee, but were known to the writer prior to that publication.

T h e r e was a great deal of interaction between the south and central section of the county, in fact, some of the nicknames given by Lee's informants as being from E p h r a i m are actually from Gunnison Valley.

While most people accepted their nicknames, it remained a sensitive issue with a few of the targets. T h e incidents and personal idiosyncracies that gave rise to monikers were often unfortunate, as they were frequently based on h u m a n foibles or genetic quirks. Fortunately, time has softened the concern about nicknames, as m a n y of the original bearers are deceased, a n d succeeding generations do not take umbrage at the inherited monikers. New nicknames do not a p p e a r to have gained widespread adoption to the same degree as they did in the past.

Nicknames from central U t a h can be classed into five categories.

These are (1) physical characteristics, (2) personal traits or idiosyncracies, (3) occupations, (4) residence, and (5) of necessity a miscellaneous category. N o attempt is m a d e here to use or list all known nicknames from Gunnison, and only those where the origin is known have been utilized.

U n d e r physical characteristics we find such names as Big John, Little John, Big Chris, Little Chris, and Chris Tallerass. T h e latter was an individual w h o was, in the central U t a h vernacular, "six axhandles across the butt." T h e "taller" is also the local pronunciation of tallow. Big H e a d e d Olsen was so-called because of the size of his cranium r a t h e r t h a n attributed vanity. O n e might also include Peg Leg Nielsen a n d Peggy Jensen, along with Half Bushel Jensen.

Personal traits or idiosyncratic behavior provides some of the most humorous nicknames, but they also indicate a lack of compassion on the p a r t of the populace, a trait often associated with the use of nicknames no m a t t e r w h a t the ethnic group involved. Sorrel Pete Jensen was aptly named, for not only did he always "drive a team of sorrels" but the writer 1

Hector Lee with Royal Madsen, "Nicknames of the Ephraimites," Western Review, III (January, 1949), 12-22.

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recalls him as having a sorrel beard. Squeaky Bill Andersen had a high, penetrating voice. Pinchy Chris Larsen was a bachelor reportedly fond of tweaking the opposite sex. Bottle John acquired his sobriquet because of a reported penchant for drinking.

To continue this category, Jim Dist Nielson received his name because of his difficulty in pronouncing "this" (e.g., "Do it dist way").

Charley Slobberboos reportedly would inadvertently expectorate slightly when speaking as a result of a lip operation. Toe Paddy Nielsen had a peculiar walk, and Tute Nielsen (said to be a modification of "cute") wore his hair long and claimed cutting it would give him headaches.

Lazy Dave was said to be prone to procrastination. Ephraim records Grin Billy, Grinning Moses, and Cross-eyed Mart, all self-explanatory.

Bear Killer spoke of his hunting prowess, John Shiner was bald, Perty Pete was a ladies man, and Hell Roarin Johnson exploded occasionally.

Ephraim had Andrew Ah Ha, Otto by Yingo, Absolutely Mortensen, and

By Frist Hendricksen, while Gunnison Valley added Danish Pete Yo, all nicknames awarded because of the repetitious use of a word or two. The writer has always been curious as to why, in a colony of Danes, one should have been singled out to be called Danish Pete.

Rich Hans in Ephraim and Ray Tight in Gunnison Valley were said to have been accorded their monikers because of penurious behavior, and Flying Hans was always in a hurry. However, research will sometimes bring to light an origin other than one commonly accepted. "Tight" was a modification of "Titus," his father's first name, and Flying Hans was originally accorded the name back in the days of polygamous marriage among the Mormons when he reportedly would ride his horse and buggy at high speed between the houses of his spouses.

Places or area of residence also provided convenient labels. The writer's Aunt Sena was known as Seenie Flat, as she once lived on a flat near the mountains. A canal running into Gunnison was referred to as the city ditch, which gave Teenie City Ditch her name. "Hardscrabble" was a local term used to denote an unfertile area, thus Hardscrabble Olsen got his name from living in such a section. In Ephraim there was "Jensen in the Green House" to differentiate him from "Jensen in the White House." A distant relative of the writer, Chris Cellar Jensen, received his name because his family once lived in a dugout or cellar, a common phenomena for early settlers in the area. Pete Golddigger lived with a prospector in Gunnison, just as Niels Postmaster lived with the postmaster in Ephraim. Residence sometimes gave rise to a new name in

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Utah, thus a Christensen family from Tollstrup, Denmark, eventually became officially known as Tollstrup.

Nicknames deriving from occupation or avocation were common, but not particularly imaginative. However, the list is indicative of a way of life now past. Thus we find Pig Killer Thompsen, Shoemaker Christiansen, Fiddler Christensen, Bootlegger Jensen, Salt Hans (he sold rock salt for cattle), Sheepherder Mortensen, Miller Hermanson, Miller Jensen, Midwife Taylor, Chris Tinker Madsen, and Carpenter Madsen.

However, it was useful to refer to one Chris Nielsen as Little Chris, and another as Chris Blacksmith. Creamery Pete Jensen was differentiated from Sorrel Pete Jensen, for he operated a pick-up station for the farmers who sold cream.

There are many nicknames that do not fit into one of the categories listed, hence the need for a miscellaneous section. Here we can place the pattern of referring to some women by their Christian name combined with that of their spouse, such as Martha Dave, Emmy Hans, and Mary Antone, since their married names of Andersen, Hansen, and Christensen were common. Conversely, we find Sally's Andrew in Ephraim, a case where the distaff side was said to be dominant in the marriage.

A single incident could give rise to an enduring name. While repairing a car a man was heard to address a monkey wrench saying "Take her monk, or Stillson will." "Takermonk" thus became the functional surname for him, his brother, and their families. One nickname from Ephraim that always intrigued the writer was Peep Hole Soren. The name originated during Prohibition when a local druggist was said to mix bath-tub gin in his place of business. Soren Sorensen was reported to have been checking up on this illicit behavior through a small hole in the wall, hence the name. To indicate how thoroughly established these names become, during the Ephraim Centennial parade a float depicted a man peering through a hole at another mixing a container of liquid.

The float carried no explanatory signs, nor were any required for the Ephraimites, as the float brought forth gales of laughter and applause.

Childhood incidents that gave rise to nicknames are exemplified by Sweet William, a term of endearment used by his mother, and Al Soup, who acquired his nickname when as a child he brought his mother a dove he had killed and requested she make soup.

A Christian name and initial sometimes achieved the status of a nickname. With a plethora of Hans Hansens in the community there was a need for nicknames such as Flying Hans, Salt Hans, or Alphabet Hansen.

One Hans Hansen became universally known as Hans K., adopting his

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middle initial as the primary mark of identification. In a similar vein, two Jensens were commonly referred to as James S. and James C , although the latter was also called Alphabet Jensen as his name was James C. E. Jensen. To indicate why this practice was functional, when James C. died at home the undertaker, who was not a member of the community, came to pick up James S. One nickname in Gunnison that had always puzzled the writer was Scrook Knighton, as the Knightons were one of the few families of English derivation in the area, and scruk is Danish for a setting hen.

Apparently Henry Knighton, who first bore the nickname was called "Henny" or "Hen," and it was logically changed by the Danes into Scrook.

Today in Sanpete County nicknames have become lineage labels.

The descendants of the original recipient still bear the nicknames in many cases. They are normally patronymic, and may be used for several generations. For example, Big Chris, Jimmy Big Chris, and Little Jimmy Big Chris are the accepted terms to identify three generations of Petersens. Where a nickname was well established, as in this case, it replaced the surname as a means of identification for the children, thus in addition to Jimmy Big Chris there was Rosa Big Chris, Hazel Big Chris, etc.

Women, though married, may carry their own patronymic nickname for life. If their spouse has a nickname that is more colorful or better established than their own, they may be identified by his alias, or both.

An example of acquiring a nickname through marriage is the daughterin-law of Chris Tallerass. Although she reportedly qualified for the entire nickname, being somewhat steatopygous, out of deference to her sex they dropped the noun from the original and just called her Annie Taller.

The social reality in Sanpete County was that the functional identity was in the nickname. Many were better known by their alias than by their surname, and a significant segment of the community knew them only by their nickname. Newcomers to the valley would have been unlikely to recognize that Mart Stompey, Chris Biddy, Fred Niels Peter, and Will Jensen were siblings.

To illustrate the point, a man once came to town looking for a John Larsen, and requested directions to his house from a resident. He was informed that no such person lived in Centerfield, but a man by that name did live in Hamilton, another part of the valley. Had he asked for John Handy, the sobriquet by which this particular John Larsen was universally known, he would have received a more accurate answer. This John Larsen was also the uncle by marriage of the writer, but he died

Utah-Danish

Nicknames

29

when the writer was an infant. T o illustrate how nicknames were used within the family, the writer was in high school before he knew that the legal name of his aunt was Annie Larsen instead of Annie Handy.

Another story that illustrates that the nickname was the actual or functional cognomen, even to the extent that it is internalized by the bearer, comes from Ephraim. A stranger arrived in town and approached the "spit and whittle" gang, a group of elders occupying what was known locally as the "wise bench." T h e stranger wanted to know if anyone knew Jacob Jensen, and received a negative answer. W h e n the stranger persisted by indicating that Mr. Jensen was reported as living four blocks east of M a i n Street, Jake Butcher, one of the old-timers, scratched his head and said, "Hell, that's m e ! " Exclusive use of a nickname as opposed to the surname for some individuals in the community may prove embarrassing. There was a case of a horrified mother in Gunnison who heard her child address Mr. Beuregard as Mr. Takermonk, as it was generally accepted that he disapproved of his nickname. However, few resent the use of nicknames, and many use them in personal references in preference to the legal name, as it results in more precise identification. In some cases this may be done in a jocular manner. In the case of the writer, his family nickname is Nickolai, which in one sense is not a nickname, as it was the middle n a m e of his grandfather and father. W h e n he returns to Gunnison Valley, where he has not lived permanently since 1940, it is frequently necessary for him to identify himself as Nickolai as well as Christensen, and since Nickolais are also numerous, his minor lineage may be specified by indicating he is the son of Big John Nickolai.

T h e r e is no pattern as to whether nicknames are used with or without the surname in Gunnison Valley, although the Christian name combined with the nickname is most common. For example, the surname of Jensen would be viewed as superfluous when referring to M a r t Stompey or Creamery Pete. However, "Peggy" without Jensen, or "Scrook" without Knighton would sound strange to the residents.

In summary, among the U t a h Danes the duplication of Christian names and surnames, with some people having identical names, makes utilization of nicknames functional, if not necessary. T h e invention and conferral of nicknames provide an outlet for their particular brand of humor and a method of poking fun. Monikers are inherited by succeeding generations, and become lineage labels. Once a nickname gains widespread acceptance, the individual and his descendants may become better known by the sobriquet than the legal name.

Utah's Senatorial Election of 1899: The Election That Failed B Y S T E W A R T L. G R O W

that has cost the Democratic party more heartburnings, more bitterness, and more unforgetable differences than any battle it has ever waged," wrote the Salt Lake Tribune at the close CJO ENDED T H E STRUGGLE

Dr. Grow holds the title of distinguished professor with a joint appointment to the Department of History and Department of Political Science at Brigham Young University. He is the author of a book on the Salt Lake Tabernacle construction and of several articles on the historical development of politics in Utah published in various scholarly journals.

Senatorial Election of 1899

31

of Utah's senatorial election of 1899.1 The Tribune was commenting on the fact that the Democratically controlled 1899 Utah State Legislature, after a dramatic and bitter struggle, had failed to elect a United States senator to succeed Republican Frank J. Cannon. It was the election that failed.

The episode occurred at a time when the United States Constitution required that United States senators be elected by state legislatures, a practice which continued until after the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913. Federal law also established the procedure to be followed by a state legislature when it had the responsibility to elect a senator.2 Specifically, the law required that on the second Tuesday after the organization of the legislature the two houses of that body were to meet separately and vote for senator. The following day, the two houses were to meet together, and if any person had received a majority in each house he was declared elected. If no person had such a majority, then the two houses of the legislature were to meet in joint session and take at least one ballot every day until a senator was elected by a majority of the joint assembly.

Utah's 1899 Legislature had the responsibility of choosing a senator to succeed Senator Frank J. Cannon, a Silver Republican. Inasmuch as the Democrats dominated both houses of the legislature, it was anticipated that a Democrat would be elected. The legislature was opened with an address by Republican Governor Heber M. Wells, in which he pointed out that one of the legislature's duties would be "the election of one of your fellow citizens to the exalted position of United States Senator from Utah." 3 He then expressed the hope that this important duty might be performed "without entrenching unreasonably upon the time of the members and without bitterness or unnecessary strife." The governor's request that the election be swift, and without bitterness, probably was voiced in the hope that the legislature would avoid some of the delay and conflict which had developed during the previous senatorial election of 1897, in which Joseph L. Rawlins had defeated Moses Thatcher on the fifty-third ballot, after a bitter fight.4 If such was the governor's hope, he must have been severely disappointed in the legislature's subsequent actions, for although it labored long and hard, it became embroiled in bitter controversy and failed to elect a senator. 'â&#x20AC;˘Salt Lake Tribune, March 10, 1899.

2 U.S., Statutes at Large, vol. 14.

3 U t a h , House of Representatives, Journal, 4 U t a h , Senate, Journal, 1897, 2nd sess.

1899, 3rd sess., p. 12.

32

Utah Historical Quarterly

William H. King

George Sutherland

Aquila

Nebecker

Candidates for the office of United States Senator in 1899

In accordance with proper procedure, the two houses met separately on January 17 and proceeded to vote for senator. The chambers were filled by people who were there to observe the process of "senator making," or to support one of the various candidates. The chaplain's prayer, in the senate, included a petition to the Almighty "that in the choice of a United States senator, such a man might be chosen as would suitably and honorably represent the State in the Halls of Congress." 5 At 2:30 the balloting began, with the following results : Senate

Frank J. Cannon (Silver Republican) William H. King (Democrat) A. W. McCune (Democrat) O. W. Powers (Democrat) Aquilla Nebeker (Democrat) George Sutherland (Republican) Total

House''

2 3 5 3 1 2

5 15 6 5 0 11

16

42

No candidate had received a majority in either house. In accordance with the law, the legislature met in joint session the following day. The galleries were again packed and many people were turned away. Several classes of students, with their teachers, put in an early appearance and stayed throughout the session. The presiding officer called the session to order, the journals of the two houses were read and inasmuch as they showed that no candidate had been elected to the Senate, the joint assem5 u

Deseret News (Salt Lake C i t y ) , J a n u a r y 17, 1899.

Ibid.

Senatorial Election of 1899

33

bly then proceeded to ballot by roll call. That first roll call was the beginning of what must have become a rather tiring routine during the subsequent 163 times that the clerk read the names of the legislators and recorded their votes. At that time, probably no one in the chamber would have predicted that the Democratic majority would remain so divided that during 164 ballots they could not agree on a senator. Even the newspapers were carrying articles indicating that an early election was expected.

Five ballots were taken the first day of the joint session. As shown in the following table, the voting throughout all five ballots held very rigid, with the 5th ballot being exactly the same as the 1st.7 Candidate

Cannon King McCune Nebeker Powers Sutherland E. H. Snow

First

Second

Third

Fourth

7 19 11

7 19 11

7 19 11

7 18 11

1 8 14

1 8 14

1 8 14

1 8 14 1

Fifth Ballots

7 19 11 1 8 14

On the 4th ballot, a complimentary vote was cast for Mr. E. H. Snow by one of King's supporters, Mr. McQuarrie. 8 However, having paid honor to Mr. Snow, McQuarrie returned his support to King on the 5th ballot. The practice of giving complimentary votes was adopted by several legislators during the session. Analysis of the 164 votes taken by the legislature indicates that the rigid pattern of voting of the first day of the joint session largely set the pattern for voting throughout the session.

Frank J. Cannon started with a block of seven votes, which remained loyally with him throughout the entire balloting process. He attracted a high of thirteen votes on the 110th ballot, but finished on the 164th ballot with the same seven votes he had on the first roll call. William H. King started with nineteen votes and reached a high of twenty votes on several ballots; however, he finished with only four votes. Aquilla Nebeker started with one vote and reached a high of ten votes on the 120th ballot, but ended with the one vote he had at first. George Sutherland received the support of the majority of the Republicans and started the race with fourteen votes. He held these solidly until the 6th ballot, when the Republicans shifted their votes to A. L. Thomas. This practice by the non-Cannon Republicans of shifting from one candidate to another, in an 7 8

U t a h , Senate, Journal, 1899, 3rd sess., p. 89.

Deseret News, J a n u a r y 18, 1899.

34

Utah Historical

Quarterly

attempt to find one who would attract Democratic votes, continued throughout the contest. Such prominent names as C. C. Goodwin, Reed Smoot, and Charles Zane were nominated, but none of them drew more than the fourteen Republican votes. The one candidate who seemed to be able to influence a significant number of legislators to switch their support to him was A. W. McCune. He started the contest with eleven votes. On the 6th ballot, he gained three additional votes, which brought his total to fourteen. By the 20th ballot it had climbed to fifteen, by the 40th to twenty-two, and on the 80th ballot he received twenty-eight votes, just five short of the necessary majority of thirty-two. The McCune forces were working diligently; and although they did not receive any additional votes in the public polling, they seemed to be gathering pledges which would shift at the appropriate time when victory could be assured.

By evening of February 17, they seemed confident that on the first roll call of February 18, the 121st ballot, they would win.9 However, before the clerk would call the roll that morning, tragedy struck their cause.

Representative Albert A. Law, a Republican, secured the floor on a point of personal privilege and proceeded to charge that A. W. McCune had attempted to buy his vote for $ 1,500. His speech included a dramatic and detailed account of the alleged bribery attempt. Immediately upon conclusion of Law's speech, supporters of McCune vigorously denied Law's charges and later alleged that what actually happened was that Law had offered to sell his vote for $5,000 and that when his proposition was spurned he had laid a plot to entrap McCune. To dispel any ideas that because Representative Law was a nominal Republican that he was speaking for the Republican party, the Republican leader in the House gained the floor and proceeded to declare that Law had previously disassociated himself from the party and also that he had been disowned by it.10 After the dramatic charges, denials, and disownings had concluded, the joint assembly proceeded to select a seven-man bipartisan committee to hear the charges and ascertain the facts. After three weeks of hearings, they submitted a divided report. Five members of the so-called Bribery Committee held that the charges had not been sustained and a minority of two members held that they had been proven. 11 Throughout the period of the committee's hearings, the joint assembly had continued to vote for senator each day as required by law. How9

Ibid., February 18, 1899.

Ibid.

11 Salt Lake Tribune, M a r c h 7, 1899, 10

Senatorial Election of 1899

35

\ \ Albert

A.

Law

A. W.

McCune

ever, during much of that time, the voting was largely a formality as the legislators waited for the committee's report. When the report was received, there were only three days left in the constitutionally limited sixty day session. During those remaining three days, the activity and tension in the legislature were at a high pitch. Thirty ballots were taken, fourteen of them coming on the sixtieth legislative day.12 In a last minute effort to find an acceptable compromise candidate, President George Q. Cannon, a member of the First Presidency of the L. D. S. church and former delegate to Congress from Utah, was nominated. Immediately, he drew fourteen Republican votes. On the 160th ballot, he drew twentythree votes â&#x20AC;&#x201D; nine short of the needed majority. However, that was the peak of his strength, and on the final ballot he received the same twentythree votes. During the closing hours, Mr. C O Richards was nominated in the hopes that the Democrats could be encouraged to give him a majority vote, but he attracted a maximum of fifteen votes. Democratic 12

Utah, Senate, Journal, 1899, 3rd sess., pp. 443-48, 466-69, 498-500, 537-40.

36

Utah Historical Quarterly

leaders tried desperately to get their party members to compromise, but their efforts were fruitless.

On the evening of the sixtieth and final legislative day, the joint assembly took a recess for dinner and reconvened at 8:00 P.M. An immense throng packed every available space in the legislative chamber and crowded the halls outside. In the next four hours, nine ballots were taken. They were interspersed with dramatic appeals for unity, hurried caucuses, and last minute negotiations â&#x20AC;&#x201D; all to no avail. The final ballot, the 164th, was started at three minutes before midnight and was finished at five minutes after. By the start of that ballot, it had become evident to most of the legislators that the stalemate would not be broken and many of them returned to their first choice. The final totals stood as follows: A. W. McCune (Democrat) W. H. King (Democrat) A. Nebeker (Democrat) O. W. Powers (Democrat) J. H. Moyle (Democrat) George Q. Cannon (Republican) George Sutherland (Republican) F. J. Cannon (Silver Republican) Votes cast Absent

21 4 1 4 5 18 2 7 62 1 Total

Necessary to a choice

63 321J

Immediately following the announcement of the vote, President Nebeker declared that no senator had been elected, and the legislature adjourned. The crowd, which had been held in check during the long hours of the night session, surged onto the legislative floor. Some men shouted, while others threw their hats in the air. Many were sad faced and grim. Women waved their handkerchiefs or used them to wipe tears from their eyes. Some of the crowd seemed to find great pleasure in the outcome and others were equally dispirited.14 The factors which produced such an electoral failure are difficult to identify and weigh. The newspaper reports of the time did not identify any specific forces and neither did the legislative record. The struggle did not seem to be between church and non-church forces, for candidates of both categories were included on both the Republican and Democratic 13 31

Deseret Ibid.

News,

M a r c h 10, 1899.

Senatorial

Election of 1899

37

sides. Nor did the contest seem to be based on sectional or economic factors. All of the strong candidates resided in the central U t a h area and were from the upper-economic, well-educated level. Salt Lake had three major newspapers at the time, the Deseret News, the Salt Lake Tribune and the Salt Lake Herald. T h e Herald supported A. W. McCune, while the Tribune vigorously opposed him but did not promote the candidacy of any other aspirant. T h e Deseret News remained neutral. So it appears that the contest was not a struggle among these newspapers.

If any factors can be charged with bringing about the failure, they would seem to be the large number of candidates, the predeliction of legislators to stick with individual candidates, the inexperience of the legislators in senatorial elections, and the lack of party discipline, especially within the Democratic party. W h e n the election started, there were six candidates and none of them seemed to be in a dominant position. T h e incumbent, Frank J. Cannon, might have been in favorable circumstances h a d it not been that he was a Silver Republican seeking re-election through a dominantly Democratic legislature. His candidacy had also been weakened by the development of a considerable amount of opposition within his own party, as evidenced by the fact that the majority of Republicans failed to support him. William H. King, a Democrat, started with the highest vote total of eighteen, but this was far from the thirtytwo required. However, inasmuch as he was the Democratic candidate with the most votes in a Democratic legislature, it might have been expected that he could win; but, the divisions within the Democratic party were such that King was only able to accumulate two additional votes for a high total of twenty, and never came close to election. Instead of consolidating behind King, the Democrats slowly developed a large enough coalition behind A. W. McCune that on the 121st ballot his election seemed certain until Representative Law accused him of bribery.

T h a t accusation, and the subsequent investigation, seemed to alienate some of McCune's support. Although the Bribery Investigation Committee exonerated him by a five to two vote, he was not able to bring together again the necessary majority. T h e Democrats then failed to agree on any other candidate. Their failure to compromise can, therefore, be charged as the cause of the electoral failure. Historian Orson F. Whitney, who was a member of the Senate during the 1899 election, also lays the blame for the failure on the "division among the Democrats." 1 5 However, the 15 Orson F. Whitney, The Making 1908), 278.

of a State: A School History

of Utah

(Salt Lake City

38

Utah Historical

Quarterly

Republicans also played a significant part in bringing about the failure, for at any time they could have shifted their votes to a Democratic candidate and brought about an election which would have assured Utah its full representation in the U.S. Senate. Evidently, they saw the possibility that a two-year vacancy in the Senate seat being contested would result in a Republican occupying that seat instead of a Democrat and so failed to swing over.

T h e reasons for the failure of the Democrats to compromise and the Republicans to swing over can be found largely in the depth of personal commitment to individual candidates, h u m a n stubborness, and party advantage. However, there were other factors existing on the U t a h political scene at the time that may have h a d significant influence. These were inexperience in senatorial elections and underdevelopment of party discipline. At the time of the 1899 election, U t a h had only been a state for three years, and was, therefore, quite inexperienced in senatorial elections. H e r legislators, particularly the Democrats, h a d not yet developed adequate skills in organizing for an electoral battle of the type they faced in 1899. Furthermore, party discipline was still a developing commodity.

National political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, had only been functioning on the U t a h scene for five or six years. Prior to that time, U t a h politics had been operated through the People's party, which was dominantly Mormon, and the Liberal party, which was principally non-Mormon. W h e n the religious basis of party division was abandoned, during the early 1890s, the population moved into the two national parties. This created a great upheaval in Utah's traditional political patterns and evidently new patterns had not yet developed sufficiently to produce the organization and party discipline, at least among the Democrats, necessary to effect a choice among a number of strong candidates.

This weakness h a d also been demonstrated in the election of 1897 when the legislature went through fifty-three ballots before it finally elected Joseph L. Rawlins to the Senate. However, the struggle of 1897, and the failure of 1899, seemed to be a good teaching experience and Utah's legislature never again failed to elect a senator so long as it had that responsibility. 10 T h e sad sequel to the 1899 failure, so far as the Democrats were concerned, came in the state legislative elections of 1900 when the Republicans won a lopsided victory, due partially to the futile factionalization exhibited by the Democrats in the 1899 senatorial fight. When the 1901 16

U.S., Senate, Rules and Manual.

1959, p. 663.

Senatorial Election of 1899

39

Legislature met, the dominant Republican majority, no doubt having learned a lesson from their Democratic brethren, swiftly proceeded to elect Thomas Kearns on the first ballot of the joint session. The vote gave Kearns thirty-seven and McCune twenty-five.17 Senator Kearns, however, served only four years because two years of the term for which he was elected had already elapsed.

Such was Utah's senatorial election of 1899 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the election that failed.

17

U t a h , Senate, Journal,

1901, 4th sess., p . 68.

S T A T E M E N T OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND C I R C U L A T I O N The Utah Historical Quarterly is published quarterly by the Utah State Historical Society, 603 East South Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah 84102. The editor is Charles S. Peterson and Margery W. Ward is associate editor with offices at the same address as the publisher. The magazine is owned by the Utah State Historical Society and no individual or company owns or holds any bonds, mortgages, or other securities of the Society or its magazine.

The purposes, function, and non-profit status of this organization and the exempt status for federal income tax purposes have not changed during the preceding twelve months.

The following figures are the average number of copies of each issue during the preceding twelve months: 2,500 copies printed; no paid circulation; 1,948 mail subscriptions; 1,838 total paid circulation; 110 free distribution (including samples) by mail, carrier, or other means; 1,948 total distribution; 552 inventory for office use, leftover, unaccounted, spoiled after printing; total 2,500. The following figures are the actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 2,500 copies printed; no paid circulation; 2,089 mail subscriptions; 1,979 total paid circulation; 110 free distribution (including samples) by mail, carrier, or other means; 2,089 total distribution; 411 inventory for office use, leftover, unaccounted, spoiled after printing; total 2,500.

Negro Slavery in Utah

BY D E N N I S L. LYTHGOE

I

F TRAFFIC DOES N O T deter, one may discover on the Brigham Young M o n u m e n t at the intersection of M a i n and South T e m p l e streets in Salt Lake City these n a m e s : " G r e e n Flake, H a r k Lay, and Oscar Crosby, Colored Servants." This plaque honoring the original pioneers of 1847 thus pays tribute to the three Negro slaves in the vanguard of the Mormon migration. T h o u g h they were the first slaves in U t a h and justly the most famous, they were not the only slaves to reside there. While the institution of slavery was not practiced in U t a h on a grand scale, it was sufficient to require historical interpretation. Oddly enough, U t a h was the only western territory in 1850 in which Negroes were held as slaves.

This was a result of the Compromise of 1850, in which California was admitted into the Union as a free state, and New Mexico a n d U t a h territories ambiguously given popular sovereignty. Since some of the Mormon Dr. Lythgoe is assistant professor of history at Massachusetts State College at Bridgewater.

Negro Slavery in Utah

41

settlers in Utah were Southerners, it is not surprising that slavery would be practiced.

The case of Green Flake, born a slave, is instructive in this respect.

Andrew Jenson, assistant historian of the Mormon church, traced Flake's birthdate to 1825 in Anson County, North Carolina, where he remained until the Mormon exodus West in 1846. Afterward, Flake lived in Union, Utah; then Salt Lake City; and finally died at Idaho Falls, Idaho, in 1903. 1 Evidently, Green Flake was one of many slaves on a large plantation in North Carolina belonging to Jordan Flake, who divided his property among his family as is stated in his will: I, Jordan Flake of the State of North Carolina and County of Anson, being weak in body though sound of mind and memory, thanks be to God for the same and calling to mind the mortality of my body and knowing that it is appointed for all men once to die, therefore, I do make this my last will and testament in the following manner and form: First: I give and bequeath to my son John M. Flake the three Negro boys that he has in possession, namely, Ned, Daniel, and Isham and two hundred dollars. . . . Fourth: I give to my son James M. Flake, two Negroes Green and Lyse and three hundred dollars. 2

James M. Flake was baptized into the Mormon church in the winter of 1843-44 in Mississippi. Following a visit to Nauvoo, Illinois, in the spring of 1844, he and his family decided they wanted to live with the "Saints." Subsequently, with three other families and three Negro slaves, the Flakes made the move. 3 O. D. Flake, a grandson of James M. Flake, continued the account: . . . When Brigham Young commenced fitting out a train to take the first of the Pioneers across the Great Plains, he needed the very best teams and outfits to be had. James M. Flake, who had put his all upon the altar, sent his slave, Green with the mules and mountain carriage, to help the company to their destination. He told Green to send the outfit back by some of the brethren, who would be returning, and for him to stay and build them a house. Like the old slaves he faithfully carried out his instructions. 4

Interestingly enough, the fact that he was a Negro slave did not prevent Green Flake from being baptized into the church. Attesting to that fact, the Southern pioneer John Brown recorded in his diary in early 1 Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia (4 vols., Salt Lake City 1901-1936), IV, 703.

2 Will of Jordan Flake, from film of North Carolina Wills, Anson County, 1751-1942 Call No. F NO 2c (4575), Part 3, 164 (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Genealogical Society Library, Salt Lake City).

3 Osmer D. Flake, Life of William Jordan Flake (N.P., [1948]), 3.

'Ibid., 9.

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Utah Historical

Quarterly

April 1844 he "baptized two black men, Allen and Green, belonging to Brother Flake." 5 Traveling with the Amasa M. Lyman and Willard Richards companies, James M. Flake and his family came West in 1848. Flake was appointed captain of one hundred wagons, most of these containing Southern families. According to the official listing, the company with which they traveled consisted of 502 whites and 24 Negroes. 6 Since no mention is made of the specific status of the Negroes, it is impossible to determine whether they were all slaves; but the Flake family records previously mentioned point to the probability.

According to his son William J., James M. Flake was killed in an accident with a mule in California's San Joaquin Valley in 1850. The next year, William, together with his mother and family, migrated with Charles C. Rich and Amasa M. Lyman to San Bernardino. Before leaving, Mrs. Flake gave her "Negro slave Green Flake to the Church as tithing. He then worked two years for President Young and Heber C. Kimball, and then got his liberty and settled near Union." 7 Years later, in 1897, the Deseret News reported that two pioneers called at their offices, one a colored man claiming to be Green Flake who was "in the first wagon through Emigration Canyon, and moved to Idaho after living in Utah 49 years. He is now 70 years of age." 8 In another testimony to the status of Green Flake and the other two Negro members of the original pioneer company, Amasa M. Lyman, Jr., himself a son of a Mormon pioneer, issued the following statement in 1936: I knew all three of those negro servants who were members of President Brigham Young's pioneer company of 1847. Hark Lay belonged to William Lay. Hark was always hard to manage. He died in California.

William Crosby also went to California and took his servant, Oscar Crosby, along with him, where the latter died. . . . After the slaves were freed, Green Flake lived at Union Fort, Salt Lake County. 9

But early Utah slaves were by no means limited to the famed three of the Pioneer party. Amasa Lyman, Jr., provided the following list of masters and respective slaves: 10 ' J o h n Z i m m e r m a n Brown, comp., Autobiography of Pioneer John Brown, 1820â&#x20AC;&#x201D;1896 (Salt Lake City, 1941), 46.

8 Flake, Life of William Flake, 10, 11.

7 Letter of William J. Flake to C h u r c h Historian, February 14, 1894, Flake File, L.D.S. C h u r c h Historian's Library, Salt Lake City.

8 Deseret News (Salt Lake C i t y ) , July 19, 1897.

9 Brown, Autobiography of John Brown, 73.

10 Interview with Amasa M . Lyman, Jr., quoted in Jack Beller, "Negro Slaves in U t a h , " Utah Historical Quarterly, I I (October, 1929), 123-24.

Negro Slavery in Utah Slave Owners: Daniel M. Thomas William Matthews William Lay William Crosby James M. Flake William Smith John H. Bankhead John Brown Jasper N. Perkins Reuben Perkins Monroe Perkins Heber C. Kimball Mr. Sprouse Charles C. Rich

43 Negro Slaves: Toby Uncle Phil Hark, Henderson, and Knelt Oscar and Grief Green and his wife "Liz" (later known as Mrs. Martha Green Flake) Aunt " ," Hanna, and Lawrence Nathan Bankhead 1 1 Betsy Crosby Brown Flewellen 12 Mary Perkins 13 Frank, wife Esther, Ben and other children Ben Martha (later married to Green Flake) Daniel Three pair of slaves 14

Perhaps the most revealing source of information relative to the migration of Southern whites and slaves to Utah is the diary of John Brown. A native of Tennessee, Brown was converted to Mormonism and sent on a mission to the Southern States in 1843. Brown recorded in his journal that in April 1846 he assisted in organizing a company of fourteen families in Mississippi and then headed for the Rocky Mountains. Upon learning that Brigham Young was still at Winter Quarters, Brown returned to Mississippi for his own family. His journal, arranged by his son, yields considerable light on the existence of slavery in the company: After a few days' rest, we commenced to wind up our business and prepare to leave in the spring for Council Bluffs, to go out with the church, when unexpectedly, in came two elders right from the Bluffs, viz: Bryant Nowlin and Charles Crismon, with an epistle from the Council of the Twelve, instructing us to remain another year, to fit out and send all the men we could, to go as pioneers. We called a council to consider the matter. We concluded to send some six pioneers, one of whom was to take charge of the whole, being mostly black servants. It fell to my lot to go and superintend the affair, William Crosby to send one hand, John H. Bankhead one, William Lay one, and John Powell one, his brother David; and I was to take one besides myself. We had to travel to the Bluffs in the winter in order to get there in time. 15

Brown then told of the tremendous hardship which the trip entailed and the effects it had upon the company: 11

Ibid., 124.

Brown, Autobiography of John Brown, 145.

13 Frank Esshom, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah . . . (Salt Lake City, 1913), 958.

14 T h e latter portion of this list (from Reuben Perkins) is compiled from information in Beller, "Negro Slaves," U.H.Q., I I , 1 2 4 - 2 5 .

15 Brown, Autobiography of John Brown, 7 1 .

12

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W e p u r c h a s e d o u r wagons a n d teams, etc., at St. Louis. A few days' travel from this point, Brothers Jas. S t r a t t o n a n d Nowlin overtook us, also Brother M a t h e w Ivory. Brother Stratton h a d his family along. T h e y h a d one wagon. T h e m u d was so b a d we were obliged to lay by several days. W e n o w h a d six wagons. I t finally t u r n e d cold a n d we h a d a very severe time of it. T h e negroes suffered most. M y boy, whose n a m e was H e n r y , took cold a n d finally t h e winter fever [Lobar p n e u m o n i a ] set in w h i c h caused his d e a t h on the road. I buried h i m in A n d r e w County, at the lower end of the r o u n d Prairie, eight miles n o r t h of S a v a n n a h , Missouri. . . .

W e reached the Bluffs a few days before t h e Pioneers started a n d while I was lying here, B a n k h e a d ' s negro died w i t h the winter fever. It was the severest trip I h a d u n d e r t a k e n . I left one wagon a n d load with Brother Crismon to bring out with the families. I took the other two wagons, t h e t w o black boys t h a t survived the trip [Oscar Crosby a n d H a r k Lay], D a v i d Powell a n d M a t t h e w Ivory, a n d joined the Pioneer camp. 1 0

In spite of the winter's devastating effects on the Negro members of the group, Oscar Crosby and Hark Lay survived to become, with Green Flake, the first Negro pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley.

In enumerating the specific make-up of the Mississippi company, Brown made the following informative entry: 1 7 Saturday, M a y 27, 1848, I m a d e a report of the Mississippi C o m p a n y as follows: Heads of Families J o h n Powell Moses Powell R o b e r t M . Smith John Lockhart George B a n k h e a d a n d John D. Holladay Frances M c K o w n William H . L a y Elizabeth Crosby J o h n Brown William Crosby Ekles T r u l y Totals:

White

John H. B a n k h e a d

Persons 6 1 9 7 6 1 10 6 1 2 3 1 56

Colored

Persons

10 11 2 2 3 1 5

34

In 1848 seven of these thirteen Southern Mormons were active slaveholders, and the proportion of colored persons to white persons was comparatively great. One of the slaves included in this group was Betsy Crosby Brown Flewellen, the colored servant of Elizabeth Crosby Brown.

As a little girl she was brought from the Crosby plantation in Monroe 10

Ibid., 72. ''Ibid., 96.

Negro Slavery

in Utah

45

County, Mississippi, to U t a h , a n d was a servant in the Brown h o m e from 1848 until the slaves were freed after the Civil W a r . Later, she married a colored barber n a m e d Flewellen, in Salt Lake City. 18 O t h e r records supporting the existence of Southern masters with their Negro slaves include the " J o u r n a l History" of the M o r m o n church, which contains this brief entry: " T h e last company of emigrants to leave W i n t e r Q u a r ters, h a d some Southerners with their colored a t t e n d a n t s . " 1 9 I n connection with some later Mississippi converts to the church, a n Iowa historian told an interesting story. Although the people of Tabor, Iowa, disapproved of theft a n d violence as a means of giving slaves their freedom, the town was nevertheless widely known as a n underground railroad station. M a n y events demonstrating their desire to free slaves have been recorded in the history of Iowa. At least one of the episodes h a d direct reference to some M o r m o n pioneers: On the evening of July 4, 1854, a Mormon elder with his family and six slaves camped overnight in Tabor on their way from Mississippi to Salt Lake City. Two of the negroes got water from a well, near which the first hotel was in the process of erection. The carpenters learned that five of the six colored people, a father, mother, two children, and another man, were anxious to escape bondage. The other slave woman did not wish to leave her master so was not informed of their plans. In the night S. H. Adams, John Hallam, and James K. Gaston took the five negroes east of town across the Nishnabotna River and concealed them in the bushes.20

Noticing the next morning t h a t the c a m p duties h a d not been performed, the slave owner acknowledged that his slaves h a d disappeared.

H e promptly enlisted help from some pro-slavery sympathizers a few miles south of Tabor, and conducted a m a n h u n t into the groves a n d thickets along the Nishnabotna River. . . . But one of the searchers, at heart a friend of the refugees, was careful to do the searching in the area where he knew they were concealed and just as careful not to find them. In a day or two Cephas Case and W. L. Clark conducted the fugitives to a Quaker settlement near Des Moines, from which place they eventually found their way to Canada. 21 INDIVIDUAL SLAVES AND SLAVEHOLDERS

N u m b e r e d among the U t a h slaveholders was J o h n Bankhead, who brought a n u m b e r of slaves with h i m from the South; significantly, these 18

Ibid., 145.

"Journal History" (L.D.S. C h u r c h Historian's Library, Salt Lake C i t y ) , July 15, 1848.

20 Catherine Grace Barbour F a r q u h a r , " T a b o r a n d T a b o r College," Iowa Journal of History and Politics, X L I (October, 1943), 358, 21 Ibid.

19

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slaves remained with the family after their emancipation as free persons of color until M r . Bankhead died in 1884. Mrs. Sina Bankhead of Salt Lake County says that her father-in-law was N a t h a n Bankhead, one of the well-known slaves belonging to John while he lived in Draper, Utah. 2 2 Included among the eleven Bankhead Negro slaves who came into the valley in 1848 were Nathan, his wife Susan, Dan, George, Alex, Sam, Lewis, Ike, John, Nancy, and Rose. When the slaves were freed at the conclusion of the Civil War, Bankhead encouraged each of them to be self-sufficient. H e h a d originally owned his slaves on his plantation in Tennessee and brought them to U t a h when he was converted to the Mormon church. Reportedly, Bankhead was kind and considerate to his slaves. 23 Vilate Crosby, a Negro slave, came to U t a h from Mississippi with the Crosbys in September 1848 in the Heber C. Kimball Company. She h a d two daughters and was also the mother of Hark Lay. Martha, one of her daughters, became the wife of Green Flake. T h e other daughter, Rose, became the wife of Miles Litzford and the mother of Dan Freeman, who was the first freeborn Negro in U t a h in 1850. 24 From Jasper N. Perkins of Salt Lake City, a nephew of Monroe Perkins, and Mrs. Esther Leggroan of Salt Lake County, daughter of M a r y Perkins, one of the Perkins slaves, the following information was derived: Reuben Perkins came to U t a h from North Carolina on October 18, 1848, with the Andrew Perkins Company and settled in Bountiful.

H e brought several Negro slaves with him. Monroe Perkins owned another slave n a m e d Ben, whom he sold to a m a n named Sprouse, a Southerner. While returning to the South with Sprouse, Ben escaped into the mountains near Denver, and returned to Utah. 2 5 Through an interview with Samuel Chambers and his son Peter, both of whom came to U t a h in 1870, Jack Beller learned the following: M a r t h a , who later became the wife of Green Flake, was brought to U t a h

by Heber C. Kimball in 1848; while Daniel Sprouse, a Negro slave, was brought by his master Sprouse from Texas in the 1850s. 26 According to one account, there were some Negro slaves in Spanish Fork, Utah, owned by John J. Redd, a pioneer from North Carolina.

Very little more is known of the Spanish Fork slaves, except that Redd 22

Beller, "Negro Slaves," U.H.Q., I I , 124.

Interview with Lucille Perkins Bankhead, great-granddaughter of Green Flake, Salt Lake City, February 25, 1966.

24 Ibid.

25 Beller, "Negro Slaves," U.H.Q., I I , 125.

20 Ibid.

23

Negro Slavery in Utah

47

brought them with him from the South, and used them in farming operations.27 Attorney Benjamin Rich of Salt Lake City said that his grandfather Charles C. Rich owned three pairs of slaves who were liberated in California when Rich went there in 1851. A native of Kentucky, Charles C. Rich initially arrived in Salt Lake on October 3, 1847.28 In partial support of Benjamin Rich's claim, his grandfather's journal recorded a journey from Salt Lake City to San Bernardino, on May 10, 1855 : In company with Brother George Cannon and wife, Elders Jos. Bull, Matthew T. Wilkie, my son Joseph, David Fairbanks, Henry Clark, Alfred Bennett, Robert Matthews, Charles Davis, and my Negro "Dick" started for San Bernardino, and traveled 80 miles that day . . .29

Although lacking in documentation, Kate B. Carter's The Story Of The Negro Pioneer includes interesting snatches of information pertaining to some of the slaves garnered from records in the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum. One of these is taken from Mary Lee Bland Ewell's personal history, in which she told of her appreciation for a Negro slave called Mammy Chloe. Having emerged from the well-founded traditions of the Old South, Mammy Chloe belonged to the Bland family of Cumberland County, Kentucky. She became very attached to the daughter Mary Lee and eventually left Kentucky to follow her when the young girl fell in love with a young Mormon named William Ewell. Sympathizing with Mary Lee's desire to accompany her husband to Utah, Mammy Chloe aided in her escape from the Bland home. Soon Mammy Chloe became a convert to the church and stood by the family for the rest of her years. Mary Lee's personal feelings about her slave are illustrative of the spirit of the Old South: . . . Even after the slaves were freed by President Lincoln, she did not desire her freedom. No one ever knew her grief leaving her son Sammy, but being slaves, both learned never to complain at separations. I am sure I can never know what her great devotion to "Miss. Mary Lee," as she always called me, cost her and how she softened my hardships whenever she could.'50

Reading like an episode from Gone With the Wind, Mrs. Ewell's story strongly resembles the romantic Southern tradition.

Another personal history used by Mrs. Carter is that of Williams Washington Camp, who was converted to the Mormon church in Ten27

Elisha Warner, The History of Spanish Fork (Salt Lake City, 1930), 9.

Beller, "Negro Slaves," U.H.Q., II, 125. "'Charles C. Rich, Journal (original, L.D.S. Church Historian's Library, Salt Lake City) May 10, 1855.

30 Kate B. Carter, The Story Of The Negro Pioneer (Salt Lake City, 1965), 39, 28

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nessee. Besides a slave called Charlotte who tended children and did housekeeping, the Camps brought Dan, Ike, and Ben with their family to Utah. In 1855 Camp's daughter Ellen married Thomas Greer, and the two were later called on a mission for the church to Texas. Camp gave two Negro slaves, Ike and Caroline, to the Greers, who apparently took the Negroes with them to Texas. 31 The "Journal History" of the Mormon church includes a small item which apparently related to the incident: June 16, 1856, President Brigham Young returned to Feramorz Little's where he had an interview with Brothers Jesse Little and Robert Burton about Brother Camp taking away his Negroes. 32

Settling in Salem, Utah, in 1855 was Southern convert William Taylor Dennis. Included with his family were the following slaves: Nancy or Mammy Dennis, Jim Valentine, his wife, and their son Jim. Although Dennis freed his slaves when he heard of the Emancipation Proclamation, Mammy Dennis refused her freedom. 33 Verification that William H. Hooper, T. S. Williams, and J. H. Johnson owned Negro slaves is found in the diary of Hosea Stout: Thursday, 21 April 1859. Suit before Jeter Clinton Esq "The people &c vs. Tom Coulbourn negro slave belonging to J. H. Johnson on examination for shooting Shep negro slave belonging to W. H. Hooper. The negros had got into a row about two wenches belonging to T. S. Williams and love and jealousy was the main cause of this fuss.

Like their masters under such circumstances would probably would do they went to shooting each other. Shep is badly wounded and his life is precarious. Dist Attorney Wilson prosecuted and Blair and myself defended. Tom was held to bail for $1000 to appear at the next Dist Court. 34

Suggestion that non-Mormons, too, were slaveholders is found in the Millennial Star's reference to federal Judge W. W. Drummond, who probably owned at least one slave: Some little excitement prevails in town to-day. An affair took place between Judge Drummond and a Jew trader here, which was rather amusing at the time, but may be something more than fun for the Judge before he gets through with it. A grand jury is meeting this evening, which will bring in an indictment against the Judge and his negro, Cato, for assault and battery with intent to murder; and he will be arrested and brought before the Probate Court on Monday morning next, at 9 o'clock, just at 21

Ibid., 39-41.

"Journal History," June 16, 1856.

33 Carter, Negro Pioneer, 48.

34 Juanita Brooks, ed., On the Mormon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout (2 vols., Salt Lake City, 1964), II, 695.

32

1844-1861

Negro Slavery in Utah

49

the time he should answer to his n a m e in the Supreme Court, which sits at that hour. . . , 35

Regarding the existence of slavery in U t a h , two officials of the Mormon church m a d e some observations. J o h n Taylor and N. H. Felt were en route to New York in 1855 to establish a paper explaining the doctrines of the church. While in Chicago, they were interviewed by a Chicago paper and the account was recorded in the Millennial Star: As respects slavery in the territory, we were assured there was but little of it there, yet it is there. Some slaves h a d been liberated by their owners since they were taken to U t a h ; others still remain slaves. But the most of those w h o take slaves there pass over w i t h t h e m in a little while to San Bernardino, a M o r m o n settlement in California, some seven h u n d r e d or eight h u n d r e d miles from Salt Lake City. H o w m a n y slaves are now held there they could not say, b u t the n u m b e r relatively was by n o means small. A single person h a d taken between forty a n d fifty, a n d m a n y h a d gone in with smaller numbers. 3 0

T h e n u m b e r cited here is no doubt exaggerated. According to the United States census, there were only twenty-four free persons of color and twenty-six Negro slaves in U t a h in 1850. 37 However, there were slaves who merely passed through U t a h on their way to the coast, and some may have died before reaching California. A few slave owners went with Amasa M. Lyman to San Bernardino, California, in 1851, to establish a M o r m o n colony. Included in this group were Charles C. Rich, William Matthews, Daniel M . Thomas, William Crosby, and William Smith. Since California was then free soil, their slaves were liberated upon arrival. M r . Lyman, Jr., claimed that William Smith's discovery that his slaves would become free in California prompted him to try to take them to Texas; the slaves, however, desired freedom and refused to go with him. 3 8 According to the census of 1860, there were thirty free colored persons and twenty-nine slaves in U t a h . Of this number, eighteen were males and eleven were females; ten resided in Davis County and nineteen in Salt Lake County. 3 9 MORMON ATTITUDES

Apparently, early M o r m o n theology and practice recognized no conflict between true Christianity and slave holding, though slavery was ""The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, X V I I I (Liverpool, England, 1856), 254.

38 Ibid., X V I I ( 1 8 5 5 ) , 63.

37 U.S., Bureau of the Census, The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850 (Washington, D . C , 1853), 993.

38 Beller, "Negro Slaves," U.H.Q., I I , 126.

39 U.S., Bureau of the Census, Eighth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1860 (Washington, D . C , 1 8 6 0 - 1 8 6 6 ) , 135.

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already a religious issue of some consequence throughout the United States. 40 In 1851 Orson Hyde clarified the stand of the Mormon church in an effort to remove widespread controversy: We feel it to be our duty to define our position in relation to the subject of Slavery. There are several men in the Valley of the Salt Lake from the Southern States who have slaves with them. There is no law in Utah to authorize Slavery, neither any to prohibit it. If the slave is disposed to leave his master, no power exists there, either legal or moral, that will prevent him. But if the slave choose to remain with his master, none are allowed to interfere between the master and the slave. All the slaves that are there appear to be perfectly contented and satisfied.

When a man in the Southern States embraces our faith, and is the owner of slaves, the church says to him, if your slaves wish to remain with you, and to go with you, put them not away; but if they choose to leave you, or are not satisfied to remain with you, it is for you to sell them, or to let them go free, as your own conscience may direct. The church, on this point, assumes not the responsibility to direct. The laws of the land recognize slavery, â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and we do not wish to oppose the laws of the country.

If there is sin in selling a slave, let the individual who sells him bear that sin, and not the church. Wisdom and prudence dictate to us this position, and we trust that our position will henceforth be understood. 41

Ironically enough, in Jackson County, Missouri, the church was believed to be of an abolitionist temperament, and Mormons received extensive harassment as a result. The rumor had circulated freely that the Mormons were trying to "tamper" with the slaves. Missouri law prevented free Negroes from staying in the state because people feared they would incite slaves to insurrection. Reacting to the heat of the controversy, the Mormons asserted that they not only did not encourage free people of color to enter Missouri, but prevented them from admission into the church as well. 42 Ambivalence significantly colors the attitudes of both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Smith, for instance, wrote on one occasion: . . . All men are to be taught to repent; but we have no right to interfere with slaves contrary to the mind and will of their masters. In fact, it would be much better and more prudent not to preach at all to slaves, until after their masters are converted: and then, teach the master to use them with kindness, remembering that they are accountable to God, and the servants are bound to serve their masters, with singleness of heart, without murmuring. 4 3 40 For more complete treatment of the religious issue see the author's "Negro Slavery and Mormon Doctrine," Western Humanities Review, XXI (Autumn, 1967), 327-38, or "Negro Slavery in Utah" (master's thesis, University of Utah, 1966).

41 Orson Hyde, "Slavery Among the Saints," Millennial Star, XIII (1851), 63.

42 Evening and the Morning Star (Independence, Missouri), July 16, 1833 See also "Free People of Color," ibid., July 1, 1833.

43 Messenger and Advocate, II (April, 1836), 291.

Negro Slavery

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51

These were not feelings of a n abolitionist; yet in 1843 he m a d e an optimistic evaluation of the potential of the Negro, saying t h a t the slaves were " m o r e refined t h a n many in high places." 4 4 Finally, in 1844, Smith became an abolitionist through his candidacy for the Presidency of the United States. H e called for the abolition of slavery by 1850, with the government paying owners for their slaves through the sale of public lands. 4 5 After Smith's death, the Mormons practiced slavery for a n u m b e r of years, with Brigham Young extending Smith's original support for it.

Young expressed his views effectively: The principle of slavery I understand, at least I have self-confidence enough in God to believe I do. I believe still further that a great many others understand it as I do. A great portion of this community have been instructed, and have applied their minds to it, and as far as they have, they agree precisely in the principles of slavery. Long ago Mama Eve our good old Mother Eve partook of forbidden fruit and this made a slave of her.

Adam hated very much to have her taken out of the garden of Eden, and now our old daddy says I believe I will eat of the fruit and become a slave too. This was the first introduction of slavery upon this earth, and there has been not a son or daughter of Adam from that day to this but what were slaves in the true sense of the word. 40

H e continued by calling it "a great blessing to the seed of A d a m to have the seed of Cain for servants," but counseling utmost kindness. 47 Later, Young told H o r a c e Greeley that slavery was "useless a n d unprofitable" in U t a h , although "of divine institution." 4 8 Even though he deemed it unprofitable in U t a h , he stopped short of recommending its abolition.

TERRITORIAL L A W

Regardless of a generally sympathetic attitude existing in U t a h toward blacks, there can be no question that some were held against their will. Since U t a h was open to slavery after 1850, blacks could be legally held and controlled. I n 1851 the U t a h Territorial Legislature passed a significant act regarding slavery: Sec. 1. Be it enacted by the Governor and Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah: That any person or persons coming to this Territory, 44 B. H . Roberts, ed., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . . . (7 vols., Salt Lake City, 1 9 0 2 - 1 9 3 2 ) , V, 217.

4o Joseph Smith, "Views of the Powers a n d Policy of the Government of the U n i t e d States," Millennial Star, X X I I ( 1 8 6 0 ) , 743.

40 Brigham Young Speech to Joint Session of Legislature on February 5, 1852 ( M S , L D . S . C h u r c h Historian's L i b r a r y ) , 1.

41 Ibid., 5.

18 H o r a c e Greeley, Overland Journey From New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859, ed., Charles T. D u n c a n (New'York, 1 9 6 4 ) , 179, 180.

52

Utah Historical Quarterly and bringing with them servants justly bound to them, arising from special contract or otherwise, said person or persons shall be entitled to such service or labor by the laws of this Territory. . . ,49

While slavery was accepted by the law, the legislature apparently thought that provisions for humane treatment should be endorsed. Additionally, desire to prevent interracial marriage may have been a motivating factor: Sec. 4. That if any master or mistress shall have sexual or carnal intercourse with his or her servant or servants of the African race, he or she shall forfeit all claim to said servant or servants to the commonwealth; and if any white person shall be guilty of sexual intercourse with any of the African race, they shall be subject, on conviction thereof to a fine of not exceeding one thousand dollars, nor less than five hundred, to the use of the Territory, and imprisonment not exceeding three years.

Sec. 5. It shall be the duty of masters or mistresses to provide for his, her, or their servants comfortable habitations, clothing, bedding, sufficient food, and recreation. And it shall be the duty of the servant in return therefor, to labor faithfully all reasonable hours, and do such service with fidelity as may be required by his, or her master or mistress.

Sec. 6. It shall be the duty of the master to correct and punish his servant in a reasonable manner when it may be necessary, being guided by prudence and humanity; and if he shall be guilty of cruelty or abuse, or neglect to feed, clothe, or shelter his servants in a proper manner, the probate court may declare the contract between master and servant or servants void, according to the provisions of the fourth section of this act.50

Laws were clearly defined for both master and slave to obey, somewhat similar to the practice of the South. If any slave should disregard the laws, the territory could force obedience upon him under the court system. According to Hosea Stout, for instance, the right of a slave owner to hold his slave as legal property was upheld in the Probate Court: Wednesday 18 June 1856. Law Suit before probate on an examination People vs William Camp et al. for kidnapping a Negro Dan. The case commenced Monday evening and lasted yesterday & to day till noon It appears that Camp was the owner of Dan who had ran away and C. had went with three others to bring him back. The court acquitted them Carrington atty Genl for the people & Mr T.S.Williams & self for defts There was a great excitement on the occasion The question naturally involving more or Less the Slavery question and I was surprised to see those latent feeling aroused in our midst which are making so much disturbance in the states. 51 49 U t a h , Legislature, "Act in Relation to Service," Acts, Resolutions, and Memorials the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah (Great Salt Lake City, 1855), 160. â&#x201E;˘Ibid., 161.

51 Brooks, On the Mormon Frontier, I I , 597.

of

Negro Slavery in Utah

53

Not only did the court acquit the owner, but there were "latent feelings" about the slavery issue aroused among the people. Though Stout failed to elaborate, it appears that the people were angered at the threatened interference with property, and that they expressed partisan support for the institution of slavery.

If J o h n Brown's journal is a valid indication, a Negro slave was of considerable value, especially an "African Servant G i r l " : 5 2 O n the 8th of J a n u a r y 1857, I consecrated and deeded to the C h u r c h the following: Property and Improvements of real estate _ $775.00 Cattle, Wagon and Pigs $541.00 F a r m i n g Tools and Rifle $105.00 Household Furniture, Bedding, etc $150.00 Twelve Sheep and T w o Pistols $ 72.00 Silver W a t c h and Cooking Stove $ 55.00 Sixty bushels W h e a t $120.00 Corn, Vegetables, etc $145.50 Sundries $ 75.00 African Servant Girl $1,000.00 $3'038.50

Probably a more accurate indication of the worth of slaves is depicted through the sales transactions that were carried on in the valley.

One such bill of sale was recorded in the County of Great Salt Lake in 1859: 5 3 K n o w all men by these presents. T h a t I, T h o m a s S. Williams of Great Salt Lake City in the Territory of U t a h , for and in consideration of the sum of eight h u n d r e d dollars, to me in h a n d , paid at and before the ensealing and delivery of these presents, by William H . H o o p e r of the city and territoy aforesaid, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, have bargained and sold and by these presents, do grant bargain and sell and convey u n t o the said W m . H . Hooper, his heirs, executors, administrators and assigns, one negro boy " D a n " ; the said nego boy is twenty-six years of age, was born the property and slave of Williams C a m p on the 15th day of October A.D. 1833, in the town of Dresden, Weakley County, State of Tennessee; and by the said Williams C a m p was sold to me in the year 1858, a bill of sale having been executed to m e by the said Williams C a m p for the said Negro boy " D a n " , to have and to hold the said negro boy " D a n " u n t o the said W m . H . Hooper, his executors, administrators and assigns, against all and every person and persons whomsoever.

Attest â&#x20AC;&#x201D; A.R. J a c k m a n Charles Evans Great Salt Lake City Sept. 7th, 1859 52 Brown, Autobiography of John Brown, 144. "'; Salt Lake County, Recorder, MS.

T.S. Williams Recorded September 8th, 1859 F.B. Woolley, Recorder

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O n file in the Salt Lake County Recorder's Office, this document certifies the existence of a limited slave trade in the valley, as well as providing another witness of Williams C a m p ' s ownership of the slave, " D a n . " T h e Salt Lake Tribune, in reporting the discovery of this document, made the following observations: Although the slave trade never was legal in Utah, the fact that dealing in human bondage took place in the past has been discovered in time-worn documents in the County Recorder's Office. Patrick J. Sullivan, an employee of a Salt Lake Abstract firm, while searching the records for real estate information, came across the copy of a bill of sale for a Negro boy named Dan in a book containing transactions for the year 1859. The slave was sold by Thomas S. Williams of Great Salt Lake City to William H. Hooper, same address, for $800.54

Emerging from the evidence are the following conclusions. Slavery existed in U t a h Territory as a legal, if limited, institution, with Southern Mormons being the chief slave owners. Among some people, at least, the attitudes toward slavery were comparable with those of the South, and were perhaps a cultural carry-over. 5 5 If slavery h a d not been carried to U t a h , M o r m o n attitudes toward it may have developed differently. It was inevitable, however, t h a t Mormons would define it within the framework of their religion. As Brigham Young said, " W e cannot talk about spiritual things without connecting with them temporal things, neither can we talk about temporal things without connecting spiritual things with t h e m . " 5 0 Young's statement m a y suggest why there was seemingly no effort to rid the territory of slavery. Those who owned slaves considered their value high enough to justify bringing them from the South to utilize them in a new home in the mountains. While some were disappointed at the loss of their slaves along the way and in California, others managed to retain their services for several years in the valley. A few slaves preferred to remain with the master in the life to which they h a d become accustomed, but most seemed to desire freedom, and subsequently seized upon any opportunity to achieve it.

51

Salt Lake Tribune, M a y 3 1 , 1939.

For additional evidence of the similarity between Mormon attitudes and Southern attitudes toward slavery, see the author's previously cited article in the Western Humanities Review.

56 Journal of Discourses (26 vols., Liverpool, 1 8 5 4 - 1 8 8 6 ) , X, 329.

55

Prisoners of war working

at Camp Ogden Army Service

Forces.

German and Italian Prisoners of War in Utah and Idaho

BY R A L P H A. B U S C O A N D D O U G L A S D. ALDER

T

H E P L I G H T OF prisoners of w a r has generally been one of the tragic tales of mankind. 1 Recent parading of American pilots in the streets of

Mr. Busco, former teacher at Weber High School, is presently working toward his P h . D . at Brigham Young University, Provo. Dr. Alder is professor of history at U t a h State University, Logan.

1 William E. S. Flory, Prisoners of War: A Study in the Development of International Law (Washington, D . C , 1942), 10.

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Hanoi is reminiscent of ancient triumphs of victorious generals whose prisoners were held as ransom. Mass slaughter of captives to avoid the expense of supporting them or as a terror technique against remaining foes was a common practice among the Assyrians and Egyptians, and is recorded in the Old Testament. 2 Classical and medieval torture practices appear barbaric to modern man, but Andersonville, Dachau, or Bataan suggests a continuity to the history of brutality. Currently, the treatment of prisoners of war is a matter of much concern to the peoples and governments involved in the Vietnam conflict.

The persistence of brutality into modern times is all the more discouraging in light of the concerted international efforts to prevent abuse to prisoners of war. Based on views from the Enlightenment that war is a relation of state to state and not of man to man, various propositions have been suggested to promote basic human rights for prisoners. In 1863 the international Red Cross grew out of attempts to care for the casualties of the Crimean War. A year later an international Red Cross convention in Geneva drew up a treaty concerning prisoners of war. The original convention has been revised periodically. New treaties were adopted extending Red Cross protection to victims of warfare at sea (1907), 3 to prisoners of war (1929) ,4 and to civilians in the time of war (1949). 5 The 1929 treaty was signed by forty-seven nations who agreed that prisoners of war should receive humane treatment, protection of their persons, adequate housing and food, intellectual and physical diversion, and the right to elect spokesmen. Signatory nations agreed not to employ prisoners of war in military work or in the production of war materials, but they were allowed to require the men to work in other vocations.

The Geneva conventions further stipulated that war prisoners be interned away from combat areas. During World War II the American continent offered the advantage of remoteness where captured enemy soldiers could be guarded with minimal effort.

Despite the bitterness of the conflict, the United States appeared to treat prisoners of war humanely in an attempt to impress them with America's democratic life. At least this was the case with those European prisoners who were transported to confinement within the continental 2

I Sam. 1 5 : 3 ; Deut. 20-16-8, 20:13-4.

Jean S. Pictet, "The New Geneva Conventions for the Protection of War Victims," American Journal of International Law, X X X X V (July, 1951).

4 U.S., Statutes at Large, vol. 47.

"U.S., Department of State, Treaties and Other International Agreements, vol. VI, pt. 3, pp. 3114-3695.

3

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United States. Base and branch prisoners of war camps were established in every state of the Union.

T h e states of U t a h and I d a h o were well suited for internment sites because of their inland location, agricultural opportunities, and remoteness from industrial centers. T h e r e were 141 base camps and 313 dependent branches in the nation. Of that total, 9 base camps and 21 branches were located in U t a h and Idaho. T h e greatest number of prisoners at any one time in the United States was 425,806. Of these some 11,660 men were allocated to base camps in U t a h and Idaho. T h e totals for the branch camps are difficult to ascertain because of the transient nature of both camps and men. 8 T h e following pages will attempt to assess the nature of the experience of prisoners while imprisoned in U t a h . W a r Department and c a m p records as well as interviews and letters to participants have been used. Whenever possible the experiences and opinions of former prisoners themselves have been drawn in.

C A M P FACILITIES

T h e Geneva convention of 1929 prescribed that prisoners of war should be lodged in buildings or barracks affording guarantees of hygiene and healthfulness. Captors were to provide the same quality of housing and food as used for their own troops in permanent camps. T h e United States generally located these camps near existing military installations such as Ogden's U t a h General Depot and Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City.

Federal government camps formerly belonging to the Civilian Conservation Corps, the National Youth Administration, the F a r m Security Administration, and other governmental agencies including state and local fairground buildings, armories, schools, and auditoriums were adapted to provide for prisoners.

C a m p Ogden Army Service Forces Depot, Utah, which may be said to have been characteristic of the base camps, followed the typical army plan. T h e physical plant contained two separate stockades, twenty- by one hundred-foot barracks located one thousand feet apart. T h e depot c Information on the prisoner of war camps was secured from inspection reports by the Young Men's Christian Association camp inspectors and inspectors from the Provost Marshal's Office. These records are located in the Provost Marshal General Branch in the National Archives, Washington, D.C. Prisoner of war base and branch camps were located throughout Idaho at Blackfoot Franklin, Emmett, Farragut (base c a m p ) , Filer, Fort Hall, I d a h o Falls, Marsing, Payette, Pocatello Army Air Force Base, Preston, Rigby, Rupert (base c a m p ) , Shelley, Sugar City, Thomas U p p e r Deer Flat, and Wilder. They were located in U t a h at Bushnell General Hospital Clearfield (base c a m p ) , Deseret Chemical Warfare Depot (base c a m p ) , Fort Douglas (base camp) Dugway Proving Ground, Hill Field (base c a m p ) , Logan, Orem, Salina, Tooele (base c a m p ) ' Tremonton, and U t a h Army Service Forces Depot (base c a m p ) .

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was capable of housing a thousand prisoners. Camp Tooele, Utah, was located three miles from Tooele at a site called Warner. The camp had only one stockade which housed up to one thousand prisoners. It was situated on level terrain in the northern extreme of the Tooele Ordnance Depot. The prisoners slept on canvas cots in individually heated, oil-stove barracks. Each barracks housed fifty men. There was a guard house at each of the four corners of the stockade. The enclosure had a doublegraduated hog-wire fence with a barbed wire overhang surrounding the entire compound.

The camp at Preston, Idaho, was typical of the branch camps. Like most camps in the Intermountain Region it was hurriedly constructed so that the prisoners could live near a farm area where labor was required.

Because it was temporary, tents were the only housing. The prisoners were nonetheless under guard as evidenced by the hastily constructed guard house and hog-wire fence surrounding the entire tent camp.

German prisoner of war Hans Johann Gruenheit was at Camp Preston. H e was injured in Hungary, November 27, 1944, while fighting the Russians, and was confined in the hospital at Berchtchgarden, Germany.

He was released from the hospital to go home on a pass. While at Gellsenkirchen, his home, American forces invaded the town and discovered he There were nine prisoner of war base camps, such as this one near Ogden, located in Utah and Idaho.

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was a member of the Third Reich Army. He was naturally classified as a prisoner of war.

In America he was first interned in Phoenix, Arizona; then he was moved to the large base camp at Rupert, Idaho. He was soon transferred to the branch camp at Preston to work with supplies. Hans recalled that guards would leave early in the morning to take the prisoners to work in the beet or potato fields. He "jokingly" said he would issue the U.S. Army personnel their guns with which to guard his own fellow prisoners. His stay in Preston was, he said, "the most carefree time in all my life." 7 The food of prisoners of war was supposed to be equal in quantity and quality to that of the U.S. troops. During most of the war this standard was rigorously adhered to in the Utah and Idaho facilities. Strangely a cut in rations corresponded with the end of the war in Germany.

This development occasioned some concern on the part of the Red Cross and of Inspector P. Schnyder de Wartensee of Switzerland, who came to study conditions at Clearfield. According to his report, The food was very satisfactory, in quality and quantity, up to about May 1945, when regulations were issued to all the Camp Commanders to cut 7

Interview with Hans Johann Gruenheit, Logan, Utah, May 14, 1966.

Camp Ogden Army Service Forces was capable of housing a thousand prisoners.

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the rations. This has been found constantly objectionable, because the amount of food allowed to the prisoners of war could not make up for the amount of energy lost due to the increased work required. Some improvement should be made or the work will suffer.8

T h e defeat of G e r m a n y a n d the fact t h a t decreased food rations coincided with this defeat led m a n y prisoners of w a r to believe that measures of reprisal were taken against them. This in t u r n led t h e m to claim t h a t the United States did not recognize the Geneva convention of July 1929. 9 According to the international agreement, the detaining power was required to furnish all necessary medical a n d hospital treatment. Therefore, the prisoners were supposed to receive the same medical and surgical services accorded American A r m y personnel.

Bushnell General Hospital was designated by the U.S. W a r Department to provide for the care a n d treatment of w a r prisoners. It was located on a 640-acre tract of land just south of the city limits of Brigham City, U t a h (presently the Bureau of I n d i a n Affairs Intermountain Indian School). Bushnell was formerly a b r a n c h c a m p of Hill Field, housing Italian prisoners, but h a d been changed into a base c a m p for German prisoners.

Colonel Robert M . H a r d a w a y , a senior medical officer, was supervisor of the hospital. H e told K a r l Gustaf Almquist, Red Cross inspector, that the hospital was intended primarily for American soldiers and they h a d only a few wounded G e r m a n prisoners. T h e r e were about forty beds for the prisoners â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a small n u m b e r w h e n compared to the approximately four thousand beds for American soldiers. 10 R E C R E A T I O N AND E D U C A T I O N

I n most camps the prisoners organized sports activities. Soccer was the favorite sport for the Germans a n d Boccie (an Italian version of bowling) was the most played Italian game. T h e United States government a n d the Y M C A provided motion pictures, musical instruments, equipment for indoor a n d outdoor sports a n d for crafts, a n d theatrical props.

Italian prisoner of w a r Joe Battisti played on the U t a h Depot Italian Service Unit League T e a m , champions of the "District Soccer League."

8 P. Schnyder de Wartensee, Y M C A inspector, " R e p o r t on Visit to C a m p Clearfield Prisoner of W a r C a m p , M a r c h 14, 1946" ( P M G O , National Archives).

9 Guy M e t r a u x , "A R e p o r t on the Activities of the Prisoner of W a r Division, United States of America, July 1943 to M a y 1946" (typescript report compiled for the international Red Cross; copy in possession of the a u t h o r s ) .

10 K a r l Gustaf Almquist, Y M C A inspector, " R e p o r t on Visit to Prisoner of War Camps, July 13, 1945" ( P M G O , National Archives).

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The league consisted of teams from the Ogden Arsenal and Salt Lake City. The ISU Depot Team won the league championship two years in a row. 11 Camp Deseret, in central Utah, was one of the smallest base camps.

It was formerly a branch camp of the Tooele German Prison Station.

Inspectors Paul Schnyder and Louis Hortal reported that aside from the usual education classes the camp highlight was a concert every Sunday performed by its nine-piece orchestra.

Camp Ogden ASF Depot was especially proud of its thirty-piece orchestra. A concert was given at least once a week at the depot or in an adjoining area such as Salt Lake City or Brigham City.

The War Department set up a large-scale adult education program for prisoners of war. However, the program was too late in starting to be very effective. Prisoners themselves set up these educational programs under the supervision of the camp authorities. They were allowed to subscribe to newspapers and periodicals printed within the continental United States in the English, German, and Italian languages. The publications were checked by censors to prevent enemy propaganda. The international YMCA acted as a central agency to help prisoners secure textbooks.

Sture Persson, YMCA camp inspector from Sweden, 12 reported that at Camp Clearfield the educational program was conducted entirely by the Germans themselves. Lectures and discussions were held five nights a week for two hours each night concerning economic and political aspects of other countries.

Karl Gustaf Almquist, another YMCA camp inspector, met the camp spokesman upon his visit to the camp and wrote the following in his report: The spokesman told me that there were many young men among the prisoners of war and he very strongly felt the responsibility of giving them the opportunity for education so that some day they could carry on their work in the Germany of the future. The problem was to hold the interest of the young prisoners of war and find out what they really could do in that direction. As all youth, they preferred to spend their leisure time in playing football or doing nothing. Certainly sport was a good thing, but when it took the interest away from more useful things it is not. This, briefly, was the problem as told me by the men of the camp. Of course they also 11 Victory News (Ogden, U t a h ) , September 15, 1945. This paper was published semimonthly in the interest of the personnel of the Utah Army Service Forces Depot.

12 World Alliance of Young Men's Christian Association, "War Prisoners Aid of the World's Committee of YMCA's" (Geneva, Switzerland, 1945-46). This typescript report is available at Utah State University and is in the authors' possession.

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Camp Ogden Army Service Forces Italian Service Unit Brass Band. h a d older m e n in the c a m p . However, on the whole the problem was to keep a m o n g t h e prisoners of w a r a loving spirit a n d interest in spiritual things.

Concerning the teaching of American History, he frankly gave as his opinion, t h a t it was necessary to give also the G e r m a n a n d E u r o p e a n background of history. I t was impossible to understand American History if they h a d no idea of their own history. D u r i n g the Nazi regime they had been t a u g h t only one side of their own history a n d been deluged with p r o p a g a n d a . Could they but discover the right picture of their own history, it would m e a n everything to them. Therefore, the spokesman asked for books on G e r m a n history written by well-known G e r m a n historians before 1932. T h e teachers of G e r m a n history now were teaching w h a t they remembered a n d learned by heart. T h e most necessary books were books on their own history, authorized by the Office of the Provost Marshall General. 1 3

At Fort Douglas, Utah, a c a m p for hard-case subversives, Second Lieutenant J. L. Kingsley offered a proposal to provide for an intellectual program to be employed within the camp. It was the first indication in the c a m p reports of an attempt to propagandize the prisoners of war to the United States democratic system. It was proposed that the canteen be stocked with better magazines a n d periodicals so that the "right kind" of reading material would be put into the hands of the prisoners. Perhaps the most powerful medium of propaganda available was the use of 13 Karl Gustaf Almquist, Y M C A inspector, "Report on Visit to C a m p Clearfield Prisoner of War C a m p , July 6, 1945" ( P M G O , National Archives).

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motion pictures. It was necessary to have a steady flow of American films circulating throughout the camps. Kingsley recommended that an interested prisoner should be selected as a director of studies to organize a n d promote educational a n d recreational activities.

T h e r e was a genuine problem getting prisoners w h o h a d not gone beyond the elementary school level involved in the education p r o g r a m .

T h e bulk of the subject m a t t e r being t a u g h t was A m e r i c a n history, geography, languages, and mathematics. A problem common to most camps was a shortage of adequate textbooks and novels in the G e r m a n language.

C a m p Hill Field, U t a h , was located five miles south of Ogden, a n d east of Sunset a n d Clearfield. T h e prison c a m p was referred to as O A T S C or the O g d e n Air Technical Service Counsel. Leone G h i r u d a t o a n d Maresciallo Bergongoli were directors of studies for the prisoners within the c a m p . T h e y expressed antagonistic feelings toward Italian officers, but also possessed a h a t r e d for any American p r o p a g a n d a .

Attendance at education classes was optional. T h e American history a n d English language classes were the most popular, as evidenced in C a m p R u p e r t where a large n u m b e r attended. O t h e r classes in different subjects (crafts, arts, painting) were held during spare hours. 1 4 T h e spokesman at Bushnell General Hospital stated t h a t the library needed books. T h e interest was reported as great, but prisoners preferred fiction a n d books of travel. T h e y especially liked richly illustrated books that helped t h e m get a more concrete understanding of the life described.

T h e r e was little possibility at Bushnell to conduct classes because the m e n were there for medical treatment and generally confined to bed. I n most b r a n c h camps the m e n h a d little in the way of recreation or education because the camps were so transient.

LABOR

M a n y citizens of the I n t e r m o u n t a i n Region will remember prisoners of w a r chiefly as p a r t of the w a r t i m e labor force. It was on the farms of the region where they were best known. U n d e r a contract labor arrangement, local farmers, after proving t h a t no native labor was available, could negotiate to use prisoners of war. 1 5 U n d e r the terms of the contract, farmers h a d to pay the m i n i m u m wage for labor received, but the 14 Mr. and Mrs. Lynn O. Pitcher of Ogden, Utah, have in their possession some fine paintings by former German and Italian prisoners of war from Camp Ogden Army Service Forces.

The prisoners presented them as a gift of appreciation while they were interned there. The Pitchers worked with stage plays which provided entertainment for the prisoners.

15 Major Maxwell MacKnight, "The Employment of Prisoners of War in the United States," International Labour Review, L (July, 1944), 54.

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money was paid to the federal government. T h e prisoners received only a portion of the pay (80 cents a d a y ) , which they could spend as they wished. T h e remainder went to the U.S. government to meet housing and food expenses for the prisoners. Following the w a r the United States agreed to pay $1.40 per day back pay to the Italian government for all its prisoners, which m e a n t that $2.20 was accepted as a day's wage.

After September 8, 1943, when Italy capitulated, Italian prisoners were given special privileges if willing to sign the Italian Service Unit parole agreement. T h e prisoners who still favored Mussolini's regime were considered regular prisoners of w a r and were treated accordingly, but those w h o signed were allowed to leave the camps, w e a r special uniforms which eliminated their previous P W status, work on farms and in defense industries, and have other privileges including weekend leaves.

Ruggerio Purin's story is an example of the Italians who came to U t a h after signing the parole agreement. H e was captured near Tunisia, Africa, early in J u n e of 1943. H e was transported to the United States where his first c a m p was Scottsbluff, Nebraska. M r . Purin reported that he was required to work h a r d in Nebraska where he picked sugar beets u p to twelve hours a day. After eight months Ruggerio was transferred to the Black Hills O r d i n a n c e Depot, Iglee, South Dakota. For a year he labored in the ammunition d u m p there. Early in 1945 he was transferred to C a m p Hill Field for a six-month stay. H e spent most of the time working in Salt Lake City at Fairmont Park where he met his future wife seventeen days before his return to Italy. M r . Purin is now an American citizen and evaluated his experience as a prisoner of war in this m a n n e r : I was treated better by the American Army than by my own Italian Army. I suffered while in the Italian Army. There were various times when I even had to beg for food from civilians in order to stay alive.

I remember returning home to Italy after the war was over. It was later that the girl I met in Salt Lake City came over to Italy and our marriage followed. I loved Italy and I wanted to stay there, but my wife wanted to return to live in the United States. I remember how humane my treatment was here as a prisoner of war. Otherwise I would

Prisoners of war working [n a potato field near Camp Preston, Idaho.

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never have returned to live in this country. I think this treatment is a credit to the United States, and as many people that are interested should know about it.16 RELIGION

Religious services were p e r m i t t e d within the individual camps, a n d prisoners enjoyed liberty in the exercise of their own faiths. Services were held by captured chaplains, ministers, a n d priests â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but primarily by American civilian ministers.

C a m p Hill Field's services were conducted by Catholic Priest M o n signor Giovanoni from St. M a r y ' s of the Wasatch. T h e c a m p was largely Italian a n d one h u n d r e d per cent Catholic.

C a m p O g d e n A S F Depot provided weekly Catholic and Protestant services. F a t h e r Giroux of St. Joseph's in O g d e n was in charge of the Catholic services. T h e evangelical services were performed by Pastor Clemens H a r m s of Brigham City. 17 I n 1945 Pastor H a r m s a n d his work were described by K a r l Almquist.

Pastor Harms belongs to the Missouri Synod and is himself a second generation American of German ancestry. I got a very good impression of his serious and industrious work in this and other camps [prisoner of war camps Clearfield and Bushnell General Hospital]. As he had a rather small congregation at Brigham, he was glad to have the opportunity of being useful in this special kind of work. After the service, he was accustomed to spending some time talking with the prisoners of war and they, on their side, seemed eager to grasp the opportunity to talk over their religious problems . . . . His quiet and fine character and his good manner of expressing his Christianity and human feelings were guarantees of nobility of spirit and trustfulness sincerely valued by the prisoners of war. 18

Pastor H a r m s ' s impact on the prisoners was such t h a t they remembered h i m with affection some twenty-two years after their confinement.

Most of the prisoners contacted by the authors mentioned him. But Pastor H a r m s ' s achievement has further m e a n i n g for the historian because he m a d e minimal records of his activity a m o n g U t a h ' s prisoners of war. H e invited the prisoners to sign a register a n d include their h o m e towns. These entries are w h a t the authors used to contact former prisoners of w a r living in Europe w h o told the story of the prisoners detained in U t a h a n d I d a h o . Pastor H a r m s recalled t h a t his first service for the 16

Interview with Ruggerio Purin, Midvale, Utah, February 7, 1965.

Pastor Harms is presently a Lutheran minister, Missouri Synod, South Dakota.

18 Karl Gustaf Almquist, YMCA inspector, "Report on Visit to Prisoner of War Camps, July 10, 1945" (PMGO, National Archives).

17

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prisoners was Christmas at Bushnell Hospital in Brigham City in 1944.

His work gradually expanded to include the ASF Depot in Ogden, the Naval Supply Depot in Clearfield, the compound and Bushnell Hospital in Brigham City, the prisoner of war branch camps at Tremonton and Logan, and for a short time a camp at Preston, Idaho. 19 Of his experience with the prisoners, Pastor Harms wrote: Throughout my work with the German prisoners, I was most cordially received by the American staff in charge. We conducted our services as we saw fit without any interference whatsoever. The camp personnel also was very cooperative in arranging times for worship so that all the camps could be served. The prisoners who attended the services were very appreciative. They were happy that they could receive spiritual ministration. I have very fond memories of the work done among the German prisoners of war. 20 MORALE AND

CONDUCT

The United States held all prisoners subject to its laws, regulations, and orders. All rules and regulations affecting prisoner conduct and activities were posted in their language. The Geneva convention stated that prisoners were not to be exposed to any cruel or inhumane treatment other than for misconduct.

At Fort Douglas guard personnel had particularly low morale, and this led to the recommendation that one hour per week be devoted to indoctrinating American Army personnel in proper conduct toward the prisoners in their charge. Officials stressed that every U.S. officer and enlisted man at a prisoner of war camp was an advertisement for democracy. The army personnel's duties and attitudes toward the prisoners could have a positive or negative effect on the prisoners.

Camp leaders throughout Utah and Idaho discovered that a variety of recreational opportunities, good classes, and frequent weekend leaves (for the Italians) lifted the morale of the prisoners and helped decrease security problems. It was not unusual for Italian prisoners to bribe guards to accompany them on leave to towns such as Ogden. This enabled the Italians to date girls and pursue other entertainment.

The progress of the war also had an adverse effect on the morale of the prisoners. News accounts of German casualties were so depressive to the prisoners that they were often censored by camp officials in an attempt to preserve high spirits.21 19

Letter from Pastor Clemens E. Harms to the author, July 26, 1966.

Ibid.

21 J. L. Kingsley, PMO inspector, "Report on Visit to Camp Fort Douglas Prisoner of War Camp, December 19-21, 1944" (PMGO, National Archives).

20

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Prisoner of war Gene Miconi described the morale and conduct problem. Born in Rome, Italy, in 1919, Gene was first captured at Tobruck, Africa, by the English and remained a prisoner for five years (1941â&#x20AC;&#x201D;46). He was interned in Suez, Egypt, and South Africa before being transferred to the United States.

He was an interpreter for the Ogden ASF Camp because of his knowledge of English. Mr. Miconi expressed his belief that many army personnel were unsympathetic toward the prisoners. He felt the guards preferred the opportunity to fight abroad and capture prisoners, rather than staying at home and doing the tedious job of guarding them.

Gene's morale was affected by his imprisonment when he became aware of the value of freedom. He waited impatiently for the day when he would once again be free.22 On July 10, 1945, a tragic incident occurred at Camp Salina. Private Clarence V. Bertucci, a twenty-three-year old guard at the camp, turned his machine gun into the camp area spraying prisoner tents with bullets. Eight prisoners were killed instantly (a ninth died the following day). Twenty prisoners were seriously wounded. Bertucci was taken immediately to Bushnell General Hospital where he admitted planning the killings but gave no plausible explanation for his action. He was later declared insane and given medical treatment. 23 Graveside services were held at Fort Douglas cemetery the following day for the slain prisoners. They were buried in the southeast corner near other German prisoners of war who died here in World War I. This incident was soon known throughout the entire region and occasioned a serious slip in morale.

As noted previously morale at the camp at Fort Douglas usually lagged behind that in the region generally. In part this was because the camp was a segregation camp for non-cooperative prisoners who evidenced subversive tendencies. Of conditions there Major Paul A. Newland reported: This camp is by its very nature composed to harbor only subversive elements. As such, its main intelligence problem should be to discover those prisoners of war who are not to be classified as subversive and get them to volunteer for unrestricted labor so that they can be transferred to working camps for non-commissioned officers. It was stressed that great care should be taken never to allow any subversive leader to be transferred to a working camp merely because he desires to volunteer for unrestricted 22 23

Interview with Gene Miconi, Ogden, U t a h , November 7, 1965.

Ogden Standard Examiner, July 11, 26, 1945.

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Utah Historical Quarterly labor, b u t t h a t only those w h o are a p p r o v e d as non-subversive by c a m p authorities should be allowed to v o l u n t e e r for such labor. 2 4

Major Newland stated that there was a feeling among the prisoners at Fort Douglas that all in life had failed them. Whatever happened to Germany in the war was divine judgment against them. Hoping to ease such feelings, pastors plead with the prisoners to keep in mind the word of God from Isaiah, stating "God have mercy upon us, forgive us for our sins." 25 At Camp Tooele general morale was good, but even here a guard fired a gun at a prisoner for refusing to obey a no smoking order while working. Tooele was typical of many other camps. A prisoner escaped by cutting holes through a lower portion of the double fence and ran approximately five hundred feet, but returned on his own accord. The camp report at Tooele includes a reflection on this event that such an escape could be attributed to the barbed-wire psychosis that compels a man to break out; yet he usually returns after a brief flirt with freedom.26 Sture Persson noted while visiting Camp Rupert that some prisoners in camp blamed the occupying powers in Germany for the war. The only guilt such prisoners seemed to feel was that Germany had lost.

Persson's answer to them was that hatred and discouragement should not gain a foothold in their minds. "It should be clear by now that hatred never builds up anything better," he said.27 A former Italian war prisoner who presently calls America home is Mario Alfredo Alfonsi. H e was enthusiastic about his imprisonment in America. America made a very favorable impression on him. Mario was taken prisoner while aboard the Italian submarine Glanco in November 1940 when it was torpedoed by the British almost two hundred miles from Gibraltar. From that time through January 14, 1946, he was a prisoner of war. He was sent along with five or six hundred other prisoners to the United States â&#x20AC;&#x201D; first to Tennessee, then Kansas, and finally Utah.

Mario Alfonsi related that while in the custody of Great Britain he was interrogated once every day for information. In the United States he was required only to give his name, rank, and serial number. Mario felt 24 Major Paul A. Newland, P M O inspector, " R e p o r t on Visit to C a m p Fort Douglas Prisoner of W a r C a m p , February 17, 1945" ( P M G O , National Archives).

25

Ibid.

D . L. Schwieger, P M O inspector, "Report on Visit to C a m p Tooele Prisoner of W a r C a m p , J a n u a r y 24, 1944" ( P M G O , National Archives).

27 Sture Persson, Y M C A inspector, "Report on Visit to C a m p R u p e r t Prisoner of W a r C a m p , M a r c h 1946" ( P M G O , National Archives).

26

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that treatment while in the custody of the United States was very fair, which meant good food and clothing with warm, adequate living conditions. His only complaints were that the barracks were overcrowded and that he could never become accustomed to the fence surrounding the prison camp. Although he is now an American citizen, Mario said he will always possess a love for his homeland. Mario felt that the fair treatment he had received while imprisoned in the United States was in large measure responsible for his shift of allegiance to the democratic system.28 Obviously prisoners of war who chose to return to Utah to live must have had favorable impressions of their internment. Those cited in this study are but a portion of the ex-prisoners now living in Utah and Idaho.

The U.S. government and YMCA reports cited were also generally favorable. In order to establish a control by which these findings might be evaluated, an attempt was made to obtain testimonies from prisoners who returned to Europe. They might be more candidly critical. Pastor Harms's roll book was the key to success in this undertaking. The German government, Bureau for Notification of Relatives of Fallen Military Personnel, sifted several hundred names and provided a list of fifty-one addresses which they thought might be the men who were prisoners in Utah and Idaho. A questionnaire was prepared and sent to each. Thirty28

Interview with Mario Alfredo Alfonsi, Ogden, Utah, November 7, 1965.

Italian Service Unit officers and enlisted men say goodbye to friends Ogden ASF Depot as they board the train for the first lap of their journey back to Italy.

at the

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three were returned as unknown. However, ten returned their forms verifying their presence in Utah and Idaho during the war and offering considerable information.

In general the responses from Germany are strongly corraborative of the evidence gathered in this country. Like the documents and interviews collected here, they do not report a clean slate. They all said they were required to work and three stated they were forced to do so. Their work days usually lasted from eight to ten hours. Seven reported laboring six days a week with one reporting a seven-day week. One prisoner reported that he was not paid, while the other nine said they received the 80 cents per day standard allotment. The responding ex-prisoners of war rated living conditions all the way from mediocre to excellent. The general concensus regarding food was that the quality was much better during the war than after it was over. One prisoner reported being brutally handled while in the United States, and two said they saw others handled inhumanely while on European soil. The remaining few did not record any such instances. All but one were interrogated, but only two said they were asked for more than their name, rank, and serial number. Most recalled they were allowed to write and receive mail at least once a month. Six of the ten men said their experience as prisoners of war in the United States influenced their impression of America positively. Three men reported no change in their previous opinion. One felt more negative about America after his imprisonment here.

Gerhard Granit appended this favorable comment: As you can see from my answers to your questions, I can only report positively concerning m y stay as a prisoner of w a r in the U.S.A. I was in Tucson, Arizona, from October 1944 until February 1945, where I was picking cotton a n d then I was transferred to Bushnell, U t a h , where I worked from February 1945 until July 1946. I n both places the treatm e n t was good. I can especially praise the time in the hospital. I worked there as a cook a n d I often forgot t h a t I was actually a prisoner. I had very good contact with the civilians working there and I received the same quality of housing a n d food as the patients and the U . S . Army personnel.

Also, I can well remember the visits of Pastor H a r m s at our worship services. H e m a d e a large contribution toward the comfort and enjoyment of our pleasant stay.

The most critical report stated: While America and G e r m a n y were still at w a r the t r e a t m e n t in the United States was good. T h e original guards were orderly. I attribute this to the fact t h a t these were soldiers from the front. Immediately after the war ended the food became miserable a n d the treatment declined considerably.

Before we gathered in C a m p Schenk for return transportation to Europe the care improved. T h e return trip from C a m p Schenk to Le H a r v e

Prisoners of War in Utah and Idaho

71

was catastrophic. One-third of my comrades arrived undernourished.

M y greatest disappointment after the trip was the c a m p in Bakenhausen

by Aschaffenburg. T h e c o m m a n d e r was a Jewish-American intelligence officer. H e played beastly tricks on the prisoners. Until then my impressions of America a n d Americans were very good, but he completely u n d i d them.

Another prisoner simply stated: President Roosevelt wanted the G e r m a n prisoners of war to be treated as guests of the United States. A n d that is w h a t happened. 2 9

Prisoners began to be sent to their homes with the end of the war, in accordance with War Department plans that every prisoner be returned to his own country. Italian and German prisoners would be replaced with American workers at the earliest possible date.

It should be borne in mind that prisoner of war camps in Utah and Idaho were only a representation of two states out of the forty-eight.

These camps were constructed and supervised to comply with War Department instructions to follow explicitly the regulations of the Geneva convention of 1929.

The base camps were generally able to follow the rules provided.

However, facilities, especially in the branch camps, were not always adequate. The branch camps, as previously stated, were rapidly constructed at locations to provide local citizens a pertinent labor force. Textbooks, teachers, clothing, heating units, recreation equipment, etc., were not always available at these camps.

The United States government used prisoners to alleviate the acute labor shortage on the home front. More prisoners could likely have been utilized in labor projects; however, the savings in time and money to the people in Utah and Idaho were considerable. The German prisoners were not allowed to mingle with the civilian population as much as the Italians who had signed the ISU pledge. Even though prisoners of war, these men made many friends that even remoteness will never erase. The supervision accorded the prisoners by the U.S. Army and Navy personnel was a definite factor in the prisoners' attitude toward the democratic system. It was evident that the German and Italian men had been subjected to much propaganda by the Hitler and Mussolini regimes. No doubt democracy was a surprise to some of these men. The people in Utah and Idaho played a part in presenting the democratic system to these men.

29 All of the responses to the authors questionnaire are in the German-Italian Prisoners Correspondence File in the archives of U t a h State University.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

In general the record of the Utah and Idaho prisoner of war camps was good. They adhered with certain failures to the standards established by international law and the War Department. Most prisoners were humanely and justly dealt with. Work expectations were within limits and spiritual, educational, and recreational opportunities were usually adequate. The conduct of guards, advisers, work directors, and the citizenship at large was, with the exception of the unfortunate and deplorable Camp Salina incident, not marked with undue hostility. A primary objective of the U.S. camps had been to reveal the democratic process in progress. Without question there were failures in this attempt, but these were sufficiently rare that the very men who were imprisoned became sympathetic chroniclers of their sojourn.30 It is the judgment of the authors that the conduct of the camps of Utah and Idaho was in the main, a humane and successful endeavor.

30 U.S., Congress, Congressional Record, 80th Cong., 1st sess., 1947, 4 1 , pt. i. Official records of the United States claim that only 960 of the 435, 788 prisoners of war died while interned in the United States.

I n the southeast corner of the Fort Douglas cemetery is a section for the graves of World W a r I I prisoners of war. H e r e are buried twenty Germans, twelve Italians, a n d one Japanese. Twenty-one G e r m a n prisoners of World W a r I are buried in a n o t h e r p a r t of the cemetery. (Information from the Salt Lake Tribune Home Magazine, M a y 27, 1962.)

REVIEWSAND PUBLICATIONS

The Farm Boy and the Angel. By CARL GARMER. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1970.

237 pp. $5.95) Carl Carmer is a professional teller of tales who recreates and embellishes the salty folklore of rural eastern America, occasionally concentrating on a story with the imperishable quality of legend.

It is not surprising that he should finally have elected to write about Joseph Smith, for Carmer was born and raised, as he tells us in the Foreword, in the drumlin country of western New York, the area now regarded by the Mormons as their "Holy Land." The title itself, The Farm Boy and the Angel, suggesting simplicity if not sentimentality, is a clue to Carmer's approach. The difficulty is that the story of Joseph Smith and his church is far too complex and controversial to be confined to a slim box of anecdote.

Carmer tells us that he himself, like Joseph Smith, lay on his back at fourteen in a leafy grove, "listening to voices riding the tremulous air, and felt a sense of supernatural presences about me. Hence I cannot find within me a reason categorically to deny that the man whom more than two millions of his fellows regard as a true prophet received revelations which he said had been offered from a divine source."

Thus in his second paragraph one already senses the ambiguity that permeates this slender, contradictory, and frequently exasperating volume. "Wher-

ever possible," he continues, " I have chosen not to enter the field of controversy over the truth or falsehood of events which have been said to transcend human experience. Since to do otherwise would completely destroy the purpose of this volume, I have decided to present these chronicles, mostly without comment, as Mormons themselves present them."

So we have a non-Mormon telling the story as seen through the eyes of the devout. Unfortunately, Carmer represents the devout as remarkably simple-minded. T h e telling is glib, error-ridden, patronizing in the extreme, and the impressive bibliography is wholly unreflected in the narrative.

Since the book is clearly aimed at the Mormon market, it may sell to those who are happy to read anything by a Gentile that is advertised as sympathetic. But even the most unreflective Mormon will find the episodes hackneyed, superficial, and lacking the grandeur their own writers give to the same slice of history.

The non-Mormon will find Carmer's account no less patronizing. Except for a cautionary note now and then to alert the reader that he is recounting Mormon tradition, not believing it, Carmer wanders from episode to episode like a garrulous grandfather at afiresideembellishing the adventures of his youth.

The infinite complications of Joseph Smith's personality and the remarkable expansion of the sociological empire he generated are never even suggested.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

T h e r e is in this slight volume n o analysis, a n d n o insight; there is also, alas, no history.

F A W N M.

BRODIE

Senior Lecturer in History University of California, Los Angeles Folklore of the Great West: Selections from Eighty-three Years of the Journal of American Folklore.

Edited with extensive commentary by J O H N G R E E N W A Y . (Palo Alto, California: American West Publishing Company, 1969. 453 p p . $10.75) I n Folklore of the Great West, J o h n Greenway, former University of Denver professor of English, wit, raconteur, recording folk singer, traveler-to-the-antipodes, a n d current professor of a n t h r o pology at the University of Colorado, does a lyrically impressive editing job.

T h e r e are a few errors of scholarship, a n d there are a few occasions of cuteness, but these let us w a r m to the m a n a n d book. T h e y d o not alienate.

I n the 1950s J o h n Greenway was an important m e m b e r of one of the three or four very finest folklore faculties in the United States. Indeed, the University of Denver was something of a pioneer in this field of scholarship, and Greenway, A r t h u r C a m p a , a n d the gentle Levette Davidson (whom Greenway acknowledges with a loving tribute in this fine volume) began to attract young folklore scholars to that campus.

Greenway left Denver for Australia a n d a Fulbright, a n d in the course of time became editor of the Journal of American Folklore. I n this capacity he developed a perspective on the evolution of the Journal that m a d e Folklore of the Great West possible.

T h e reader should understand that the subtitle means what it says. T h e book does indeed develop from articles t h a t have appeared throughout the eighty-three-year life of the Journal.

O n e would like to quarrel with the title

on these very grounds, for there are other journals — Western Folklore, Northwest Folklore — that have p u b lished articles about the Great West, some as fine as the best of the J.A.F. However, Greenway's strategy as stated in the subtitle allows h i m to do as he wishes, a n d one can only hope that a good editor will d o for these other journals a similar job of editing and commentary and t h a t a second good book can be done on the Great West.

Nine substantive chapters follow an excellent introductory chapter ( excepting a questionable scholarly asseveration) : " T h e Good O l d Days," " T h e I n d i a n at H o m e , " " T h e I n d i a n and the White M a n , " "Cowboy Songs," "Songs of the Old Country," "Songs of the N e w , " " T h e Days of Gold and the Days of Dross," "Bad M e n a n d Big," " W h i p pers a n d Witches a n d Heavenly Helpers," a n d " H a v i n g F u n . " I t is possible to d o a lyrical editing job. As a m a t t e r of interest, J o h n Greenway and Roger Welsch (A Treasury of Nebraska Pioneer Folklore, University of Nebraska, 1966) have both assembled treasuries of material, demonstrating superbly t h a t collections of lore need not be insipidly done. T u r n to page 410 of the Greenway book a n d read his prose: " O n e is suffused with love for h u m a n beings, the only creature on the earth that has to consider his own inevitable end a n d the hardships of the road in getting there, when one is permitted to see the poor h u m a n being through the chinks in the a r m o r he wears against the world — whether it be the Amish in black suit, hat, a n d beard, or the fat m a n in the dark glasses and the H a waiian shirt. We are all h u m a n beings, God help us, a n d t h a t is both bad enough a n d good enough to say for any of God's creatures."

But it must in fairness be pointed out t h a t Greenway errs occasionally.

Certainly his position that folklore is a product of enclaves of the culturally unique will be challenged by those who

Reviews and

Publications

find folklore even in the organization man's homogenized suburbia. The urban belief tale might be offered as evidence by those who oppose Greenway's claim.

Again he errs in Chapter V, "Cowboy Songs," when he states "Only that narrow and desolate corridor running along the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains knew the genuine working cowboy." This is just not accurate. It is true that the cattle industry there has been written about more extensively than elsewhere, but writing and the realities diverge sharply at this point.

One could cite the Miller-Lux operation extending from the central valley of California up through Nevada and into Oregon nearly as far north as the Columbia River â&#x20AC;&#x201D; "a million acres and a million head of cattle," or the FrenchGlenn holdings of Harney County, Oregon, over 120,000 deeded acres and claim to perhaps twice that amount.

Cattle drives from Harney and Malheur counties of Oregon to Oglalla, Nebraska, were most important to eastern Oregon economy. Thousands of Devonshire and Durham cattle made up these drives.

Several of the reviewer's authentic cowboy informants would take sharp issue with Greenway's statement that "the cowboy was technically a hobo, one notch above the tramp." By whose technology? And he seems woefully unaware that under a pair of chaps the working cowboy wore trousers: "Monstrous great chaps with a gap in front that demanded the re-invention of the codpiece for the sake of decency" (p.

180). Indeed! The gap behind was even greater.

But perhaps this cuteness annoys only Idahoans, who know that Woop Woop is not in the Gem State but belongs down under and mildly resent the condescension that ties a nonsense place to their state ("lists of profound sayings . . . from Woop Woop, Idaho" p. 60).

Altogether the book is a happy marriage between Professor Greenway's

75 knowledge and delightful prose and the work of collectors who have enriched the lives of all of us now that their articles have been restored to life.

L O U I E W.

ATTEBERY

Chairman, Department of English The College of Idaho, Caldwell

Negroes in the Early West. By OLIVE W. BURT. Illustrated by LORENCE F. B J O R K L U N D . (New York: Julian Messner, 1969. 96pp. $3.95) A variety of books about American blacks have been published during the past few years. An encouraging number of these books are for young readers, and represent a positive step to broaden the history horizons of the nation's youth. It has been said that the history of a nation is a composite of the stories of her people. Olive Burt has written about people of the early West who were explorers, mountain men, founders of cities, businessmen, soldiers, and cowboys. Some of these men and women came to the West as free people while others arrived as slaves. The biographies in Mrs. Burt's book are representative of other blacks who made the West their home, but who are among the "non-people" of history â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that is, they left no written records of their actions, hopes, and accomplishments.

It is unfortunate that chroniclers of the past too often neglected to record the deeds of blacks, or if they did, resorted to rather undescriptive phrases like, "He was a just man." Sometimes we find better descriptions like Washington Irving's comments about mountain man Edward Rose. He called Rose a man "of powerful frame and fearless spirit." All too often, however, the meager records only let us know that the black man existed; they do not tell much about the person. Mrs. Burt has done a fine job of searching out information about her subjects and pre-

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senting this in a readable, interesting way.

The book relates stories of blacks who had different backgrounds. Some had little schooling while others, like William Alexander Liedesdorff, were well educated. The stories of black cowboys and soldiers present a view of the West unknown to many as the mass media have most often portrayed these people as being only white. The story of James P. Beckwourth is an important part of the chapter on mountain men. His biography, it should be noted, has also been presented in book-length form by Mrs. Burt. The final chapter of this useful book tells of women like Mammy Pleasant, Biddy Mason, and Mary Fields who made their special contributions to the development of the western frontier.

Books like Negroes in the Early West are important not only because of the information they contain, but because of the direction they point. Perhaps readers who learn of the contributions of individuals through reading these pages will be led to discover similar stories in their own communities.

Teachers and students alike should appreciate both the helpful index and the believeable illustrations.

HOWARD KANETZKE

Editor Badger History Office of Museum Education The State Historical Society of Wisconsin Pioneering the Union Pacific: A Reappraisal of the Builders of the Railroad.

By

CHARLES

EDGAR

AMES.

(New York: Appleton - Century Crofts, Educational Division, Meredith Corporation, 1969. xvii + 591 pp. $12.00) The centennial of the first transcontinental railroad produced a veritable spate of books about the history of that great project. Now that many of the ceremonies are concluded we can look

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back on the literature which the celebrations stimulated with some satisfaction, for collectively the new publications do expand our knowledge of the vast problems accompanying one of the greatest American transportation projects of the nineteenth century. This volume is one of the dozens that appeared in 1969 which contribute to a deeper understanding of the Union Pacific's early history.

Charles Edgar Ames, the author, is a direct descendant of the Ames brothers who in 1869 were major stockholders in the Union Pacific and who became famous (or infamous) as promoters of the Credit Mobilier the construction company that financed the completion of the Union Pacific. Himself a Wall Street broker and railroad director in addition to being an amateur historian, Mr. Ames understands the intricacies of corporate finance and is extremely sympathetic to management's point of view. It is not surprising, therefore, that in this book Mr. Ames seeks to justify the actions of his relatives, Oakes and Oliver Ames, who have been severely criticized by historians and by their contemporaries for conflicts of interest or even outright corruption. In formulating his defense, Mr. Ames is especially severe on their dynamic business rival, Thomas Durant, clearly the dominant executive in the higher echelons of the Union Pacific during the construction phase. If the author succeeds in clarifying the motives of the Ames brothers in their various decisions, he is not as effective in denigrating the role of Durant who still appears as the major figure for good or ill in the building of the transcontinental railway.

The prime value of this volume is its emphasis on the specific business problems and financial decisions faced by the builders of the Union Pacific. Much of this information is not new and has long been available in scattered sources.

But Mr. Ames has brought it together

Reviews and Publications and so provides a more comprehensive account of the railroad's business problems than has hitherto been available.

This is a rather lengthy study, in part because it consists of long excerpts from a variety of sources, presented in chronological sequence. One wonders whether the author could have presented his major conclusions in a shorter and more concise and analytical format. Perhaps then his presentation would have been more effective, and might have attracted a larger number of readers as well.

It should be noted that Mr. Ames has been very diligent in his search for sources. He has combed manuscripts of the Ames family, of Thomas Durant, and of Grenville Dodge; he has searched newspapers and periodicals; and he has consulted congressional documents and reports. Moreover, he has kept himself abreast of available secondary works so as to assure the soundness of his own. This is not a book for the casual reader. But anyone wishing a clearer and more realistic understanding of the financial issues confronting the Union Pacific's management between 1863 and 1893 will find it useful.

GERALD D. N A S H

Professor of History University of New Mexico The Great Platte River Road: The Covered Wagon Mainline Via Fort Kearny to Fort Laramie. By MERRILL J. MATTES. (Lincoln: Nebraska State Historical Society, 1969. xv + 583 pp. $7.95) As the title indicates, this volume constitutes a report of a very carefully and thoroughly researched study of that segment of the major overland trail between the Missouri River and Fort Laramie, as that trail was developed and used during the great westward overland migration prior to the completion of the transcontinental railroad.

All scholars of the American West are well aware of the significance of the

77 "Oregon Trail" in the development of our country but most will be happily surprised to realize how many segments of that great trail, at one time or another, crossed portions of present-day Kansas and Nebraska, from various points on the Missouri, to the Platte River before funneling up both sides of that stream to comprise the great transMississippi wagon road.

Source material for the work consists chiefly of personal diaries, journals, and reminiscences of those who actually traversed the route. In the main those migrating people are allowed to tell their own story at various points along the trail. More that eight hundred primary sources and over four pages of secondary sources are listed in the bibliography. Of special value is the fact that the present locations of the primary sources are listed; an invaluable aid for researchers. This feature alone would make the volume worthwhile.

The book contains a great deal of statistical information such as a chronology of the route between the years 1804 to 1866, "the last significant year of civilian travel by wagons up the Platte River." Included in this chronology is a valuable bibliographical report of the major sources dealing with specific years. The total number of persons estimated to have traversed the trail between 1841 and 1866 is given as 350,000 with the year 1850 leading out with 55,000 persons. Description of equipment, organization, provisions, camping, and other aspects of the migration add value to the volume. Special attention is given to important segments of the road such as Ash Hollow, Fort Kearny, Scott's Bluffs, Fort Laramie, etc.

The book is generously illustrated with contemporary sketches as well as modern photographs, several by the author. Of special value is a series of excellent maps showing in detail various portions of the route.

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Utah Historical

At first glance the reader might be disappointed to note that the study terminates at Fort Laramie, but upon further examination it becomes obvious that to give the same type of comprehensive treatment to the various major roads to the west, and especially west of South Pass, would require several additional volumes. O n the other hand interested scholars are challenged to undertake similar studies on those other trails. The present volume provides future scholars with an excellent format and an invaluable bibliography. It is a major contribution to the literature of the West.

DAVID E. MILLER

Director, Western History Center University of Utah Salt Lake City A Mormon Mother, An Autobiography.

By A N N I E CLARK T A N N E R . (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1969. xiv4-294 pp. $6.00) Written in her seventy-seventh year, this story of a second wife, who was also a child of a second wife, is remarkable in that it spans the years from the 1860s to the 1940s. Annie is involved in the great changes that took place in Utah and in the L.D.S. church. Though of special interest to Mormon scholars, this book should be read by anyone wishing a better understanding of polygamy and its special problems before and after the Manifesto.

Annie grew up in a happy, prosperous polygamous household, and it was easy for her to defend this institution to classmates and visitors at Brigham Young University where she was a student. In doing so, she came to the attention of Professor Joseph Marion Tanner, and she was honored when he asked her to become his second wife.

Being married to the man who later became president of Utah Agricultural College meant that she had to live a secluded life rearing her eight children.

Quarterly

She did have one exciting year in Cambridge while her husband was a student at Harvard, even though she had to threaten to fast indefinitely before he would provide proper housing and promise to spend every other Sunday with her family.

Almost half of the book is composed of quotations from her diary and letters to and from her husband and children.

They give intimate pictures of the times, the hopes, and the frustrations of Annie and the children and indicate something of the relationship between husband and wife. In looking back on these times Annie commented, "I was undoubtedly a better mother than I was a wife or I could have forsaken all I had and gone to Canada." By this time Mr. Tanner had purchased a large farm in Canada and taken three additional wives. The children took turns working on the farm during the summer, but because of crop failures they always worked for nothing. As time went on Annie could see the farm coming between her children and the educational goals she had set for them. She not only discouraged her children from working in Canada but refused to sell her beautiful home, built with the inheritance from her father, and turn the proceeds into the Canada farm. This was the breaking point in alreadystrained relations. Annie was then cut off from any financial help and left to educate her children alone. She and the children worked and succeeded. Of that time she wrote, "Strange to say, however, we never felt poor. Perhaps because we received no sympathy, as no one ever knew our condition. Then, too, we came and went from a very lovely home . . . . The children's success was my single source of satisfaction. I lived and worked to give them every available opportunity. Their success was all I had."

During the later years of her life, Annie traveled and studied as she visited her children. By the time she wrote her

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79

book, she h a d come to follow reason more than faith. I n her writings she was able to bring her life experience into perspective, revealing the values as well as the problems of polygamy as she knew it.

Anyone interested in reading about the life of a second wife will delight in this autobiography.

M A R I A S.

ELLSWORTH

Logan,

Utah

The American Heritage Book of Great Adventures of the Old West. C o m piled by the Editors of American Heritage. Introduction by ARCHIBALD H A N N A , J R . (New York: American Heritage Press, [1969]. 384pp. $8.95) T h e editors of this volume have selected twenty articles originally p u b lished in American Heritage to describe the old West as it was a n d to "partially correct the false view of the West that is still too widely held." T h e old West as it is described in this book is the trans-Mississippi West of the U n i t e d States during the nineteenth century.

T h e articles cover the frontier experience from Lewis a n d Clark to the last range wars a n d t h e last days of Geronimo. T h e m a n y well-chosen illustrations are helpful in making each article interesting.

T h e selections vary in excellence with "Gold" by R a l p h Andrist a n d " O r d e a l in Hells C a n y o n " by Alvin M . Josephy, Jr., ranking high in both readability a n d historical accuracy. T h e r e are a few points of misinterpretation and fact that should be n o t e d : the W h i t m a n massacre of November 1847 was not the major motivation behind Polk's desire to settle the Oregon b o u n d a r y (p. 169) as the boundary h a d been settled in 1846; the Nauvoo T e m p l e built by the M o r m o n s was burned in 1848 not 1846 (p. 172) ; the American I n d i a n was not originally considered a citizen u n d e r the Fourteenth A m e n d m e n t (p. 329) ; and in comparing the D o n n e r party of 1846

with the Stevens party of 1844, the Donners were also i m p o r t a n t trailbreakers (p. 140).

T h e book provides enjoyable reading a n d is often exciting. T h e cure for a severe snake bite is described as pouring g u n p o w d e r on a bite a n d then lighting it. Childbirth could be eased a n d hastened by administering a spoonful of powdered rattlesnake rattles. T h e editors have m a d e a contribution in placing all of the articles under one cover.

R I C H A R D W.

Assistant

This Was Pioneer Motoring: An of Nostalgic Automemorabilia.

ROBERT

F.

SADLER

Professor of History Weber State College

KAROLEVITZ.

Album By

(Seattle:

Superior Publishing Company, 1968.

192 p p . $12.95) I t m a y be assumed t h a t before World W a r I I there was little interest in the automobile in this country, as few books a n d fewer magazines could be found devoted to the subject. Since 1944, however, the long-smoldering love affair of Americans for the automobile has burst into a passionate romance that has spawned h u n d r e d s of books, several magazines of wide circulation, a n d m o r e t h a n two dozen national clubs dedicated to collecting the history, operation, a n d restoration of automobiles. These clubs have thousands of devoted members a n d local chapters across the country.

M a n y otherwise rational people list " a n t i q u e automobiles" as their hobbies.

Robert F. Karolevitz, a journeyman printer a n d serious farmer, has collected h u n d r e d s of photographs of t h e "olden days," a n d preserved them in entertaining albums. His previous books are Newspapers in the Old West, This Was Trucking, a n d Doctors of the Old West.

His latest volume has to do with a u t o mobiles, a n d begins with a succinct quotation from William F. H a r r a h : "Few material things have been as i m p o r t a n t

80 to America as the automobile. The manufacture of the automobile was the root of our industrial growth, and for decades now it has been the central support of our economy. We are all tied to the automobile by history, by business, by emotion. The automobile deserves to be preserved and remembered."

That Mr. Harrah believes what he preaches is proven by his collection of more than one thousand beautifullyrestored old cars. The Harrah Auto Collection in Reno is open to the public, and is well worth a few hours stopover on the drive from Salt Lake City to San Francisco, even if you have not been stung by the automotive love bug.

Aloof and disinterested wives of seriously afflicted husbands can be found evidencing considerable interest in Mr. Harrah's magnificent collection.

Author Karolevitz, in applying Mr. H a r r a h ' s automobilian philosophy, treats the reader, as well as the casual page-flipper, to a merry trip down memory lane.

He points out that the book is not intended to be an all-encompassing history of motorized transportation, but is simply a book of nostalgia. The main purpose is to preserve some excellent old photographs which epitomize the era of transition from animal to mechanical power. Words can little embellish a picture of a Brush Runabout mired axle-deep in a muddy morass called a highway.

A picture of particular interest to Utahns shows a hard-tired, open-air bus loaded with fans sporting University of Utah penants en route to a football game.

The chapters of the book carry intriguing titles, including: "What On Earth Will We Call It?" "Old Dobbin Gets A Final Horselaugh," "What's Your Hurry, Bud?" and "At Work And At War." Also included is a page of slogans of long gone and nearly forgotten autos.

Utah Historical

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Among them: Severin — "Faithful To The End Of The Road"; Bates — "Buy A Bates And Keep Your Dates"; and Marmon —• "The Easiest Riding Car In The World." In this ecological day the slogan of the Waverly Electric reminds us that we have probably come the full circle: "No Dirt, No Odor, No Grease, No Bother."

The only fault I found in the book is the practice of including the credit line immediately after the copy of each picture. This is rather distracting. The source of the photos could possibly better be listed on one page near the back of the book.

The book is a love letter of interest to all, and especially those whose hearts beat faster when looking at pictures of the first faltering excursions of horseless carriages.

STANFORD P. DARGER

Repesentative Utah State House of Representatives The Study of American Folklore, An Introduction. By JAN HAROLD BRUNVAND. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1968. xiii+ 383 pp. $6.50) In recent years interest in folklore has mushroomed. More and more people, feeling that the best study of mankind is man, seek to save from the experience of the race all that is worth saving. Jan Brunvand's book, The Study of American Folklore, provides for beginning researchers the basic terms, definitions, theories, and functions of the study of folklore. Brunvand has attempted to do in a volume an encyclopedic task reminiscent of Samuel Johnson's in writing the first standard dictionary of the English language. And he has done an eminently successful job. A person embarking on a study of folklore or history should read the book. He will get concepts of the scope of folklore, definitions of terms, and ideas for application of his work — and he will be enlightened.

Reviews and Publications Folklorists will not all agree with Brunvand in his definitions or his emphasis. T h e many actors I have seen present Hamlet rarely please me, for I have my own concept of Hamlet.

In his book Brunvand divides folklore into three basic headings: "Verbal Folklore," "Partial Verbal Folklore," and "Non-Verbal Folklore." This dissection, if followed in folklore collecting may very well kill the victim. In the section on verbal folklore is one chapter "Folksong" and another "Ballads" which separatism gives the impression that ballads are not folksongs. In the section on partial verbal folklore is one chapter on "Folk Dances and Drama" and another "Folk Games," separating again items generically connected. Under nonverbal folklore is a chapter "Folk Music." It is a well-established fact that folksong is a unique combination of lyric, epic, and dramatic elements, that a ballad or folksong of any type should not be separated from its various elements, especially from its music.

In the same vein Brunvand lists superstition as partly verbal. He should not separate the act of not walking under a ladder from verbal expression of the action. Observing this act of divorcement of element from element makes me want to say, "What God has put together let no man put asunder."

This fault of dissection could have been corrected through different organization.

But this fault does not destroy the usefulness of the book. It even serves well to establish the truth that folklore includes all folkways including actions, artifacts, and behavior patterns. T h e book remains the best introduction to folklore available. Well written with definitions and illustrations, with generalizations and details to support them, it is both interesting and informative. Bibliographical supplements provide exceedingly good sources for further reading.

The sample studies in the Appendix show significant ways in which folklore

81 can be applied. This is good; yet, these samples should not be considered the only significant methods of application of folklore studies. Historical, sociological, anthropological, ethnic, artistic, literary, political, behavioristic, and other applications could not all be presented in an introduction.

In this work Brunvand proves himself a m a n of great stature in the field of American folklore.

T H O M A S E. C H E N E Y

Brigham

Professor of English Young University

N E W B O O K S AND P U B L I C A T I O N S The Arapahoes,

Our People.

By VIR(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970)

GINIA C O L E T R E N H O L M .

Birthright of Barbed Wire: The Santa Anita Assembly Center for the Japanese.

By A N T H O N Y

(Los Angeles: 1970)

L.

LEHMAN.

Westernlore

Press,

1894-1964, 75 Years, National Register of Historical Sights [Washington Square, Salt Lake City and County Building]. History furnished by N E W ELL G. K N I G H T . ([Salt Lake City: N.P., 1970]) Happy Day: Life and Times of Edward I. Rich, MD., 1868-1969. By EZRA J. POULSEN. (Salt Lake City: Granite Publishing Company, 1970) John Hunton's Diary, Wyoming Territory, 1885-1889. Volume 6. Edited by the late L. G. ( P A T ) FLANNERY. (Glendale, California: T h e Arthur H. Clark Company, 1970) Western Mining: An Informal Account of Precious-Metals Prospecting, Placering, Lode Mining, and Milling on the American Frontier From Spanish Times

to 1893.

By O T I S E. YOUNG,

JR. With the Technical Assistance of ROBERT L E N O N .

(Norman: Univer-

sity of Oklahoma Press, 1970)

82

Utah Historical

ARTICLES OF INTEREST The American West, The Magazine of Western History — V I I , September 1970: "An Emigrants' Guide for Women Making the Necessary Preparations for the Arduous Five-Month Journey along the Oregon Trail," by TERRY B R O W N , 12ff.; "Song of Man, A Prologue to History," by CHARLES L. CAMP, 19-23; "Spurs and Saddlebags, Ballads of the Cowboy," by A U S T I N and ALTA F I F E , 44-47 — N o v e m b e r 1970: " T h e Morrisite War, Insurrection by a Self-styled Prophet," by M. H A M L I N

CANNON,

4ff.

Annals of Wyoming — 42, October 1970: "Wives, Mothers, Daughters: Women's Life on the Road West," by ROBERT

L.

MUNKRES,

191-224;

"Practical Housekeeping [published in 1886 — portions of two chapters entitled " T h e Laundry" and "The Cellar and Ice-House"]," 243-51 Arizona and the West: A Quarterly Journal of History — 11, Autumn, 1969: "Washoe Territory, Rudimentary Government in Nevada [Mormons and Mormonism in Nevada],"

by K E N T D. RICHARDS, 213-32 — Autumn 1970: "A Dedication to the Memory of Zane Grey, 1872-1939,"

by RICHARD W. ETULAIN, 217-20 Arizona Highways — 7, July 1970: "Navajo Country, Arizona, U.S.A.,"

by J o JEFFERS B R O W N ,

2-47

Buckskin Bulletin — V, Fall 1970: "Another 'First' for Jed Smith [John Vincent Mason oil hung in the Westerner International's Hall of Frontier Fame — No. 1 in W I Hall of Frontier Fame]," 1 The Bulletin — X V I I , October 1970: "Importuning for Redress [Mormons in Missouri]," by WARREN A. J E N NINGS,

15-29

The Chronicles of Oklahoma — X L V I I I , Summer 1970: "Auguste Pierre Chouteau, Merchant Prince

Quarterly

at the Three Forks of the Arkansas,"

by W A Y N E M O R R I S , 155-63 Colorado Magazine-—47, Spring 1970: "Crusade of the Blue Banner in Colorado [Presbyterian church in the West]," by NORMAN J. BENDER, 9 1 -

118; " T h e Impact of the Colorado State Constitution on Rocky Mountain Constitution Making," by GORDON M. B A K K E N , 152-75 Desert Magazine—33, September 1970: "In Memory of 'Mr. Desert' [Randall Henderson]," by JACK PEPPER, 7; "Grafton, U t a h , " by ERNIE COWAN,

10-11; "Gold Lake . . . Fact or Fantasy [Caleb Greenwood]," by H E L E N WALKER,

16-17 — October

1970:

"Sagacious Sage Grouse," by K. L. BOYNTON, 12-15; "Tracing the Trilobites, A Utah Field Trip," by JOLEEN ROBISON, 28-31 — 34, January 1971: "Arches in Navajoland," by BILL KNYVETT, photos by BILL CRAWLEY, 22-24 Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought—V, Summer 1970: "Cache Valley Landscape [photographs]," by DAVID

BIEDERMANN,

34—40;

"Art,

Beauty and Country Life in Utah,"

by ELIZABETH SPRANG, 58-70; "The Conversion of Sidney Rigdon to Mormonism," by F. M A R K

MCKIERNAN,

71-78 The Improvement Era — 73, October 1970: "Kirtland Revisited," by D R .

G. D A L E W E I G H T and D R . EARL

MORTENSEN, 4 - 8 ; "The

M.

Instructor,

A Voice of Truth for 105 Years, 1866-1970," by LORIN F. W H E E L WRIGHT,

16—19 — November

1970:

"The Improvement Era — The Voice of the Church (1897-1970)," by DOYLE L. GREEN, 12ff. — December

1970: "Sixty-nine Years of the Children's Friend," by MARY R. JACK,

10-12 The Intermountain Food Retailer—45, September 1970: "These are the 'Good Old Days' — Transition to

Reviews and Publications Super-Markets,"

by P. A.

83 "PERC"

BALLINGER, 2 Iff.

Intermountain Industry — 72, October 1970: "Capitalizing on 'Character,' Sensitive Remodeling Brings Out C h a r m of Older SLC Business Houses," 6-8 — December 1970: "Mineral Fishing's 1st Big Haul [Great Salt Lake Minerals & Chemicals Corporation]," 6ff.

The Journal of Arizona History—11, Summer 1970: "Fort Mojave: Outpost on the Upper Colorado," by PHILLIP J. AVILLO, JR., 77-100 Journal of the West — IX, July 1970: "California and the Transformation of the Mountain Men," by VIRGIL L. MITCHELL,

413-26

The Masterkey — 44, October—December 1970: 'Hopi Silversmithing [history, technology, overlay process, guild, and form and design economic factors]," by J O H N and JOYCE MORI,

124-42 Millennial Star — 132, June 1970: "It's Goodbye To The Era, Instructor . . .

And The Star, Three New Magazines From 1971," 2-4 National Parks & Conservation Magazine: The Environment Journal — 44, October 1970: "Hubbell Trading Post," by O. F. OLDENDORPH, 6-9

Nevada Highways and Parks — 29, Winter 1969: " T o Tame A Giant, A Collection of Historic Hoover Dam P h o t o g r a p h s , " by M A L C O L M T. THOMPSON,

9ff.

Nevada Historical Society Quarterly — X I I I , Fall 1970: "The Yager Journals: Diary of a Journey Across the Plains [Part T h r e e ] , " by [ J A M E S PRESSLEY YAGER], 26-48 New Mexico Historical Review—XLV, July 1970: "Protestant Missionary Activity Among the Navajo, 18901912," by MICHAEL J. WARNER, 20932

The Pacific Historian — 14, Summer 1970: "Jedediah Smith In Hayward,"

by REGINALD R. STUART, 4 - 9 ;

"Yes

Mr. Lampson, The 'Original Gold Spike' Is Still Alive and Well At Stanford," by R A L P H W. H A N S E N , 79-86 — Fall 1970: "Thanks, Mr. Hansen, For Being the Catalyst Helping to Solve The Mystery of the Genuine Spike [Golden Spike]," by ROBIN LAMPSON,

4-18

Pacific Northwest Quarterly — 61, July 1970: "An Indian Manifesto, An Essay Review," by M E R L E W. W E L L S , 162-64 The Palimpsest — L I , September 1970: "Burlington to Quincey," by WILLARD GLAZIER, Nauvo, Illinois, 402-16 Persimmon Hill, A Quarterly of the West — I, Summer 1970: "The Beginning [Charles M. Russell]," by O. M. MOSIER,

16-23

The Pioneer — 17, September-October 1970: "Brigham City's Pioneer Tannery Built in 1870, Falls to Bulldozer," 18; "The Saga of 'China Polly,' Pawn In Poker Game Becomes 'Angel of Salmon River,' " by CHARLES KELLY, 22-23 — November-December 1970: "Nauvoo, The Beautiful, Soon To Become 'Wiliamsburg of West,' " 10-11; "Historic 21st Ward Chapel Razed, Built in 1877, Has Had 11 Bishops," 1 2 — 1 8 , January-February, 1971: "Grand Old 'Lady Of The Lake' 8th Wonder of the World [Saltair]," by L E S GOATES, 4-5 Plateau: The Quarterly of the Museum of Northern Arizona — 43, Summer 1970: "Navajo Voting Patterns," by STEPHEN J. K U N I T Z and JERROLD E.

LEVY, 1-8; "Basketmaker Artifacts from Moki Canyon, Utah," by N E I L M. JUDD,

16-20

The Pony Express, Stories of Pioneers and Old Trails — X X X V I I , September 1970: "Colorado's Long

84 Haired

Utah Historical Cannibal [Alfred

Packer],"

by H . H A M L I N , 3ff.

Our Public Lands— 20, Summer 1970: "Crossroads of the Pioneers: T h e wagons rolled West through Cassia County [Idaho]," by H. MAX BRUCE, 11-14; "A Day in Crack Canyon, A walk to remmber [San Rafael Reef],"

by J O H N D. CARLSON,

1970's," by RICHARD P. HOWARD, 2 4 -

26 Sierra Club Bulletin—55, August 1970: "The Rape of Black Mesa," by W I L LIAM BROWN, 14-17

The Smoke Signal [Tucson Corral of the Westerners] — No. 20, Fall 1969: "The Discovery of Rainbow Bridge," H. CHIDESTER,

210-30;

"Early Travel on the Green and Colorado MARSTON,

"Missouri Volunteers on the Santa Fe Trail, 1847-1848 [Part Two]," by L E O E. OLIVA,

2-20

Vermont History—XXXVIII, Autumn 1970: "John Wolcott Phelps: The Civil War General Who Became A Forgotten Presidential Candidate In 1880," by J O H N MCCLAUGHRY, 263-

90

20-21

Saints' Herald, Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints — 117, November 1970: "New Excavations at Nauvoo," by NORMAN R U O F F , 26-27 — December 1970: "Joseph Smith, The Book of Abraham, and The Reorganized Church of the

by O T I S

Quarterly

Rivers," by O T I S

DOCK

231-36

The Trail Guide [Kansas City Posse, The Westerners] —• XV, June 1970: "Misouri Volunteers on the Santa Fe Trail, 1847-1848 [Part One]," by L E O E. OLIVA, 2-20 — September 1970:

Weber State College Alumni News — 7, October 1970: "Ethnic Studies at Weber State, Why and How," by RICHARD O. ULIBARRI, 4-5

Western American Literature — V, Spring 1970: "Vardis Fisher: A Bibliography," by GEORGE KELLOGG, 4 5 64 — Summer 1970: "Vardis Fisher and Wallace Stegner: Teacher and Student," by J O S E P H M. FLORA, 121-

28 The Western Historical Quarterly — I, October 1970: " T h e Many-Sided Frederick Jackson Turner," by WILBUR R. JACOBS, 362-72; "Pattern and Structure In Western Territorial Politics," by K E N N E T H N. O W E N S , 3 7 3 92; " ' A Mighty M a n Was Brother Lot': A Portrait of Lot Smith — Mormon Frontiersman," by CHARLES S. PETERSON, 393-414 Westways — 62, September 1970: "Adrift on the Lower Colorado," by WILLIAM C. ANDERSON,

11-13

30, 1971, Dale L. Morgan died and with his passing the West lost one of its foremost historians. And while he had a most productive career, one of the great tragedies for scholarship is that he was not able to finish some half dozen books in various stages of progress. His staff position at Bancroft Library, which he held since 1954, will not soon be filled.

Dale Lowell Morgan was born in Salt Lake City on December 18, 1914. He was the oldest of four children, three boys and one girl. His father died when Dale was only six years old. His mother (Emily) supported her family as a school teacher serving the public schools of Salt Lake City for over forty years. Dale was well aware of her struggle to support her family and always showed great concern for her. A great bond of love and friendship existed between mother and son, a bond that was strengthened when at fourteen years of age Dale was stricken with spinal meningitis. The disease resulted in a complete loss of hearing for Dale and measurably altered the course of his life.

In high school, Dale was strongly influenced by his art teacher who encouraged him to enter the profession of commercial art. It was with this as a major that he graduated from the University of Utah with a B.A. degree in 1937. However, while there, he demonstrated his talent for writing by having numerous stories and essays published in the student literary magazine. At that early age he wrote sympathetically and understandingly about the problems of the society which reared him.

After graduation, Dale went to San Francisco where he tried his hand at commercial art. But in the Depression years of the late 1930's, work of any kind was hard to find, and especially in art.

Returning to Utah, Dale became involved in the Utah Historical Records Survey under the Works Progress Administration, as he said "in a capacity sometimes called historian, sometimes historical editor."

Luckily for history, Dale had found his true calling.

His first historical efforts resulted in the publication of seven Inventories of County Archives of Utah, and others were left in manuscript when he was "drafted to complete the volume published next year [1941]" by the Utah Writer's project, Utah: A Guide to the State. This was Dale's first full-sized book. Upon reading it to this day, one is amazed at the thoroughness of his youthful research and the skill and beauty of his writing. There are passages of description which portray Dale the artist, and Dale Morgan the young man who though having lost one of his senses had sharpened his sense of sight and smell and put them to good use in his writing, as when he described the geography of Utah: V J N

TUESDAY, M A R C H

Dale L. Morgan

87

The State is immense and varied, almost beyond belief. The band of irrigated green, west of the Wasatch Mountains, extends from north central Utah southward, curving gently west to a corner with Arizona and Nevada. West of this band is the gray-green Great Salt Lake, gray desert, and peaked mountains. Eastward is the red desert country of the Colorado Plateau, yellowing as it approaches the Uinta Mountains on the north, ever reddening as it extends southward and eastward to the Arizona and Colorado lines — a country of flat-topped mountains and violent color. These dessicated gray and red deserts, and these mountains, represent more than 90 per cent of Utah. The tremendous weight of the land lies upon everything. The mountains climb into the skies; the deserts ache with sheer empty immensity. (Utah: A Guide to the State, page 8.)

But while Dale wrote with the feeling and soul of a poet, he researched with a determination, perseverance, and meticulousness possessed by few historians. His writing is marked with an accuracy that has met the challenge of the most severe critic. His editorial work is beyond reproach and a model for others to aim toward (The Pritchard Diary for example). Not infrequently a diary provided the vehicle for Dale to make a major contribution through editorial comment in clarifying some controversial point in history. An example of this is in his Rocky Mountain Journals of William Marshall Anderson . . . . on the founding of Fort Laramie. Many other examples could be cited where Dale clarified points in controversy. His books on Jedediah Smith and William H. Ashley are outstanding examples of his rectifying misinterpretations of earlier writers.

From his first historical writing in 1940 until he laid down his pen on March 30, Dale authored or edited more than forty books — many of them landmarks in their field and some of them the definitive study on a subject. His works in process, A History of the Fur Trade in North America, 1763-1870, and A History of the Mormon Church — to name but two — were bound to be classics in their fields. For long ago Dale became a recognized authority on the fur trade of the Far West and his monumental work in Mormon Bibliography established him as one of the foremost scholars on Mormon history. Furthermore, he authored articles by the dozen, and his book reviews are numbered by the score.

His published writings are not his sole contributions to history.

Dozens of scholars have given their thanks to Dale for helpful suggestions, critical reviews of manuscripts, and even writing or rewriting portions of a book, with little or no public recognition for his efforts.

88

Utah Historical

Quarterly

Some of the awards and recognition given to Dale are: Fellow Award, Utah State Historical Society (1960) Henry R. Wagner Memorial Award, California Historical Society (1961) Fellowship Award, California Historical Society (1962) Distinguished Alumni Award, Utah Alumni Association (1964) Award of Merit, American Association for State and Local History (1965, 1969) Silver Buffalo Award, New York Westerners (1966) John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (1945, 1970)

My own memories of Dale are not only those of a great scholar, an associate and strong supporter of the Utah State Historical Society, but of a warm and pleasant friend and companion along a mountain path or tracing out a long, overlooked segment of a pioneer trail. It was here that he could call upon an unbelievable memory and relate minute details that were recorded in not one but several diaries.

My memories are also of Dale Morgan a man of many ideas and more projects for himself and others to do than could be undertaken in a half dozen lifetimes. However, Dale compressed more projects into his too short life than many of us would do were we given a dozen lives.

This day, we are all poorer with the loss of a talented, dedicated scholar, Dale Lowell Morgan.

Some other of his most outstanding books are: The Humboldt, Highroad of the West, Rivers of America Series (New York, Farrar & Rinehart, 1943) Letters

by Forty-Niners Written from Dawson's Book Shop, 1949)

Jedediah Smith and the Opening Company, 1953)

Great Salt Lake

City (Los Angeles,

of the West (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill

California As I Saw It (Los Gatos, Talisman Press, 1960) A Guide to the Manuscript Collections of the Bancroft University of California Press, 1963)

Library

Overland in 1846: Diaries and Letters of the California-Oregon Volumes (Los Gatos, Talisman Press, 1963)

(Berkeley, Trail, Two

The West of William H. Ashley (Denver, Fred A. Rosenstock, 1963) In Pursuit of the Golden Dream: Reminiscences of San Francisco and the Northern and Southern Mines, 1849-1857 (Western Hemisphere, Inc., Stoughton, Mass., 1970)

Everett L. Cooley Curator, Western Americana University of Utah Library

U T A H STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY Membership in the Utah State Historical Society is open to all individuals and institutions who are interested in Utah history. We invite everyone to join this one official agency of state government charged by law with the collection, preservation, and publication of materials on Utah and related history.

Through the pages of the Utah Historical Quarterly, the Society is able to fulfill part of its legal responsibility. Your membership dues provide the means for publication of the Quarterly. So, we earnestly encourage present members to interest their friends in joining them in furthering the cause of Utah history. Membership brings with it the Utah Historical Quarterly, the bimonthly Newsletter, and special prices on publications of the Society.

The different classes of membership are: Student

$

3.00

Annual

$

5.00

Life

$100.00

For those individuals and business firms who wish to support special projects of the Society, they may do so through making tax-exempt donations on the following membership basis:

\

Sustaining

$ 250.00

Patron

$ 500.00

Benefactor

$ 1,000.00

Your interest and support are most welcome.

as a M CO <1

3 S 00 CD

w &

to

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

BOARD OF STATE HISTORY Division of Department of Development Services MILTON c. ABRAMS, Smithfield, 1973

President DELLO G. DAYTON, O g d e n , 1 9 7 1

Vice President CHARLES s. PETERSON, Salt Lake City Secretary DEAN R. BRIMHALL, F r u i t a , 1 9 7 3 MRS. JUANITA BROOKS, St. George, 1973

JACK GOODMAN, Salt Lake City, 1973 MRS. A. a JENSEN, Sandy, 1971 THERON LUKE, PrOVO, 1 9 7 1

CLYDE L. MILLER, Secretary of State

Ex officio HOWARD c. PRICE, J R . , Price, 1971 MRS. ELIZABETH SKANCHY, Midvale, 1973

MRS. NAOMI WOOLLEY, Salt Lake City, 1971

ADVISORY BOARD OF EDITORS THOMAS G. ALEXANDER, PrOVO S. GEORGE ELLSWORTH, L o g a n

MRS. HELEN z. PAPANIKOLAS, Salt Lake City LAMAR PETERSEN, Salt Lake City

MRS. PEARL JACOBSON, Richfield

HAROLD SCHINDLER, Salt Lake City

DAVto E. MILLER, Salt Lake City

JEROME STOFFEL, L o g a n

ADMINISTRATION CHARLES s. PETERSON, Director J O H N JAMES, J R . , Librarian

The Utah State Historical Society is an organization devoted to the collection, preservation, and publication of Utah and related history. I t was organized by publicspirited Utahns in 1897 for this purpose. In fulfillment of its objectives, the Society publishes the Utah Historical Quarterly, which is distributed to its members with payment of a $5.00 annual membership fee. The Society also maintains a specialized research library of books, pamphlets, photographs, periodicals, microfilms, newspapers, maps, and manuscripts. Many of these items have come to the library as gifts. Donations are encouraged, for only through such means can the Utah State Historical Society live up to its responsibility of preserving the record of Utah's past.

MIRIAM B. MURPHY, Associate Editor IRIS SCOTT, Business Manager

The primary purpose of the Quarterly is the publication of manuscripts, photographs, and documents which relate or give a new interpretation to Utah's unique story.

Contributions of writers are solicited for the consideration of the editor. However, the editor assumes no responsibility for the return of manscripts unaccompanied by return postage. Manuscripts and material for publications should be sent to the editor.

The Utah State Historical Society does not assume responsibility for statements of fact or opinions expressed by contributors.

The Utah Historical Quarterly is entered as second-class postage, paid at Salt Lake City, Utah. Copyright 1971, Utah State Historical Society, 603 East South Temple Street, Salt Lake City, Utah 84102.

HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

S P R I N G 1971 / V O L U M E 39 / N U M B E R 2

Contents INDIAN COUNTRY

BY C. GREGORY CRAMPTON N O T E S O N T H E H I S T O R Y O F T H E S O U T H E R N P A I U T E S AND WESTERN SHOSHONIS

BY CATHERINE S. AND DON D. FOWLER THE

SOUTHERN UTES A CENTURY

BY ROBERT W. DELANEY

90

95

AGO 114

THE INDIANS AND THE FUR M E N

BY HENRY HARRIS, JR., AN INTERVIEW BY FLOYD o'NEIL THE RELUCTANT SUZERAINTY: T H E U I N T A H AND O U R A Y R E S E R V A T I O N

BY FLOYD A. o'NEIL N A V A J O F R O N T I E R S I N U T A H AND T R O U B L O U S T I M E S IN M O N U M E N T VALLEY

BY J. LEE CORRELL T H E GOSIUTE INDIANS IN PIONEER U T A H

BY JAMES B. ALLEN AND TED J. WARNER THE WALKER WAR

BY HENRY HARRIS, JR., AN INTERVIEW BY FLOYD O^NEIL

128

129

145 162 178

THE

HOPIS AND T H E M O R M O N S 1858-1873

BY CHARLES S. PETERSON I A M AN A M E R I C A N

BY GERTRUDE CHAPOOSE WILLIE, AN INTERVIEW BY NORMA DENVER IN M E M O R I A M : C H A R L E S K E L L Y CHARLES KELLY DISCOVERS CHIEF WALKER^S GRAVE MEMORIAL ESSAY BY A. R. MORTENSEN EDITOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR

179 194 197 199

C H A R L E S S. P E T E R S O N MlRIAM B R I N T O N M u R P H Y

T H E C O V E R "Wakar, Later Chief of Utah Indians" by Solomon N. Carvalho. This splendid portrait was painted by the artist and photographer of Fremont's fifth expedition, 1853-54.

The party met near disaster in a winter crossing of Utah's southern mountains. Carvalho fell ill and wintered in Salt Lake City. He was present on the Sevier River in May 1854 when Brigham Young concluded a treaty of peace with the famous chief thus ending the brief "Walker War" between the Utes of central Utah and the Mormons. At that time, Carvalho remarked in his diary, "I induced Wakara to sit for his portrait." See chapter thirty of the artist's book, Incidents of Travel in the Far West, first issued in 1857 and reissued in 1954 with an introduction by Bertram W. Korn. The original portrait is owned by the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and it is published here with the gracious permission of that institution.

BACK C O V E R The Square C. Gregory Crampton.

Tower,

Hovenweep

National

Monument.

Photograph

courtesy

Indian Country

BY C. GREGORY C R A M P T O N GUEST

EDITOR

9 T H I S I S S U E of the t/ta/z Historical Quarterly is devoted to the history of the aboriginal peoples who once ranged over the wide sweep of rough country from Great Salt Lake to Colorado's Western Slope and from the Uinta Mountains to the Grand Canyon. H e who would write of the first men who lived in this land of deserts, high mountains, deep canyons, and sharp-edged mesas, must begin his story with an account of the Desert Culture which dates back some nine or ten thousand years.

Archeologists say that over this long period of time the climate of the arid West has remained about the same as it is today. In a harsh and vigorous environment the desert people, who roamed over an area much wider than we have described here, in time worked out a stable pattern of living nicely and efficiently adjusted to the limited resources available to them.

I n small bands the desert dwellers in search of food moved about with the seasons hunting and gathering but they sought out the protection of caves and overhanging cliffs for temporary residence. By 6000 B.C., they had developed a specialized material culture resting in part on the use of basketry and netting, fur cloth and sandals, nredrills and milling stones, digging and throwing sticks, wooden clubs, and stone projective points.

With the passage of time the southern segments of the Desert Cultures were changed dramatically, though not suddenly, by the infusion of new ideas from Mexico. Of these, agriculture based mainly on that great triad of prehistoric plants â&#x20AC;&#x201D; corn, beans, and squash â&#x20AC;&#x201D; was the most important. A reliable food supply made sedentary living possible and with some leisure time on their hands the aboriginal peoples of Dr. Crampton, professor of history and director of the Duke Indian Oral History Project at the University of Utah, has been a frequent contributor to the Quarterly. T h e editors of the Quarterly are grateful to Dr. Crampton for his help in arranging for this special issue.

Indian

Country

91

Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and northwestern Mexico produced a sophisticated lifeway which archeologists have labeled the Southwestern, or Pueblo, Tradition.

T h e Pueblo Culture gradually took form in the five hundred years before A.D. 400 and thereafter, with some significant regional variations, developed to full and classical proportions by the eleventh century. O n e of its regional variants was the well-known Anasazi Culture which spread over parts of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, centering on the middle reaches of the San J u a n River in the Four Corners area.

At its apogee Pueblo Culture was distinguished by large communal buildings housing hundreds of persons, an elaborate complex of arts and crafts, and a rich ceremonial life closely linked to agriculture on which the good life of the Pueblos depended.

For causes not yet fully understood the Anasazi people late in the twelfth century suffered a decline and fall. T h e great towns, such as Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde, and the many lesser ones, were abandoned. Remnants of a once populous people moved south and east and it is quite probable their descendants include the Hopi Indians of northeastern Arizona and other modern Pueblos of the Rio Grande Valley in New Mexico.

However, the country between the Great Salt Lake and the Western Slope was not left vacant by the departing Anasazis. I n the northern part of the region where the Pueblo Culture had been peripheral and weak, the more primitive lifeway of the ancient desert people h a d survived. Indeed the prehistorians point out that the ancestors of the present Shoshonean-speaking Gosiute, Paiute, and Ute bands of U t a h , Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado, were in all probability the ancient dwellers of the desert whose known continuous history, therefore, may be as old as any in the world. 1 T h e first approaches by the white m a n to the Indians of the Intermountain West came from the south. I n 1540 Coronado reached the Zuni and Hopi villages and the Rio Grande pueblos; before the end of the century O n a t e had planted the first Spanish settlement in New Mexico.

Spain never established any permanent settlements beyond the banks of the Rio Grande but her cultural impact was great on the peripheral tribes.

1 O n the Desert Culture see Jesse D. Jennings, Danger Cave, University of U t a h Anthropological Papers, 27 (Salt Lake City, 1957), a n d a summary article by Jennings, " T h e Desert West," in Jesse D . Jennings and Edward Norbeck, eds., Prehistoric Man in the New World (Chicago, 1964), 149-74.

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T h e Utes benefited notably. By 1700, they had become a mounted people ranging on horseback across the central Rockies from the Great Plains to the Wasatch. With better land and hunting grounds, and borrowing ideas from Spain and from their Indian neighbors, the Utes culturally distanced their Gosiute and Paiute relatives who, conservatively, adhered to their old ways. For example, when these bands acquired horses the animals were more often used for food than mounts. 2 T h e Athapaskan-speaking Navajos, a most adaptable people, also benefited both from proximity to the Spanish settlements and their aboriginal neighbors. T h e Navajos were comparative newcomers to the Rocky Mountain region having arrived from western Canada at a date probably not long before the coming of the Spaniards. These Indians seem to have settled in north central New Mexico where they came in close contact with the Spanish villages and the Pueblo peoples as well as the Utes. They gradually extended their sphere of influence westward and eventually their frontier crossed the San Juan River into Utah. 3 T h e location of the intermountain tribes was nicely documented by the Dominguez-Escalante expedition of 1776, the first comprehensive traverse of the country under discussion here. Bernardo de Miera, expedition cartographer, drew a topographical m a p in colors on which he indicated the actual areas then occupied by the Utes (Yutas), Paiutes (Payuchis), Navajos (Navajoo), and other groups. 4 For seventy years after 1776 only a few white men penetrated the territory of the mountain and basin tribes. After 1821, when Spanish sovereignty over the region was transferred to Mexico, the American fur men from bases in New Mexico and the upper Missouri combed the central Rockies for beaver. In the 1830s New Mexico caravan traders opened the long 1,500-mile Spanish Trail between Santa Fe and Los Angeles, through the country of the Utes and Paiutes. Indians along the way participated in this commerce, the dominant figure being the Ute Chief Wakara (Walker and other spellings) whose principal stock in trade were horses and Indian slaves.5 See Wakara's portrait on the cover of this issue.

2 T h e earliest history of the Utes has been summarized by S. Lyman Tyler, "Before Escalante, an Early History of the Yuta Indians in the Area North of New Mexico" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of U t a h , 1951).

3 T h e literature on the Navajos is enormous. Ruth Underbill's The Navajos (Norman, Oklahoma, 1956) is a good historical summary.

4 Miera's map in facsimile appears in H.E. Bolton, trans., and ed., Pageant in the Wilderness, The Story of the Escalante Expedition to the Interior Basin, 1776, Including the Diary and Itinerary of Father Escalante, Utah Historical Quarterly, X V I I I ( 1 9 5 0 ) .

5 LeRoy R. and Ann W. Hafen have summarized the New Mexico-California trade in the Old Spanish Trail, Santa Fe to Los Angeles, with Extracts from Contemporary Records

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As the year 1846 opened, radical changes in Indian life were imminent. Before the year was out New Mexico fell to American troops in one of the early actions in the Mexican War. But the United States had to defend its new possession from Indian marauders and there followed eighteen years of intermittent warfare with the Navajos which forced these Indians west into the deep canyons of the Colorado and north across the San Juan into Utah.

In 1847 the Mormons arrived in the Great Basin. Although the Saints pursued a policy of peaceful coexistence they nonetheless competed with the Indians for the limited available resources and troublous times followed.

The greatest threat to the Indians followed the gold rush to California. The rush, beginning in 1848, lasted for ten years and then the miners swept over the intermountain regions prospecting for new bonanzas. In the late 1850s they found them â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Fraser River, the Comstock, Denver â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and for the rest of the century they rushed back and forth all over the West in pursuit of elusive bonanzas. The farmers and stockmen followed the miners while transportation systems were established wherever their services were needed. Nearly everywhere in the West the Indians found themselves inundated and overwhelmed by the aggressive white man.6 The scholarly essays that follow are chapters in the history of this confrontation. As elsewhere in the New World, the Indians of the central Rockies and the Great Basin were forced to accept the domination of superior power. But they were notably slow to accept the cultural domination of the conquerors. The Shoshonean-speakers still cling to some of the old ways identifiable with the 10,000-year-old Desert Culture. The Hopis continue to live much as they did before the coming of the Spaniards. The Navajos, quick to learn, place their own unmistakable stamp on everything they borrow. This stubborn persistence at long last has made its impression on the dominant culture and there are some signs that the Indians' contributions and the Indian himself will be integrated into American culture and American life.

The Indian has and is contributing material for the writing of his own history. From artifacts and physical remains the archeologists have (Glendale, California, 1954). Utah's best-known Ute chief has found two biographers: Paul Bailey, Walkara, Hawk of the Mountains (Los Angeles, 1954) ; Conway B. Sonne, World of Wakara (San Antonio, Texas, 1962).

6 Although he touches the Shoshonean-speakers but slightly, Edward H . Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, the Impact of Spain, Mexico and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960 (Tucson, Arizona, 1962) is a masterful work for the Arizona-New Mexico area.

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reconstructed the pattern of living in the long ages of the prehistoric past. In his own researches in Indian history the historian often finds that his documents and sources, written mostly by the conquerors, are slanted and biased, and very often incomplete. It should be emphasized, however, that many of the basic documents for Indian history remain unpublished (see the Amy document edited by Robert W. Delaney).

To complete the record and to restore imbalances historians are now turning to new sources of information and employing the methods of other disciplines. The articles in this special issue of Quarterly are indicative of this new history. Archeological data appears in the article

by J. Lee Correll. From living Indians the historians are collecting reminiscences and remembrances of past times â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the record of oral history. See the short accounts by Gertrude Chapoose Willie and Henry Harris, Jr., excerpted from longer documents in the collections of the Duke Indian Oral History Project at the University of Utah. The articles by the Fowlers, and Floyd O'Neil contain some information supplied by living informants. Much new material for the study of Indian history has been brought to light by the litigation before the federal Indian Claims Commission. See the articles by Correll, and by James B. Allen and Ted J. Warner.

Joe, a long time ago you told m e you studied to become a Medicine M a n ; did you give it u p ?

Yes, h a d to. T o o h a r d on me. Got sick. Beckwith, I got d o w n flat on my b a c k ; sick; stiff; they t h o u g h t I die; couldn't m o v e ; a r m s no good; legs no good; couldn't eat. I t too strong for me. I lay sick long time. I t h a r d on me. T h e y said, "Joe, too h a r d on you. T o o m u c h for you. M a y h u r t you. Better give it u p . " I did give u p the study, b u t I like it, a n d still do some â&#x20AC;&#x201D; always do some. Like it. ( F r a n k Beckwith, Indian Joe, In Person and In Background [Delta, U t a h , 1939]. 53a. Only seven copies of this unusual m o n o g r a p h were printed privately by Beckwith to send to friends as "my Christmas Greeting C a r d for 1939." T h e U t a h State Historical Society's copy is the gift of J. Cecil Alter.)

Notes on the History of the Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis

BY CATHERINE S. AND DON D. FOWLER

Ta-peatsj Paiute from Rio Virgin area.

Photograph by J. K. Hillers with Powell Expedition, 1871-75.

Courtesy Smithsonian Institution.

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9 T H E NEIGHBORS of the Utes on the south and west were several linguistically related groups of peoples known as Paiutes, or more properly, Southern Paiutes, and Western Shoshonis, including the Gosiutes, Weber Utes, Northwestern Shoshonis, and other Shoshonis. Before white men came, small groups of these peoples hunted, gathered, and sometimes farmed local areas much as did their U t e neighbors. They occupied a broad expanse of country covering much of western and southern U t a h and parts of adjacent Nevada, Arizona, and southern California.

After contact with the white man, Indian lifeways were substantially altered and many cultural institutions were changed. T h e territorial range was reduced from its previous extent to a few small reservations and colonies adjacent to non-Indian settlements. Indians were forced to seek new means of subsistence, new associations, and to cope with new technological problems.

This paper focuses on some of the events which occurred in the eastern Great Basin and on the Colorado Plateau during the period of white exploration and occupation â&#x20AC;&#x201D; events which forced changes in aboriginal Southern Paiute and Western Shoshoni societies and cultures.

O u r primary interest is in Southern Paiute ethnohistory, with data on Western Shoshonis treated in less detail. T h e more complete accounts of Euler and Kelly for the Southern Paiutes and several papers by Malouf and others for the Western Shoshonis, should be consulted for more thorough treatments of these topics. 1 T h e Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis speak dialects and languages closely akin to the U t e language and to those of other Great Basin Indians. These languages are placed by linguists in the Numic branch or family of languages, a grouping ultimately related to other branches or families of the Uto-Aztecan stock and spoken elsewhere in western North America and Mexico. O t h e r Uto-Aztecan languages include Cahuilla, Serrano, Cupeiio, Luisefio, and Tubatulabal, spoken in parts of southern California; Hopi in northern Arizona; and Pima, Catherine S. Fowler is an instructor in anthropology at the University of Nevada. Don D. Fowler is director of the Western Studies Center Desert Research Institute and associate professor of anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno. / R o b e r t C. Euler, Southern Paiute Ethnohistory, University of U t a h Anthropological Papers, 78 (Salt Lake City, 1966) ; Isabel Kelly, Southern Paiute Ethnography, University of U t a h Anthropological Papers, 69 (Salt Lake City, 1 9 6 4 ) ; Carling Malouf, Ethnohistory in the Great Basin, Desert Research Institute, Social Science and Humanities Publications, 1 (Reno 1966), 1-38 and references cited therein.

Southern

Paiutes and Western Shoshonis

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Papago, T a r a h u m a r a , Cora, Huichol, Nahuatl, and others spoken in northern and central Mexico. 2 Most tribal classifications in the Great Basin are based on linguistic affiliations rather t h a n on any sense of social or political integration held by these peoples. T h e Numic language family is generally divided into three main groupings called Western, Central, and Southern Numic.

Southern Numic contains two languages, one spoken by a group historically called Kawaiisii who live in southern California, and the other by groups called Chemehuevi who live in southern California and southern Nevada, Southern Paiute with various sub-groups in southern Utah, northern Arizona, and southern Nevada, and Ute including various sub-groups in eastern U t a h and western Colorado. Central Numic contains two languages, one spoken by peoples called Panamint, the other by Ruby Valley, Gosiute, White Knife, and Weber U t e Shoshoni, as well as by several Shoshoni groups in Idaho and western Wyoming. T h e Comanches who dominated the Llano Estacado and other areas of west Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma in the nineteenth century are also Central Numic or Shoshoni speakers. Western Numic contains two languages, one spoken by the Western Monos of California, and the other by Northern Paiutes from Owens Valley in California through western Nevada and into northeastern California and southeastern Oregon. T h e Bannocks of eastern Oregon and central Idaho are also Northern Paiute speakers. 3 T h e term Numic is derived from the native word all these peoples use for themselves, variously numu in Northern Paiute, niiwii in Southern Paiute, numu in Shoshoni, etc., meaning "person, h u m a n being, or native speaker." Names designating these peoples in anthropological and historical literature, including most of those cited above, were not commonly used as tribal or group names in the pre-contact period but now are generally recognized and have been adopted.

Archaeological and linguistic evidence indicates that the Numicspeaking peoples spread across the Great Basin sometime after A.D. 1000, displacing or replacing the earlier carriers of the Fremont and Virgin Branch Anasazi cultures in U t a h , eastern Nevada and northern Arizona. Distributional, as well as other linguistic and cultural evidence, 2

Wick R. Miller, Anthropological Linguistics in the Great Basin, Desert Research Institute, Social Science and Humanities Publications, 1 (Reno, 1966), 89.

3

Ibid,

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suggests that this spread originated somewhere in southern California or northern Mexico.4 By historic times (for our purposes 1776 with the explorations of Escalante and Dominguez) 5 the Southern Paiutes were well established in a cresent-shaped area extending from the deserts of southern California on the southwest to Sevier Lake, Utah, on the northwest, and then to beyond the confluence of the San Juan and Colorado rivers on the east (Fig. 1). Their territory included basin and range environments, much of the high plateaus of south-central Utah and northern Arizona, and parts of the canyon lands of southwestern Utah. 6 The Western Shoshonis were established in a triangular area of the Great Basin west of the Southern Paiutes that extended from Death Valley on the south through much of central and eastern Nevada and into northwestern Utah (Fig. 1).

Historically, some Western Shoshoni and Southern Paiute groups were among the last American Indians to come into sustained contact with whites. Although the Southern Utes had early contacts with the Spanish at Abiquiu and Santa Fe in the 1600s and the Northern Utes were in contact with the fur traders in southwestern Wyoming by 1812,7 some Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis did not have any sustained contact with whites until the early 1870s.8 Neither the Western Shoshonis nor the Southern Paiutes adopted horses until very late. In fact, the principal distinction between Ute and Southern Paiute hinges largely on the use of horses. As Steward suggests, "Local groups became Ute rather than Southern Paiute upon acquiring horses and the cultural features associated with them." 9 The same criterion might be applied to the Western Shoshonis and Northern Paiutes within their territories. Western Shoshonis became Eastern Shoshonis and Northern Paiutes became Bannocks upon acquiring horses and horse culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.10 Ultimately, both the Western Shoshonis of 4 Sidney L a m b , "Linguistic Prehistory of the Great Basin," International Journal of American Linguistics, X X I X ( 1 9 5 8 ) , passim.

5 Herbert E. Bolton, trans, and ed., Pageant in the Wilderness: The Story of the Escalante Expedition in the Interior Basin, 1776, Utah Historical Quarterly, X V I I I (1950).

G Euler, Southern Paiute Ethnohistory, Fig. 2.

7 Albert H . Schroeder, "A Brief History of the Southern Utes," Southwestern Lore, X X X , 3 ( 1 9 6 5 ) , 53-78; Malouf, Ethnohistory in the Great Basin, 6.

8 Euler, Southern Paiute Ethnohistory, 75.

9 Julian H. Steward, "Aboriginal and Historic Groups of the Ute Indians of U t a h : an Analysis," prepared for the U.S. Department of Justice, Indian Claims Commission (MS, Washington, D . C , 1955).

10 Don D. Fowler, "Cultural Ecology and Culture History of the Eastern Shoshoni Indians" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1965, 72 ff.

Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis

WESTERN

^SHOSHONI

PANAMINT

(Fig. 1) Map showing relative location of Indian tribes in the area now occupied by Utah and parts of Colorado, Arizona and Nevada.

Compiled

by Catherine S. and Don D. Fowler.

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central Nevada and the Southern Paiutes did use horses, and some of them functioned briefly as raiders in the 1850s and 1860s. However, they did not possess the "Plains" complex of horses, an orientation toward buffalo hunting, and later the fur trade and raiding, characteristics of their Eastern Shoshoni and Ute cousins.11 The social organizations and cultures of the Western Shoshonis and Southern Paiutes were similiar in the pre-contact period.12 Both were foragers subsisting on roots, seeds, berries, insects, small game, and fish (where available), as well as birds, deer, antelope, and mountain sheep.

Both employed the same basic tools: bow and arrows, flint knife, digging sticks, seed beaters, gathering baskets, and the flat grinding slab and mano. Both dressed in rabbit skin robes, bark or hide aprons, and basket caps (for women) or breech straps (for men), and sandals or moccasins.

Both lived for most of the year in small family groups, called "kin cliques" by anthropologists.13 The Western Shoshonis and Southern Paiutes referred to these groups as "camp groups" or "house groups." 14 Occasionally, larger groups came together for rabbit, antelope, or mud-hen drives or other communal hunts and activities. At these gatherings dancing, courting, and gambling also took place. Groups remained together until the task was completed or until local food resources were exhausted. There is also some evidence that several "house groups" wintered together when accumulated food supplies made it possible to do so.15 There is no evidence of overall tribal political control or a concept of chief except in the sense of a respected person, a good hunter or dance leader.

The Western Shoshonis and Southern Paiutes also shared with other Great Basin groups and American Indians generally, traditions of myths and tales which provided a cosmology, and, through the examples they portrayed, moral and ethical codes. Traditionally, tales and myths were told with great ceremony in the winter by elders sitting around the campfires. (Certain prohibitions precluded the telling of 11

Schroeder, "A Brief History of the Southern Utes," 54 ff.

Euler, Southern Paiute Ethnohistory, passim; Kelly, Southern Paiute Ethnography, passim; Julian H. Steward, Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin, 120 (1938), passim.

13 Don D. Fowler, Great Basin Social Organization, Desert Research Institute, Social Science and Humanities Publications, 1 (Reno, 1966), 62.

Acculturap " J a c k S. Harris, " T h e White Knife Shoshoni of Nevada," in R. Linton, ed., tion in Seven American Indian Tribes (New York, 1940), 4 3 ; C. S. Fowler, "Southern Paiute Field Notes, 1967," Duke Collection, Center for Studies of the American West University of 7 Utah. ' 18 Steward, Basin-Plateau, passim.

12

Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis

101

myths during the summer season.) Young Paiutes and Shoshonis listened intently to long tales of Coyote, Wolf, Rabbit, Tortoise, and others in which proper and improper conduct was made explicit and incest prohibitions, practical obligations, rights, and other matters were defined and exemplified.16 Shamanistic curing practices are also well documented for both Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis.17 Shamans received their powers to cure disease, foresee the future, and occasionally practice witchcraft from a tutelary spirit. The power beings, including animal spirits, water babies, and occasionally ghosts, came to a prospective shaman unsought and instructed him in proper curing rituals. These were performed with members of the family or others in the camp in attendance and might last several days, depending on the severity of the patient's condition. Shamans who lost too many patients were rejected by the group and could be killed.

Southern Paiute and Western Shoshoni groups associated with Indians in adjacent territories. Such communication was undoubtedly responsible for the spread of several cultural practices in the pre-contact period. Some Southern Paiutes, including the Shivwits, Chemehuevi, Kaibab, San Juan, and possibly Moapa peoples practiced a limited type of garden horticulture based on the cultivation of corn, squash, sunflowers, beans, and other native plants. They probably adopted this practice from groups living to the south and/or southwest of them. These included the Yuman-speaking peoples along the Lower Colorado River 18 and the Hopis living east of the Grand Canyon. The Kaibab Southern Paiutes are said to have learned horticulture from the St. George (Shivwits) Paiutes about 1850, while the San Juan Paiutes south of the Kaibab and across the Colorado River learned the practice from the Hopis.19 Both Southern Paiute and Western Shoshoni peoples traded with neighboring Indians. From the Utes, the Southern Paiutes obtained buckskins, native paints, and buffalo robes. From the Navajos they received blankets and later horses, giving buckskin and sometimes children in ex10 John Wesley Powell, "An Overland Trip to the Grand Canyon," Scribner's Monthly, X, 6 (1875), 659-78; Julian H . Steward, Some Western Shoshoni Myths, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin Number 136 (1943), 249-99; Carling Malouf and Elmer R. Smith, "Some Gosiute Mythological Characters and Concepts," Utah Humanities Review, I, 4 ( 1 9 4 2 ) , 369-77.

17 Kelly, Southern Paiute Ethnography, 133-41; Isabel T. Kelly, "Southern Paiute Shamanism," University of California Anthropological Records, I I ( 1 9 3 9 ) , 151-67; Steward, Basin-Plateau, passim.

18 Kenneth M. Stewart, "Chemehuevi Culture Changes," Plateau, X L , 1 (1967), 14-21.

39 Kelly, Southern Paiute Ethnography, 39, 170.

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change.20 The Las Vegas area Paiutes were noted for their mountain sheep horn bows which were highly prized and traded in various areas of Utah. From the Mohaves, the Chemehuevis adopted a number of practices in later times, including pottery making, warfare, and flood-water farming.21 The "Cry," an aspect of Yuman mourning practices, had diffused into the eastern most Southern Paiute areas at least by 1800.22 In 1776, Escalante, accompanying what was probably the first nonIndian party to penetrate the country of the Western Utes, Shoshonis, and Southern Paiutes, noted colored shells and some "colored woolen threads" in the possession of Paiutes in southwestern Utah. The shells were probably obtained through trade with the River Yumans. The Paiutes claimed they had obtained the threads from Indians "who wear blue clothing and who had crossed the river." Escalante identified these people as "Cosinas," or Havasupai, and thought that the "Cosinas" had probably obtained blue cloth from the Hopis.23 Euler, however, thinks that the "Cosinas" indentification may be erroneous and that the Hopis themselves may have been responsible for the items without the Havasupai middlemen.24 Kelly reports some evidence of direct trade between the Kaibab Southern Paiutes and both the Hopis and Havasupais.25 Although there is little direct evidence for Western Shoshoni trade in the pre-contact period, it was undoubtedly of some importance to them. Steward notes that certain groups in post-contact times used bead strings of prescribed length for "money." 2e Other Western Shoshoni groups in central Nevada also engaged in limited trade with other fixed mediums of exchange. Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis traded with each other across their common frontier for pine nuts, rabbit nets, buckskin, and other items. People along the border also intermarried to some extent.

The Spanish entrada into the present-day southwestern United States, beginning in the 1540s, ultimately affected the Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis in various ways. The spread of horses and the knowledge of horse culture to the Utes and Navajos in the late 1600s increased their mobility and intensified their contacts with Southern -"Ibid., 90-91.

21 Stewart, "Chemehuevi," 14-21.

22 Kelly, Southern Paiute Ethnography, 101.

23 Bolton, Pageant in the Wilderness, 202.

21 Euler, Southern Paiute Ethnohistory, 33.

25 Kelly, Southern Paiute Ethnography, 89.

26 Steward, Basin-Plateau, 45.

Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis

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Paiutes and the Western Shoshonis.27 The promotion of slavery as part of the Spanish social system also influenced all of the Indians on the northern borders of the new colonies. Equipped with horses, the Utes and Navajos were able to raid other groups for slaves â&#x20AC;&#x201D; usually taking young women and children â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and selling them in the Spanish settlements of New Mexico and southern California. The Southern Paiutes were in the unfortunate position of being between the Ute raiders on the north and east, and the Navajos on the south. Western Shoshoni groups, although less involved in the traffic, were prey to Ute raiders in the eastern areas of their territory. New Mexicans also participated in the trade either directly or indirectly as dealers with the Utes and Navajos.

The earliest documentation of the slave trade in the Great Basin is the description of an encounter in 1813 between Indians at Utah Lake and the Spanish traders Mauricio Arze and Lagos Garcia. The men later testified under oath that the Indians insisted on selling them slaves and, when they refused, killed some of their horses.28 The trade flourished at least from this time until 1850 when the Mormons, under Brigham Young's direction, managed to suppress it. Numerous documents attest that raiding or bargaining for slaves went on around Utah Lake, in the Sevier River area, along the Old Spanish Trail and elsewhere in Utah and eastern Nevada. Expeditions were outfitted for slave trading in New Mexican settlements and some fur trappers may also have engaged in the traffic as a sideline.29 The mounted Navajo and Ute groups participated directly in the trade, selling captives to the New Mexican and southern California settlements, or trading them to Mexican parties. Wakara and other Ute leaders were directly linked to these activities.30 The Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis were a major target of these slave raids. In 1839, Farnham reported that "Piutes" living near the Sevier River were "hunted in the spring of the year, when weak and helpless, by a certain class of men, and when taken, are fattened, carried 27 As Francis Haines, " T h e Northward Spread of Horses Among the Plains I n d i a n s , " American Anthropologist, X L ( 1 9 3 8 ) , 429-37, has shown, the Southern Utes were using horses by the 1680s {cf. Schroeder, " A Brief History of the Southern U t e s , " ) . I n succeeding years the Utes a n d Eastern Shoshonis acted as middlemen for the rapid spread of horses northward onto the Great Plains. By 1776, the Utes were well m o u n t e d and in possession of m a n y "Plains" material traits. Bolton, Pageant in the Wilderness, 44 ff.

28 William J. Snow, " U t a h Indians a n d the Slave T r a d e , " Utah Historical Quarterly, II (July, 1929), 67-73; Carling Malouf and A. Arline Malouf, " T h e Effects of Spanish Slavery on the Indians of the I n t e r m o u n t a i n West," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, I 2 (1945) 378-91.

29 Malouf a n d Malouf, "Spanish Slavery," 381.

M Ibid.. 384.

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Utah Historical Quarterly Hi

to Santa Fe and sold as slaves

during their minority. 'A likely girl' in her teens brings often ÂŁ sixty or ÂŁ eighty. The males are valued less." 31 There are also documented instances of Mexicans, Navajos, or Utes trading jaded horses to the Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis for c h i l d r e n , whereupon the horses were most frequently eaten.32 Kelly also notes that children were traded for horses by the Kaibab Paiutes.

Some of her informants accounted for the introduction and spread of horses in their area by this means.33 Captured slaves were often ill-treated by their Indian captors, although females generally fared better than males.34 De Smet reported from hearsay that slaves were well treated in the California and New Mexico settlePaiute encampment on the Rio Virgin near St. George. ments, but his assessment may Photograph

by John K. Hillers have been prejudiced by an atwith Powell Expedition, 1871-75.

Courtesy Smithsonian Institution. tempt to justify the use of slaves by "Christian" people.35 Euler has suggested that several documents describing the timidity of the Southern Paiutes and in some cases their total absence from 31 T . J. F a r n h a m , "Travels in the Great Western Prairies, Part I , " in R. G. Thwaites, ed., Early Western Travels, 1748-1846, (Cleveland, 1906), X X V I I I 249.

32 Daniel W. Jones, Forty Years Among the Indians (Salt Lake City, 1890), 49-50.

33 Kelly, Southern Paiute Ethnography, 89-90.

34 Malouf a n d Malouf, "Spanish Slavery," 382.

33 Pierre J e a n D e Smet, Letters and Sketches, with a Narrative of a Year's Residence among the Indian Tribes of the Rocky Mountains (Philadelphia, 1843), 32-33.

Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis

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some heavily traveled areas, may be a reflection of their fear of slavers.

He also notes that some documents are beginning to reflect open aggression and hostility by some Southern Paiute groups in the 1840s.36 The slave trade may also have led to severe depopulation among the Southern Paiutes. The Indian agent Garland Hurt noted that prior to 1860, because of the slave traffic, "scarcely one-half of the Py-eed [Paiute] children are permitted to grow up in a band; and a large majority of these being males, this and other causes are tending to depopulate their bands very rapidly." 37 Although the Utes often raided the Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis for slaves, they also transmitted to these groups new items of material culture, some from invading whites, including horses, tipis, guns, kettles, metal knives, and even dogs (which were apparently not held aboriginally by some Paiute groups). Potatoes and possibly beans were apparently added to the cultigens of some Paiute groups prior to the arrival of the Mormons.38 Aboriginal patterns of leadership began to strengthen into the more formal notion of chiefs by this period. This may have developed as a response to growing stress and the need for protection from hostile whites and Indians.39 The mounted Ute groups with their chiefs and band leaders may also have served as models for this development.

The first white intrusions into Western Shoshoni territory were made by the fur trappers in the 1820s. Peter Skene Ogden of the Hudson's Bay Company was active in the Snake River country during this decade and by 1829 had made trips to the upper Humboldt River and had explored much of northeastern Nevada and western Utah. His diaries make few references to encounters with Indians, but he did note the presence of trails, fish traps in the Humboldt River, and other traces of native occupancy which were undoubtedly of Western Shoshoni origin.40 In 1827, the American Jedediah Smith traversed the central Great Basin from California to the Great Salt Lake, but he reported few Indians except along the present Utah-Nevada border and in the valleys east of the 38

Euler, Southern Paiute Ethnohistory, 46n.

Garland H u r t , "Indians of U t a h , " in James H . Simpson, Report of Explorations Across the Great Basin of the Territory of Utah for a Direct Wagon-Route from Camp Floyd to Genoa in Carson Valley, in 1859 (Washington, D . C , 1876), Appendix O, 462.

37

3S

Euler, Southern

Paiute Ethnohistory,

98.

39

Ibid.

40 Gloria G. Cline, Exploring the Great Basin (Norman, Oklahoma, 1963), 120 ff; T. C. Elliott, "Peter Skene Ogden, Fur Trader," Oregon Historical Quarterly, X I , 3 ( 1 9 1 0 ) , 229-78.

\

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border, apparently in Gosiute country.41 Indeed, the Smith party may have been the first non-Indian group to contact the Gosiutes. Mountainmen probably introduced a number of material traits to the easternmost Western Shoshonis during this early period even though these Indians did not actively work for the trappers.42 Fur trappers were also the first white men to engage in armed conflict with the Indians of the Great Basin.43 As the fur trade declined in the 1840s, a trickle of west-bound emigrant trains began to move across the lands of the Western Shoshonis.44 However, until the trickle turned into a flood following the discovery of gold in California, the Western Shoshonis were probably little affected by contacts with the whites.

With the coming of the Mormons in 1847, Indian-white contacts intensified. The relationships of these first pioneers with the Utes and Shoshonis of the northern area are relatively well known.45 From the outset, the Mormons became unwilling participants in the slave trade, purchasing Indian children from the Utes who threatened to kill the children if the Mormons did not buy them. But active measures by Brigham Young and the territorial legislature ultimately ended the trade. Brigham Young, as Ex-Officio Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Utah Territory also established many other Indian policies of note.46 The decade of the 1850s was a settling-in period for the Mormons in much of Utah, including the southern and central portions. It was also a time of difficulties with mounted Indian groups, especially the Utes, highlighted by the "Walker War." There were some conflicts with unmounted Shoshonis and Southern Paiutes, primarily over lands and food supplies. Mormon settlements and farms displaced the people from their best hunting and gathering lands. Traditional food items were depleted by grazing animals, plowing, timbering, and other activities. Some unmounted Indians preyed on settlements and wagon trains for food and before long others were reduced to begging for hand-outs.

While some well-mounted Ute and Shoshoni groups raided ranches, settlements and trails on a regular basis, others settled on lands adjacent to Mormon farms and towns. This pattern was especially typical of un41 Maurice S. Sullivan, Jedediah Smith, Trader and Trail Breaker (New York, 1936), 109. Dale L. Morgan, Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West (Indianapolis' 1953)' 226-27, 238. ' 42 Cline, Exploring the Great Basin, 84.

13 Washington Irving, The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U.S.A. in the Rocky Mountains (New York, 1868), 385 ff; Cline, Exploring the Great Basin, 168 ff.

44 Malouf, Ethnohistory in the Great Basin, 14-31.

45 Ibid.

K Ibid.

Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis

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mounted Western Shoshonis and Southern Paiutes. Those groups frequently preyed upon by the Utes may well have felt that Mormon towns and ranches offered not only economic advantages but a measure of protection as well. Malouf has noted that some Gosiutes near Deep Creek were employed as farm and ranch laborers in the 1850s, and soon began to learn other skills.47 Those groups who neither settled near towns nor took up raiding moved westward into the desert valleys in a last futile attempt to continue aboriginal subsistence patterns. Settlement and population movements by this time had resulted in considerable reshuffling and condensing of pre-contact territorial ranges for all groups.

Mormon and Southern Paiute and Western Shoshoni relationships for the 1850s and 1860s have been discussed in some detail by both Euler and Malouf.48 Sporadic troubles of various kinds were reported in the colonies and settlements of southern Utah and along the well-traveled trails. However, missionary activities in the south and north â&#x20AC;&#x201D; most notably by Jacob Hamblin, Howard Egan, and others â&#x20AC;&#x201D; helped keep conflicts to a minimum. Raids by Navajos on Mormon settlements in the south, and continued Southern Paiute-Navajo friction, led to several incidents, but serious confrontations were averted largely through Hamblin's efforts.49 Apart from the official policies of Brigham Young, individual Mormons and non-Mormons in Utah held varying opinions about the Indians, most of them consistent with general American views of the period.

These ranged from common stereotypes of Indians as lazy, shiftless, thieving savages of little worth, to more positive attitudes noting their basic industry, intelligence, and educability. Many felt that although they were basically "savages" the Indians could and should be taught "civilized" ways even though most considered this would be a slow process.50 Few whites advocated a policy of complete integration as the two cultures were held to be too far removed from each other. Mormon ideology regarding the origin and identity of the Indians generally was responsible for some favorable attitudes and policies toward them, but it may also have been a contributing factor in maintaining a degree of social distance between the groups. Gradually, a place for the Indians was prepared within Mormon society as a whole â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a place as an unskilled labor force 47 48

Ibid.

Euler, Southern Paiute Ethnohistory, 99-116; Malouf, Ethnohistory in the Great Basin, 19 James A. Little, Jacob Hamblin Among the Indians (Salt Lake City, 1966), 28 ff.

50 Euler, Southern Paiute Ethnohistory, 6 1 .

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to be tapped upon mutual consent and a position of association but not integration into the local settlements.

By the early 1870s most of the Southern Paiute and Western Shoshoni groups had been under some form of direct contact with Mormons or other non-Indians for at least a few years. Some groups had mobilized their loosely organized numbers into larger political and residence units.

Some of these had spokesmen or chiefs who served as go-betweens for a number of people. Among certain Western Shoshoni groups, particularly those in the deserts and valleys west of Salt Lake City and central Utah, raiding bands developed with Utes occupying the organizing and leadership positions. The association of Utes with Gosiutes during this period has been noted by several writers 51 who have also indicated that UteGosiute intermarriage was fairly frequent. The Gosiutes had aboriginally occupied a fringe area with the Utes, and in pre-contact times had probably intermarried with them to some extent, but the new associations forced by Ute displacement from the Wasatch Front seem to have fostered even closer ties. The Southern Paiutes also intermarried with the Utes to some degree along their border areas. Farther to the south, however, such marriages were infrequent.

In 1873, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs sent a special commission to Utah and Nevada to look into certain Indian matters, especially into suggestions for removing Southern Paiutes and some Shoshonis to areas away from settlements. The commission was headed

by John Wesley Powell and George W. Ingalls. Powell had led exploring expeditions into the canyon country of Utah since 1868 52 and was well acquainted with the Indians of the region 53 who had named him "kapurats," or "arm off" (referring to his amputated right arm lost in the Civil War). Ingalls was an Indian agent based at Pioche, Nevada.

Powell and Ingalls were directed to ascertain the "conditions and wants" of the Indians of Utah and Nevada and to make recommendations for placing various Indian groups on reservations. From May to December 1873, the two commissioners toured Utah and Nevada meeting with delegations of Indians at Salt Lake City, Fillmore, Kanab, Santa 51 Malouf, Ethnohistory in the Great Basin, 18; Steward, Basin-Plateau, 132; Hurt, "Indians of U t a h , " 461.

52 J o h n Wesley Powell, The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons (Washington, D . C , 1875) ; William C Darrah, Powell of the Colorado (Princeton, 1951). The literature on Powell's western explorations is extensive. See Utah Historical Quarterly, 37 (Spring, 1969) for bibliography. r? ' ' Don D. Fowler and Catherine S. Fowler, eds., Anthropology of the Numa: John Wesley Powell's Manuscripts on Great Basin Peoples, 1868-1880, Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, X I V (Washington, D . C , 1971).

Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis

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Clara, Moapa, Las Vegas, and several points in eastern Nevada. Their report 5 4 consisted of a summary of conditions as they found them, a census of the Indian "tribes," and recommendations for removal of the Indians to reservations.

By 1873, reservations were formally established in the Uintah Basin in eastern Utah, Fort Hall in southern Idaho, and Wind River in Wyoming. In Utah there were also reservations or, more properly, farms in San Pete Valley near Gunnison, at Corn Creek near Fillmore, at Spanish Fork and at Deep Creek which had been established in the 1850s by Brigham Young.55 But these reservations had no official status. In the 1860s the federal government ordered them surveyed and sold, which created several problems since there were no legal definitions of their boundaries. 56 By 1873 the Indians at Spanish Fork had been removed to the Uintah Reservation, but other groups remained where they were.

Powell and Ingalls recommended that those Indians not already on reservations be removed: that the Northwestern Shoshonis be sent to Fort Hall or Wind River, the "Pah-vants and Seuv-a-rits [who] speak the same language, and are intermarried with the Indians on the Uintah reservation" be sent to Uintah. 57 The same course was initially suggested for the Southern Paiutes, but it was later recommended that they be sent to Moapa in southern Nevada in view of the traditional enmity between the Utes and Southern Paiutes and the fear the latter expressed of the former.

Powell and Ingalls recognized that traditional Indian lifeways had been shattered by white settlement: They are broken into many small tribes, and their homes so interspersed among the settlements of white men, that their power is entirely broken and no fear should be entertained of a general war with them. The time has passed when it was necessary to buy peace.lt only remains to decide what should be done with them for the relief of the white people from their depredations, and from the demoralizing influences accompanying the presence of savages in civilized communities, and also for the best interests of the Indians themselves. T o give them a partial supply of clothing and a small amount of food annually, while they yet remain among the settlements, is to encourage them in idleness, and directly tends to establish them as a class of wandering beggars. 58 54 J o h n Wesley Powell a n d George W. Ingalls, On the Conditions of the Ute Indians of Utah; the Paiutes of Utah, Northern Arizona, Southern Nevada, and Southeastern California; the Western Shoshones of Idaho and Utah; and the Western Shoshones of Nevada; and Report Concerning Claims of Settlers in the Mo-a-pa Valley, Southeastern Nevada (Washington, D . C , 1874). rr 5 ' 'Ibid., 426. ' Ibid., 425 58 5S Ibid.

Ibid., 431,

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Powell and Ingalls further suggested that a reservation should not be "looked upon in the light of a pen where a horde of savages are to be fed with flour and beef, to be supplied with blankets from the Government bounty, and to be furnished with paint and gew-gaws by the greed of traders, but that a reservation should be a school of industry and a home for these unfortunate people." 59 Reflecting the agrarian ideals of the nineteenth century, Powell and Ingalls felt that the Indians should be trained as farmers, instructed in "civilized" crafts and settled in houses.60 The several recommendations were not immediately acted upon.

Many groups attempted to continue in their old ways, but the expansion of white farming and grazing activities made life increasingly difficult for the Indians. In late 1880 Jacob Hamblin, who had accompanied Powell on his explorations ten years earlier,61 wrote two letters to Powell detailing the plight of the Southern Paiutes near Kanab, one of which is reproduced below: Salt Lake City Nov. 19, 1880 Mr. J. W. Powell: As the tribal Inds. are in a very destitute cituacion I thought it would be no more than humanity required of me to call your atencion to it, thare is 40 or 50 family's all told that are many about Kanab including the uincarits or the mount troumble Inds. you visited the first season I was with you.62 The watering places are all occupide by the white man. The grass that product mutch seed is all et out. The sunflowere seed is all distroyed in fact thare is nothing for them to depend upon but beg or starve.

While hereing them talk over their cituacion as they gather around there campfires and refer to some promises they clame you made them while you were in their country I have taken the responsibility to call your attencion to it.

I assisted them some this last season to put in some corn and squash.

They got nothing on acount of the drouth.

They are now living on cactus fruit and no pine nuts this season. If thare could be some asistance rendered this winter and something to incorage them to plant corn another season it would be no more than we could reasonably expect. I would like to here from you the earlyest oportunity that I can tell the Inds. what you say.

J. Hamblin 63 59 00 01

Ibid.

Ibid.

Little, Jacob Hamblin Among the Indians, 109 ff. ''"'Ibid., 110-12. T h e reference here is to the Uinkarets band of Southern Paiutes visited

by Powell and Hamblin in the fall of 1870.

03 U.S., D e p a r t m e n t of Interior, Bureau of Ethnology, Letters Received, 1880, Bureau of American Ethnology Collection (Smithsonian National Anthropology Archives). Hamblin's original spelling has been retained.

Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis

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Powell replied in February: Feb., 18, 1881 Jacob Hamblin, Kanab, Utah Ty. My dear Sir: Your letters relating to the Indians in the vicinity of Kanab were read and the subject-matter received my prompt attention; but after doing all that I can I find that it will be impossible to do anything for the Indians in that region, except through one of the Agencies â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that is they must either go to the Uinta or to the Muddy Valley so as to be included in the estimates annually sent from those places.

Under the present Administration Indians who do not report at Agencies are not assisted, the object being to get them together at such places in order that they may be taught carefully, and given homes in severalty as soon as they are competant to take care of themselves. I am much interested in the Indians of Kanab, as you know, and would have been glad to help them if possible.

Please tell "Frank" [Chuarumpeak] 6 4 and other of my Indian friends what I say and that I hope to see them again some day.

J. W. Powell G5

But the Southern Paiutes did not go to Muddy or Uintah reservations. The reservation problem was not resolved until the Shivwits reserve was established outside Santa Clara, Utah, in 1891, and the Kaibab Reservation on the Arizona Strip in 1907. Until that time, Paiute colonies on the fringes of Mormon settlements remained typical. Some of these, including Cedar City and Richfield for the Southern Paiutes and UteSouthern Paiutes, and Deep Creek for the Gosiutes were formally established on private lands or on Mormon church property. Deep Creek was later transferred to federal control, but title to lands in the others have remained in the hands of non-Indians. In many cases, Southern Paiutes and Shoshonis neglected by the federal government were given assistance by the Mormons, a policy which continues today.

The modern period has been one of continued transition for Southern Paiute and Western Shoshoni groups. With the establishment of reservations and colonies, their land base was fixed to a fraction of its aboriginal size. This further constricted the movements of peoples who had been used to moving at will and with few impediments. Old subsistence patterns were abandoned in favor of some limited form of agriculture or stock raising â&#x20AC;&#x201D; where these activities were possible â&#x20AC;&#x201D; or wage work, especially farm labor. Farm workers enjoyed a degree of mobility 84 Chuarumpeak was the leader of the Kaibab band of Southern Paiutes in the 1870s and served as one of Powell's principal informants (Fowler and Fowler, Anthropology of the Numa, passim.) Chuar Creek in Grand Canyon was named by Powell after his Indian friend.

85 U.S., Department of Interior, Bureau of Ethnology, Letters Sent, 1881, Bureau of American Ethnology Collection (Smithsonian National Anthropology Archives).

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Utah Historical Quarterly

and freedom not wholly atypical of patterns in pre-contact times. For this reason, as well as others, and because of overt and covert pressures by farmers and ranchers, this type of work has remained popular. The need for unskilled workers is much more limited today, and Indians face new hardships in the job market.

Southern Paiute children began to attend federal day schools in the 1890s at Panguitch, Shivwits, and Kaibab, and after 1900, secondary schools at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and Sherman, California, or elsewhere.

More recently, students have attended advanced schools at Phoenix, Arizona; Haskell, Kansas; and Santa Fe, New Mexico, as well as local schools and universities. After the federal day schools were closed, students were transferred to local city and county schools. A federal school was maintained until fairly recently at Deep Creek. A lack of relevancy in school curricula especially in high schools, and the closing of socialization opportunities with non-Indians at adolescence, have been cited as important causes of the high drop-out and poor attendance rates of Southern Paiute children and young adults, especially in the higher grades.66 Experiences at schools, especially away from home, have accounted for some changes in life style throughout this period. Many Southern Paiute and Western Shoshoni young men have served in various branches of the armed forces over the decades. The federal Indian Reorganization Act of 1936 has also helped to establish governing bodies for reservations and colonies, with elected local leaders and councils. There have been a few other governmental programs that have directly benefited the Southern Paiutes, including a cattle loan program at Kaibab.

Recent federal and state training programs designed to relocate persons away from their traditional associations and families have not been overly successful. Tight family bonds persist as the best defense against a hostile world.

In 1956, most of the Southern Paiutes were terminated from federal control, and remaining reservation lands were turned over to the people.

In some cases, because of the tax burdens, the lands passed out of Indian control and were sold to other parties or leased to outside concerns.67 Because of termination, what remained of a land base for the Southern Paiutes has largely disappeared, except for the Kaibab and Moapa reser88 Elmer R. Smith, "Southern Paiute Bands," prepared for the Bureau of Indian Services (MS, University of U t a h , 1954). °" T h e Indian Peak Reservation was sold to the State of U t a h ; grazing leases at Shivwits barely cover the taxes.

Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis

113

vations, which are still federally held, and some colony lands, most of which are legally owned by non-Indians. Colony areas still maintained are not large enough to support subsistence activities. They also offer substandard living conditions, often because of the variance in land titles.68 The Gosiutes still retain their reservation lands at Deep Creek and Skull Valley. The Kaibab Paiutes have recently participated in successful federal self-help housing programs.

Many of the cultural traditions that were current in the aboriginal period and in the early periods of contact are today remembered only by a few older individuals. Many specific practices, such as seclusion of women during menstruation and childbirth, etc., are no longer adhered to, partly for practical reasons. Others, such as funeral observances, gaming, and vestiges of religious belief are still followed. Some traditional subsistence items are still sought, including game animals, pine nuts, and berries. A few natural medicines are still gathered and used. Native language skills vary from area to area, but in general, persons younger than fifty years of age have limited fluency. Many small children no longer hear their native language spoken at home. Some traditional visiting patterns are still maintained, and summer activities such as the Ute Sun Dances, Bear Dances, and rodeos are well attended by Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis. A few native artisans reproduce traditional handicrafts. But despite the many changes of the past century, and despite the hardships of adjusting to a non-Indian society still being faced, the Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis remain distinct because of their cultural heritage and history — not merely as Utah Indians but as Indian Utahns.

08 As private lands they may not be eligible for some federal forms of aid. Cities, counties, and the state are unsure of their responsibility regarding them.

Joe, have you ever seen the S U N D A N C E ? . . . somebody sick want to get cured. If they haven't the money, or the goods to hire it, the tribe hires it for them. Indians good t h a t way, Beckwith. — W h a t one got, all can share. Hold Sun D a n c e by tribe; everybody pays who can. Sun cures 'em, too, Beckwith — lots of times. . . .

H o w long do they keep it u p ?

T h r e e days a n d nights, Beckwith. Go without. . . . Pretty h a r d ; without water is the worst. N o t mind no food — I n d i a n used to that. But it's h a r d on anybody, Beckwith, to work in the hot sun, stripped down to w a i s t . . . without water. Get pretty thirsty."

W h a t do you call the dance in your language, Joe? T a g u wipi, most times, Beckwith.

W h a t does tagu wipi m e a n , Joe? T H I R S T Y D A N C E ! (Beckwith, Indian Joe, 53o)

The Southern Utes a Century Ago

BY R O B E R T W .

DELANEY

Southern Ute Indian Agency at Ignacio, Colorado. Fifth from right, back row, may be the famous Negro interpreter, John Taylor. Utah State Historical Society, Junius Young, photographer. * INDIANS HAVE BEEN an integral part of the American experience and * have left their stamp on all of American history. One hundred years ago, as the line of frontier settlement moved westward with avid searchers for precious metals in the vanguard, the people of the United States encountered groups of Indians of whom there was little knowledge. One Dr. Delaney is director of the Center of Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado.

Southern Utes

115

such group were the Utes who, at that time, generally roamed in the territories of New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah and occasionally in northeastern Arizona and even the present-day panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas. These lands were coveted by miners, ranchers, and farmers who continually pressured the federal government to concentrate the Utes on reservations and make a greater portion of the land available for settlement.1 In the years immediately after the Civil War officials in Washington had little reliable information about the Utes and relations with them were often burdened by corruption and flagrant mismanagement on the part of agents in the field. Fearing that the uneasy peace that prevailed in the Four Corners frontier was endangered in 1870, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs appointed a special agent to study conditions among the Indians of the region. The person chosen to conduct this investigation was W. F. M. Amy who had a long and remarkable career in the West.

Although Amy was concerned with other Indians, a principal object of his 1870 reconnaissance was the investigation of the Ute bands in New Mexico and Colorado. Filled with detail and first-hand observations, his report on the Utes, presented later in this article, represents the response of an intelligent and interested observer â&#x20AC;&#x201D; part idealist and part realistâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; who had definite recommendations to make to the officials responsible for formulating policy.2 Together with the other reports filed

by Amy that year it constitutes a historical resource of prime importance for the study of the Southwest.

William Frederick Milton Amy was born in Washington, D . C , in 1813. In 1830 he moved to Norfolk, Virginia, and there became acquainted with Alexander Campbell, the dynamic evangelist who, a few years earlier, had founded the Disciples of Christ. Amy became a devout member of the Campbellites, attending and graduating from their Bethany College. In 1850 he moved to Bloomington, Illinois, became a militant Free Soiler, and soon moved to Kansas and worked to prevent that 1 A very readable introduction to these Indians is Wilson Rockwell, The Utes, A Forgotten People (Denver, Colorado, 1956).

2 Excellent reviews of federal practices are Frank D . Reeve, " T h e Federal Indian Policy in New Mexico, 1858-1880" in four installments in New Mexico Historical Review, X I I and X I I I (1937 and 1 9 3 8 ) ; James W. Covington, "Relations between the U t e Indians and the United States Government, 1848-1900" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oklahoma, 1949).

A good account of Indian agents is in Flora Warren Seymour, Indian Agents of the Old Frontier (New York, 1941), Chapter X deals with Amy's career. Loring Benson Priest, Uncle Sam's Stepchildren (New York, 1969) deals with United States Indian policy from the end of the Civil W a r to passage of the Dawes Severalty Act in February 1887. More recent Indian policy of the United States is recounted in Angie Debo, A History of the Indians of the United States (Norman, Oklahoma, 1970).

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Utah Historical Quarterly

state from entering the Union as a slave state. In May of 1861 President Abraham Lincoln appointed Amy to be agent for the Moache Utes and Jicarilla Apaches attached to the sub-agency at Cimarron (socalled because Cimarron, New Mexico, was the closest post office), which had been established on the old Maxwell Ranch about forty miles east of Taos. This was done to remove the Indians from the corrupting influences at the main agency at Taos. While at Cimarron he attempted to improve the lot of his charges and to "civilize" them acW. F. M. Amy, courtesy Smithsonian Institution cording to his own standards. From 1862 to 1867 and again in 1872 and 1873, he held high offices in the government of the Territory of New Mexico. Between these tours of duty, he secured, in 1868, from President Andrew Johnson an appointment as agent to the Utes and Apaches at Abiquiu, New Mexico.3 When replaced in that office in 1869 by Captain James French, 4 he went to Washington in search of a special assignment from the government. On March 25, 1870, he was appointed "Special Agent for the Indians of New Mexico" and was ordered to visit every village in the territory and take a census of the Indians, examine land titles, inquire into the need for schools, and settle disputes regarding Indian reservations. He began this work in early May 1870, and, in that year, submitted eight lengthy reports filled with accurate statistics and penetrating analyses. From 1873 to 1875, Amy was agent for the Navajos and his tenure in that office is one of the most controversial portions of his Indian service carrer. In 1881 he died at the age of sixty-eight and is buried in the National Cemetery at Santa Fe. When Americans approached the region we now recognize as the Colorado Plateau they found three sub-groups of Utes living in three 3 Abiquiu lies in the valley of the Chama River northwest of Santa Fe. It had been settled by the Spanish as a frontier outpost sometime before 1747.

4 At first it was a part of the general policy of the Ulysses S. Grant administration to use army officers instead of civilians as Indian agents. However, the Army Appropriation Act of July 15, 1870, asserted that any active army officer who accepted a civil appointment had to surrender his commission and, after 1870, Indian agencies were turned over to religious organizations.

Southern Utes

117

widely separated areas. The bands that eventually became known as the White River and Uintah Utes lived in northwestern Colorado, chiefly along the Yampa, White, and Green rivers. The Uncompaghre or Tabeguache Utes made their habitual homes along the Gunnison and Uncompaghre rivers.5 And the Southern Utes composed of the Moache, Capote, and Weminuche bands lived in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.6 Of the latter the Moaches roamed from southern Colorado to Santa Fe; the Capotes Chief Ignacio, courtesy occupied the headwaters of the Rio Center of Southwest Studies, Grande, especially in the area of Fort Lewis College Tierra Amarilla and Chama; and the Weminuehes generally held the valley of the San Juan and its northern tributaries. Neighboring the Southern Utes, but belonging in no tribal arrangement, were the nomadic Paiutes or Pah-Utes who took sanctuary in the rugged and barren wastelands along the present Colorado-Utah border.

The first official treaty between the United States and the Ute Indians was negotiated in 1849 at Abiquiu and ratified by the Senate on September 9,1850. This treaty was largely the work of the famous Indian agent James S. Calhoun, a friend of the Utes and other Indians of 5 With the creation of the Territory of Colorado in 1861, an agency was established on the Conejos River for the Tabeguache Utes, who were transferred there from the Taos Agency.

In 1864 the Moache band was ordered to join the Tabeguache Utes on the Conejos but generally refused to do so. See John B. Lloyd, " T h e Uncompaghre U t e s " (master's thesis, Western State College of Colorado, n . d . ) . For general information on areas inhabited by Indians, see Clark Wissler, Indians of the United States (New York, 1940). T h e White River Utes,' the Uintahs, and the Tabeguache now make up the Northern Utes whose reservation is the UintahOuray Reservation in U t a h .

8 At the present time the Moache and Capote bands are known as Southern Utes with headquarters at Ignacio, Colorado. They hold 5,291 acres of allotted land and 298,277 acres of tribal land which is held in common by the approximately 600 members of the tribe.

Thus, the Indian lands equal about 305,000 acres, less than one-half of the 818,000 acres enclosed by the external boundaries of their reservation which is 15 miles wide and 120 miles long in southwestern Colorado. See Progress and the Future, A Report by the Southwestern Ute Tribe (Ignacio, Colorado, 1966). T h e Weminuche are now known as the U t e M o u n t a i n Utes with headquarters at Towaoc, Colorado. T h e 553,358 acres of reservation land are held in common by approximately 700 members of the tribe, and several families of U t e Mountain Utes live on allotted land in Allen Canyon, U t a h . T h e total population of all Utes today is approximately 3,000.

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the Southwest. The Utes agreed to the jurisdiction of the United States, peaceful relations, return of captives and stolen property, and the right of the federal government to draw boundaries, provide laws, and establish military posts, along with all of the other provisions generally incorporated in Indian treaties of that day. This treaty, however, did not prevent hostilities. Campaigns against the Utes in 1854 and 1855 were carried out from Fort Massachusetts (located in Colorado about eightyfive miles north of Taos, New Mexico) and Fort Union (situated near the base of the Gallinas or Turkey Mountains in New Mexico). A special treaty was made with the Tabeguache Utes in 1863, which provided for their immediate removal to the Territory of Colorado and the subsequent removal of the Moaches to the same area, but removal was always much easier to legislate than to effect.

The Treaty of 1868, to which Amy repeatedly refers in his report, was signed by ten Ute leaders, ratified by the Senate on July 25, 1868, and proclaimed on November 6, 1868.7 By this agreement, the Utes were given all land between the 107th meridian and the Utah boundary and between the New Mexico boundary and a line fifteen miles north of the 40th parallel. In effect this gave the Utes nearly all of the land west of the Continental Divide in Colorado. The government agreed to establish two agencies â&#x20AC;&#x201D; one on the White River for the Uintah Utes and other groups residing on the Grand, Yampa, and White rivers, and one on the Rio de los Pinos for the Tabeguache, Moache, Weminuche, and Capote bands.

(The Rio de los Pinos referred to was a branch of the Uncompaghre River near Ouray, Colorado, and not the tributary of Las Animas River in present LaPlata County, named by the Spaniards in the eighteenth century.)

The Utes had long enjoyed a life of unhampered migration. They moved back and forth according to the seasons and the availability of food and they now resisted all pressures to place and keep them on reservations. They saw nothing wrong with stealing livestock from the white settlements and from other Indian tribes, especially since they could no longer travel into the plains to secure buffalo meat for the winters. When the Utes saw white men entering their lands illegally, they felt no compulsion to abide by incomprehensible treaties made by white men who seemed to break or ignore them with impunity.

7 For treaties with the Indians of the United States, see Charles J. Kappler, ed., Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties (Washington, D . C , 1903-1938). T h e Treaty of 1849 is in Volume I I , pages 585-86; the Treaty of 1868 is in Volume I I , page 990. See also, Covington, " U t e Indians and United States Government," 112. An excellent section on the Utes is contained in D. H . Cummings, "Social and Economic History of Southwestern Colorado" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, 1951).

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The following report describes the Utes as well as some other Indians with whom Amy came in contact in 1870. In it he makes recommendations to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for reservations for the Utes, Jicarilla Apaches, and Navajos. He also provides information on miners filtering into the San Juan Mountains, and presents his ideas for schools, farm instruction, military protection, and the general "civilizing" of all Indians. Amy's report is in line with the government's new "Peace Policy" inaugurated in March of 1869-â&#x20AC;&#x201D;"conquer by kindness." This policy emphasized the education and "civilizing" of Indian tribes and, like Amy, saw the full assimilation of all Indians into the mainstream of white American culture as its eventual goal.

REPORT NO 4 8 Abiquiu Rio Arriba Co. New Mexico July 19th 1870 Hon Eli S. Parker 9 Commissioner Indian Affairs Interior Department Sir: Referring to my report "no 1" dated April 30th, "No 2" dated June 2d, and "No 3" dated June 27th 1870, I now most respectfully state that while traveling over 1559 miles of country since the 1st day of May, 1 0 I have visited and conversed with, the principal men and head chiefs of the Weminutche and Capote Utes on the eastern and the western sides of the reservation fixed for them by the treaty made March 1868 and I have also seen the portion of these Indians who make their homes off the reservation.

Sobotar head chief of the Capotes has under him 286 Indians-m^rc, women, and children, and is located on the east side of the reservation.

"Chaves" a "Capote renegade" does not live on the reservation but roams with his people in the settlements and they occasionally steal and kill sheep and cattle belonging to the citizens. They number 79 persons.

8 This report is on Roll 557 of Micro-copy 234. The original manuscript is in the National Archives. This micro-copy is in the Center of Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado, and is presented here exactly as A m y wrote it, italicizing those words which A m y had underlined.

9 Ely S. Parker (1828-1895) was one of the more interesting commissioners of the nineteenth century. H e was a Seneca Indian and an engineer and a soldier. H e was a friend of U.S. G r a n t who m a d e him commissioner on April 13, 1869. H e actively tried to champion and protect the Indians of the United States. I n doing this, he made many enemies among special interests and those who sought to exploit the Indians. I n February of 1871 he was tried by a committee of the House of Representatives on charges of defrauding the government. Although entirely cleared of this charge, he resigned soon afterward. See Dumas Malone, ed., Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1934), X I V , 219-20.

30

For this trip of Amy's see Lawrence R. Murphy, ed., Indian The Journal of Special Agent W. F. M. Amy (Santa Fe, 1967).

Agent

in New

Mexico;

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Utah Historical Quarterly (They have increased by addition from Sobotar's b a n d during the past two years) - 11 T o t a l n u m b e r of Capote men, women and children. . . . 365 12 I a m fully satisfied from my acquaintance with these Indians that the whole n u m b e r of C a p o t e men who should be considered warriors do not exceed one hundred and seven (107) and as far as they may have names they may be classed as follows, viz.: with "Sobotar" on the reservation, but occasionally roaming in the settlements, " T a p u t c h e " , " M a r t i n e " , "Piquitagon", " H e r m a n o " , " M a n u e l " , "Jose", and forty seven others without names.

T h e above n a m e d Indians are opposed to any person being on their reservation and want their agency at Abiquiu}* T h e y say "they have h a d nothing to do with making the treaty b u t as it is m a d e they w a n t every person kept off their lands." " T u m p e a c h e " , "Curivitche", " P e d r o Gallegos", "Isidro" and "Chiviz" are frequently with "Chaves" but agree with "Sobotar", and with him are opposed to any agency u p o n the reservation a n d are in favor of ordering off the lands, specified in the treaty, all miners.

T h e r e are with "Chaves", "Cornea (whose n a m e is signed to the treaty as " P a - b u s - s a t " ) , "Washington", " J u a n i q u i o " , "Cornea Jr.", " S o u r d o " , " P a d r e " , "Vicente", " J u a n anche", " C a r r e t a No. 1", "Carreta No. 2" " C h y u m o " , "Palon", " C a n i a " , " I t a l i a n " and thirty three others whose names I could not get.

This last party are opposed to the miners being allowed in their country. T h e y w a n t the agency to remain at Abiquiu but say, that "if the Great F a t h e r will not p u t their Agency at Abiquiu or Tierra Amarilla, he can put it where he pleases in their country, provided it is south of the Sierra La Plata, that they will not go to the Agency at "Cochetapu" for anything." 14 I t is proper to say here t h a t " C o r n e a " is an exception, since I saw him a few weeks ago-. I a m told by other Indians that he has been to the agency at "Cochetapu" and received goods and returned to this side of the mountain.

T h e Weminutche 15 band numbers, as near as I can ascertain, Four hundred and eighty five (485) men, women, and children, "Persechopa" head chief â&#x20AC;&#x201D; "Savillo" 2nd chief Killed by Ignacio since I saw them the at Pagosa Springs "Pimichi", "Cabeson", "Josepha", " O j o Blanco", and

II U t e bands continually changed in size and population according to the quest for food and as the prestige of different leaders changed.

12 I n 1856 Kit Carson had estimated the Capotes to number between 800 and 900; the Moaches to number 600; and the Tabeguaches to number 1,200. There had been a decrease in population due to war and disease, especially measles and smallpox.

33 At that time the Capotes and Weminuches were supposed to get their rations at Abiquiu, but it was a long way for them to travel.

14 I n 1868 the Uncompaghre Utes in the San Luis Valley started to the new agency but refused to go farther than Cochetopa Pass some sixty miles away. So, in 1869 an agency was established for them at Cachetopa Pass on a small creek, named "Los Pinos" to conform to the treaty. However, that site was over 9,000 feet in altitude and was generally "snowed in" six months of the year.

35 For a report on the Weminuche, see S. F. Stacher, " T h e Indians of the U t e Mountain Reservation, 1906-09," Colorado Magazine, X X V I (January, 1949), 52-61. Mr. Stacher was financial clerk for the U t e Mountain Utes at Navajo Springs Agency under Fort Lewis School from 1906 to 1909. Later he was superintendent of the Consolidated U t e Agency at Ignacio, Colorado, which still had jurisdiction over the U t e Mountain Utes.

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Eighty men warriors are with "Sobotar" on the east of the divide of the Rio Las Animas a n d refuse to allow miners in their country. T h e y also agree with "Sobotar" in regard to the location of the agency, etc, etc, etc.

O n the west side of the Rio Las Animas divide are, "Ignacio", "Cabeza Blanco Hijo", "Hijo Benow", "Pauwanie", "Chiviato", " C u m i n pitche" and fifty six other men warriors who are willing to sell the mining lands on the reservation for cattle, sheep, and goats, and to go to an Agency on the Rio Los Pinos or go to the "Sheberitche Utah Indian Country."

I have been this particular in giving the names and views of these Indians, because I believe it essential t h a t you, and any person w h o may hereafter be appointed to locate these Indians at an agency, should know in advance their views so as to be fully informed how to approach them.

T h e warriors in the two bands [Weminutche and Capote] are comparatively insignificant in n u m b e r but the relation they bear to other bands of the U t a h s might involve a war with all the U t e Indians were they (these two bands) to become hostile. T h e fact, however, t h a t since I saw the Indians on the east of the Animas divide "Ignacio", the 2d chief of the Wemenutches in a quarrel killed "Savillo" and 3d chief of the same band, a n d the fact that "Savillo" was brother to "Kaneatche", formerly head chief of the Mohuache [Moaches] at C i m a r r o n Agency, has m a d e a breach between the Mohuache a n d a portion of the W e m e n u t c h and Capote bands, and while it will make it difficult to get the Mohuaches to locate with the Wemenutches and Capotes in the San J u a n Country â&#x20AC;&#x201D; it will have a tendency to prevent a coalition of all the U t e Indians for war gainst the settlements a n d the government.

I therefore believe t h a t the present is a favorable time to locate the W e m e n u t c h e and Capote bands at the agency on the Rio Los Pinos and prevent their depredations u p o n the settlements a n d the Navajoes in violation of their treaty.

I n the report of the H o n Commission of I n d i a n Affairs for 1868, page 167, there is the report of a raid m a d e by the Utes u p o n the Navajoes, a n d since t h a t time there has been frequent robberies, thefts, and murders, the Utes stealing from a n d killing Navajoes and the Navajoes in turn doing the same to the Utes.

It became necesary for m e to pass across the Navajo reservation a few days ago to reach the U t a h s in the southwestern corner of the U t a h reservation just east of the lately discovered Silver a n d Gold mines on the Dolores river 16 a n d on the U t a h reservation and also to visit the Pueblos of "Jemes", "Zia", and "Zuni." I n this trip I saw several thousand N a vajoes a n d camped and talked with their chiefs. I also saw a n d talked with the Utes who are on the "Animas", "Plata", a n d " M a n c o s " rivers.

18 A number of prospectors had moved into the San J u a n Mountains in 1870 and staked out claims. Amy, in another report, gives their names and a general location of their claims.

More miners moved in during the following years and the Utes became concerned about the depletion of the game and the violation of the Treaty of 1868. T h e result was the so-called Brunot Treaty by which the Utes ceded a rectangle of the San J u a n Mountains approximately sixty miles by seventy-five miles. T h a t treaty was ratified by the Senate on April 22, 1874. The Utes continued to roam back and forth through the ceded area and the government established Fort Lewis first at Pagosa Springs and later near Hesperus, Colorado, to protect both the Utes and the whites.

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I found t h a t C a p t . Bennett agent of the Navajoes h a d returned or paid for all the property stolen by Navajoes from the Utes, a n d the Utes told m e they were "satisfied". But when I then urged the Utes to return the property they h a d stolen from the Navajoes they refused to do it a n d claimed it is the spoils of war.

I saw in the possession of the Utahs} in the northwest corner of the Navajo reservation, a considerable herd of sheep, goats, a n d horses.

T h e sheep a n d goats were stolen from the Navajoes a n d the horses I believe were stolen from the settlements in U t a h Territory.

I n September last a party of Utes with "Savillo" and "Manuel" to lead t h e m went to the c a m p of "Benito" a chief of the Navajoes. They m a d e a n attack before they (the Navajoes) knew t h a t they were near t h e m a n d killed a woman and a man, a n d the Utes drove off seven horses and three herds of sheep and goats â&#x20AC;&#x201D; numbering about two hundred and

fifty (250).

After this another party of Navajoes â&#x20AC;&#x201D; not the Navajoes who h a d the stock â&#x20AC;&#x201D; m a d e this a n excuse a n d came over to the C h a m a River into the settlements and stole nine horses from Ignacio, 2nd chief of the Wemenutches, which horses were returned to Ignacio or paid for by Agent Bennett. At the time these horses were stolen a n d settled for "Benito" was at Defiance Agency waiting on Capt. Bennett to restore his stock and it is positively known that none of the party belonged to the retaliatory party. T h e worst feature in the case is t h a t the bad Navajoes make this an excuse for their stealing. T h e y say "our people are robbed a n d are not paid for their losses, hence we m u s t m a k e ourselves good in some way".

(I have seen in the possession of Utes a n d citizens to w h o m the Utes sold t h e m some of the horses, sheep, a n d goats mentioned a b o v e ) . "Benito" a n d his people are still waiting for their stock, a n d say "The dead cannot be restored. W e do not ask anything for the m a n a n d the w o m a n t h a t were killed, but we do ask t h a t our horses, sheep, a n d goats be returned or others in their place of equal value."

D u r i n g the last year, there has been stolen by the Navajoes from citizens within thirty miles of Abiquiu to my personal knowledge over eighty horses and mules and Agent Bennett of the Navajoes has returned of the stolen property over thirty animals.

I have been this particular because I believe t h a t the Navajoes, Utes, a n d Jicarilla Apaches, can never be civilized, Christianized, and m a d e self sustaining, till a remedy for the growing evil is adopted that will correct it, and I believe that if it is allowed to continue it will result in the ruin of the settlements in N e w Mexico a n d finally cause a w a r with all the tribes which will cost millions of dollars to the government.

Capt. F. T . Bennett the agent of the Navajoes has too m a n y Indians u n d e r his charge for one agent to control; a m o n g them, however, h e has Indians w h o are willing and who do aid him in the return of stolen property.

Lieut. J. B. Carson agent of the Utes has not the influence of one portion of his Indians to aid him in the return of stolen property. T h e y promise to have it returned but do not do it and he cannot control his

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Indians as the agency is off the reservation more t h a n a h u n d r e d miles from the eastern line of it.

T h e correction of this entire evil, in my opinion, (which is formed after a n experience of m a n y years mingling with these Indians) is the establishment of a general system, of reservations for the Navajoes, Utahs a n d Jicarilla Apaches, with police regulations on each reservation, a n d a positive prohibition against the Indians going off the reservation, a n d no citizens allowed u p o n the reservation without the consent of the agent in charge, a n d , then only to transact the business he m a y have there, or to pass over the reservation on the highway to the country beyond.

Herewith I transmit a m a p m a r k e d " A " on which is defined the Reservation of the U t a h s as determined by the treaty of M a r c h 1868.

T h e Navajo reservation as defined a n d surveyed u n d e r the treaty m a d e J u n e 1st 1868 a n d a proposed reservation for the Jicarilla Apaches.

These A p a c h e I n d i a n s now r o a m over the whole n o r t h portion of the Territory of N e w Mexico, through the settlements. T h e y p l a n t in patches a n d are a perfect pest to nearly half t h e population of the T e r ritory. I n my last most accurate census of these Indians, w h e n I h a d t h e m all together so t h a t I could count t h e m they n u m b e r e d as follows: viz: M e n a n d boys over 18 yrs. of age W o m e n a n d girls over 18 yrs. of age Children u n d e r 18 yrs. of age T o t a l n u m b e r of Jicarilla Apaches

387 365 208 960

I n a few days I will start to take the census of these Indians but as they are now scattered from C i m a r r o n to Taos, from T a o s to Abiquiu a n d thence to T i e r r a Amarilla over a n extent of country 150 miles long a n d 40 miles wide, I fear it will not be as accurate as it would if I could get t h e m all together at one place.

My plan for three tribes â&#x20AC;&#x201D;â&#x20AC;˘ Utes, Navajoes a n d Jicarilla Apaches, is this, viz: Establish an agency for the W e m e n u t c h e a n d Capote bands of U t a h on their reservation u n d e r the treaty of M a r c h 1868 at Rio Los Pinos which is south of the Sierra L a Plata range of mountains at the point m a r k e d on the accompanying m a p thus. Š 17 I have been u p and down t h a t stream a n d also the "Rio Nutria", "Rio Pedra" a n d "Rio Florida" a n d I found wood, building timber, water, pasture a n d arable land sufficient to sustain five times as m a n y as are in the two bands of Wemenutches a n d Capotes. I a m satisfied t h a t an energetic agent who has or could get the confidence of these Indians could place them all on the reservation on the river above mentioned a n d m a k e t h e m self sustaining after four years with an appropriation of ($49,500.)

Forty nine thousand five hundred dollars for the first year a n d ($20,000.)

Twenty thousand dollars per year for the following three years. See item, in report of the commissioner of I n d i a n Affairs for 1867 p a g e 206 a n d a p 17 I n line with Amy's recommendation, an agency for those Indians was established at Ignacio, Colorado, in the valley of the Rio de los Pinos but it was not until the summer of 1878 that the Capotes, Moaches, and Weminuches were actually located on the new reservation.

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Utah Historical Quarterly proved by Col. A. B. N o r t o n 18 Supt. of Indians, N e w Mexico, same report page 191.

I r e c o m m e n d that no additional treaty be m a d e with these Indians but t h a t ($20,000.) Twenty thousands dollars be a p p r o p r i a t e d to purchase cows, sheep, a n d goats to be divided a m o n g these Indians, when located at or near the agency on the R i o Los Pinos, provided that the said Indians, will relinquish to the government of the U n i t e d States all right a n d claim to the portion of the reservation (specified in t h e treaty of M a r c h 1868) which lies within the following described lines: — B e g i n ning at the intersection of the 108° of Longitude west of Greenwich with the 39° of latitude thence south to the 37° of latitude thence east to 109° of longitude west of Greenwich thence north to the 39° of latit u d e a n d thence east to the place of beginning. This includes the mining lands lately discovered o n that reservation, which I have m a r k e d on the m a p " A " with blue lines.

This portion of the reservation w h e n obtained from the Indians I respectfully recommend should be established as a mining district with a surveyor or Commissioner to survey a n d record the claims of the miners a n d see t h a t the government is paid for t h e mines and land in accordance with the U . S . mining laws, which would bring a considerable revenue into the U . S . Treasury.

Either a proclamation ordering all miners out of this country must be m a d e a n d enforced, or an a r r a n g e m e n t such as I have suggested must be a d o p t e d so as to avoid trouble growing out of a violation of the treaty with the Utes m a d e M a r c h 1868.

D u r i n g the last year there has been about two h u n d r e d miners on this reservation. Some have been ordered off by the I n d i a n s a n d left to avoid trouble; others h a v e remained. This has m a d e some of the Indians very discontented.

U p to this date there has been 274 claims of 200 ft. each taken and recorded. T h e r e are now in t h a t country nine miners who hold the district. Previous to J u n e 1st 1870 there were 13 Lodes of silver and gold discovered on which the 274 claims were located. See m a p herewith, marked " B " — Since the 1st of J u n e there has been 17 Lodes discovered (all rich silver ore) a n d claims taken on them. T h e discoverers, 14 persons, have left temporarily to obtain supplies a n d additional help to work these mines.

For the names of the Lodes and the miners, etc. I respectfully refer you to the m a p herewith marked "B". 1 ! ) T h e expenditures a n d suggestions herein m a d e to make these Utes self sustaining — taking into consideration the mineral resources of that

38 Colonel A. B. Norton was Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the New Mexico superintendency. He had arrived in New Mexico in 1866 to assume that position.

39 T h e "Brunot T r e a t y " of 1873 (ratified in 1874) ceded a rectangular area in the San J u a n Mountains of Colorado to the United States government for mining purposes. This recommendation reflects a basic dichotomy in Amy's thinking. He was always interested in the welfare of the Indians provided that they did not hinder the economic development of an area.

H e later attempted to modify the Navajo reservation in 1874, and this was one of the reasons he was disliked by that group.

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country â&#x20AC;&#x201D; will I believe be an advantage to the government pecuniarily as well as a benefit to the Indians, settlers a n d miners.

I n regard to the Navajoes, I would respectfully suggest t h a t five agencies should be established for them. I have marked places on the m a p thus: T h e principal agency should be at "Canon Bonito". (Fort Defiance) and sub agencies at "Canon de Chelle" at "Tunicha Valley", at "Chinsci Valley" a n d the fifth at "Mesa de los Calabases.". At this last place "Auga Grande" a Navajo chief with nearly a thousand Indians are now located a n d have prospects of good crops a n d desire to remain there.

This location is over a h u n d r e d miles from the agency at C a n o n Bonito a n d is off the reservation 72 miles from the west line in a country that interferes with no person. I therefore respectfully recommend t h a t land sufficient for a special reservation be set a p a r t for these Indians at t h a t place.

T h e r e are a considerable number of Navajoes in the settlements in the neighborhood of "Sibolleta" and "Cubero" who* in my j u d g m e n t should be ordered to the reservation. 2 0 A p a r t of t h e m are now near "Black Rock" with "Pino" (a Navajo captain) and at times all of t h e m go to the agency at C a n o n Bonito, a n d obtain supplies. T h e y should not be encouraged to remain off the reservation as I have reason to believe that they aid the bad Indians on the reservation to steal from the settlements.

I have m a r k e d with blue pencil on the m a p herewith a proposed extension of the Navajo reservation on the south to include Black Rock Valley where a n u m b e r of Navajoes are now located off the reservation in violation of the treaty. And where in my opinion these Navajoes from Cubero should be placed under the control of the agent at Canon Bonito as soon as this strip of land is attached and m a d e a p a r t of the reservation.

Police I n the present condition of things in these tribes, it is out of the question for any agent to control his Indians or to make them self sustaining. T h e r e are in each tribe and b a n d of Navajoes, Utes, and Jicarilla Apaches a sufficient number of good Indians to enforce judicious policy arrangements, if they were organized, regulated, a n d moral force a n d example given to them. The illicit intercourse of soldiers and employees with the female Indians should be prevented.

There is nothing that is more calculated to engender disease and demoralize than this promiscuous intercourse.

T o prevent it I would recommend that each Agency be furnished with a Carpenter, a Blacksmith, two Farmers, A Butcher, a Supt. of Mechanical labor, and a school teacher.

Seven employes and each one should be m a d e "a Lieutenant of Police" u n d e r the agent and be authorized to select a sufficient n u m b e r of the best Indians at each agency to enforce policy arrangements and bring to punishment according to law all offenders.

20

Mexico,

These Navajos were actually occupying land claimed by the Laguna Indians of New

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Utah Historical Quarterly (Note if a white settler steals from an I n d i a n or his neighbor and he is caught he is punished to the full extent of the law. If an I n d i a n commits any crime (as things now exist) if h e is caught a n d the property stolen is found it is taken from him, but he is allowed to go free. T h e police should arrest him a n d have him punished by the laws of the land, the same as any other criminal in the settlements.)

T h e employee at each agency should upon entering his duties pledge himself to have no illicit intercourse with the female Indians, to abstain from swearing, card playing, and the use of intoxicating liquors, and any violation of this pledge should be sufficient cause for his discharge by the agent a n d immediate removal from the reservation.

As far as practicable men with families should be employed and required to live with their families at the agency.

T h e Traders in all these tribes should in my opinion be forbidden to sell or in any way furnish intoxicating liquors, playing cards or ammunition to any Indians on the reservation. Liquor will m a k e an Indian vicious. Playing cards demoralizes, makes the I n d i a n idle, a n d accustomed to gamble and idleness they become thieves.

T h e use of ammunition, for the little game there is, is not profitable a n d encourages the I n d i a n to continue in his savage habits, which do not tend to the civilizing, Christianizing and making himself sustaining.

I will leave here on the 25th to take the census of the Pueblos and other Indians in accordance with the instructions of the H o n Secretary of the Interior through the H o n Superintendent of the Census.

Amy, seated right, negotiating with a group of Utes in 1867. of Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foudation.

Courtesy

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While doing this I will also continue to carry out your instructions to m e dated M a r c h 27th a n d April 1st a n d the instructions of Acting Supt Cady dated J u n e 24th 1870, a n d continue to urge upon the Wemenutches a n d Capotes a n d the Utes of C i m a r r o n Agency t h a t their cattle sheep, and annuities were sent last year to their reservation in Colorado and that they failed to get them because they refused to be there for them, a n d t h a t if they w a n t anything new they must go there a n d stay.

I will also urge the Jicarilla Apaches to consent to quit their roaming over the country a n d agree to go on a reservation. I will propose to them no special place for a reservation till I have instructions from you, a n d respectfully ask your attention to the reservation I have proposed for t h e m in this report. I believe it to be the best location t h a t could be selected for t h e m as it is entirely out of the settlements.

O w i n g to the associations, controversies, thieving, etc. etc. t h a t exists between the Utes and Navajoes I have felt t h a t I could not perform my duties u n d e r your instructions without saying w h a t I have in this report in regard to them.

H o p i n g t h a t my labors which a r e very arduous (being principally on horseback irt a country scarcely inhabited except by Indians) m a y meet your approval a n d result in good to t h e government, the Indians a n d the citizens of New Mexico.

I have the honor to be very respectfully Y o u r obt. Servant W. F. M . A m y Special Agent for I n d i a n Service in N e w Mexico D u r i n g my absence in the I n d i a n country, letters will reach m e if directed to Abiquiu, New Mexico via Santa Fe.

he map which accompanied Amy's report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs indicates his ideas regarding the compulsory reservation system for the Utes, Navajos, and Jicarilla Apaches. He recommended that the Utes be forced to cede approximately one-third of their reservation for the purposes of mining (this was accomplished in the Brunot Treaty referred to) ; the Jicarilla Apaches were to removed to a small reservation in northwestern New Mexico (a treaty was made to that effect in December 1873, but no effort was made by the United States government to remove the Jicarillas to the vaguely described land) ; and the Navajos were to be served by several agencies generally straddling the New Mexico-Arizona border (this was not accomplished but Amy's assessment of the needs of the Navajos was correct and later sub-agencies were established to take care of the different groups of

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that people). A m y believed that his proposal would provide ample room for the three groups to develop agriculture and become assimilated into the dominant culture.

Amy's report is an important document especially for the history of the Southern Utes. It shows those Utes organized a century ago into bands under chosen leaders whom some of the older members of the Southern Utes still remember. It shows the value placed upon domesticated livestock by peoples who had had to hunt vigorously for game, and it shows the oft repeated but futile hope that Indians would want to become assimilated into the mainstream of American life.

The Indians and the Fur Men

BY HENRY HARRIS,

JR. 1

AN INTERVIEW BY FLOYD O'NEIL

O : Now, the Indian traditions here and the records we have, indicated that Fort Robidoux was probably opened around 1831, in that neighborhood. And certainly by 1833 Antoine Robidoux was in here. Now which one of the trappers was here before that time?

H : Only one that I've heard my mother say was Chambeau Reed. H e and his party came in. H e had his first trading post at Whiterocks — Chambeau Reed. H e traded calico, beads, knives and stuff like that to the Indians, and buckskin and furs.

O : Now what about Denis Julien, he would have been before Robidoux?

H : Yes. O : Your grandpa used to talk about Denis Julien, what did he call him?

H : Julien. That's what they call him, Denis Julien, and that's all I know.

O : Was he here before Robidoux?

H : Well, he was — I understand — Mother said he was here before.

1 The complete interview with Henry Harris, Jr., of the Uintah-Ouray Reservation is in the collection of the Duke Indian Oral History Project at the University of Utah,

Ute delegation of 1905 for the final negotiations on opening the Uintah and Ouray Reservation. Front: Appah, Arrive; center: Red Cap, David Copperfield, Charlie Shavanaux, Wee-che; rear: Wallace Stark, Charley Mack, John Duncan, Suckive, unknown, Boco White, unknown.

Courtesy Smithsonian Institution.

The Reluctant Suzerainty: The Uintah and Ouray Reservation

BY F L O Y D A. O N E I L

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f T H E EARLY HISTORY of the Ute Indians — their relations with the Spaniards of New Mexico and with the American trappers — has attracted a number of historians. Even more scholars have explored the conflict that developed after the Mormons settled along the western borders of the U t e domain. It is the author's intention to deal briefly with those areas of U t e history which are already covered in printed works and then to concentrate on some aspects which are less well known.

T h e arrival of white settlers was not particularly disturbing to Utah's Indians since the Great Salt Lake was a border area between the Utes and the Shoshoni bands which ranged over the Great Basin west of there.

As the Mormons moved south, however, taking up new lands, the Indians were crowded off their central settlements, in U t a h Valley and elsewhere.

This southern thrust prompted Ute resistance— first at Battle Creek in 1850 — and then the so-called "Walker W a r " of 1853-54.

Brigham Young, ex-officio Commissioner of Indian Affairs, attempted to solve the problem of the dispossessed natives by creating farms where they might be trained to be self-sufficient by white standards. The attempt failed and the people of the Territory of U t a h moved to have the Indians expelled from their native areas as the only realistic solution.

T h e first step in removal was taken during the Civil W a r when President A b r a h a m Lincoln designated the Uintah Basin as an Indian reservation.

T h e Mormons h a d already explored the area and deemed it undesirable as a place for their settlements.

Superintendent of Indian Affairs O. H . Irish and Brigham Young attempted to work out a plan calling for the resettlement of the Utes in the Uintah Valley, and the Spanish Fork Treaty of 1865 was negotiated for that purpose. Congress did not ratify this treaty but it did approve the formation of the Uintah Valley Reservation. When the Utes learned this they were indignant. As federal officials began rounding them up, the reluctant natives quite naturally opposed dispossession. Their resistance to removal is called the Black H a w k War, 1865-69. This was begun after the government instructed the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in U t a h to ". . . prepare and submit a plan for removing the Indians from their old reservations to the Uintah Valley." 1 Mr. O'Neil is assistant director, Center for Studies of the American West, University of Utah.

3 U.S., Congress, Report of the Commissioner December 1864, serial 1220, p. 161.

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In his letter of September 26, 1864, Superintendent O. H. Irish foreshadowed coming events: Those Indians inhabiting t h a t portion of the territory south of Great Salt Lake City, are all anxious to know whether the government proposes to enter into treaties with them. T h e y are anxious to understand their rights; they look with a l a r m u p o n the constant and increasing stream of emigration pouring into this territoy.

T h e y behold the enterprise of the white m a n manifesting itself by taking possession of w h a t they h a d long occupied a n d claimed as their country. T h e y see farms opened a n d cultivated on every h a n d ; they witness the establishment a n d rapid development of mining interests with apprehension a n d jealousy, a n d they threaten to stop all prospecting, a n d have done so in some portions of the territory, a n d unless some negotiations are opened a n d treaties formed, there will be difficulty with these Indians.

I have promised to lay the m a t t e r before the Great F a t h e r and they wait his action impatiently. U n d e r the circumstances, I feel t h a t I cannot too strongly urge this m a t t e r u p o n your attention. 2

It became obvious that Irish failed to gain the attention necessary to avert hostilities because his successor, F. H. Head, in the next report dated September 20, 1866, wrote: A small n u m b e r of outlaws u n d e r the c o m m a n d of a chief n a m e d Black H a w k , have been engaged in hostilities for nearly two years. T h e i r n u m b e r did not at first exceed fifty m e n . And in the various skirmishes which have taken place, nearly t h a t n u m b e r have been killed, b u t accessions have been continually h a d from a m o n g the m o r e reckless Indians of the different bands, so t h a t their n u m b e r has increased to' about sixty men.

T h e y have m a d e raids u p o n several of the small and defenseless settlements in the southern portion of the territory for the purpose of stealing cattle a n d horses, fighting when pursued by the settlers, who sought to recover such raids u p o n the settlements of Salina a n d R o u n d Valley, stealing in each instance nearly two h u n d r e d cattle and horses. 3

The war was costly. Bancroft wrote that "more than fifty of the Mormon settlers were massacred, and an immense quantity of livestock captured, and so widespread was the alarm that many of the southern settlements were for the time abandoned, the loss to the community exceeding $1,000,000."4 The war dragged on until the Indians were forced into defeat by the superior power of the territorial militia. Under the leadership of Chief Tabby, who favored peace, the reluctant natives were removed to the Uintah Valley. Black Hawk died and the warring 2

Ibid., 26 September 1864, p. 313.

U.S., Congress, Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 39th Cong., 2d sess. 20 September 1866, serial 1284, p. 124.

4 H u b e r t Howe Bancroft, History of Utah (1889; reprint ed., Salt Lake City, 1964) 632-33.

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Utes were in no condition to resist further. These early struggles are wellknown chapters in Utah's history. Less has been written of the years of anguish that followed.

Pardon Dodds, was the first agent of the Uintah Valley Agency, but George W. Graffam, who replaced him, filed the first annual report. In that report he says: ". . . there are on the reservation, as near as I am able to ascertain, of all ages and sexes fifteen hundred Ute Indians; some of them quite industrious and intelligent, but sadly in want of education and moral teaching." 5 Graffam disliked his charges, his location, and his job. He was obviously not the man for the job and his report was characterized by his successor, J.J. Critchlow, as anything but accurate.

It was, he said, "perfectly insipid." G Critchlow was of a different stamp. His first reactions upon arriving at his new post have been preserved: M y first impressions of the agency were anything but favorable, and I a m free to state that h a d I h a d an adequate conception of its position a n d condition, I should not have accepted it; but, having accepted and being here, I immediately commenced a survey, in order to ascertain, if possible, w h a t was best to be done. I found the employees, some of them utterly depraved a n d worthless,the Indians completely discouraged, having almost come to the conclusion t h a t the agency was about to be abandoned, the latter roaming a b o u t discontented a n d hungry, having access to every place except the commissary, in which there was little, except flour, worth keeping from them. All were on short rations of everything except flour and potatoes, a n d with a very remote prospect of a new supply. I found comparatively few Indians here, most of them being out o n hunting expeditions to procure something on which to subsist. T h e Chief, T a b b y - T o K w a n a , a n d several influential Indians were present, with w h o m I held a council, at which I laid before them, using one of the Indians and an employee as Interpreters, the benevolent plans and purposes of the government relative to their care and support, telling them that "Washington" designed to treat them kindly and liberally, b u t that he could not always get good m e n to carry out his plans; t h a t I desired to do as the Great Father told m e ; that I did not w a n t to promise them much, as they knew promises were not always kept; t h a t they must wait and see whether I was a good " m o n c h " or not. T h e y seemed to be well pleased a n d disposed to give me a fair trial. 7

The new agent moved with energy and foresight to serve the needs of his charges. Many of his early efforts met indifferent success. He had to face problems like this: 5 U.S., Congress, Report September 1869, serial 1414, p.

8 U.S., Congress, Report September 1871, serial 1505, p .

7 Ibid.. 9 6 1 .

of the Commissioner 675. of the Commissioner 962.

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Uintah Chief Ta-vah-puts, right, and his home. Note two rows of corn drying in sun at far left. Courtesy National Archives.

Douglas, the White River Chief, with quite a n u m b e r of his band, came to the agency a n d succeeded in persuading our Indians who has u p to t h a t time intended to farm, to give it u p and let the white m a n farm for the Indians, telling t h e m t h a t Washington did not intend t h a t they should work, also ridiculing those t h a t farmed, calling them squaws, a n d finally succeeded, toward the latter p a r t of April, inducing our Indians to leave with h i m for a visit a n d council at some point south. 8

Trouble of another kind came in 1876 when the Utes became alarmed over the surveying party which was sent to work out the reservation boundaries. Their suspicions were further inflamed when they heard that the Uintah Reservation was to be opened to white settlement. Critchlow managed to assure the Indians that once the survey was made the enclosed lands would be used for their exclusive benefit.

Later, the agent reported additional rumors that the reservation was to be thrown open to white settlers and the Indians again removed. He wrote: W e all for a time believed these reports. Any one can imagine the utter astonishment of both Indians and whites, especially as these reports 8 U.S., Congress, Report of the Commissioner September 1872, serial 1560, p. 676.

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followed so quickly after the assurance given in the matter of survey. The Indians seemed for a time almost stupefied, and old men who had maintained an unshaken confidence in Washington seemed to doubt whether they had a great father or not. One, a good Indian, nothwithstanding what some reckless white men say that all such are dead, actually shed tears. I tried to reassure them, fearing the effect upon their general conduct, and especially on their farming operations. I told them I would go to Salt Lake and find out all about it. I partially succeeded, though I must say I felt degraded before my Indians, and that the government, if these reports were true, was justly chargeable with bad faith toward its dependent wards. I could not have much blamed them had they become perfectly reckless.9

H o w many such letters from responsible agents in the field fill the Indian service records now in the National Archives? We may imagine the agent's feeling when he was asked to furnish Indian troops to help suppress the Sioux who h a d destroyed Custer's command on the Little Big Horn.

T h e year 1879 was a crucial one in Ute history. I n Colorado the White River Agency band of Utes (Yamparicas) rose in rebellion and killed Agent N a t h a n Meeker and some of his staff. Major T. T. Thornburgh was sent to punish the hostiles but was killed and his command nearly wiped out. A relief column brought the outbreak under control.

Chief Ouray of the Uncompahgre Utes also intervened to stop the struggle.

T h e Meeker affair brought profound changes to the Uintah Reservation. As punishment the White River Utes were transferred to the Uintah Valley Reservation. T h e Uncompahgre Utes, innocent of any violence against the whites in Colorado, were transferred into U t a h on an adjacent piece of territory.

T h e increased Indian population required the opening of roads. One was built from Fort Bridger and another route was surveyed linking Park City with the reservation. Still another road through Soldier and Nine Mile canyons was opened from Price, Utah, when the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad began operations in early 1883.

T o manage the Uncompahgres from Colorado a second agency was soon established at Ouray, and a military post, Fort Thornburgh, was founded there in 1881. Trading posts were opened at both agencies. By the early 1880s Critchlow could boast, "it is exceedingly gratifying to all friends of these Indians, that notwithstanding the outrages committed 9 U.S., Congress, Report of the Commissioner September 1876, serial 1749, p. 533.

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by the White River Utes, with whom ours are most intimately connected, and the protracted troubles and unrest succeeding them, our Indians with a few exceptions, after the first excitement, remained in a state of almost perfect peace and quiet and were more than ordinarily kind and easily controlled." 10 But the settlement of so many Indians on the Uintah Valley Reservation caused serious frictions between the White River Utes and the Uintah Utes from central Utah. Critchlow reported that the White Rivers were "indolent and know nothing of farming or caring for themselves by civilized pursuits, and what is worse, many of them have no desire to learn . . . they laugh at the Uintahs for farming, and say they ought to fight and then Washington would furnish them plenty to eat." " Later he wrote that "The last year has been one of peculiar anxiety to both the Indians and the agent. . . . there was a continual state of unrest, dissatisfaction and friction." 12 Nonetheless the agent concluded his annual report with a hopeful outlook: "The White River Utes, who appeared hostile and stubborn at first, have gradually come in, and I think will gradually settle down and engage in civilizing pursuits."13 From the Ouray Agency, Agent J. F. Minniss in his first report said that the Tabeguache Band (Uncompahgre) were "orderly, quiet and peacefully disposed with a disposition to their welfare." 14 Minniss added that agriculture would have to depend on irrigation but this appeared to be all but impossible as water from the two major streams, the Green and White rivers could not be diverted to the land. The land itself, as one agent reported, was: . . . extremely rugged a n d fearfully riven, being pinnacled with m o u n tains, crags, a n d cliffs a n d torn with canons, arroyos, a n d ravines. . . . a wild a n d ragged desolation, valuable for n o t h i n g unless it shall be found to contain mineral deposits. 1 5

Conditions among the Uncompahgres seemed hopeless. In their reports the agents continually repeated that the land would not support their charges; they complained that the Indians were suffering from 10 U.S., Congress, Report of the August 1880, serial 1959, p. 272.

11 U.S., Congress, Report of the August 1881, serial 2018, p . 215.

12 U.S., Congress, Report of the September 1882, serial 2100, p. 209.

13 Ibid., 212. u Ibid., 208.

15 U.S., Congress, House, House serial 2885, p. 4.

Commissioner

of Indian

Affairs, 46th Cong. 2d sess

31

Commissioner

of Indian

Affairs, 47th Cong. 1st sess

18

Commissioner

Report

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1

No. 3305, 51st Cong., 2d sess. 2 February 1890

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A section of an 1873 manuscript map from the National Archives, redrawn

by Robert Morgan, shows the Spanish Fork Indian Reservation, Fort Bridger, Uintah Valley Reservation, major routes of travel and other items of interest. A rich supply of primary materials in the National Archives and elsewhere awaits use by researchers of American Indian history.

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poverty and boredom and some of the Indians returned to their old homelands to hunt game and gather berries. In 1887, Colorow of the White River band led a small group into northwestern Colorado, on such an expedition. He was accused of illegally poaching game and was attacked by the ranchers of Colorado. The militia was called out and several of the Utes were killed, including one boy of tender years. Although the Utes were to range back into Colorado from time to time, the soldiers at Fort Duchesne usually kept them well in check.

In 1886, Fort Duchesne had been established and all three bands of Utes were consolidated under one agency located at that place. By then encroaching white settlers had become an acute threat to the harried Utes. Ashley Valley had been settled by a Mormon group in 1878, and by 1890 virtually all of the good agricultural land there had been taken up under the terms of the Homestead Act. The residents naturally turned their attention to the neighboring lands of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation.

Pressures on the Ute lands mounted. The location of the Uintah Agency at Fort Duchesne meant that the western border of the reservation was distant. The settlers of Heber Valley were already illegally using that area for grazing before the tribal leaders and agents finally obtained permission from the Secretary of the Interior to lease these lands to the whites. The discovery of gilsonite (a hydrocarbon mineral) on the Uncompahgre Reservation occurred at about the same time as the Indian people had occupied that area. Mining companies applied intense pressure to get Congress to give that land over to mining â&#x20AC;&#x201D; an effort in which they were ultimately successful.

By 1887, when the Dawes Severalty Act was passed, the newspapers of Utah were asking that the Utes be allotted in severalty, and the rest of their lands opened to settlement.

Matters grew worse. Throughout their tenure on the reservation, the Utes had heard continual talk of the movement to open their lands to white settlement. By the late 1890s however, action supplanted words and federal, state, and local officials initiated the opening process. On June 7, 1897, Congress passed an act which provided for a survey of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation in preparation for its opening. The Indians were to be allotted lands in severalty and the remainder of the reservation was to revert to the public domain.

As a rush of settlers came to the reservation in 1898, the Indians became angry, for the survey was not completed, nor were the Indians'

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titles extinguished until such a survey was complete. The incident nearly led to violence; but the allotting commission mollified the angry Utes by hastily issuing lands to them.16 The Uncompahgres were badly victimized.

As the policy for opening the reservation was being developed the government directed the U.S. Geological Survey to determine the amount of land and water available for farms and to study prospects for developing an irrigation system. An expert hydrographer, Cyrus Cates Babb was assigned to make the study. His work was begun in 1899 and completed in 1902. Babb seems to have been a careful and accurate observer. He suggested to his superiors that care should be taken to protect the rights of the Indians. In reporting to the commissioner, his superior F. H. Newell observed: At present, a n d for m a n y years in the future, the supply of water o n the reservation is enormously in excess of the users, b u t in view of the future needs of t h e lands which m a y be allotted to the Indians, there is not m u c h w a t e r which can be appropriated without injury to these prospective wants. 1 7

In the meantime Utah's congressional delegation worked feverishly to have the reservation opened. This effort, initiated before Utah became a state, gained more strength after statehood was achieved. The opening which had been scheduled for 1902 had to be delayed because the surveys were not complete and because the Ute people were adamant in their opposition to the opening of the area they considered to be theirs.

Finally in 1902, the entire vexed matter was aired in a Senate hearing, which produced some unusual results.

George Sutherland, a representative from Utah, and later associate justice of the Supreme Court, appeared to speak with convincing effect against the interests of the Utes. His contentions were many, but among the most telling were, first, that the first treaty made with the Utes by James Calhoun in 1849 did not apply to all Utes; second, that the reservation was set aside by an executive order with congressional approval and could be undone by the same method without the approval of the Indians; third, that the Uintah Valley Reservation was set aside for "the Indians in Utah" 18 and belonged no more to the Uintahs than to any 18 Thomas G. Alexander and Leonard J. Arrington, "The Utah Military Frontier, 18721912, Forts Cameron, Thornburgh, and Duchesne," Utah Historical Quarterly, 32 (Fall 1964), 351.

17 U.S., Congress, House, House Document No. 671, 57th Cong. 1st sess., 16 April 1902 serial 4377, p. 8.

18 U.S., Congress, Senate, Senate Document No. 212, 57th Cong., 1st sess. 4 February 1902, serial 4234, p. 112.

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other Indians of the state including Navajo and Shoshoni; fourth, that the federal government had the power to restore reservations to the public domain without Indian consent following the precedent in the case of the cancelled lands in Utah at Corn Creek, San Pete, the Indian farm at Spanish Fork, and the Deep Creek Reservation.19 As a result of the hearings, Congress moved ahead to dispossess the Utes. Each Indian received his plot of ground. Limited timber and coal lands were reserved for the use of the three bands. And the residue of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation was thrown open to white settlement.

In late April 1903, United States Indian Inspector James McLaughlin was ordered to the Uintah Reservation to push negotiations with the White River and Uintah Utes for the opening of their lands.

McLaughlin arrived at the agency at Whiterocks, May 13, 1903, and ordered the police to call the Indians into council on May 18. There he "explained minutely" 20 what Congress had in mind for them. The council lasted six days, during which time the inspector explained the features of the act to the stunned Utes. In exasperation McLaughlin wrote on May 30: Wanrodes alone, of all the Indians who spoke in council, discussed the question intelligently. The other speakers made little or no reference to the question of accepting allotments under the law, their speeches being chiefly in opposition to opening the reservation, contending that their reservation could not be opened to settlement without their consent; that such was well known by everybody and had repeatedly been told the Indians by government officials; and some of the speakers, who have been 19

Ibid., 111-20.

U.S., Congress, House, House Document serial 4565, p. 3.

20

No. 33, 58th Cong., 1st sess., 30 May 1903,

Fort Dushesne, ca. 1890, with rock cairns marking entrance. Courtesy National Archives. \MMM:m/MMMMM:.:,

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Utah Historical Quarterly members of delegations visiting Washington, stated t h a t they were thus advised by officials of t h e D e p a r t m e n t during their visit to Washington. 2 1

McLaughlin attempted to convince them that the reservation would be opened with or without their permission but was unsuccessful. As the long council wore on the firmness of Indian resolve not to approve became manifest. McLaughlin wrote that he could have obtained the consent of the Uintahs, but that the White Rivers, led by Tim Johnson, were not only opposed but were intimidating the others.22 This may have been the case, but all of the Utes were extremely reluctant to give up more of their land base. A tradition exists that the government attempted bribing and even counted the votes of children! In spite of McLaughlin's failure, the federal officials pressed on with the opening. The resistance of the Indians, the slow moving bureaucracy, the remoteness of the area, and the difficulty in dealing with the several bands delayed the opening until August 1905, when final action was set in motion. In the proclamations of that date, Roosevelt set aside 1,010,000 acres of the reservation as a forest reserve, 2,100 acres as townsite, 1,004,285 acres opened to homestead entry, 2,140 acres in mining claims, and 60,160 acres under reclamations; the residue, 282,460 acres, as unallotted tribal lands.23 The proclamations sparked a new land rush. Several hundred people located farms on the newly opened lands. The government had many more applicants for the good land than could be filled, therefore, marginal and sub-marginal farms were taken up, many of which were abandoned subsequently.

The new settlers were almost immediately in trouble. By 1912 enough of them were so poverty stricken they went to Senator Reed Smoot asking for an act of Congress to place a moratorium on land payment. A special law was required for this. The senator was hard pressed in pleading their case but was finally able to persuade Congress of the poverty of his constituents and the necessity of extending their time.24 As the process of allotment proceeded, the resistance of the Indian was predictable. The anger of the White River Utes was bitter.

Some of the allottees were later to claim that while "first choice" was to 23

Ibid.

Ibid., 4.

23 U.S., Congress, Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 59th Cong., 1st sess., 1905-06, serial 4959, p. 501.

21 U.S., Congress, House, House Report No. 943, 62d Cong., 2d sess., 1911-12, serial 6133, p. 2.

22

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be theirs to the land, officials allotted them side-hills and cobble-stoned areas, while the good lands were opened to white homesteaders. The frustrations of all the Indians were many. Within a few years they had been reduced from a relatively free life to captivity. They were assigned to a small farm and told to adopt the methods of the whites. The prospect of farming a small plot of ground was repugnant. Suckive expressed the opinion of many when he said he would not "live like a pig in a pen."

Several hundred Sioux had visited the Uintah Reservation in the 1880s and had brought expressions of friendship. The Utes, remembering them, felt that perhaps a liason with these Plains Indians might be used to bring force against the federal government. In 1906, under Red Cap's leadership nearly 400 of the Utes journeyed to South Dakota, while the U.S. Army harrassed and escorted them. Officials of the federal government and the various states fumed. But the Utes made it to South Dakota. Their alliance with the Sioux failed. After two years of dislocation, and poverty, the wandering Utes returned to Utah no better off than when they left. The only reason they refrained from fighting was the lack of any hope of success.26 Following this debacle, officials in the Bureau of Indian Affairs made fumbling attempts to meet the desires of the Indian people. This was probably prompted by pressure from Washington, D . C , as the South Dakota adventure had drawn heavily upon the federal treasury.

Meanwhile a new mood of resignation settled on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation. Only four years after the return of the people from South Dakota, the army removed its forces from Fort Duchesne. By that year, 1912, the region's growing white population held undisputed control. Although relations between the two races appeared quiet on the surface, numerous tensions continued to exist. Indians schools made but modest progress. Bigotry and notions of white superiority were as obvious as ever. Conflicts over land and water interests were frequent. By 1912 the Utes had been reduced to a narrow reservation situation comparable to that of many another Indian tribe.

The American Indians have suffered at the hands of the federal government. White populations have generally felt that the Indians were undesirables; the stereotyped solution for erasing the "undesirable" ele25 Henry Harris, Jr., 1967 Interview, Duke Oral Indian History Collection, University of U t a h .

26 Floyd A. O'Neil, "An Anguished Odyssey: T h e Flight of the Utes, 1906-08," Utah Historical Quarterly, 36 (Fall, 1968), 315-27.

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Chief Ouray, seated center, with his sub-chiefs: Warets, Shavano, Ankatosh and Guero. Photographed

by William Henry Jackson while on a peace mission to Washington, D.C.

ments was to make farmers and independent men of them, thus breaking up the tribal customs which were considered alien to "civilized" ways.

But many Indians could not and would not conform. They resented captivity. The Utes hated farming and they thought it an undignified pursuit. The lands they held were poor. The reservation was remote from any market so that even leasing the lands was not productive. But the government persisted in making farmers of its charges. Often the trust funds of the Indian people were used to build canals which served the non-Indians far better than those for whom they were intended.

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Like other Indians, the Utes had little contact with local government except for law enforcement or, in the case of general violence, state militias. Theirs was a dialogue between the Great White Father in Washington, D . C , rather than a dialogue with the people around them. This connection with Washington was at times inconvenient. The superintendent represented Uncle Sam on each of the agencies; consequently much depended on one personality. This in one way made the representative of the government uniquely available, but on major decisions it required a delegation to make the long trip to Washington. Once they were removed from their people and placed under the strange and overpowering environment of the east coast, most western Indians could be easily manipulated. The majesty of government was used to overawe them.

The federal establishment had many programs that were closely allied with the desires and aspirations of the Christian churches and reformers of the times. One result was a government policy hostile to native religions. Among other things, efforts were made to suppress sacred rites.

Not surprisingly, the Ute reaction was defensive â&#x20AC;&#x201D; they became more aware of their own culture and helped to preserve those rites that the government and its Christian administrators were attempting to suppress.

In 1948 the government established the United States Indian Court of Claims. The Ute claims were the first of the great land cases to be settled in that court. So valid were Ute arguments that they had been dispossessed of land rightfully theirs that the court awarded them a settlement of $32 million about one-half of which went to the Uintah and Ouray members.

Although the money was used in some part for the betterment of the Ute people, tribesmen were often ill-prepared to spend their share of the money. Most useful to them has been that portion of the court award held in trust and administered by the tribal councils with the advice and help of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and economic experts.

But even Ute land claims reimbursement has not kept the Ute people from poverty. One result has been the proliferation of programs and projects sponsored by the federal government. Often the Indian reservations epitomize the welfare state. However, in its various guises federal aid has enabled the tribes including the Utes to move toward self-sufficiency. The effect of federal help upon tribal development is and has been profound. Most of the reorganization of the Indian tribes has been spon-

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sored by the federal government. The Indian Reorganization Act, or the Wheeler-Howard Act of 1934, has been particularly important. From it has grown a form of democratic control in which tribal councils, committees, and governors have replaced the tribal organizations by which Indians traditionally conducted their affairs. Federal policy for both good and ill has been dominant in this process.

For too long we have searched the records only for the mistakes of the agents of the federal establishment, then presented American Indian history as a series of blunders and the representatives of the government as an unending list of villains. Most of the people who have worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the army, and other agencies have been men of honest intentions and good works. They represent, by and large, a far more pragmatic and humane point of view in Indian matters than the population of the nation as a whole. Policy, not personnel, was most often faulty. In the future, officials will probably be judged far less harshly than now.

Presently, very great changes are occurring. There is a strong revival of interest in Ute culture among the Indians themselves. The tribal government, in cooperation with numerous federal agencies, is rapidly transforming the reservation economically. Education is far more intensive than ever before. Most important is the rise of self-determination among the Ute people, combined with a more realistic view of Indian aspirations by the federal government and the white-dominated society.

The ability of Indians to play a significant role in determining the course of their own development seems to be at hand.

Opposite: Hashkeneinii Biye' shown at age 83 with his son, long after the controversial killings of two white prospectors. Utah State Historical Society, Charles Kelly Collection.

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f NAVAJO FRONTIERS in the present-day San J u a n County of southeastern U t a h extend back into respectable antiquity. Tree-ring dates from Navajo archaeological sites recorded in the area range from 1620 (from a hogan in the White Canyon area west of Bear's E a r s ) , through the 1700s and 1800s, into the twentieth century. 1 Cartographic data, though often failing to delineate the nature of Navajo occupancy, certainly support their presence there. We find seventeenth and eighteenth century maps showing "Apaches de Navajo," "Apaches de Navaio," or the "Provincia de Navajo," extending well north of the Rio de Nabajo, an old name for the Rio San Juan. 2 As early as 1823 a Mexican expedition was sent against the Navajos.

Commanding a detachment operating north of Black Mesa, Francisco Salazar noted the tracks of livestock driven by Navajos who were retreating from his troops. These tracks led in the direction of La Orejas ("The Ears" or "Bear's Ears" which rise at the south edge of Elk Ridge), and Salazar recorded that the Navajos "remained on the other side of the San J u a n River," 3 an indication at this early date that the Navajos regarded the Bear's Ears country as a place of refuge in time of war.

I n 1835 the U t e Indians reported to Mexican officials that rich Navajos " . . . are to be found in the middle of the La Plata and Datil Mountains, next to the Utes . . . that they are living there and that they intend to make their plantings for this year. . . . " 4 Though these places are in southwestern Colorado, additional data from Navajo tradition and other sources show that Navajos roamed to the west in present-day U t a h . For instance, K'aayelii or " O n e With Quiver" was born about 1801 north of the Bear's Ears on Elk Ridge near a spring at the head of a canyon, both of which today still bear his name, though in the corrupted Mr. Correll is supervisor, Research Section, Navajo Parks and Recreation Department, T h e Navajo Tribe, Window Rock, Arizona.

1 M. A. Stokes and T. L. Smiley, "Tree-Ring Dates from the Navajo Land Claim. I. The Northern Sector," Tree-Ring Bulletin, 25 (June, 1963).

2 N . Sanson's M a p of 1669, Paris, France (reprints available at the Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe) ; J o h n Senex' M a p of 1710, in Thomas Donaldson, "Moqui Pueblo Indians of Arizona and Pueblo Indians of New Mexico," U.S., Census Bureau, Extra Census Bulletin (Washington, D . C , 1 8 9 3 ) ; Joseph de Urrutia's M a p of 1769, Primera Parte, Madrid, Spain (copy from Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley) ; M a p by an unknown Spanish Cartographer, 1771 (copy from T o m Bahti, Tucson, Arizona, 1954).

3 Diario formado por el Coronel D n Fran c o Salazar el Dia 3 de A g t o 1823 . . . , entries for August 12 and 13., located in the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives, Mexican Archives, Santa Fe. T h e Archives hereinafter cited as NMSRC&A, MA. 4 Miguel Garcia to Bias-' de Hinojos, January 12, 1835 (NMSRC&A, M A # 4 2 6 7 - 6 8 ) .

T h e name Datil Mountains is an early name for Sleeping U t e Mountain.

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Remains of a Navajo forked-pole hogan in San Juan County, Utah, occupied before the Fort Sumner period of 1863-68, by "White Sock," grandfather of Jim Hatathly (right); others shown: Harry Jones and Francis Mock. Photograph by Clifford Gedekah.

form of Kigalia.5 K'aayelii became one of the principal headmen north of the San Juan River, and spent his entire life ranging with his followers from the Bear's Ears to the Henry Mountains, into the Blue or Abajo Mountains, the La Sal Mountains, the Uncompaghre Plateau in Colorado in Allen Canyon, and along Montezuma Creek, where he died in 1894 and is buried.6 Other Navajos well known in the area included Kee Diniihi or "Pained Foot," who was born in White Canyon west of Blue Mountains about 1821, and moved about with his band in much the same manner 5 Paul Goodman, Transcript (hereafter Tr.) 2829; Eddie Nakai, Tr. 2512-13, 2552, Docket 229, Navajo, before the Indian Claims Commission (hereinafter cited as Docket 229).

K'aayelii Spring is in the canyon shown on present-day maps as Kagalia (a corrupted spelling) Canyon.

6 Navajo Plaintiff's Exhibits 520-A and 520-B, Site Reports N-LSJ-CC-E and N-LSJ-MCQ Q ; Tom Farley, Tr. 5454-55; Paul Goodman, Tr. 2826-29; Billy Holiday, Tr. 5476; Tse K'izzi, Tr. 146; Eddie Nakai, Tr. 2512-13, 2541-42, 2546, 2552; John Rockwell, Tr. 2399 all in Docket 229.

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as did K'aayelii.7 Also during the 1820s two of Dibe Ligai's or White Sheep's grandparents were born there, one around Bear's Ears and the other at the "Lower Crossing" of the San Juan. Many others also were born at a favored farming resort of the Navajos known by them as Naahondzo located at the mouth of Oljeto Creek north of Monument Valley.8 Hastiin Beyal, a Navajo who was about ninety-five years old when interviewed in 1927, was born about 1832 at the head of Grand Gulch near Bear's Ears. About 1842, when ten years old, he and his sister helped drive the family's small herd of sheep all the way from Elk Ridge to Chaco Canyon where the family had moved. While living north of the river the Utes and Navajos had been friends, but, according to him, they later became enemies.9 Farnham's map of 1839 shows Navajos north of the San Juan River in Utah almost to the 38° north latitude near present Monticello 10 and Calhoun's sketch map of 1849, as well as Gunnison's map of 1855, both locate Navajos between the San Juan and Colorado rivers.11 During the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, Navajos lived and ranged in the La Sal Mountains, near the Bear's Ears, in Arch Canyon, along Montezuma and McElmo creeks, near present Dove Creek, Colorado, and even in the Henry Mountains west of the Colorado River,12 grazing 7

T o m Beletso, Tr. 2681-86; Eddie Nakai, Tr. 2471, 2479, Docket 229.

White Sheep, Tr. 154-55; Paul Goodman, T r . 2758, 2762, Docket 229. Captain H. L. Kendrick noted on April 21, 1856, that when the San J u a n River was high, Navajos crossed it much lower downstream than military knowledge at that time extended. Kendrick to W. A. Nichols, File K - 5 / 1 8 5 1 , Letters Received, Record Group 98, "Records of the War Department, Department of New Mexico" (National Archives, Washington, D . C ) . These records will hereinafter be cited as L R or LS, Record Group 98. There were a number of crossings, established by long usage, on the lower San J u a n . T h e "Lower Crossing" was located about eighteen miles up the San J u a n from its mouth. O n e of the major crossings was called Nahoondzo by the Navajos and was located at the mouth of Oljeto Creek; this is shown as "Navajo F o r d " on Macomb's M a p of 1860, M a p of Explorations and Surveys in New Mexico and U t a h , File W-81, Record Group 77, "Records of the Office of Chief of Engineers" (National Archives). Other crossings were located at the Clay Hills, at the mouths of Comb Wash, Recapture Creek, Montezuma Creek, and at Aneth, Paul Goodman, Tr. 2754-55; Eddie Nakai, Tr. 2441-46, 2501, 2546.

Docket 229.

9 Neil M. J u d d , The Material Culture of Pueblo Bonito, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collection, 124 (Washington, D . C , 1954), 343-46.

30 Thomas Jefferson Farnham, Travels in California (Oakland, California, 1947).

11 Sketch M a p by Superintendent of Indian Affairs James S. Calhoun, October 15, 1849, M a p No. 255, Record Group 75, "Records of the Office of Indian Affairs" (National Archives).

Captain J. W. Gunnison's M a p , 1855, Topographical Engineers, Explorations and surveys for a railroad route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, printed in U.S. Congress, Senate, 33d Cong., 2d sess., 1856, Senate Ex. Doc. 78.

8

12 Mary Bitsili, Tr. 2250-53; Tom Beletso, Tr. 2672-73, 2676-78, 2725; Mary Jelly Tr. 2303-04, 2306, 2309, 2315, 2 3 7 3 ; Frank Todicheenie, Tr. 4819-22; White Sheep, Tr. 154-55Eddie Nakai, 2446, 2458-59, 2480, 2482-83, 2512-13, 2545, 2551-52, 2557-58 2580-81; Lucy Harvey, Tr. 2986, 2990-91; Albert G. Sandoval, T r . 2046-47; J o h n Rockwell, Tr. 2398-99 all in Docket 229.

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stock, gathering wild foods, or farming in the canyons and higher elevations north of the river, as well as along the San Juan River Valley.13 Descendants of these early Navajo residents continue to occupy the region today. From oral tradition reported by them, from archaeological evidence, and from cartographical and documentary sources, we are able to assert that the Navajo Indians have roamed San Juan County and adjacent parts of Utah and Colorado for at least two centuries.

ii When troops commanded by Colonel Christopher "Kit" Carson campaigned with Ute and other Indian allies against the Navajos during the winter of 1863-64, some Navajos along the Utah frontier managed to elude the soldiers and retreat â&#x20AC;&#x201D; as they had in 1823 from the Mexican troops â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to the secure refuges afforded by the rugged terrain of the lower San Juan River region. There they stayed during the exile of many of their countrymen to the Fort Sumner reservation in eastern New Mexico from 1863 to mid-1868.

One such group who escaped capture was led by Chief Hashkeneinii, also spelled Hoskaninni.14 Of the Tachiinii or Red Streak Clan, Hashkeneinii was born during the 1820s at Kee agodi, "Short Foot," some four miles northwest of Kayenta, Arizona, and by the time of the Carson campaign of 1863, he was in his thirties, a renowned medicine man, and 13 Lieutenant J o h n G. Parke's M a p , 1851, File M - 1 6 1 / 1 8 5 1 e n d . , Record Group 94, "Records of the Adjutant General's Office" (National Archives); Lieutenant John G. Parke to Colonel J o h n Munroe, M a r c h 7, 1851, File P - 1 5 / 1 8 5 1 , LR, Record Group 9 8 ; Lieutenant L. McLaws to Colonel D. T. Chandler, April 17, 1851, Old Book 4 (Bound as 7 ) , p p . 93-94, LS, Record Group 9 8 ; M e m o r a n d u m of a " T a l k " held with Navajos at Cebolleta, New Mexico, April 19, 1851, File C-36/1851 e n d . , LR, Record Group 9 8 ; James S. Calhoun to L. Lea, May 1, 1851, in Annie Heloise Abel, The Official Correspondence of lames S. Calhoun (Washington, D . C , 1915), 341-42; Major E. Backus to Lieuteant J. C McFerran, M a y 7, 1852, Miscellaneous Box 94, L R , Record Group 9 8 ; Captain H . L. Kendrick to Major W. A. Nichols, April 2 1 , 1856, File K - 5 / 1 8 5 6 , L R , Record Group 98. Navajo Plaintiffs Exhibit 520-A, Sites N-LSJ-CC-E & K, N - L S J - C H - G , I & J, N - L S J - M G - L ; T o m Beletso, T r . 2678-79, 2686-87; Robert Longsalt, Tr. 5322-23; Billy Holiday, T r . 5472, 5 4 7 5 ; Eddie Nakai, T r . 2471, 2473-74, 2479, 2487-88, 2502-03, 2513-14, 2543-44, 2681-82, 2684; Paul Goodman, Tr. 2758, 2762-64, 2828-29; J o h n Rockwell, Tr. 2399; T o m Farley, Tr. 5454-55, Docket 229. It is significant that in the "Opinion of the Commission" in Docket 229 dated J u n e 29, 1970, the Claims Commission ruled, in its Finding No. 17, that the Navajo Tribe of Indians held aboriginal title to lands in southeastern U t a h described t h u s : "Beginning at the intersection of the Colorado and San J u a n Rivers in the present State of U t a h ; thence on a line northeasterly to Bear's Ears; thence easterly to Blanding, U t a h ; thence southeasterly to Cortez, Colorado; . . . thence northwesterly [northeasterly] up the Colorado River to the place of beginning."

14 Translated variously as "Angry Warrior," "Giving O u t Anger," "Angry O n e , " or " T h e One Who Distributes T h e m in an Angry Way," Informants # 3 8 , Cecil Parrish; # 1 5 9 , Blind Weaver; # 3 2 6 , Tony Onesalt, Informants statements are on file, Research Section, T h e Navajo Tribe (Window Rock, Arizona). Charles Kelly, "Hoskaninni," Desert Magazine, 4 (July, 1941), 8, a n d "Chief Hoskaninni," Utah Historical Quarterly, XXI (July, 1953), 2 2 1 ; Walter Dyk, Son of Old Man Hat (New York, 1956), Robert W. Young, ed., The Navajo Yearbook, Report No. VIII, 1941-1961 (Window Rock, Arizona, 1961), 146.

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leader of the Navajos in the Monument Valley-Oljeto region.15 As a younger man, he had kept horses in White Canyon west of Bear's Ears.16 The appearance of foreign invaders was not unknown to Hashkeneinii and his followers. For many years he and his countrymen had been harassed by Mexicans and others who ventured into their country to steal stock and to capture women and children for slaves. In fact after such a raid in the Monument Valley area in the late 1840s, the Navajos dealt the Mexicans a severe defeat.17 Learning that Carson's troops and Indian allies were approaching, Hashkeneinii and his group fled west to Navajo Mountain and north of the river, a region not unfamiliar to the young chief. Retreating hastily, for they feared their traditional enemy the Utes far more than the soldiers they collected only what belongings they could carry, including one old muzzle-loading rifle. In their haste only three of their horses could be rounded up, and only about twenty of the hardiest sheep were taken. Accompanying Hashkeneinii was his wife, the mother of his only son, the five-year-old Hashkeneinii Biye'. His wife's two sisters whom he later married never bore him any children. Also in the party were his younger brother. Do'at'iini ("Gentle Man"), his mother who was named Yaago Adilhaali ("Uses Club Downward"), an uncle, two Ute slave women, a relative called "Laughting Boy" who died during the flight, and other close kin. In all, the group consisted of seventeen people.

Some time later Hashkeneinii, his brother Do'at'iini, and their uncle returned to Monument Valley to search for any stock the soldiers and Utes might have overlooked. They found all their hogans burned, their cornfields trampled, and a few Navajos, each believing himself the sole survivor, who revealed themselves from their hiding places. While searching for stray horses, a roving band of Ute Indians caught and killed the uncle. The following night Hashkeneinii surprised and attacked some Utes, killing three. He and his brother then returned to Navajo Mountain with the stock and survivors to rejoin their group there.18 15 Informants # 3 8 , Cecil Parrish; # 3 9 , Billy Holiday; # 1 2 9 , T o m Lefty; Paul Goodman, T r . 2839, 2843, Docket 2 2 9 ; Kelly, "Chief Hoskaninni," U.H.Q., X X I , 219-20; Byron Cummings, Indians I Have Known (Tucson, Arizona 1952), 4.

16 Eddie Nakai, T r . 2474; Paul Goodman, T r . 2809-11, 2819-20, 2836-37, Docket 229; Informants # 1 0 1 , Clyde Peshlakai; # 1 5 9 , Blind Weaver; # 1 8 4 , Tse K'izzi; Cummings, Indians I Have Known, 2 ; Kelly, "Hoskaninni," D.M., 4, pp. 6, 8. " K e l l y , "Chief Hoskaninni," U.H.Q., X X I , 2 2 4 ; Letter from Charles Kelly to Richard F. V a n Valkenburgh, February 18, 1943, File V A N V 284-482 (Arizona Pioneers Historical Society, T u c s o n ) .

18 Kelly, "Hoskaninni," D.M., 4, pp. 8-9 and "Chief Hoskaninni," U.H.Q., X X I , 220-21.

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While some eight thousand of their countrymen were in exile at Fort Sumner from 1863 to 1868, Hashkeneinii and his group ranged free between Navajo Mountain and the Bear's Ears, and in the region between the Colorado and San Juan rivers. Navajo bands headed by K'aayelii ("One With Quiver"), Daghaa Sik'aad ("Bunchy Mustche"), Kee Diniihi ("Pained Foot"), and other headmen who had managed to escape the invaders also ranged through these remote recesses. Once, however, soldiers and Utes attacked Hashkeneinii's camp north of the San Juan. Though they killed a few, most of the Navajos escaped.19 The border between Utah and Arizona continued to be the scene of violent and bloody action, and Monument Valley, a stronghold for warring bands, remained one of Utah's most fought-over areas.

After the signing of the Treaty of June 1, 1868, and Navajo captives at the Bosque Redondo came back to their homeland, Hashkeneinii and his band also returned southward to Monument Valley and once again settled themselves there. Experiences with slave raiders and encounters with the military had instilled in Hashkeneinii and his people, and especially in his young son, Hashkeneinii Biye', a suspicion and distrust of the white man which ultimately was to culminate in the slaying of two prospectors to Monument Valley — Samuel Walcott and James McNally. i ii Following the Fort Sumner episode prospectors began to venture into Monument Valley in search of the deposits of gold and silver rumored to exist there. Many disappeared without a trace, and the Indians— in particular the Navajos — were suspected. In 1881 two prospectors, named James Merrick and Ernest Mitchell, lost their lives there. Two of the monuments along the Utah border — Merrick Butte and Mitchell Butte — are named in their memory. It was later learned that they were robbed and killed by a band of roving Utes.

Early in the spring of 1884, Samuel Walcott, an elderly gentleman from Baltimore, Maryland, and his youthful partner, James McNally of Illinois, after provisioning and outfitting themselves at Mitchell's Trading Post on the San Juan River near present Aneth, Utah, traveled to Monument Valley to prospect for gold and silver.20 19 Paul Goodman, Tr. 2819-20, 2836-38, Docket 229; Informants # 3 8 , Cecil Parrish; # 1 0 1 , Clyde Peshlakai; # 1 5 9 ; Blind Weaver; # 1 8 4 , Tse K'izzi; # 3 2 6 , Tony Onesalt; Cummings, Indians I Have Known, 2.

20 Charles Kelly, "Graveyard of the Gods," Desert Magazine, 1 (July 1938)- Kelly, "Chief Hoskaninni," U.H.Q., X X I , 2 2 3 ; Richard F. V a n Valkenburgh, "Blood Revenge of the Navajo," Desert Magazine, 6 (October, 1 9 4 3 ) ; Richard F. V a n Valkenburgh, Dine Bikevah (Window Rock, Arizona, 1941), 101.

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On April 7, 1884, a rumor reached the agency at Fort Defiance of "a conflict between some Navajos and a small party of white men up to the northwest" on or about March 31, 1884. Agent Denis M. Riordan, who claimed to have once himself been threatened by Hashkeneinii and his band, immediately dispatched Navajo Scout Sam Bigodi from the western area of the reservation to investigate the affair.21 Bigodi returned April 19 and made his report; 22 it was somewhat inadequate, for "Pete," a scout from the Chinle area, was then sent to Monument Valley for the purpose of making a further investigation. His report, dated May 4, with that of Sam Bigodi, led Agent Riordan to the conclusion that two prospectors had been "murdered in cold blood." Pete's report, along with Acting Agent S. E. Marshall's transmittal letter, are reproduced in their entirety,23 as showing the thinking of the Indians, who had little traffic with whites along the Utah border and were wary and supicious of them.

Navajo, Fort Defiance, Ariz.

May 4th, 1884 Hon. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Washington, D.C. Sir: Enclosed please find the Report of "Pete" a reliable and trustworthy Navajo Scout who investigated into the matter of the killing of the Americans near the Navajo Mountain on or about the 31st day of March 1884. I am satisfied that this report is correct, and that the Americans were murdered in "cold blood." Mr. Riordan has gone on leave, and before he left, he instructed me "That if the Scouts who are now out after the murderers return without them, to send the entire available force of Scouts, and if they fail then to call for troops." These instructions I shall follow, unless otherwise ordered by the Dept.

Very respectfully, S. E. Marshall Farmer, Actg. Agt. Navajo Agency, N. M. May 4th, 1884 R E P O R T OF "PETE." A Navajo Scout who investigated into the killing of two Americans near the Navajo Mountain Ariz, on or about the last of March 1884.

21 Denis M. Riordan to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, April 19, 1884, File 8228/1884, Record Group 75, "Records of the Office of I n d i a n Affairs" (National Archives) ; also in Fort Defiance Letterpress Book 4A, p p . 151-52, Record Group 75 "Records of the Office of Indian Affairs" (National Archives). Hereinafter these records will be cited as FD with the letterpress book number.

22 Report of Sam Bigodi, April 19, 1884, FD-4A, p p . 153-56. Sam Bigodi was also known as Hastiin Ndaaz, "Heavyset."

23 Riordan to Commissioner, April 22, 1884, FD-4A, pp. 161-63; Report of Sam Bigodi, April 19 1884 FD-4A, p p . 153-56; S. E. Marshall to Commissioner, May 4, 1884, FD-4A, p.

230; Report of "Pete," May 4, 1884, FD-4A, p p . 223-29.

Navajo Frontiers in Utah

153 "Viz"

T h e evening before the Americans were killed a Navajo Beleen-la-ki [Bilii Ligai, "White Horse"] went to their camp. T h e y wanted m e a t a n d corn, and before the I n d i a n left they m a d e arrangements with him to sell them the needed articles on the following morning.

I n the m o r n i n g a grown u p m a n Ten-nai-tsosi [Dine Ts' osi, "Slender Navajo"] a n d a half-grown boy, started for the c a m p with the m e a t a n d corn, and when they got there they found Osh-ka-ni-ne-be-gay [Hashkeneinii Biye', "Hashkeneinii's Son"], there with the Americans. H e with the grown u p m a n a n d the boy sat a r o u n d the fire while the Americans eat their breakfast. After they got through with their breakfast one of the Americans, a young m a n , went out to h u n t their horses. T h e young boy then m a d e signs to the remaining American t h a t they were ready to t r a d e the corn a n d meat. T h e American shook his head, and pointed off towards where the other American h a d gone a n d m a d e signs, t h a t they would trade when he came back. Osh-ka-ni-ne-be-gay said to the grown u p m a n T e n nai-tsosi " I wonder if the American would trade a gun t h a t was lying on the ground nearby for a horse."

Ten-nai-tsosi said "Ask him." Osh-ka-ni-ne-be-gay then m a d e signs towards the horse, a n d the gun, offering to trade, b u t the American refused.

Osh-ka-ni-ne-be-gay then said "Let's kill these Americans, they are always m e a n a n d have no 'accomodation about them.' " T h e boy said "All right, let's kill them," but Ten-nai-tsosi said "No, do not kill them because you w a n t to do so. Perhaps your relations would not w a n t you to do anything like that." Osh-ka-ni-ne-be-gay said " T h e reason I w a n t to kill the Americans is because they killed some of my people away back when I was a small boy a n d I say lets kill these Americans." T h e boy said "All right we will kill them." Ten-nai-tsosi again said "do not h a r m them."

But Osh-ka-ni-ne-be-gay picked u p a n axe t h a t was lying on the ground a n d told the boy to " G o to the gun a n d take a hold of it." T h e American came u p a n d took a hold of the handle of the axe, a n d tried to take it away from Osh-ka-ni-ne-be-gay, b u t he told the American he only wanted to see how sharp it was, so the American let loose. By t h a t time the boy was at the g u n a n d was unfastening the scabbard. T h e American went to him a n d told h i m to leave the gun alone, and stooped down to pick it u p when Osh-ka-ni-ne-be-gay came u p behind him, the American, a n d struck him in the back of the h e a d with the axe, killing him instantly. Ten-naitsosi was still sitting by the fire when he got u p and went over a n d picked u p the Winchester Rifle and the small pistol which I have here, and now t u r n over to you, D . M . Riordan, U . S . I n d i a n Agent. Just then two old Navajos came u p [one was D a g h a a Yazhi, "Little Mustache"] a n d one of the old fellows cleaned his own eyes a n d looked on, a n d said " W h a t have you boys been doing fighting or w h a t . " Ten-nai-tsosi pointed to Osh-ka-ni-ne-be-gay a n d said " T h a t is the m a n t h a t killed the American." Just then they saw the other American coming towards the c a m p with the horses. T h e old fellow asked " W h a t are you going to do with that American t h a t is coming with the horses."

Ten-nai-tsosi again pointed to Osh-ka-ni-ne-be-gay and said " H e killed this American, a n d I don't know w h a t he will do with this other one." T h e

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old fellow said "As long as one is killed, it is better to kill the other one too for if they are murdered no one will ever know anything about it." The Indians then all went away from the camp a little ways when they stopped. The old fellow said "You had better send over to Osh-ka-ni-ne's camp and get a Winchester Rifle there that is a very good gun so as to make sure to kill this other American." Osh-ka-ni-ne-be-gay said "What is the use of sending for a gun when we have the Americans' Winchester gun right here." Then Osh-ka-ni-ne-be-gay fired upon the approaching American with the Winchester rifle. The American at once tied the three horses he had with him together making a kind of breastwork. Osh-kani-ne-be-gay fired four shots killing all three of the horses and continued shooting until he had used up all the cartridges in the gun, eight in all.

The old fellow [Daghaa Yazhi] said "lets crawl up close to the American as we have no more gun cartridges to shoot and kill him with our pistols." The American was lying down between the bodies of the dead horses. So they all commenced to crawl towards the American from different directions. The old fellow got the nearest to him, about 25 feet away, a bunch of grass hiding him from the view of the American. They all commenced to shoot at the American with their pistols, he returning the fire and as the old fellow raised his head over the bunch of grass the American saw him and shot him through the head, the ball going in near his eye & came out back of his ear. The old fellow got up and ran away, falling down every little while. They, the Indians, then all left, and went to an Indian Hogan (hut) where they made a fire to warm the old fellow that was wounded, and from there they sent word to Osh-ka-ni-ne about this scrape and soon after dark Osh-ka-ni-ne with some of his followers came there. They put a watch for the American to see which way he went when he left. Away after dark the watchman came back and reported that the American was gone, but he could not tell which way he went. Osh-ka-ni-ne and his son Osh-ka-ni-ne-be-gay and his followers started on the trail of the American that night, and they came back the next day, and said they had killed that other American. Oshka-ni-ne-be-gay wanted to kill the Americans the first night but his wife hid his moccasins away so he could not go to the Americans' camp until the morning. I got this gun and pistol from Ten-nai-tsosi who said he had nothing to do with the killing, but was opposed to it from beginnig to end, and that he buried the American who was killed at the camp the next day after the murder. I saw the grave myself. All the other things, saddles, blankets &c were burnt up because they were covered with blood. Two other horses which belonged to the Americans I brought with me as far as the Chin-lee-Valley where they gave out and also two horses which were taken from Mr. Mitchell during the recent trouble there.

Ten-nai-tsosi told the murderers that he was coming to the Agency to state these facts. He came with me as far as my horse herd in the Chinlee-Valley where I left him in charge of the four horses. He will be in with them as soon as they are able to travel.

These are the facts as I got them from eye witnesses. This is my report and is all I know about the matter of the killing of the two Americans

by Navajos near Navajo Mountain.

Navajo Frontiers in Utah Witness, S. E. Marshall

155 his PETE X mark

Signed in the presence of and interpreted by HENRY DODGE, Interpreter Navajo Agency, N.M. May 4th, 1884

The next day, May 5, Dine Ts'osi, "Slender Navajo," from Monument Valley went to Fort Defiance and made a statement to Agent Riordan regarding the killings of Walcott and McNally. Making much of his own innocence, he placed most of the blame upon Hashkeneinii Biye'.24 Two days later â&#x20AC;&#x201D; May 7 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Agent Riordan's Navajo Scouts brought Chief Hashkeneinii and his son Hashkeneinii Biye', in to the Fort Defiance Agency. Accompanying them was a large force of Hashkeneinii's armed followers. Also with them came Ganado Mucho or Totsohnii Hastiin, chief from the Ganado, Arizona, area, whose influence extended over some four thousand Navajos including Hashkeneinii's band. A few weeks earlier during a dispute at Mitchell's trading post (the trader on the San Juan who had outfitted Walcott and McNally), the Mitchells had shot and killed a Navajo, wounded two others severely, and fired upon two Navajo squaws. Nothing had been done about this shooting scrape to satisfy the Navajos' loss. For this reason Ganado Mucho declined to turn Hashkeneinii and his son over to the agent for arrest. Without military support, the agent was powerless.25 While at the agency, however, a statement was recorded from Hashkeneinii Biye' regarding the events which occurred on or about March 31, 1884, when Walcott and McNally were killed. Chief Hashkeneinii and Bilii Ligai, "White Horse," corroborated the story as told by Hashkeneinii Biye'.26 His story implicated Dine Ts'osi who, in his own statement of May 4, had protested his innocence in the affair. Hashkeneinii, his son, and those accompanying them then returned to Monument Valley.

In the meantime Riordan resigned as Navajo agent and John H. Bowman assumed charge of the agency June 30, 1884. On July 3 he wrote the commissioner: 24 "Story" of Ten-nai-tsosi [Dine Ts'osi], May 5, 1884, FD-4A, pp. 233-37; Riordan to Commissioner, May 6, 1884, FD-4A, p. 238.

23 Marshall to Commissioner, May 8, 1884, FD-4A, pp. 248-51.

28 Statement of Osh-ka-ni-ne-be-gay [Hashkeneinii Biye'], May 7, 1884, FD-4A, pp. 23947.

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Utah Historical Quarterly At once u p o n my taking charge of the Agency I m a d e the d e m a n d that the guilty parties should come in and surrender themselves as they are dist a n t from the Agency fully 175 miles. I gave t h e m ten days time, and if they are not here at the expiration of the ten days, it is my purpose to send the Scouts to m a k e the arrest, a n d if they are not able to carry out my orders, then will call u p o n the military for help. 2 7

The following day, certain that the Navajos would not surrender at the appointed time, July 10, he requested Lieutenant Colonel R. E. A. Crofton, commander at Fort Wingate, to order a company of cavalry to report at the agency on July 11, fully equipped for a trip of 150 to 200 miles. Guides and scouts were to be provided by the agency.28 However, on July 10 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the appointed day â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Bowman's scouts brought Chief Hashkeneinii to the agency where he was immediately placed under arrest, and the following day was sent under guard to Fort Wingate. Agent Bowman's confidence in his scouts was such that he informed Colonel Crofton that he did not believe he would need the military escort of twenty-five soldiers, but he did request that they remain at the agency until the affair was settled.29 The same day, July 11, the scouts arrested Daghaa Yazhi, "Little Mustache," the old man who was shot in the head during the fight in which the prospectors were killed. A statement regarding his participation in the killings was taken from him, and Agent Bowman determined to keep him prisoner at the agency as he was "a very old man, and still suffering from the wound in the head inflicted by the young man McNally." 30 Before July 18, Bowman's scouts came in with Dine Ts' osi, "Slender Navajo," and reported that Hashkeneinii Biye' had left Monument Valley about the time his father was arrested and had not been seen since. It was rumored, however, that he was on his way to Fort Wingate seeking an opportunity to see his father and, if possible, to assist him in escaping.31 Hashkeneinii had sent word to his son to come in and surrender. In the meantime Agent Bowman had dispatched a squad of Navajo Scouts to Monument Valley to inform the Navajos that if they did not surrender Hashkeneinii Biye', a force would be sent large enough to round up all 27

John H. Bowman to Commissioner, July 3, 1884, FD-5, pp. 17-18.

Bowman to Lieutenant Colonel R. E. A. Crofton, July 4, 1884 FD-5 pp. 20-21 and July 6, 1884, FD-5, pp. 30-32.

29 Bowman to Crofton, July 11, 1884 (2 letters), FD-5, pp. 74-75 76-77; Bowman to Commissioner, July 12, 1884, FD-5, pp. 80-81.

30 Story of Tug-i-yezzy [Daghaa Yazhi], July 12, 1884, FD-5, pp. 82-83; Bowman to Commissioner, July 12, 1884, FD-5, pp. 80-81.

33 Bowman to Crofton, July 18, 1884, FD-5, pp. 104-5.

28

Navajo Frontiers in Utah

157

their stock and bring them in to be held at the agency until they gave him up.32 On July 28 Bowman informed Colonel Crofton: I a m n o w t h r e a t e n e d with a " r a i d " by t h e five wives of this "old m a n " [Hashkeneinii] w h o are said to be o n their w a y to suplicate for t h e release of their joint husband. 3 3

The failure of Bowman's scouts to arrest Hashkeneinii Biye' prompted Agent Bowman to call a council, and on August 14 he informed Colonel Crofton: I have called a council of Chiefs a n d H e a d m e n of this tribe to meet on m o n d a y next a t M r . [ T h o m a s V.] K e a m s ' R a n c h a n d at t h a t t i m e shall endeavor to impress t h e m with t h e full i m p o r t a n c e of this matter. 3 4

The agent also arranged for a military escort to accompany him to Monument Valley to effect the arrest of Hashkeneinii Biye', to recover the bodies of Walcott and McNally, and capture, if possible, some Utes who had recently killed two Navajo Scouts in southeastern Utah. In the meantime reports indicated that Hashkeneinii Biye' had taken refuge with a large band of renegade Utes including those who were involved in killing the Navajo Scouts in Utah. It was also reported that the Utes were preparing to fight in order to protect Hashkeneinii Biye' and prevent him from being taken.35 On August 15 Bowman, accompanied by the agency interpreter Chee Dodge, the agency blacksmith who was also chief of scouts, ten Navajo Scouts, and forty soldiers of the Sixth Cavalry under command of a Lieutenant Kingsbury, set out for Monument Valley by way of Keams Canyon, Arizona.36 From there Agent Bowman reported on August 18: Will n o t leave h e r e until m o r n i n g . W e were delayed one day because o u r b u c k b o a r d did not get in T h e Soldiers are here a n d will go with us. T h e r e are a great m a n y I n d i a n s here a n d t h e air is thick with r u m o r s of w a r a n d other absurd reports. T h e I n d i a n s a r e badly stirred u p .

32

Ibid., 98-100.

Ibid., July 28, 1884, p. 157.

31 Ibid., August 14, 1884, p. 219.

33 Ibid., pp. 221-22; Bowman to Thomas V. Keams, August 14, 1884, FD-5, pp. 223-25; Marshall to Crofton, August 17, 1884, FD-5, p. 234; Marshall to Crofton, August 21, 1884, FD-5, pp. 243-47; Marshall to Crofton, August 19, 1884, FD-6, p. 8; Bowman to Commissioner, August 25, 1884, FD-5, pp. 304-15; Marshall to Commissioner, August 22, 1884, FD-5, pp.

250-51.

36 Marshall to Crofton, August 15, 1884, FD-5, pp. 231-32; Bowman to Keams, August 14, 1884, FD-5, pp. 223-24; Bowman to Commissioner, August 25, 1884, FD-5, pp. 304-15.

33

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Utah Historical Quarterly

At Mr. Keams's suggestion, Bowman requested that a company of cavalry be sent "so if necessary it could cooperate with Lt. Kingsbury's command. . . ." 37 Bowman also learned at the council that the Navajos wished to avert a general war with their traditional enemies the Utes, who raised no stock except horses, were a fighting tribe, and had little to lose by war. The Navajos further claimed that the Utes would go to war with them on the slightest pretext. For this reason they had not attempted to take Hashkeneinii Biye' from them.38 On August 18 the force left Keams Canyon and started for Monument Valley. On the twenty-third Bowman received a report that, pursuant to his request for reinforcements, Captain Kendall of the Eighth Cavalry with twenty-six men and one wagon transport were standing by, and would go forward immediately in case of trouble. Also Captain Waterbury with his company of infantry were also en route to join Kendall.39 Agent Bowman's account of the trip to Monument Valley follows: . . . W e moved due n o r t h over a very rough and indistinct trail. Before leaving K e a m s I hired a trusty I n d i a n to ride as rapidly as possible to the U t e c a m p a n d return a n d meet us on the trail, after having first ascertained the exact situation there. This I n d i a n met us t h e evening of the second day out, and reported that he h a d been in their c a m p h a d seen Ish-ka-ni-ne-be-gay [Hashkeneinii Biye'] and talked with him â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that they were advised of my movements, the number, and progress of the soldiers, a n d t h a t they would fight us. U p o n receiving this information we determined to strike them immediately; c a m p e d for a couple of hours and then led by the I n d i a n above referred to, m a r c h e d all night across the desert, arriving at their c a m p at day break, intending to surround, surprise, and capture them, but found to our disgust t h a t they h a d fled early in the evening.

T h e y h a d scattered out a n d left no visible trail that we could follow. Feeling assured t h a t further efforts to effect their arrest a t t h a t time would be useless, and as the troop and animals were suffering greatly for want of water, I had them move back a few miles and go into c a m p where there was a small supply of water.

I n the meantime I instructed the scouts to scatter out, scour the country, and endeavor to gain some information of the burial places of Walcott and McNally. T h e y finally succeeded in finding an I n d i a n who said he knew where the "old m a n " , (meaning Walcott) was buried, and that he would show m e the place. T h a t he heard that the young m a n was killed a n d left somewhere on the haystack m o u n t a i n s ; did not know where abouts. I therefore procured a pack-mule from the Lieut, and with five 37 Marshall to Crofton, August 21, 1884 (quoting Bowman's letter), FD-5, pp. 243-47; Marshall to Commissioner, August 22, 1884, FD-5, pp. 250-51; Bowman to Commissioner, August 25, 1884, FD-5, pp. 304-15.

38 Bowman to Commissioner, August 25, 1884, FD-5, pp. 304-15.

39 Marshall to Bowman, August 23, 1884, ibid., 255.

t

Navajo Frontiers in Utah

159

Navajo scouts a n d my Blacksmith, went to the place, which was about fifteen miles northwest of our c a m p . W e found the body buried about three feet deep in the sand, grave u n m a r k e d , except by a depression caused by the sand settling in the midst of level, sandy plain, a b o u t three or four miles from the foot of a low m o u n t a i n range. T h e body was buried with the clothes on — one ankle encircled by the knot of a rope, indicating t h a t the body h a d been dragged to this place after death. T h e skull was badly broken, a n d the flesh in the last stages of decomposition. W e also found, a short distance from this point, a place where they h a d buried a dog, a n d lying there were some bones of sheep a n d horses. I do not believe, however, that they killed m o r e t h a n one horse in t h e fight. Myself a n d Blacksmith took u p a n d packed the remains as carefully as possible. T h e I n dians, owing to their superstitious fears, refusing to assist us.

W e then went back to the c a m p a n d from there to the m o u n t a i n where McNally was reported to have been killed, a n d m a d e efforts to find his remains, b u t it is a large, rocky, mountain, covered with scrubby cedars a n d pine, a n d we were unable to find any trace of them. . . . I therefore deemed it best to bring the remains (of Walcott) here (to Ft. Defiance) a n d to telegraph you for further instructions. I have a suitable coffin prepared, a n d the remains placed therein, a n d a m now ready to ship t h e m t o wherever you m a y direct. I do not consider t h a t it would b e any consolation to the bereaved widow, or friends of the deceased to see these remains. You can easily imagine t h a t they present a very ghastly a p pearance.

I shall continue to use every effort to effect the arrest of the remaining fugitive [Hashkeneinii Biye'] w h o was implicated in this crime, a n d hope to be successful eventually. I do not believe t h a t the remains of McNally can ever be recovered as I a m satisfied that no one knows where they are except the Indians who killed him. . . . 40

Walcott's remains had been buried about eight miles from El Capitan (Aghaalaa, "Wool Piled Up") and about five miles from the range of hills known as the Haystacks. His grave was about one-fourth mile southwest of the place he and his partner had camped the night preceding their deaths.41 40 41

Bowman to Commissioner, August 25, 1884, ibid., 304-15.

Ibid., September 11, 1884, pp. 428-33.

Indian guide points to trail in this 1928 photograph taken on the Navajo Reservation. Utah State Historical Society, Charles Kelly Collection.

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160

Utah Historical Quarterly

Agent Bowman returned to Fort Defiance the evening of August 24 with Walcott's remains, having made the distance in twenty-five hours.42 On the twenty-sixth he wrote the agent of the Southern Ute Reservation to complain of Ute bands coming onto the Navajo Reservation and thwarting his efforts to take Hashkeneinii Biye' into custody.43 He decided finally that the best plan for his capture was to send a Navajo to Monument Valley to report when and if Hashkeneinii Biye' should return to his home there, then go in with scouts to arrest him.44 He also requested the Ute agent at Ignacio, Colorado, to arrest Hashkeneinii Biye' should he be found among the Utes.45 In the meantime Chief Hashkeneinii, Dine Ts'osi, and Daghaa Yazhi had been transferred to the jail at St. Johns, Arizona. After spending some time there Chief Hashkeneinii was released on $500.00 bond.

At Fort Defiance Hashkeneinii requested Agent Bowman to secure for him a silver belt, some other jewelry, six strings of coral and turquoise beads (the latter valued at about $400.00), and a pistol which had been taken from him at Fort Wingate while incarcerated there.46 Chief Hashkeneinii never recovered his jewelry or belongings.

When the case against Hashkeneinii and the other Navajos came up for a hearing in November 1884, the Grand Jury, after reviewing the evidence, failed to render an indictment. Agent Bowman had never succeeded in apprehending Hashkeneinii Biye',47 but Chief Hashkeneinii had spent some seven months in jail for his son's misdeeds.

When old Chief Hashkeneinii died in November of 1909, his hogan was burned according to Navajo custom.48 He was buried at "Standing Black Rock" some three miles north of Kayenta. His grand-nephew killed two horses over his grave. Hashkeneinii Mesa, named for him, located in the ancestral homeland of his family,50 commemorates his memory to this day. The property of the wealthy old chief was divided among his four wives and thirty-two Ute slave women by Asdzaa Ts' osi, "Slender 42

Bowman to Keams, August 25, 1884, ibid., 273-74.

Bowman to Agent, Southern U t e Reservation, August 26, 1884, ibid., 286-87.

44 Bowman to Keams, August 30, 1884, ibid., 333-34.

15 Bowman to Agent, Ignacio, Colorado, October 16, 1884, FD-6, pp. 120-21.

48 Bowman to Crofton, November 17, 1884, ibid., 252-53.

17 Bowman (unsigned) to Commissioner, December 19, 1884, FD-9, pp. 132-34.

48 Richard F. V a n Valkenburgh, "Navajo Naa'taani," Kiva, 13 ( 1 9 4 8 ) ; Cummings, Indians I have Known, 4 ; Neil M. Judd, Men Met Along the Trail (Norman, Oklahoma, 1968), 4 3 ; Frances Gilmor and L. W. Wetherill, Traders to the Navajos (Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1953), 172ff.; Kelly, "Chief Hoskaninni," U.H.Q., XXI, 219, says 1912 which is in error.

49 Paul Goodman, Tr. 2803, 2817-18, Docket 229.

00 Kelly, "Hoskaninni," D.M., 4, p. 8.

13

Navajo Frontiers in Utah

161

Woman", or Louisa Wade Wetherill, who with her husband, Hastiin John, had established a trading post in Hashkeneinii's domain in 1906.51 Hashkeneinii Biye' of the Lok'aadine'e Clan, was born on the mesa which bears his father's name. He was Hashkeneinii's only son and succeeded him as headman in the Monument Valley region. Before his death in 1941, Hashkeneinii Biye' had had eight wives and sired twentyeight children. He also was buried a few miles north of Kayenta.52 iv Navajo efforts to resist further white encroachments upon their northern frontier ultimately proved successful. Following the Hashkeneinii episode, Navajo rights to a portion of their domain in southeastern Utah were recognized. Perhaps with a view to preventing further encroachments and bloodshed, President Chester A. Arthur issued an Executive Order May 17, 1884, making a part of the Navajo Reservation all lands in the State of Utah lying south of the San Juan River and its confluence with the Colorado. Though President Benjamin Harrison eight years later â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in 1892 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; rescinded the order so far as it involved the area commonly called the "Paiute Strip," these lands were later restored to the Navajos by an Act of Congress dated March 1, 1933. In the meantime, additional lands north of the San Juan River along the Colorado border, and including the settlement at Aneth, Utah, had been given the Navajos by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905. Other lands in Utah, including McCracken Mesa to the north of Aneth, were acquired in 1958 through an exchange for Navajo land around present Page, Arizona.53 Even with these extensions, the present boundary of the Navajo Reservation in southeastern Utah does not fully reflect the Navajos' original northern frontier. In a judgment of June 29, 1970, the Indian Claims Commission determined aboriginal Navajo use and occupancy of southeastern Utah to extend northward to the Bear's Ears and the present town of Blanding.54

51 Gilmor and Wetherill, Traders to the Navajos, 178ff.; Richard F. V a n Valkenburgh, " D o n ' t Knock on A H o g a n Door," Desert Magazine, 10 (October, 1947).

52 Informant # 3 1 , M a r t h a Fisher; # 3 9 , Billy Holiday; # 1 8 4 , Tse K'izzi.

33 Navajo Tribal Code (Orford, New Hampshire, 1962), Vol. 2.

34 Finding of Fact No. 17, J u n e 29, 1970, p. 272, Docket 229.

The Gosiute Indians in Pioneer Utah

BY J A M E S

B. A L L E N A N D TED J .

WARNER

T H E HISTORY OF T H E INDIAN in the Territory of U t a h was, in some ways, a microhistory of the Indian in America. It was the story of confrontation between two cultures and the inevitable giving way of one to the other. T h e difference between the two was partly expressed in opposing concepts of land ownership. T h e communal system of the Indian, with its indefinite boundaries and its assumption that the land was for the use of all, could not long withstand the onslaught of those who believed in private ownership of land. T h e clash of civilizations resulted James B. Allen and Ted J. Warner are associate professors of history at Brigham Young University. "Go-Shoot Habitation, Pleasant Valley" by H . V. A. von Breckh with 1859 Simpson expedition. J. J. Young made the finished watercolor. Courtesy National Archives,

Gosiute Indians in Pioneer Utah

163

when whites encroached on Indian lands and this was accompanied by armed conflict, removal to reservations, sincere efforts to Christianize the Indians, and well-meaning efforts by high-minded whites to help the Indians. In addition, the advance of white civilization gradually but irreversibly changed the Indian way of life. The Gosiutes of Utah had such a history, and before the end of the nineteenth century they had become almost wholly dependent upon white civilization.

Historically the Gosiute Indians inhabited a region south and west of the Great Salt Lake. They were closely related to the Shoshoni tribes, but lived more or less isolated in one of the most arid and inhospitable regions of the United States. Because the harsh environment made it impossible to sustain large numbers in a given place, the Gosiutes did not constitute a unified tribe or even a band. They wandered as small groups of twenty-five to thirty people locating their camps wherever they found food. Most were concentrated in the Deep Creek region and in Rush, Skull, and Tooele valleys.1 There were no authoritative leaders or chiefs. In the winter several groups might band together in temporary villages located in sheltered places where surplus food had been cached and where wood and water were available. Prior to the coming of the whites these Indians had little contact with the Ute and Paiute neighbors to the east and south, although they did associate with the Western Shoshonis of Nevada. 2 The Gosiutes, as other Western Shoshoni groups, were typical "diggers" of the Great Basin. These wandering bands sustained life by gathering, root grubbing, or catching small game. Their primary source of food was a variety of plants, roots, berries, nuts (particularly pine nuts), seeds, and greens. They had a remarkable knowledge of desert life and harvested some one hundred varieties of plants. This diet was supplemented by lizards, snakes, fish, insects, rodents, rabbits, birds, crickets, and locusts, and by mountain sheep, deer, bear, and elk which were hunted in nearby mountains.

It was in 1849, two years after the arrival of the Mormons in the Great Basin, that the Gosiutes began to feel the disruptive, modifying influences of white civilization. In that year Capt. Howard Stansbury, who was exploring and surveying for the Corps of Topographic Engi1 Julian H . Steward, Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin, 120 ( 1 9 3 8 ) , 132; Carling Malouf, The Gosiute Indians, University of U t a h Anthropological Papers, 3 ( 1 9 5 0 ) , a reprint of the Archaeology and Ethnology Papers of the Museum of Anthropology, University of U t a h . N o t e : tribal names may be spelled variously.

2 Shoshone Tribe et. al. vs United States, Docket 326, Indian Claims Commission ( 1 9 6 2 ) , 21.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

neers, built a small adobe house in Tooele Valley. At the same time the legislature of the provisional State of Desert granted certain individuals the right to take timber from nearby canyons. In October, Mormon Apostle Ezra T. Benson and a few companions began construction of a mill in the valley. During the winter about a dozen white families settled in the area and in January 1850, Tooele County was officially created.

The townsite of Tooele was located and surveyed by Jesse W. Fox in 1853, and other pioneers soon began to locate farms outside the town.

The next year settlers built a mud wall around most of the town, which then constituted two square blocks, in order to protect themselves against the possibility of Indian attacks.

The encroaching whites had good reason to provide for their own protection for their intrusion had a disrupting effect upon the Indian economy and naturally aroused resentment. The Indians were accustomed to locating their own camps near streams and canyons in order to take advantage of the water and readily available food. Now the whites were establishing permanent settlements and building sawmills and gristmills at these same locations. There is no evidence that any treaty or other agreement was made with the Indians. Even if there had been a treaty the Gosiutes could hardly have understood, at least this early in their contact with the strange white culture, the idea of exclusive use of nature's resources and the granting of private rights to land, timber, or water.

By 1860 white settlement had invaded many of the favored Gosiute regions; cattle, sheep and horses grazed and roamed over the ranges.

In addition, the Pony Express traversed Gosiute territory, and at least twenty Overland Mail stations were built on Gosiute land.3 White population had reached a thousand, exceeding that of the Indians. As the Indians watched the land being appropriated for agriculture and saw livestock grazing over their favorite grounds they began to raid white settlements. As early as 1851 it was estimated that such raids near Tooele had cost settlers over five thousand dollars in livestock stolen or destroyed.4 Some raids were motivated by revenge and hostility but others were carried out to stimulate Gosiute economy! When food was scarce it seemed only reasonable to take the white man's cattle or to raid mail stations and other establishments where provisions could be found. In this " H o w a r d Egan, Pioneering the West 1846-1878 (Richmond, U t a h , 1917), 197-98.

'LeRoy R. Hafen and S. Lyman Tyler, "Lands of the Western Shoshone and Gosiutes" (MS, BYU Library, Provo, U t a h ) , 21.

Gosiute Indians in Pioneer Utah

165

way some of the Indians gradually began to depend upon the settlers for their livelihood. Little wonder that certain whites began to suggest ways of improving relations with the Indians. A few looked at the Gosiutes with sympathy, as did Indian Superintendent Jacob Forney, who visited them in 1858 and left the following description: They are, without exception, the most miserable looking set of human beings I ever beheld. I gave them some clothing and provisions. They have heretofore subsisted principally on snakes, lizards, roots, Etc. I made considerable effort to procure a small quantity of land for them but could not find any with water sufficient to irrigate it.5

Some of the Gosiutes may have attempted a primitive type of farming before the advent of the Mormons, but it probably amounted to very little.6 By the spring of 1859 the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Utah became interested in establishing new, more permanent farms among the Gosiutes. He instructed Robert Jarvis, an Indian agent, to 5 U.S., D e p a r t m e n t of Interior, Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the Year 1858 (Washington, D . C , 1858), 212. Referred to herinafter as Report of the Commissioner plus the date.

8 " R e p o r t of J. W. Powell a n d G. W. Ingalls," in U.S. D e p a r t m e n t of Interior, Report of the Commissioner, 1873, 58. Referred to hereinafter as "Powell a n d Ingalls Report. Note t h a t Powell a n d Ingalls are the only known source for this idea, and the basis for their statem e n t is not known.

View of Tooele, 1902. Surveyed in 1853 by Jesse W. Fox, the town occupies former Gosiute lands. Courtesy Tooele Daughters of Utah Pioneers. : , ,...•••.. : , , . . . , , , . , , . . . , .:..;••-•:;

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Utah Historical Quarterly

proceed to Deep Creek as well as Ruby Valley and to open farms at those places in order to keep the Indian from raiding mail company stations and immigrant trains. The "miserably starving fragments of the GoshaUtes" were to be induced to try farming at Deep Creek.7 Jarvis met with a number of separate Gosiute bands in Pleasant Valley. On March 25, he talked with about one hundred Indians who expressed their willingness to "go to work like the whites, and help raise grain," to be friendly with them, and to stop stealing their cattle. The Indians left for Deep Creek on April 3. Later, another and more hostile band arrived at Jarvis's camp, but with the help of Howard Egan and a Dr. Chorpenning he convinced them of the "necessity of abandoning their roving and predatory lives" in order to pursue agriculture. The agent was convinced that a majority was ready to do so.8 Jarvis was ably assisted in his Pleasant Valley councils by members of a third group of Gosiutes which, he said, numbered about one hundred and was at that time engaged in agriculture. Said Jarvis: They were present at both councils, and in council they told those miserable wretches if they did not go to work and quit stealing, they would bring their warriors over and kill every one of them; that they were dogs and wolves, and not fit to live.9

This more industrious band was anxious to obtain farm implements as well as instruction. No agent had ever visited them and they had no equipment, but with the use of sticks to turn up the ground they had already planted some forty acres in wheat that year.

By 1860, then, a decade after the first white settlement was planted among the Gosiutes, steady encroachment of white civilization was beginning to change the Indian way of life. For some, white settlements were a source of food. Others were willing to try their hand at farming, and were asking for necessary tools. Some roving bands, heretofore only loosely organized, found it necessary to deal with white agents, and this necessitated a tightening of their own organization and the choosing of at least a nominal chieftain. In September 1859, Superintendent Forney reported from Salt Lake City that the Gosiute band was broken and subdivided into small fragments, but that some sixty had a "quiet and welldisposed chief to control them" and were at that time "permanently located on the Deep Creek Indian farm. The remainder roam over a region of country from forty to two-hundred miles west of this city. A 7

Report of the Commissioner, Ibid., 363-64, 368, 377-79.

"Ibid., 378.

8

1859, 368, 377-79.

Gosiute Indians in Pioneer Utah

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concentration of them all into Deep Creek valley is in progress." 10 Plans for locating all the Gosiutes on farms -â&#x20AC;&#x201D; referred to unofficially as "reservations" â&#x20AC;&#x201D; proved to be overly optimistic; in the absence of a treaty the Indians could only be persuaded to accept the sedentary life and only a few were ready for it.

By 1861 the Gosiute at Deep Creek had failed to live up to expectations. Benjamin Davis, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Utah, found it necessary to dismiss the white farm agent because no farming was being accomplished. At the same time Davis was planning to organize the scattered Gosiute bands and bring them under one chief, and he discussed the matter with several Indian leaders. Apparently he hoped to concentrate the Gosiutes on the Deep Creek "reservation" for he urged the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to extend its limits and to survey and regularize the boundaries. His plan did not mature but it foreshadowed similar moves which were continually urged upon the government by succeeding agents and continually resisted by the Indians. 11 The Gosiutes found it difficult to adapt to changing conditions. They did not easily succeed in farming and in the early 1860s many were destitute. In December 1862, Amos Reed complained in a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs that much of the tillable portion of the desertlike country had been occupied by whites and the game had been destroyed or driven off. The Gosiutes, as a result, were threatening the Overland Mail and telegraph. The sympathetic Reed wrote that "it is really a matter of necessity with these Indians that they starve or steal â&#x20AC;&#x201D; unless they receive assistance." 12 Because they must "starve or steal," numbers of Indians were attracted to the route of the Overland Mail where they attacked company stations. The government hoped to prevent such raids by giving the mail company provisions to distribute among the Indians between Salt Lake City and Carson City, and the company itself provided an extra $12,000 in 1862.13 But during the winter of 1862-63, the Gosiutes attacked three mail stations, killing three people and wounding one. "It is a wanton agression on their part, and was without the slightest provocation," 14 10

Ibid., 363-64.

Report of the Commissioner, 1861, 131.

12 Amos Reed to William P. Dole, December 30, 1862, in "Letters Received by the Office of Indian Affairs, 1824-81" (National Archives Microfilm Publications, Microcopy M - 2 3 4 ) .

Hereinafter cited as "Letters Received."

13 Ibid. " J a m e s Doty to William P. Dole, M a r c h 30, 1863, "Letters Received." See also H u b e r t Howe Bancroft, History of Nevada, Colorado and Wyoming, 1540-1880 (San Francisco, 1890), 219. Bancroft reports t h a t the stage company lost 150 horses, 17 stations and 16 men in the "Gosh U t e W a r . " 31

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complained the Utah Indian superintendent, and this was followed by repeated requests for increased federal appropriations to placate the Indians. 15 In an effort to solve these and other problems, the government in 1863 concluded a series of treaties with the Utah and Nevada Indians. In the Gosiute Treaty: (1) the Indians agreed to cease all hostilities against the whites; (2) the Indians agreed that several routes of travel through their country would be "forever free and unobstructed by them"; (3) military posts and station houses could be erected wherever necessary; (4) telegraph, stage lines, and railways could be constructed without molestation through any portion of the Gosiute country; (5) mines, mills, and ranches could be established and timber could be taken; (6) the Gosiutes agreed to "abandon the roaming life which they now lead, and become settled as herdsmen or agriculturalists" whenever the President of the United States deemed it expedient to remove them to reservations; (7) the United States, "in consequence of driving away and destruction of game along the routes traveled by white men, and by the formation of agricultural and mining settlements," agreed to pay the Gosiutes $1,000 a year for the next twenty years. The treaty was ratified in 1864 and proclaimed by President Lincoln on January 17, 1865.16 In spite of the strong wording of the treaty, it did not actually deprive the Gosiutes of sovereignty over their land. It was a treaty of peace and amity rather than a treaty of cession.17 Although it gave the Indians no choice as to their ultimate removal, it did not set aside a specific area for their relocation. The Indians themselves, furthermore, probably had little conception of what the various parts of the treaty implied, and there was undoubtedly serious question as to whether newly created chieftains really had authority to speak for all the Gosiutes. In any event, the Indians continued to occupy their lands as if little had happened, and overt hostilities ceased.

Even before the treaties of 1863 were proclaimed, the United States moved to relocate the Utah tribes on reservations. O n May 5, 1864, the President approved "An Act to vacate and sell the present Indian Reservations in Utah Territory, and to settle the Indians of said Territory in the Uinta Valley." 18 The Uintah Valley was designated as the site for the "permanent settlement and exclusive occupation" of such Utah tribes 13

J a m e s Doty to William P. Dole, April 22, 1863, "Letters Received."

U.S., Statutes at Large, 13 stat. 681-84 ( 1 8 6 6 ) .

17 Northwest Bands of Shoshone Indians vs United States 342 U . S . 335 ( 1 9 4 5 ) .

38 U . S . , Statutes at Large, 13 stat. 63 ( 1 8 6 6 ) .

38

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Gosiute Indians in Pioneer Utah

as may be induced to inhabit the same. Most Utah Indians accepted removal, but not the Gosiutes. The Deep Creek "reservation" was not sold and the Gosiutes themselves could never be persuaded to move to the Uintah Valley.

By 1864 the federal annuity was forthcoming, but it proved to be only a fraction of the real need. Superintendent O. H. Irish, who distributed supplies to the Gosiutes in Tooele Valley, thought that it should be increased to at least $5,000. Even though Irish found the Indians "well disposed and peaceful," the Overland Mail Company still considered them hostile and predatory. The general agent complained to Irish that the land afforded the Indians no means of subsistence and the Indians were forced to come to company stations for supplies. The pine nuts, he said, had utterly failed that year, making it necessary for the Indians to attack and plunder in order to avoid starvation. Liberal expenditures by the federal government, he declared, were required to conciliate the Indians and protect the mail. He personally made arrangements for some Gosiutes to herd livestock for settlers during the winter.19 All this was only a fulfillment of Irish's earlier concern that the Utah Indians in general could no longer live peacefully on their ancestral lands.

19 O. H. Irish to William P. Dole, November 28, 1864, December 18, 1864 and H. G. Rumfield to O. H. Irish, December 8 1864, "Letters Received."

Wells Fargo stage station at Deep Creek (now Ibapah), Francis L. Horspool, artist.

Utah, in 1868.

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O n October 18, he had written to the federal Commissioner of Indian Affairs: The Indians, in all this mountain country, cannot live any longer by hunting; the game has disappeared, the old hunting-grounds are occupied by our people to their exclusion. We must instruct them, therefore,.in some other way of making a living than the chase, or else support them ourselves in idleness, or leave them to prey upon the emigration pouring into the country. For starving Indians will steal, pillage, murder, and plunge the frontier, from time to time, into all the horrors of savage warfare. 20

The government was serious in its efforts to concentrate the Utah Indians, including the Gosiutes, on reservations. On February 13, 1865, the Secretary of the Interior informed the Commissioner of Indian Affairs that any Indians who refused to vacate their "reservations" in compliance with the terms of the 1864 Indian Removal Act would not receive any treaty benefits.21 Ten days later a law of Congress provided for the extinguishment of Indian title to land in the Territory of Utah suitable for agricultural and mineral purposes. In spite of the 1863 treaties, the federal government apparently did not consider that it had extinguished Indian title to the land. The new law authorized the President to enter into treaties with the Utah Indians for the absolute surrender to the United States of their possessory rights to all agricultural and mineral lands in the territory except those set apart for reservations.

Such reservations were to be located as remotely as possible from existing settlements in Utah. 22 The Commissioner of Indian Affairs moved immediately to extinguish the Gosiute title. He wrote to the Utah Indian superintendent drawing attention to the provision in the 1863 treaty whereby the Gosiutes had agreed to settle upon a reservation whenever the President deemed it expedient. "That time has now come," he declared, "and advantage may be taken of the existence of that clause, or similar provisions, in the treaty with the other bands." 23 Following instructions, Superintendent O. H. Irish met with representatives of various Utah tribes on June 8, 1863, and negotiated a treaty in which the Indians relinquished right of possession to all lands within 20 Report of the Commissioner, 1864, 171. See also H. C. Doll to O. H. Irish, December 26, 1864. "Letters Received," in which Doll describes the very destitute condition of the Gosiutes at Deep Creek and their dependence upon the Overland Mail and neighboring ranchers.

21 A. P. Usher to William P. Dole, February 13, 1865, "Letters Received."

22 U.S., Statutes at Large, 13 stat. 432 (1866).

23 William P. Dole to O. H. Irish, March 28, 1865, in Report of the Commissioner 1865 149.

Gosiute Indians in Pioneer Utah

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Utah Territory. The Uintah Valley was reserved for them and the Indians agreed to move there within one year after ratification of the treaty. The government agreed to expend $25,000 annually for their benefit for the next ten years, $20,000 annually for another twenty years, and $15,000 annually for an additional thirty. In addition, the government stipulated other benefits and agreed to sell existing "reservations," including Deep Creek, for a minimum of sixty-two and one-half cents per acre and use the money for the benefit of the Indians. 24 This treaty was probably more generous in its terms than any agreement yet made in Utah, but it did not solve any problems. The Senate refused to ratify it, and the Gosiutes continued to occupy their land. The Utah superintendent reported in 1867 that the Indians did not seem to comprehend that the treaty was not binding until ratified by the Senate and that they were dissatisfied that it had not been put into effect.25 In the meantime, the Deep Creek "reservation" was surveyed in contemplation of its sale.26 By 1870 the economy of the Gosiutes had changed significantly. Hostilities, in general, had ceased, and most of the roaming bands had apparently settled down in an effort to make a success of farming in Deep Creek and Skull Valley. Hunting and gathering continued as a basic way of life, but the Indian superintendent was doing all he could to promote agriculture. In 1869 some thirty acres of wheat, potatoes, and turnips were under cultivation at Deep Creek.27 That same year William Lee, a Mormon farmer and interpreter, was assigned to live with the Indians in Skull Valley and help them in farming activities. The Indians were outfitted with teams, plows, and other implements, and, with Lee's help, raised a thousand bushels of potatoes, beets, and carrots. Unfortunately, their wheat crop of that year was destroyed by grasshoppers.28 Meanwhile, efforts continued to persuade the Gosiutes to remove to a reservation but the task was complicated by the fact that they were fearful of other tribes and could not be induced to live on any reservation with other Indians. Superintendent J. E. Tourtellotte suggested in 24

O . H . Irish to William P. Dole, J u n e 29, 1865, in Report

of the Commissioner,

1865.

25

F. H . H e a d to N . G. Taylor, August 22, 1867, in Report

of the Commissioner

1868

20

F. H . H e a d to N. G. Taylor, J a n u a r y 20, 1868, "Letters Received."

150-51.

117.

27

F. H . H e a d to Ely S. Parker, August 1, 1869, in Report of the Commissioner 1869 2021, 288-331.

28 Daughters of the U t a h Pioneers, History of Tooele County (Salt Lake City, 1 9 6 1 ) , 2 9 ; William Lee to Ely S. Parker, December 23, 1870 and William Lee to H . A. Morrow, M a r c h 13, 1869, "Letters Received."

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1869, therefore, that a separate reservation be established for them and that Deep Creek not be sold until another location was selected.29 In March 1870, Tourtellotte reported that the Gosiutes in Skull Valley were "much interested" in their farming and might do well. Even there, however, the Indians became frustrated as white settlers encroached upon their improvements and tried to secure the land for themselves. Tourtellotte, who had great sympathy for the Gosiutes, urged the government to secure at least a half-section of land for them until some permanent and final disposition could be made.30 With apparently less sympathy and less understanding of the problem, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs responded only by urging again that the Gosiutes be moved to Uintah Valley. Tourtellotte replied that this would be satisfactory neither for the government nor the Indians, and explained again that the Gosiutes did not have the same language or habits as the Ute Indians in the Uintah Valley and simply would not consent to settle there. If they were moved at all he thought they should join other Shoshonis.31

By September, Tourtellotte was even more optimistic for the future of Indian farming at Skull Valley. The Gosiutes had plowed, fenced, and cultivated sixty acres and he felt that they might even become selfsustaining. There was no begging, stealing, or depredating, he reported, and rabbits and pine nuts abounded in the area. The Indians also had some horses, oxen, and cows. They were among the poorest Indians in his superintendency but, he wrote, "if they continue to labor as they have done this year, they will eventually become the richest." 32 In 1870 the Western Shoshonis were attached to the Nevada Indian superintendency for administrative purposes. Since the Gosiutes were considered part of the Shoshoni group, the Nevada superintendent tried to learn something about those who were under his jurisdiction. Some, he found, were located near Egan Canyon where they were trying to farm on the property of John V. Dougherty. "Nothing whatever," he reported, "has hitherto been done for their benefit by the Government; their very existence seems to have been ignored." 33 Dougherty apparently took compassion on the group and allowed them to try to work some of 29 J. E. Tourtellotte to Ely S. Parker, September 20, 1869, in Report of the Commissioner, 1869, 230-31; Tourtellotte to Parker, December 3, 1869, "Letters Received."

3 '' Tourtellotte to Parker, M a r c h 28, 1870, "Letters Received."

33 Tourtellotte to Parker, April 31, 1870, "Letters Received."

32 Tourtellotte to Parker, September 20, 1870, in Report of the Commissioner, 1870, 605.

33 H. Douglas to Ely S. Parker, September 20, 1870, in Report of Commissioner, 1870, 560.

Gosiute Indians in Pioneer Utah

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his farmland. In 1871 they harvested some wheat, but they continued generally destitute and in October Dougherty asked the Utah superintendent to provide blankets and other supplies.34 William Lee, meanwhile, had gained the confidence of the Indians in Skull Valley and began eloquently to plead their cause to federal officials.35 In the early months of 1871, however, both Superintendent Tourtellotte and Lee were released from their assignments, and the Skull Valley Gosiutes, unsure of continuing aid, became discouraged. They pleaded with Lee to continue to represent them to the government. He wrote to the new Indian agent, Col. J. J. Critchlow, expressing his fear that if new help was not forthcoming the Indians would become so discouraged they would go back to their old ways of stealing and plundering. Furthermore, they still resented the continuing idea that they should be moved to the Uintah Reservation. "They are willing," implored Lee, "to do anything on their own land the land of their fathers," but he added, "they are not willing to go to the land of the stranger." Lee was also fearful that if the government did not provide additional aid the Indians would kill the livestock already provided for them. 36 The somewhat optimistic outlook of the year before had been premature.

In 1871 the federal government sent a special agent, George W. Dodge, to investigate Indian affairs in Utah. In December he met with William Lee, who volunteered to let him use his ranch for a meeting with the Gosiutes on January 9, 1872. No report is available of what happened at that meeting, but apparently Dodge was impressed with the desperate need of the Indians for he soon requested over $2,500 worth of supplies to be distributed to them. 37 This was much more than all the supplies distributed the previous year, and certainly a substantial improvement on the $1,000 provided by treaty. Like all other agents, however, Dodge concluded that the only practical solution was to remove the Indians entirely from the area. He first recommended that the Gosiutes and the Western Shoshonis be accommodated at Fort Hall, but later changed his mind and recommended that all the Shoshonis in Utah and Nevada be taken to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). He justified this by saying that they were of the same nation and language as the Comanches. 38 34

John V. Dougherty to J. J. Critchlow, October 18, 1871, "Leters Received."

William Lee to Ely S. Parker, December 23, 1870, "Letters Received."

38 William Lee to J. J. Critchlow, April 23, 1871, "Letters Received."

37 George W. Dodge to F. A. Walker, February 2, 1872 and William Lee to H. A. Morrow, March 17, 1873, "Letters Received."

38 George W. Dodge to F. A. Walker, August 31, 1872 and December 7, 1872, "Letters Received," 35

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The Gosiutes, however, had no interest in moving either to Fort Hall or Indian Territory. The incident illustrates the confused state of government Indian policy, and it intensified Gosiute disillusionment. For over twenty years white civilization had spread across their ancestral hunting and gathering grounds. Although they still had free access to most of their aboriginal land, the white man's villages, farms, stage stations, and mines dotted the land at the best locations. Their natural food sources dwindled as white population grew. The white man had proffered help, but it was usually too little and very late. The Gosiutes had tried to farm, and sympathetic whites still worked with them, but their success was less than spectacular. The white men had frequently talked of removing the Indians from the area entirely and had even induced some leaders to agree in 1863 to move whenever the federal government deemed it expedient, but they had no desire for such a move and certainly had no wish to live among the unfriendly tribes at any of the locations yet suggested. But as the years passed the Gosiutes became more and more dependent upon white civilization. In a few short years the trend would be irreversible, if it were not already.

In 1873 the United States government appointed John Wesley Powell and George W. Ingalls as a special commission to examine the condition of several western Indian tribes which had not been removed to reservations. In a preliminary report of June 18, they declared that the Gosiutes probably numbered four hundred persons and that some of them were engaged in farming at Skull Valley, Deep Creek, Salt Marsh, and Warm Springs. Commenting on all the Indians in the area, they observed that white incursions had spoiled their hunting grounds, forced them to scatter into small bands, and broken up their great confederacies.

Although they did not recommend immediate removal, they felt that the Gosiutes would probably prefer to go to the Uintah Reservation and recommended that they be ordered to relocate. Hereafter no annuities would be distributed except at designated reservations. The government approved these recommendations and in a letter of June 25 the Commissioner of Indian Affairs authorized Powell and Ingalls to carry them into effect.39 When the Indians at Skull Valley heard of these recommendations, they became greatly excited and their leaders visited General H. A. Morrow at Camp Douglas to express their concern. Morrow sympathetically relayed their feelings to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and at the " ' P o w e l l and Ingalls R e p o r t , " Powell to Commissioner, J u n e , 1873, "Letters Received."

Gosiute Indians in Pioneer Utah

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same time expressed his own opinion that the "valley now occupied by them is unfit for the purpose of farming by white men and if abandoned by the Indians it would relapse into a desert." 40 He argued that instead of removing the Indians from Skull Valley the government should unite the other bands of Gosiutes in Utah and Nevada with them there. Morrow was not clear as to how he expected more Indians to survive in Skull Valley if it were not fit for white farming, but perhaps he assumed that the federal subsidy would continue its support and that the Indians would simply be more content in their own homeland.

William Lee concurred with Morrow's idea that the Indians should not be removed, but he was apparently more hopeful with regard to agriculture. A year after Morrow's letter to the Commissioner, Lee wrote that 200 Gosiutes were on the Skull Valley farm and the 130 acres were under cultivation. He declared that Skull Valley was good for farming and was sufficient to sustain the entire Gosiute Tribe, which he numbered at about 700. The tribe, he said, was anxious to become self-sustaining and he expressed confidence that with the proper help this could be done.41 Powell and Ingalls made their final report in December 1873. They had determined that there were 256 Gosiutes in Utah and 204 in Nevada, making a total of 460.42 The commissioners concluded that continued annuities would simply establish the Indians as a class of wandering beggars and that collecting the Indians on reservations was the best way to serve them. They recommended that the 1864 law which provided for the sale of existing "reservations" be repealed and that these lands be opened to settlement in the usual way. The report emphasized the pitiable condition of the Gosiutes and said that all the Indians visited by the commission "fully appreciate the hopelessness of contending against the government of the United States and the ties of civilization." 43 It appears, however, that Powell and Ingalls did not fully understand the Gosiutes, as revealed in the Indians' expressions of concern to Morrow and Lee. In spite of Powell and Ingalls's report the Gosiutes were not removed to a reservation, although the government continued to press for removal.

In 1875 the Commissioner of Indian Affairs asked Powell for further information concerning the Indians. He reported again that they would 40

H . A. Morrow to Commissioner, J u n e 30, 1873, "Letters Received."

William Lee to E d w a r d P. Smith, August 2 1 , 1874, "Letters Received."

42 "Powell a n d Ingalls R e p o r t , " 5 1 .

43 Ibid.. 63.

41

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probably affiliate best with the Indians on the Uintah Reservation, but he felt that they would also mix well with those at Fort Hall and recommended that this was actually the best place for them. He objected to the Uintah Reservation on two grounds: (1) it would be more difficult to get the Indians there, and (2) he was fearful that they would be too close to Mormon influence.44 In December 1875, Powell received word that the Gosiutes had expressed willingness to go to a reservation but that they would prefer the Uintah Basin. To this he had no objection and his source of information led him to believe that all the Gosiutes would be willing to go.45 But the Gosiutes were not removed and they continued their farming at Skull Valley. William Lee continued to write letters promoting the Indian cause and asking for more aid to help them become self-sufficient.46 Farther west the Gosiutes at Deep Creek still farmed an area fifteen miles south of what was considered their "reservation." Annuities had stopped, white farmers were taking over the best lands in the area, but the Indians persisted in their efforts. Howard Egan proposed in 1877 that the Deep Creek "reservation" be sold in order to raise funds for supplying them with farming equipment.47 This condition seems to have continued from the 1870s to the end of the century, although by that time the Gosiutes had become a forgotten people. They practically disappeared from all correspondence and reports in the Office of Indian Affairs. Apparently no one took the trouble even to enumerate them. Powell and Ingalls's figure of the 256 Gosiutes in Utah in 1873 was repeated in every annual report through 1895, after which the Gosiutes disappeared completely from these statistical summaries. The Nevada superintendent did not list any Gosiutes for the 1880s and 1890s although the several Indians enumerated as not under an agent probably included Gosiutes.

The problem of determining exactly where the Gosiutes were and what they were doing in this period is further complicated by the fact that reports from the Uintah agency consistently listed the Gosiutes as one of the tribes occupying that reservation. In the specific statistical enumerations, however, no Gosiute was ever listed. It may be that some Gosiutes did find their way to the Uintah Reservation but it is doubtful that any substantial number lived permanently in the Uintah Valley.

41

J. W. Powell to Commissioner, November 26, 1875, "Letters Received."

J. W. Powell to Commissioner, December 21, 1875, "Letters Received."

48 William Lee to Edward P. Smith, M a r c h 17, 1877, "Letters Received."

47 Deposition of H o w a r d Egan, December 13, 1877, with papers of George Q. Cannon, "Letters Received."

43

Gosiute Indians in Pioneer Utah

177

From all of this it seems clear that the Gosiutes continued to eke out an unsatisfactory living in the latter part of the nineteenth century, trying vainly to withstand the continued encroachment of white farmers and miners but at the same time looking to Washington for help. It may have been fortunate that they still had within them the "digger" heritage, which prepared them to survive even under the most stringent desert conditions. At any rate, no removal policy was enforced against them and during the nineteenth century no specific area was set aside as a reservation.

Finally, by executive orders, two reservations were established on their ancestral homelands in the twentieth century. On January 17, 1912, President William Howard Taft set aside eighty acres in Skull Valley for the exclusive use of the Indians residing there. Five years later, on September 7, 1919, this very small reserve was enlarged by an additional 17,920 acres by order of President Woodrow Wilson. The Deep Creek or Gosiute Reservation in western Tooele County and eastern Nevada was established on March 23, 1914, when some 34,560 acres in Utah was declared an Indian reserve by President Taft.

With the establishment of the Gosiute reservations, the traditional cycle of Indian-white contact in America was once again completed. In some ways the Gosiute story was simply a micro-history of the broader American experience. The cycle normally included white encroachment upon Indian lands, a treaty of cession, a period of peace, white demands for readjustments after new incursions, Indian protest followed by Indian attacks, white retaliation, another treaty followed by additional land cessions, and final Indian acceptance of a more restricted reservation.

Nearly all of these were experienced by the Gosiutes of Utah.

Special acknowledgement is accorded to the Duke Indian Oral History Project at the University of Utah and to the F. Kenneth Melis Foundation of New York City for assistance in the preparation of this special issue.

The Walker War

BY H E N R Y HARRIS, JR. AN INTERVIEW BY FLOYD o ' N E I L

H : Corn Creek flows through there with the Uintah. And they moved from there over here, so that's when they called them Uintah. And their chief was Wakarum.

O : Wakarum?

H : Yes, the white man couldn't say walk so he says Walker.

O : I see. This is the source of the name the Walker War and so on.

H : Yes. O : I've heard some pronounce this Wakara. It was Wakarum!

H : Yes, it means yellow, yellow man, Wakarum means yellow man.

When they put his name down they spelled it Walker. At the time of the [Walker] War he was in, he was their leader, main chief.

Then he had a bunch of Paiutes from over the other way, Death Valley, Carson, Elko, and through there with him. And there were some members of the Shoshoni Tribe.

O : Those that were from up around the Tooele country were Shoshoni?

H : They were Utes.

O : I see. And the Shoshonis and the Utes were at peace then?

H : Yes, they were at peace. Why, they never did fight that I can remember of, but I do know the Sioux and the Utes used to fight. The Navajos and the Sioux and the Utes used to fight more than any â&#x20AC;&#x201D; constantly.

1 The complete interview with Henry Harris, Jr., of the Uintah-Ouray Reservation is in the collection of the Duke Indian Oral History Project at the University of Utah.

The Hopis and the Mormons 1858-1873

BY CHARLES S. PETERSON

t THE HOPI INDIANS HAVE been the object of widespread official and public interest since about 1880. By contrast they were largely ignored during the two decades prior to that time, with the exception of the Dr. Peterson is director of the Utah State Historical Society.

Eastern court of Oraibi, site of Thales Haskell's mission as it appeared in 1921. Courtesy Department of Library and Archives, Phoenix, Arizona.

MMMmMmm IMMW"'11"

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Mormons who were intensely interested in them. 1 Beginning in 1858, Mormon parties visited the Hopi mesas regularly until 1873 when Latterday Saint colonization of northern Arizona was initiated. Although it was neither studiously compiled nor widely reported, the record of the Hopi Mission between 1858 and 1873 is perhaps the most complete and valuable chronicle of the Hopi people during that era.

Mormon interest in the Hopis dates back at least to the spring of 1852, when a trip made by the Ute chieftain Walker to northern Arizona was reported in considerable detail to John D. Lee.2 In the months that followed, another Ute trading expedition was reported and Mormon leaders began to make occasional reference to the Hopis in sermons. A group of Mexicans visiting Salt Lake City in the spring of 1853 were eagerly queried about the Arizona mesa dwellers. They replied in such detail as to enable Thomas Bullock to report with considerable accuracy that "the Moquich Indians had seven towns about fifteen miles apart.

That they owned sheep and cattle, raised grain, and lived in adobe houses, some of which are three or four stories high." 3 This growing consciousness, along with the establishment of an Indian mission in southwestern Utah in 1854, made it merely a matter of time until circumstances provided the impetus necessary to surmount the canyons and river that separate Mormon and Hopi. Flagging interest in the Paiutes as prospective candidates for the gospel's net and the Mountain Meadows Massacre, strange bed fellows though they were, provided this impetus in 1858.

The course of events that year suggests that the Mountain Meadows Massacre provided the immediate incentive. Jacob Forney, Superintendent for Indian Affairs in Utah, had made use of Mormon Indian scout, Jacob Hamblin, in his effort to locate as many of the Massacre's youthful survivors as possible. Writing on August 4, 1858, he commended Hamblin 1 O t h e r exceptions include Colorado River explorer Lieutenant Joseph C Ives and Kit Carson. T h e former, who visited the H o p i villages a few months before the first Mormons did, characterized the Hopis as follows: "They seem to be a harmless, well-meaning people, industrious at times, though always ready for a lounge and gossip. They are honest, so far that they do not steal, but their promises are not to be relied upon. They want force of character and the courageous qualities which the Zunians and some other Pueblo Indians have the credit of possessing." Joseph C. Ives, Report of the Colorado River of the West (Washington, D . C , 1861), 127. Carson, who thought the Hopis could be placed "in antagonism to the Navajoes" and thus bound to the military, found an irony in the fact that this peaceful people h a d "never tasted . . . of the bounty so unsparingly bestowed" on the other Indians and suggested that unused Navajo annuities be diverted to this purpose. See U.S., Congress, House, D e p a r t m e n t of the Interior, Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 38th Cong., 2d sess., 1864-65, House Ex. Doc. 1, 302-3.

2

Deseret News (Salt Lake C i t y ) , April 17, 1852.

"Journal History" ( C h u r c h of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Historian's Library), November 14, 1853.

3

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for his diligent search and, promising compensation, instructed him to "endeavor to discover the remainder of the unfortunate children still supposed to be among the Indians." 4 Word soon followed that an effort should be made to look into rumors that some of the children had been seen south of the Colorado River. Almost immediately, Hamblin announced plans to pull missionaries out of the Muddy River area of Nevada because of the unprecedented thievery and defiance manifest among the Paiutes there during the summer. Fifty missionaries were thus freed for new conquests. The elders, he wrote, "now intend to visit the Moquis, Navajo, Crabs, and as many other of the tribes as is necessary to find those unfortunate children."

It is clear, however, that the expedition also represented an opportunity to fulfill a long-standing desire to preach to the Hopis on the part of Jacob Hamblin. Plans were laid to leave "one or two" missionaries "in a place as the way may open, or the spirit may dictate." Schooled by their experience with the Paiutes, Hamblin thought the elders were well prepared for a successful work among "a more noble race." The prospect was nearly overpowering and Hamblin expressed the general spirit when he wrote, "If I ever rejoiced in this work it is now." 5 Hamblin, along with a dozen companions including Spanish and Welsh interpreters, headed for Arizona on October 28, 1858. Making first contact with Hopi tribesmen at Oraibi, they visited other villages vainly searching for the missing children before turning homeward. The party left four of its members behind with instructions to spend the winter at Oraibi and at one of the villages on Second Mesa.

During the next decade and a half the Mormons sent no fewer than fifteen official missions to the Hopis. On at least three occasions, missionaries were left on the mesas with instructions to stay and preach for periods extending up to a year, but none of them seems to have remained for more than five months. All told, about 85 white men participated in one or more of the fifteen expeditions, with total personnel for the trips approaching 125 men. Jacob Hamblin made every trip. Thales Haskell and Ira Hatch and one or two others also returned many times.

Expeditions were usually made in the fall or winter and, as a general rule, lasted no longer than two or three months. In each of the winters of 1860-1861 and 1862-1863, two trips were made. Between 1865 and 1869 preoccupation with Navajo raids in southern Utah and fear of 4

Forney to Hamblin, August 4, 1858, Jacob Hamblin File (L.D.S. Church Historian's Library).

5 "Journal History," September 10, 1858.

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hostile bands along the route apparently kept the missionaries at home.

Otherwise, the Mormons sent an expedition to the Hopis nearly every year.6 During this period, no Mormon seems to have employed the name Hopi. Rather, the terms Moquis and Moquitch were commonly used.

The mission itself was usually referred to as the Moquich Mission. The missionaries employed a variety of names for the several Hopi towns.

Most of these bore little relationship to modern nomenclature, but some like Hotevilla and Moenkopi were exceptions. However, the name Moenkopi (or Moencopi, and other spellings) was also indiscriminately applied to Moenave, an oasis seven miles west of present Moenkopi where John D. Lee lived briefly in 1873, and to the entire system of springs that seeps from the cliffs adjacent to Moenkopi Wash.

The missionaries of 1858 failed to locate any youthful survivors of the Mountain Meadows Massacre but they did find much that intrigued and excited them. In the first place, they found a sedentary people tending farms and flocks and industriously meeting their own needs for homes, clothing, and utensils. More important, the missionaries found an isolated people unspoiled by contact with other whites. Indeed, the Hopi Indians seemed to provide a unique oportunity for the Mormons.

Here, as nowhere else, Mormon preaching and Brigham Young's Indian policy could be tested without interference. Relations with Utah's tribes had been marred by the frictions of close living, by nomadic life patterns and, following the Utah War, by an Indian policy dictated and conducted by non-Mormon agents from Washington, D.C. Consequently, the Hopis, insulated and aloof, stirred deep feelings of affinity in the Mormons and constituted an opportunity for evangelizing that could scarcely be resisted. This more than anything else explains the church's persistent interest in the Hopis.

The missionaries also found a people some of whom, at least, seemed to recognize the Mormons as men of destiny. On the first Hopi mission, the whites were hailed into a white-washed hall at Oraibi and told it had been in constant readiness to receive white and bearded ambassadors from the west.7 Hopi tradition, it seems, looked to the time when bearded prophets, usually said to be three in number, would lead the Hopis back 8 T h e best single account for the Hopi missions is still James A. Little, Jacob Hamblin, A Narrative of His Personal Experience, as a Frontiersman, Missionary to the Indians and Explorer (Salt Lake City, 1881). O t h e r secondary accounts appear in Pearson H. Corbett, Jacob Hamblin the Peacemaker (Salt Lake City, 1952) and Paul Bailey, Jacob Hamblin Buckskin Apostle (Los Angeles, 1961).

7 Little, Jacob Hamblin, A Narrative, 6 2 ; Bailey, Jacob Hamblin Buckskin Apostle, 205.

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across the Colorado River whence they had come as the result of an ancient treaty with the Paiutes. As told to Jacob Hamblin and his associates, this story implied that the Mormons were the long-awaied white leaders. In their dealings with the missionaries the Hopis used the tradition to meet a variety of situations: to explain their scorn for the Paiutes who had broken the treaty, to justify reluctance for crossing the Colorado River prematurely, and most frequently to explain the alleged Hopi rejection of other whites and their affinity for the Mormons. Characteristic of its use in the latter connection was an assurance given Jacob Hamblin in 1863 that the Hopis were confirmed, in the traditions of their forefathers; that a white and bearded men would come from the East and try to destroy them, therefore, they ought to have as little as possible to do with them; but white and bearded men would come from the West who would have a good spirit and would bless them and try to save them; the tradition teaches that when these from the West should appear they were to be taken into the houses and supplied with the best fare they had to give. This tradition is deeply rooted in the minds of the Moqui. Many of the old men say their fathers told it to them, hence when they meet us they meet us as good men and friends.8

It is difficult to know how sincere the Hopis were when they recounted such stories, but it is certain that the bearded prophet tradition continued to affirm the Mormon's own idea of himself as a messenger of destiny and to buoy his aspiration that the Hopis would one day respond to his preachments.

The Hopis also are reported to have predicted that the Mormons would eventually come and live among them. In fact some of them expressed this sentiment to Jacob Hamblin during his first visit. Returning to southern Utah he related "that some of their chief men felt impressed to state, that some of the Mormons would settle in the country south of them, and that their course of travel would be up the Little Colorado."

James G. Bleak who heard Hamblin make this report later noted that, "There was at that time no thought of such a thing among the visitors, or their coreligionists; but since has such been actually the case." 9 As the foregoing indicates, the Hopis were usually friendly. The Mormons were treated with politeness and were repeatedly fed and housed. The Utahns were also given sanctuary from marauding Navajos.

Some of them found true and close Hopi friends. Tuba, who was gen8 Jacob Hamblin to Brigham Young, May 18, 1863, Hamblin File (L.D.S. Church Historian's Library). For another version of the "three prophets" story see James G. Bleak, "Annals of the Southern Utah Mission" (Utah State Historical Society), Book A, 49.

9 Bleak, "Annals," Book A, 41.

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John D. Lee's cabin at Jacob's Pools, Arizona, ca. 1873. Utah Historical Society, Charles Kelly Collection, (E. O. Beaman,

State photographer).

erally amenable to Mormon efforts to alter the Hopi life style, was friendly from an early time, appearing first in the diary of Thales Haskell for 1859-1860.10 At times, the Hopis displayed a certain willingness to submit to Mormon teaching though few were truly influenced by it.

Mormons were also included in the ceremonials of the Hopis and were undoubtedly among the first Anglo-Americans to see the famous Hopi dances. Speaking of the first dance he witnessed, Jacob Hamblin wrote, "I have been to many an Indian dance but this surpassed any I ever witnessed." " One of the best Mormon accounts of Hopi dances appears in John Steele's report of the 1862 mission. Of this Steele wrote: Saturday was the Fest [sic] day a n d into whatever house we entered, we were presented with victuals and enjoyed ourselves as well as could be expected, it being a feasting and dancing time to bring down snow to water their ground, which was at the new moon. For three days and nights they danced and m a d e preparations for the final religious rites of bringing down snow, which was performed in a large cellar, the only one in town into which we were not permitted to enter. Whether they were ashamed of their works, or t h o u g h t our faith would operate against them, I do not know. However they sent runners all round town with a prepared corn 10

Utah Historical Quarterly, X I I (January-April, 1944), 86.

Jacob Hamblin to Brigham Young, December 18, 1858, Hamblin File (L.D.S. Church Historian's Library).

11

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husk, which was handed in great haste to the inhabitants of each house, who breathed on it and handed it to their next neighbor who breathed on it and so on until all the inhabitants had breathed several times on it.

They handed it to us, and when we found out what was wanting, we could perform the ceremony as well as any of them. We were next presented with a painted stick with feathers tied on at several places and a handful of consecrated meal which was distributed among us, and with brother Haskell at our head we marched through town to a certain place outside, where the stick was stuck in the ground among some hundreds of the same kind, and each one sprinkled his meal on the feathered stick. This was done to incorporate our faith with theirs, in order that snow might come down and water their land. Several of them had hair wet and meal sprinkled on, in imitation of snow.12

Steele reported a heavy snowstorm as the misionaries left the village two days later.

In addition to the dances and ceremonials that accompanied them, Mormon accounts sometimes mention a sacred stone kept in an Oraibi kiva. The stone was not shown to many but its presence was later documented in the publications of the Bureau of Ethnology.13 Bearing inscriptions which, according to the Hopis, described the advent of prophets from the west, the stone and indeed the entire ritual and tradition of the Hopis, seemed to suggest parallels to Mormon doctrines and ceremonies.

But Hopi friendship had its limits. This was particularly true when food was in short supply. Each of the first two resident missions failed in part because of problems in finding sufficient food. The mission of 1858 left Benjamin Knell, William M. Hamblin, Andrew S. Gibbons, and Thomas Leavitt on Second Mesa. Without food or trade goods, their welcome quickly wore thin. They sought to sustain themselves by trading the few items they had or by working and begging for food. None of these measures succeeded and they were quickly reduced to near starvation. In recording their experiences, Andrew Gibbons wrote: Myself, Bro. Knell traveled round through village, found difficulty in obtaining food and that we did get was filthy beyond description, calculated in its nature to produce disease. At night we all met in council to see what was best for us to do for we was satisfied in our own minds that we could not sustain ourselves in this place. When we labored hard all day, carrying corn and wood up the rocks they gave us a little meat cooked in the most filthy manner.

12

" J o u r n a l History," J a n u a r y 8, 1863.

U.S., D e p a r t m e n t of the Interior, Bureau of Ethnology, Fourth Annual Report of the United States Bureau of Ethnology, 1882-83, 5 8 ; and Andrew Smith Gibbons, "Andrew Smith Gibbons' Diary" (original, Francis Gibbons, Salt Lake C i t y ) , October 19, 1877.

13

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After similar experiences at Oraibi and an unsuccessful hunting trip, the whites yielded. Trading their guns and ammunition to acquire a scant outfit and suffering intensely from cold and hunger, they finally made it back to the Mormon settlements on December 27.14 Only two men, Thales Haskell and Marion J. Shelton, were left in the Hopi country the following year. Unlike their companions of 1858, they were well outfitted with trade goods. As long as these lasted, the missionaries apparently found their welcome secure, but as their trading stock was reduced attitudes shifted. As early as the end of November, both whites noticed that their Indian friends were acting "rather distant." 15 Such worries notwithstanding, Haskell and Shelton continued on at Oraibi until March before giving up and heading for home.

From the time of Chief Walker's first report in 1852, the Mormons entertained the idea that the Hopis were anxious to trade. The first mission seemed to confirm this belief and even to suggest that an economic bond might be forged between the two peoples by developing trade, particularly in agricultural and textile implements. Experience, however, proved that the Hopis were at best lukewarm in their interest in trade.

Stubbornly resisting social change â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a trait that has since become clearly apparent â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and in possession of the only homegrown food supply in the region, the Hopis occupied a remarkably strong bargaining position. In 1859, Brigham Young sent a good supply of farming and textile tools along with other trade stuffs but, to the disappointment of the missionaries, the Hopis showed little interest in trading as they said that similar implements could be had for the asking from the army at Fort Defiance which lay only a few days march to the east. Later efforts to introduce Mormon industrial techniques met a similar reception.

Although it was never a good market, other trade goods attracted more favorable attention and pack trains of up to fifty animals were taken by the Mormons on some of the Hopi expeditions. Much of this commerce appears to have been conducted under church auspices. However, individual missionaries occasionally did take advantage of their journey to carry on petty private enterprises. Trading continued throughout the entire period, 1858-1873 but, despite one report of "a thousand Indians trading" at Oraibi, the Hopis never became dependent upon the whites.

Indeed, Mormon accounts indicated that the Hopis retained essential control of the market, bargaining with shrewdness and caution if not 14 33

Gibbons, "Diary," November 21 to December 27, 1858.

Utah Historical Quarterly, X I I , 84.

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outright reluctance. Typical was Thales Haskell's report of December 2, 1859: We have cut up our bed tick and are trying to trade it for beans meal, dried peaches, etc. They are the hardest customers to trade with I ever saw. They often want a shirt for a quart or so of beans. We sometimes get all out of patience trying to trade with them. Concluded to quit trading for a few days to see if we cannot get better trades. 16

The Hopis also trafficked with other Indians. Walker and his brother Aripene made regular trading trips to Oraibi. In 1859, while Haskell was at Oraibi, Aripene sent his agents throughout Hopiland and among neighboring Navajos announcing that he would establish trading headquarters at the site of present Hotevilla. This notice attracted large numbers of both Hopis and Navajos. Paiutes wandered widely in northern Arizona and they, too, probably engaged in trade with the Hopis and other Indian groups.17 Judging from Mormon accounts, the Hopis were the fixed element in an otherwise fluid frontier. There is_ evidence that most of them did not travel widely for trade or for any other purpose. Numerous references are made to Indians who had spent their entire lives between their farms and villages â&#x20AC;&#x201D; all within a radius of less than ten miles. Characteristic was the following report by Marion J. Shelton in 1869: The inhabitants travel very little, save it be those who go for salt, which they are constrained to carry on their backs from ninety to one hundred and fifty miles. One may often meet with hoary headed persons amongst them who assert that they have never been to the nearest village, seven miles distant. The farthest they have ever been from home is to the wild potato patch, three miles away.

As Shelton suggests, a major factor in Hopi travel was salt, and passing reference exists of Hopi trails to the Colorado River, the Little Colorado River and to a source of salt beyond the New Mexico border.18 Furthermore, three Oraibis returning from Utah with Jacob Hamblin in 1863 showed more than casual knowledge of trails along the south side of the 16

Ibid.

Ibid., 82-83. T h e Mormons were dependent u p o n the Paiutes for m u c h of their information on Arizona a n d Paiute guides accompanied most expeditions. O n e Paiute is said to have done missionary work for the Mormons. Of him H a m b l i n wrote: " W e learn from the Indians that Tutsegavit is preaching to a small band of the Apaches, and spreading a good influence among them. They live between this place [a Colorado crossing below the G r a n d Canyon] a n d the Cohonena Country [in the neighborhood of the San Francisco Peaks]. Tutse was ordained by bro Brigham some years since preach to the Indians, b u t has preached none for two or three years until the present time." Jacob Hamblin to Erastus Snow, November 26, 1862, H a m blin File (L.D.S. C h u r c h Historian's L i b r a r y ) .

18 Deseret News, October 30, 1869.

17

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Grand Canyon. But on the whole the Hopis stayed close to their traditional homeland.

As always when diverse races meet, communication was a problem.

The peculiarities of Mormon attitudes in this respect led to some interesting developments. These had their inception in 1852 when Chief Walker first called Mormon attention to the Hopis. Somehow John D. Lee got the impression that Walker had met Indians speaking a Welsh dialect in northern Arizona. To begin with Lee apparently believed the Welsh Indians to be a tribe apart from the Hopis but later reference indicates that the Hopis themselves, with alleged light-colored skin, brown hair, and occasional white (albino) individuals, were thought to have some mysterious connection with the Welsh â&#x20AC;&#x201D; probably part of the Welsh Prince Modoc myth. I have found no evidence of how the Welsh myth found its way into Utah history, but it seems likely that Lee or other whites, by use of leading questions, opened the way for Walker's intriguing account. The development of the myth during the next few years is uncertain, but it lived on and attracted sufficient credence to result in the appointment of James Davis to the mission of 1858 as Welsh interpreter.19 Davis apparently listened in vain for evidence of Gaelic in the Hopi tongue for no word of his success has been found and the missionaries quickly turned to other expedients for breaking this particular sound barrier.

The Welsh myth was abandoned more slowly by church leaders. In 1863, when a Hopi delegation appeared in Salt Lake City, they were rushed to experts in the Welsh language. This time the verdict was promising. Wise heads agreed the Hopis managed the near impossible sound of certain Gaelic gutturals without difficulty.20 So impressive was this discovery that some months later when the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Arizona passed through Utah he was assured the Hopis "could pronounce any word in the Welsh language with facility, but not the dialect now in use." 21 After being formally committed to the report of the Indian Commissioner, Utah's Welsh Indians story appears to have come to rest and no more is heard of it.

An even more remarkable experiment in communications involved the Deseret Alphabet which was in great vogue with Mormons of the 79 Typical of the Welsh myth was James G. Bleak's entry that Welsh words had been reported among the Hopis and that they might prove to be of Welsh descent; for this reason a Welsh interpreter was made one of the company. Bleak, "Southern U t a h Mission," 40.

20 Deseret News, February 13, 1863.

21 U.S., Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 294-95.

Hopis and Mormons

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era. A young missionary named Marion J. Shelton, who was caught up in the Deseret Alphabet's potential for lingual reform, was assigned to teach the Hopi missionaries Spanish after the 1858 mission revealed that some Hopis spoke that language. His attention thus directed to the Hopis, Shelton immediately saw in them a unique opportunity to put the Deseret Alphabet to practical use. With Jacob Hamblin supporting the plan, he was soon called as an elder to the Hopis with a special obligation to instruct them in the alphabet. 22 On arriving at Oraibi in the fall of 1859, he commenced at once to give oral lessons. By the time Hamblin left to return to Utah three weeks later, the enthusiastic Shelton could report that "those to whom I have given lessons have taken right hold to the alphabet and several of them know the first six characters, and we can hear them hollowing the sounds throughout the village." 23 This brief application of the alphabet had pointed up the need for an additional character. Suggesting simply an " I , a straight mark," Shelton wrote requesting Brigham Young's approval for its incorporation in the alphabet. During the next three months Shelton continued his efforts. His own skills increased, but after its initial popularity the Deseret Alphabet attracted decreasing interest until Shelton finally seems to have been compelled to bribe his one remaining student to keep him working at it. Shortly before Shelton and his companion, Thales Haskell, left Oraibi in March of 1860, the latter, with the lag of his spirits very much in evidence, wrote that he had "tryed in vain to learn the Indians the misteries of the Deseret Alphabet." 24 The hope that unlettered natives might be assisted in their course towards civilization by this experiment in language reform was evidently abandoned with the return of Shelton and Haskell and no later attempt was made to revive it.

After 1860, Welsh dialects and language reform forgotten, Mormon elders sent to the Hopis concentrated on Spanish and Hopi. The interest in Spanish was much broader than the Hopi Mission, and all Mormon colonists to Arizona and Mexico were encouraged to learn it. Many of them did so, thus facilitating communication with the Hopis and other Indians of the southwest. Only a handful of missionaries learned Hopi: among them were Marion Shelton, Thales Haskell, Ira Hatch, Jehiel 22 Brigham Young to Jacob Hamblin, September 18, 1859, Hamblin File (L.D.S. Church Historian's Library).

23 Utah Historical Quarterly, X I I , 97.

"Ibid., 93.

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McConnel, Jacob Hamblin, and, at a somewhat later date, Christian Lingo Christensen.

From the beginning of the Hopi Mission, the Mormons were determined in their effort to entice some of the Indians to return with them to Utah. In part, this was the old ruse of inviting a small group to visit the centers of white society on the sound assumption that the natives would be baffled and awe stricken by what they saw. But it was also more. The Mormon entreaties for a Hopi visit envisioned an outright gathering to Zion. In 1860 Brigham Young actually hoped that substantial numbers of them might choose to escape the constant badgering of the Navajos as well as the uncertainties of life on the mesas and migrate to Utah.

Once in the territory, it was planned to locate them in small communities along with an adequate force of missionaries to instruct them in the ways of civilization including modern agriculture and Mormonism.25 But Brigham Young reckoned without the Hopis' obdurate commitment to their own tradition and none came.

During the early years of the Hopi Mission, Jacob Hamblin made repeated requests that a delegation of Hopis return the compliment of his own visits by paying a call on Brigham Young and the Mormon capital. The Hopis were polite enough but stubborn. Their tradition forbade crossing the Colorado River. This was enough and Hamblin's best offers were futile until the winter of 1862-1863.

The expedition of that winter, which had gone south by way of a crossing below the Grand Canyon, was met by a rare show of force. Not expecting the Mormons to approach their village from the south, the Oraibis assembled intending to give them "a warm reception." 26 However, on learning the identity of the visitors the Oraibis received them kindly enough, and Jacob Hamblin was able to report a growing friendship between the Hopis and the Mormons.27 On returning to St. George on January 10, 1863, Hamblin related that he had again extended an invitation to "the Moqui people to send some of their chief men to visit Utah and have a talk with some of the Mormon chief men." 28 Objecting as usual that they could not cross the river until "the re-appearance of the three prophets who had led their fathers to that land, and who had told them to remain on those rocks until they should come again," the Hopis at first declined. However, after further consultation they changed their 23

"Journal History," September 4, 1860.

Ibid., J a n u a r y 8, 1863.

27 Ibid., M a y 18, 1863.

28 Ibid.

2a

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191

decision and sent four men. Some doubtful moments ensued when the Oraibis hestitated to cross the Colorado River, but the party arrived safely in the southern Utah towns where one native remained to learn English. The other three were taken on to Salt Lake City by Jacob Hamblin.29 There the delegation was handsomely received. They were house guests to Apostle Wilford Woodruff and made the rounds of the Mormon headquarters including visits to Brigham Young, the Church Historian's office, and photographer Charles Savage, as well as the Welsh interpreters referred to above. As a parting gesture, they were given a variety of hand tools and a cash gift. Aside from perfunctory statements that the Indians responded favorably, there is no account of how the Hopis reacted to the experience. On the other hand, there is ample evidence that the Latter-day Saint leaders were excited by the meeting and plans were laid immediately to send a party of one hundred missionaries to Hopiland. Writing of these plans, George A. Smith summarized the aspiration of the church: 29 I n his "Annals of the Southern U t a h Mission," James G. Bleak states that only three Indians accompanied H a m b l i n back to U t a h on this 1863 expedition. H e reckons accurately that three went on to Salt Lake City b u t makes no reference to the fourth man. Providing a clue, he refers in an 1869 entry to a " M o q u i I n d i a n n a m e Lah-se" returning with the expedition of that year. Book A, 113 a n d 135. O t h e r accounts of the 1863 expedition, including the official report by J o h n Steele, indicate t h a t four Indians went as far as St. George. See J o h n Steele, " R e p o r t of the Mission of 1862-1863," December 2 1 , 1862, "Journal History."

Hopis from Oraibi visited Brigham Young in 1863 to encourage trade.

A fourth Hopi with this group went only as far as St. George. Courtesy Smithsonian Institution.

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Utah Historical

Quarterly

while the protection of 100 brave generous a n d high m i n d e d missionaries would render their flocks a n d their herds, as well as their scalps, c o m p a r a tively safe while t h a t m o r a l a n d religious training which is necessary to m a k e the descendents to Lehi, Ishmael a n d Z o r a m , a white a n d delightsome people, c a n successfully be bestowed on their heads. T h e L o r d requires us to do t h a t which is in o u r power for t h e r e d e m p t i o n of those r e m n a n t s of J a c o b , a n d the result, after doing o u r d u t y we leave in His hands. 3 0

During the winter of 1863, Hamblin accompanied three of the Hopis back to Oraibi. While in Arizona, he explored extensively, looking for a feasible wagon road between the Grand Canyon a n d the San Francisco Mountains and studied the area south of these mountains for possible colonization sites.

But in 1863 conditions in northern Arizona were changing radically.

Escaping federal forces sent against them, Navajo renegades found refuge in the canyonlands of Black Mesa and Navajo Mountain from which they conducted raids on Hopi flocks and on the Mormon settlements west of the Colorado River. These hostilities halted Mormon attempts to colonize northern Arizona for a decade and even the annual trips to the H o p i Mission were interrupted from 1865 to 1869.

But the vision of a permanent Hopi Mission persisted. I n 1876, when the Mormon frontier was successfully extended south into Arizona, one of its objectives was to draw the Hopis to it. This policy enjoyed limited success at T u b a City where the Mormons lived as neighbors to the Hopis in Moenkopi for over thirty-five years. Joint occupation was less successful in the Little Colorado River towns. At least sixty-five Hopis lived for a time at Sunset near present Winslow. However, after floods swept their harvest away in August of 1878, these left convinced their predictions h a d been verified that the Little Colorado valley could not be successfully farmed. 31 Ironically, once a substantial number of Mormons h a d moved to Hopiland, the interest that h a d sustained the Hopi Mission for fifteen years soon abated. Wilford Woodruff, w h o lived at 30

G. A. Smith to Erastus Snow, February 15, 1863, "Journal History," February 15, 1863.

See Christian Lingo Christensen, " T h e Hopis," Times-Independent (Moab, U t a h ) , M a r c h 9, 1922. According to Christensen, whose reminiscing account was written over forty years later, a preaching visit which he along with Lot Smith a n d others made to the Hopis in February of 1877 "resulted in the fact that 65 Hopi men went. . . down to Sunset where by the help of the Mormons they raised 400 bushels of wheat which they carried home in the fall of 1877. I n 1878 many more came but they suffered the same fate we did when we lost all our crops. This ended the Hopi farming as well as our own on the Little Colorado. It was a pitiful sight to see these people wading out of the tremendous flood with their small belongings on their backs. They bade us goodbye sorrowfully, and expressed the hope that none of us would die in this display of the Creator's anger stating that they had left the corn fields and cotton fields of their forefathers' inheritance and this was their reward. Superstition works a hardship on innocent, ignorant people, always."

31

193

Hopis and Mormons

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:

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.

.

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MMM mmM:M\:MSiM MMMMMWMm

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Present-day view of Indian corn fields at Moenkopi taken from the site of the old Mormon woolen mill, remains in foreground. Photograph by C. Gregory Crampton.

Moenkopi for several months and on the Little Colorado for a full year in 1879-80, probably expressed the opinion of most Mormons when he wrote in 1883 that the "Oribas and Moquies are very dull and superstitious and hard of understanding compared with the Navajos, Zoonies, Lagoonies and Islatos." 32 With a few exceptions, such as Tuba City's Christian Lingo Christensen, the Mormon missionary impulse lay dormant as far as the Hopis were concerned after 1880. After that time the federal government began to take a belated interest in the Hopis and initiated educational efforts among them. About the same time protestant missionaries and Gentile traders began to appear.

In light of the cumulative experience of these various thrusts into Hopiland, we may now ask what the effect of the Mormon mission had been. In terms of the Hopis, it was small enough. No more than a dozen or so natives became members of the church. With the possible exception of Tuba and Tom Polacca, these appear to have had little understand32 Letter to Lot Smith, April 17, 1883, Lot Smith Letters, (University of Arizona Library, Tuscon).

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Utah Historical Quarterly

ing of what their new association implied and continued to live by their native traditions. It is likely that the establishment of Moenkopi was accelerated by the coming of the Mormons, but the development of a permanent village there would probably have occurred in any case when Navajo hostility declined after 1870. Otherwise, one finds little measurable evidence that the Hopi, or Moquich, mission had any influence upon the Indians. There is no evidence that any Hopis made the transition into the white society. No Hopi children were raised in white homes and, though there was some discussion of its possibility, no marriages appear to have been consummated between Hopi women and Mormon men.

The Hopis, on the other hand, wrought a considerable influence upon the Mormons. Their presence in northern Arizona did much to attract the Latter-day Saints in that direction. Routes and roads over which the Mormon migration moved after 1876 were pioneered by the Hopi missionaries. And of greatest consequence the Mormons, who were ever attentive to the dictates of a mission, were doubtlessly influenced in the southward bent of their colonization by the hope that the Hopis would prove pliant in their hands and become "a white and delightsome people."

/ Am an American

BY G E R T R U D E AN

INTERVIEW

CHAPOOSE

BY N O R M A

WILLIE

X

DENVER

D : Gertrude, a lot of people put your dad [Connor Chapoose] down as one of the most famous of the Ute people in our later days and one of the great leaders. Can you think of anything that your dad ever told you that really spurred you on or helped you to go ahead in this world?

1 T h e complete interview with Gertrude Chapoose Willie of the Uintah-Ouray Reservation is in the collection of the Duke Indian Oral History Project at the University of Utah.

/ Am an American

195

W: Well, he's always told us, "Never be ashamed of who you are." And you're never too proud to stoop over and help the person that's in need. You might be better off than most people, but don't forget who you are and where you come from. My dad used to tell me to never take a back seat to anybody. Always be proud of your heritage and who you are. Speak up for yourself 'cause nobody will do it for you.

And this is the same thing I have told my kids over and over again.

If you get knocked down get back up and defend who you are. If you are labeled as something, say that "I am an American."

The only thing that I can really strongly remember that he hashed over and over with us kids was, some day you're going to lose your identity as Indians. You're going to forget your language.

You're going to forget your culture, your tradition, and all of that.

And that's just where you're going right now, by not teaching your kids how to speak Ute, he'd tell us. And he told us be sure to teach the kids, your kids, my grandchildren, he says, teach 'em to speak Ute. And don't let them ever forget how we're supposed to live, who we are, where we come from. You know, it was really a big thing; we don't look at it like that.

But when President Lincoln set the slaves free he set the red man free too, he says. And he said, "Some day it's going to be asked who is the Indian, who's an Indian now?" Who's got their right heritage to claim this land? And you know what we're going to do?

We're going to say, "I am." And that person is going to say, "Okay prove to me that you're an Indian." And what are we going to say?

You are going to stand up and you're going to speak in English, "Well, I'm so and so's daughter, my grandparents are this," And he's gonna say, "No, that's not what I'm looking for." And some day somebody, it's got to be somebody that'll say [Ute]; and that's the one that that man's gonna say to, "Right, you're the Indian, the only Indian that's left." The only Indian that's gonna get all this reward or whatever is going to be at the end of that time.

Charles Kelly

197

Editors note: It is with great pleasure that the Utah Historical Quarterly presents this special Indian issue made possible through the fine efforts of Dr. C. Gregory Crampton and the contributing authors.

The Quarterly was in mid-production when news of Charles Kelly's death was received. Dr. Crampton had already secured permission for the Quarterly to reproduce Walker's portrait on the cover. It seemed appropriate, therefore, to commemorate the historical "leg work" done by Charles Kelly by printing a previously unpublished letter in which he details his discovery of the Ute chief's grave; and to follow that with a memorial essay by A. R. Mortensen.

CHARLES KELLY DISCOVERS C H I E F WALKER'S GRAVE Torrey, Utah, May 1, 1946 Dear Rod and Dale: x According to Carvalho, Chief Walker was camped on Meadow creek when he died. I had heard from Frank Beckwith a good many years ago that Walker was buried somewhere near there. Beckwith is well acquainted with the Indians at Kanosh, and so last Easter Sunday I asked Beckwith to go with me to Kanosh and see if Joe Pickavit, the chief, would take us to the grave. He agreed readily enough and we started out from the Indian camp near Kanosh. 2 Joe took us up Dry canyon, the first canyon north of Corn creek, and just south of another called Walker canyon. We drove as far as the road went, then hiked up a side draw, always climbing toward the top of the mountain. . . .

We climbed the mountain until we were beneath a very large rock slide near the summit. Above was the highest peak, and on the peak an outcrop of white rock. Joe said the grave of Walker should be directly beneath that marker. He looked for a dead pine tree and some aspens.

We found them just below us. Dropping down, we came to a small rock slide entirely surrounded by aspens, the only aspens we saw on the mountain. Joe said he thought the grave ought to be there somewhere. We started hunting for it. While he looked above I dropped down below to This letter, a carbon copy of which is on file at the U t a h Historical Society, was edited for publication by Charles S. Peterson.

1 J. Roderic Korns a n d Dale L. M o r g a n who h a d collaborated on West from Fort Bridger, published as volume 19 of the Utah Historical Quarterly, and who were long-time friends of Charles Kelly. An article growing out of this experience, " W e F o u n d the Grave of Chief Walker," appeared u n d e r Kelly's by-line in Desert Magazine, vol I X , (October, 1946), 17-19.

2 Frank Beckwith was a m o n g Charles Kelly's most intimate friends. Born in Evanston, Wyoming, the son of a banker, Beckwith was the long-time publisher of the Millard County Chronicle at Delta, U t a h . His interest in and knowledge of I n d i a n history a n d anthropology were proverbial. I n no small degree his knowledge of the Indians was firsthand, as few U t a h n s knew their I n d i a n neighbors as intimately as did F r a n k Beckwith. Joe Pickavit, whose n a m e Kelly spells "Pickyavit" in the Desert Magazine article, was a K a i b a b chief with whom both Kelly a n d Beckwith h a d been friendly for some time.

198

Utah Historical Quarterly examine some rocks which appeared to have been moved. Suddenly, near the bottom of the slide, I fotind the grave â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a hole in the slide rock about 6 feet deep. Everything had been removed. Joe said the grave was robbed by whites about 1909, and perhaps that is why he did not hesitate to show it to us. 3 This hole had been made by removing rocks in the slide, which is the usual Indian method of burial. The body had been put in and cedar poles laid across, then stones had been piled on the poles. The robbers had thrown out the rocks and also the poles, which were still piled near the grave. We made several photographs of the hole and surroundings. Then, hunting further, we found another grave, perhaps two, which had not been opened. I presume his Piede slave women were buried there. Two were killed when Walker died. Also a boy was buried alive on top of Walker's grave. He was walled in with rocks, and this accounts for the "wall" around Walker's grave reported by pioneers. Gottfredson says some Indians passed the grave two days after burial, and the boy was still alive.

He wanted to be let out; said Walker had begun to stink.4 I don't put much faith in that, since Walker was buried January 30, and the boy would have frozen to death in one night. Also it was so cold that Walker's body would not have begun to smell. But in any event, all accounts agree a 10 year old Piede boy was buried alive with Walker. The two small girls buried alive may have been put in a different place. Or they may be in the graves not opened.

After we had looked at the place, Joe told us he had never been there before. Said he got his information from an old Indian 25 years ago, and remembered it. I am sure he was telling the truth, because he did not know just what to look for, and in fact I discovered the grave before he saw it. . . .

I never expected to see Walker's grave, so this was a unique experience. We probably photographed it for the first time. Joe asked us not to do any digging, but otherwise showed no fear in approaching the place.

We all sat on the edge of the hole, and Beckwith even got down into it. As I said, everything, to the last bead, had been removed. Joe says the slide is never covered with snow in winter, because warm air from a cave lower down keeps it melted. We did not go down to the cave, but he may be correct.

Yours, (signed) Kelly Frank found horse bones.5

3 With reference to the grave robbers Kelly wrote elsewhere: "No doubt the bones of Chief Walker and some of his belongings are still in existence, but the m a n who robbed that grave has never dared talk, and if there are any relics of this famous chief still in existence, their a location is unknown. Strangely enough, many lesser Indians are commemorated by markers along our highways, but there never has been a m o n u m e n t to the great Chief Walker, without whose constant friendship the settlement of U t a h would have been delayed many years." Ouotation from an unidentified newspaper clipping on file at the U t a h Historical Society.

4 Peter Gottfredson, Indian Depredations in Utah (Salt Lake City, 1919), 84. s Written longhand below the typed body of Kelly's letter was his notation: "Frank found horse bones." I n the Desert Magazine article Kelly wrote that both Beckwith and Joe Pickyavit found horse bones and found them in sufficient quantity to convince him that the fifteen horses reportedly killed as p a r t of the burial rites h a d indeed been slaughtered at the site.

Kelly, " W e Found the Grave of Chief Walker," 19.

Charles Kelly

199

,_, IN M E M O R I A M JL H E OBITUARIES HAVE BEEN written, the eulogies have been spoken, Charlie Kelly's volatile spirit is at rest. Death came to this long-time friend and supporter of the Utah State Historical Society on April 19 in Salt Lake City. Harriette his wife of more than fifty years, survives.

Charles Kelly was born February 3, 1889, in a roaring lumber camp at Cedar Springs, Michigan, where his father, Alfred Kelly, an itinerant Baptist preacher, was holding forth at the time. In Ohio, as a boy of seven, he learned to set type in a small print shop which his father was using to turn out religious tracts. After a stint in college in Indiana, money ran out and Charles began his own peripatetic wanderings as a tramp printer in the Midwest and Far West. He served a hitch in the army in World War I, during which he met and corresponded with Harriette Greener. After discharge he decided to settle in Utah. Here, in February 1919 he and Harriette were married; and here he chose to remain.

For the next twenty years Charlie continued to earn his living as a linotype operator and printer, eventually becoming a partner in the Western Printing Company. In the meantime he had become interested in local history, and as a result of a trip to the Great Salt Lake Desert of western Utah in 1929, he became fascinated with the story of the Donner-Reed party. From that day on, as one of his biographers put it, Charlie was "irrevocably hooked in history." He followed every early trail, he read innumerable journals, diaries, and books on the Intermountain West, and he floated the Colorado River and its tributaries.

For another decade Kelly earned his living as a printer, but his hobby, his avocation, his very passion was the research and writing of the stories of the old West and particularly the Utah-Arizona-Nevada region.

His first book, a direct result of that trip to the deserts of western Utah in 1929, was Salt Desert Trails, a history of the Hastings Cutoff and other trails across the Great Salt Lake Desert used by pioneers seeking a shorter route to the gold fields of California. More fieldwork, more research, and in rapid succession a storm of books issued from his typewriter, many of them to go through more than one edition. In 1934, with Hoffman Birney, he published Holy Murder, the story of Porter Rockwell. Two years later Old Greenwood appeared. This was the story of Caleb Greenwood, trapper, pathfinder, and early pioneer of the West. In 1937, with Maurice L. Howe, he published Miles Goodyear, and the next year two more books appeared; Outlaw Trail, a history of Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch, and the edited Journals of John D. Lee, 1846-47 and 1859.

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As if this outpouring were not enough, simultaneous with his book productions and over the years to the end, a veritable stream of magazine articles and innumerable book reviews flowed from Charlie's typewriter.

M a n y issues of the Utah Historical Quarterly carried his by-line. Desert Magazine beginning in 1938 published at least fifty-two highly-illustrated feature articles during the succeeding eighteen years. Arizona Highways, Utah Magazine, Old West, True West, Pony Express, several Westerners Brand Books, and many other magazines carried his name.

O n the eve of World W a r I I , Charles Kelly quit the printing business, moved to Fruita, U t a h , in the Wayne Wonderland and soon became the first custodian (unpaid for several years) of the newly created Capitol Reef National Monument. Here, miles from a paved road, without electric power or plumbing, he and Harriette made their home for the next eighteen years in the heart of the country he loved so much. I n many ways this expanded and developed unit of the National Park Service is Kelly's monument.

Time was catching up with him. I n 1958 he retired and returned to Salt Lake City to make his home for his remaining years. Many artifacts, photos, journals, and diaries he had dug u p over the years he gave to several institutions, but the U t a h State Historical Society was the main recipient. Its library and archives are the richer for his generosity.

I n 1960 the society awarded him an Honorary Life Membership. In the fall of 1969, just a year and a half before his death, the American Association for State and Local History gave him its coveted Award of Merit for his contributions to the cause of state and local history.

Choosing to live the major portion of his life in a society that was orthodox and conformist, Charlie was neither. T h a t Charles Kelly was a character no one who ever knew him can deny. H e was a m a n with a barbwire personality, an individualist, opinionated and always strong minded; a m a n with a short fuse, an extreme liberal in some matters and very conservative in others. With it all, he had a generosity of spirit, an underlining of kindness and loyalty to those who earned his respect and admiration.

All who truly love and are uplifted by the vast open spaces of the Great Basin, the high plateaus of the Colorado, and the mountains in between, forever owe a debt to Kelly for the written legacy he has left behind. More personally, those of us who admired him, who have profited from his counsel, and who loved him, have lost a friend.

A. R. Mortensen, National Park Service

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UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

BOARD O F STATE H I S T O R Y Division of Department of Development Services MILTON c. ABRAMS, Smithfield, 1973

President DELLO G. DAYTON, O g d e n , 1 9 7 1

Vice President CHARLES s. PETERSON, Salt Lake City Secretary DEAN R. BRIMHALL, Fruita, 1973 MRS. JUANITA BROOKS, St. George, 1973

JACK GOODMAN, Salt Lake City, 1973 MRS. A. C. JENSEN, Sandy, 1971 THERON L U K E , PrOVO, 1 9 7 1

CLYDE L. MILLER, Secretary of State

Ex officio HOWARD c. PRICE, J R . , Price, 1971 MRS. ELIZABETH SKANCHY, M i d v a l e , 1 9 7 3

MRS. NAOMI WOOLLEY, Salt Lake City, 1971

ADVISORY BOARD O F E D I T O R S THOMAS G. ALEXANDER, PrOVO S. GEORGE ELLSWORTH, L o g a n

MRS. HELEN z. PAPANIKOLAS, Salt Lake City LAMAR PETERSEN, Salt Lake City

MRS. PEARL JACOBSON, Richfield

HAROLD SCHINDLER, Salt Lake City

DAVID E. MILLER, Salt Lake City

JEROME STOFFEL, L o g a n

ADMINISTRATION CHARLES s. PETERSON, Director J O H N JAMES, J R . , Librarian

The Utah State Historical Society is an organization devoted to the collection, preservation, and publication of Utah and related history. I t was organized by publicspirited Utahns in 1897 for this purpose. In fulfillment of its objectives, the Society publishes the Utah Historical Quarterly, which is distributed to its members with payment of a $5.00 annual membership fee. The Society also maintains a specialized research library of books, pamphlets, photographs, periodicals, microfilms, newspapers, maps, and manuscripts. Many of these items have come to the library as gifts. Donations are encouraged, for only through such means can the Utah State Historical Society live up to its responsibility of preserving the record of Utah's past.

MIRIAM B. MURPHY, Associate Editor IRIS SCOTT, Business Manager

The primary purpose of the Quarterly is the publication of manuscripts, photographs, and documents which relate or give a new interpretation to Utah's unique story.

Contributions of writers are solicited for the consideration of the editor. However, the editor assumes no responsibility for the return of manscripts unaccompanied by return postage. Manuscripts and material for publications should be sent to the editor.

The Utah State Historical Society does not assume responsibility for statements of fact or opinions expressed by contributors.

The Utah Historical Quarterly is entered as second-class postage, paid at Salt Lake City, Utah. Copyright 1971, Utah State Historical Society, 603 East South Temple Street, Salt Lake City, Utah 84102.

HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

SUMMER 1971 / V O L U M E 39 / NUMBER 3

Contents TOWARD A SYNTHETIC INTERPRETATION OF T H E MOUNTAIN WEST: DIVERSITY, ISOLATION, AND COOPERATION

BY THOMAS G. ALEXANDER

202

THE "FIRST" IRRIGATION RESERVOIR IN T H E UNITED STATES: THE NEWTON, UTAH, PROJECT

BY LEONARD J . ARRINGTON AND THOMAS G. ANDERSON

WATER F O R T H E BIG RANGE

BY A. J. SIMMONDS

207

_

224

ALBERT F. POTTER'S WASATCH SURVEY, 1902: A BEGINNING FOR PUBLIC MANAGEMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES IN UTAH

BY CHARLES S. PETERSON

238

RECLAMATION AND T H E ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF NORTHERN U T A H : T H E WEBER RIVER PROJECT

BY STEPHEN A. MERRILL

254

RECLAMATION WORK OF T H E CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS, 1933-1942

BY K E N N E T H W . BALDRIDGE

-

265

AN INVESTMENT IN PROGRESS: UTAH'S FIRST FEDERAL RECLAMATION PROJECT, T H E STRAWBERRY VALLEY PROJECT

BY THOMAS G. ALEXANDER

EDITOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR

THE COVER

286

CHARLES S. PETERSON Miriam Brinton Murphy

In 1892 Utah artist H. L. A. Culmer produced a series of three articles titled "Mountain Scenery of Utah" describing the beauties of lakes and streams for The Contributor. The articles were illustrated with engravings made from Culmer paintings, of which the cover illustration, "Wasatch by Moonlight," was one.

Toward a Synthetic Interpretation of the Mountain West: Diversity, Isolation, and Cooperation

BY T H O M A S G. ALEXANDER G U E S T EDITOR

in 1931, Walter Prescott Webb's The Great Plains has had a tremendous impact upon assumptions underpinning the historiography of the region west of the 98th meridian. In this pioneering study, Webb argued that O I N C E ITS PUBLICATION

A plains e n v i r o n m e n t , such as t h a t f o u n d in t h e western U n i t e d States, presents t h r e e distinguishing characteristics: 1. I t exhibits a comparatively level surface of great extent.

2.

I t is a treeless land, a n unforested a r e a .

3.

I t is a region w h e r e rainfall is insufficient for the o r d i n a r y intensive agriculture c o m m o n to lands of a h u m i d climate.

Webb believed that any region exhibiting two of the three characteristics ought to be considered part of the Plains environment. The Mountain West was included because, according to Webb, it was treeless and arid. 1 That the third feature obtains in the Mountain West, hardly anyone would deny. But that it displays either of the other two to any consistent degree, only those unfamiliar with the region would affirm. Far from Dr. Alexander, associate professor of history at Brigham Young University, has been a frequent contributor t o t h e Quarterly. The editors are grateful to Dr. Alexander for his help in arranging for this special issue. The author wishes to express his appreciation for the suggestions of James B. Allen, Everett L. Cooley, S. George Ellsworth, and Charles S. Peterson.

"Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains (Boston, 1931), 3-4 and map between 4-5.

Webb, "The Great Plains and the Industrial Revolution," in Allan G. Bogue, Thomas D. Phillips, and James E. Wright, The West of the American People (Itasca, 111., 1970), 11-14. See for example W. Eugene Hollon, The Great American Desert Then and Now (New York, 1966) ; Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, 1950)!

Introduction

203

being flat, the land is broken by mountains and plateaus. Webb's "InterMountain Plain," is in fact the Basin and Range Physiographic Province, characterized by alternating basins, valleys, and mountains. 2 Of greatest importance, the Mountain West was not devoid of timber. Unlike the regions east of the 98th meridian, however, land usually suited to general crop agriculture was not forested. Timber was located rather on the mountains and plateaus rimming the farming region. This circumstance caused a great deal of difficulty for early settlers, not because the timber resources were insufficient for their needs but because it was expensive to obtain and land disposal legislation and administration tried to prevent the use of timber located on land which could not be legally purchased. Because of the abundance of timber, it is not at all surprising that the bulk of today's national forests lie within the Mountain States. 3 If then, the application of Webb's thesis to the Mountain West fails because two of the three characteristics are missing, what alternative hypothesis can be used to analyze Mountain West development? Two characteristics seem predominant: first, the region is made up of radically diverse geographic elements; and second, the resources necessary for most economic activities are isolated from one another.

For most generalizations about the Mountain States, one might make almost as good a case for the opposite point of view. T h e region has low precipitation, and large portions average well under eight inches per year. In the mountains, however, are zones with more than thirty-two inches of precipitation per year. T h e landscape is characterized by treeless valleys and by forested uplands. It exhibits both fertile, easily tilled farmlands and rugged mountains. T h e rate of water runoff, unlike that of the Great Plains, is not uniform but heavy or light depending upon the location. It is characterized by relatively high concentrations of mineral resources, situated at widely separated points. 4 T h e point so often made before with regard to water is also true with regard to other resources. Timber, minerals, and farmland are all present, but they are often concentrated in pockets isolated from one 2 Geographically, the Mountain West is approximately the region between the 105 th and 120th meridians, but for convenience it will be defined as U t a h , the states surrounding U t a h , and Montana. U.S., Department of the Interior, The National Atlas of the United States of America (Washington, D . C , 1970), 61-62 and 70.

3 U S D I , National Atlas, 154-56. Thomas G. Alexander, " T h e Federal Frontier: Interior Department Financial Policy in Idaho, Utah, and Arizona, 1863-1896" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1965), 74 and 177-81. Paul W. Gates and Robert W. Swenson, History of Public Land Law Development (Washington, D . C , 1968), 5 4 5 - 6 1 .

4 U S D I , National Atlas, 62, 85-87, 90, 97, 118-19, 158-59, and 178-87.

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another. Because of the divergent location of these resources, separate pockets of settlement developed. Settlement could not follow the westward flow which had characterized the movement up to and even onto the Great Plains. Colonization of the Mountain West left vast unpopulated regions between points of high concentration of people.5 This combination of diverse geography and isolated resources has meant that a relatively high degree of cooperation or its substitute â&#x20AC;&#x201D; privately or publicly supplied capital â&#x20AC;&#x201D; has been necessary to bring interdependent but geographically separated resources together. 6 During the early years of settlement, except where cooperation made the combination of isolated resources possible, general crop agriculture lagged behind the rest of the nation. Not until 1920, after the development of dry farming and large irrigation projects, did the percentage of the population engaged in crop agriculture in the Mountain West pass the national percentage. On the other hand, industries which could command capital for the wedding of population, resources, and technology, flourished in the region. Prime examples have been extraction of minerals, railroads, and forestry, all of which employed a disproportionately large share of the population in the nineteenth century. All of these industries tended to promote concentrated town and city rather than rural development. Even stock raising, the type of agriculture which did surpass the national average in percentage of persons employed, generally required cooperation in the distribution of range and the employment of cooperative methods which were'never needed on the individualistic family farm.7 Because of these features, first, of geographic diversity, and second, of isolated resources, cooperative or corporate development has of necessity been characteristic of the Mountain West. The region between the 5 U S D I , National Atlas, 242. A general discussion of the region will be found in Morris Garnsey, The Mountain West: America's New Frontier (New York, 1950). See also the sources listed in note 7.

6 T h e term cooperation is used in its broadest sense to include privately as well as publicly sponsored activities.

7 L e o n a r d J. Arrington, The Changing Economic Structure of the Mountain West, 1850â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 1950 (Logan, U t a h , 1963), 3 9 - 4 9 . For examples see: Earl S. Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope (New York, 1965), passim; James B. Allen, The Company Town in the American West (Norman, 1966) ; D u a n e A. Smith, Rocky Mountain Mining Camps: The Urban Frontier (Bloomington, 1967) ; Clark C. Spence, Mining Engineers & the American West: The Lace-Boot Brigade, 1849-1933 (New Haven, 1970) ; R o d m a n W. Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 18481880 (New York, 1963), chapters 3 - 8 ; Oscar Osburn Winther, The Transportation Frontier: Trans-Mississippi West 1865-1890 (New York, 1964) ; Gene M. Gressley, Bankers and Cattlemen (New York, 1966) ; Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1958) ; Gilbert C Fite, The Farmer's Frontier, 1865-1900 (New York, 1966), chapter 10.

Introduction

205

105th and 120th meridians has more than its proportionate share of public lands, national forests, national parks, large military installations, Indian reservations, and federal reclamation projects. Even in the private sector, large corporate undertaking such as mining companies, sugar companies, and railroads have dominated the region's development. 8 Some years ago, Earl Pomeroy argued that historians had too often emphasized the discontinuities rather than the continuities in western development. 9 The Mountain West exhibits both. Obviously, those who came into the region carried cultural technology baggage which they had to adapt to the new environment. It was undoubtedly this continuity of attitudes and practices which made the traditional family farm difficult and traditionally corporate undertakings like mining, railroading, and forestry possible. Some institutions such as water law had to be adapted to the new environment. 10 Directly in the center of the Mountain West lies Utah, which may serve as a case in point. The articles collected in this issue show the practical emphasis on collective use which was needed for the development of natural resources in Utah. By concerted community action in the construction of the Newton Project and the West Cache Canal and later by association through agencies of the federal government in the development of national forests, federal reclamation projects, and the various activities of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the people demonstrated their commitment to cooperation. In fact, the history of the development of Utah reads like a chronicle of cooperation — whether communitarian, corporate, or public — in the solution of problems caused by the peculiar environment.

For the Mormon settlers of Utah, cooperation was as much continuity as it was discontinuity for others who tried to farm in the Mountain West. Mormons had developed an ideology of cooperation within their group — if not with others — in the Midwest which made community irrigation projects possible. On many subjects, however, the ideas of the average Utahn have often remained similar to the individualistic agrarianism so characteristic of popular American culture. Perhaps an archetypical Utahn was Utah's apostle-senator, Reed Smoot.

8 See Paul, Mining Frontiers; Winther, Transportation Frontier; Gressley, Bankers and Cattlemen; L e o n a r d J. Arrington, Beet Sugar in the West: A History of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1891-1966 (Seattle, 1966) ; U S D I , National Atlas, 2 7 2 - 7 3 .

9 Earl S. Pomeroy, " T o w a r d a Reorientation of Western History: Continuity and Environm e n t , " Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 41 ( M a r c h 1 9 5 5 ) , 579—600.

10 Webb, The Great Plains, 4 3 1 - 5 2 .

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Though he supported the Forest Service, federal reclamation projects, and national parks, his image was that of a conservative, stand-pat, Republican. 11 If the reality of Utah's growth has been a long story of cooperative or corporate development, perhaps this realistic approach will be most important in determining whether Utahns can meet the future environmental problems. An ecological history of Utah, if the articles presented here are any indication, would probably show that within their technological and conceptual capabilities, Utahns have dealt quite well with environmental problems even though their rhetoric might not always have been consistent with their practices.12 11 Russel B. Nye, This Almost Chosen People: Essays in the History of American Ideas (East Lansing, 1966) ; Milton R. Merrill, "Reed Smoot, Apostle-Senator," Utah Historical Quarterly, X X V I I I (October 1960), 3 4 3 - 4 9 ; Thomas G. Alexander, "Senator Reed Smoot and and Public Land Policy, 1905-1920," (Accepted for publication by Arizona and the West).

12 Some of the solutions to problems in the articles below may not be the ones we would adopt today. This is not to say, however, that they were the wrong solutions for the people at that time.

DON'T WASTE WATER And the canal companies who maintain leaky canals â&#x20AC;&#x201D; what of them ? They would better elect new directors who will stop the leaks. It's no use saying the leaks can't be stopped. In the majority of cases it is not true. A lot of hustle, a few teams a n d men, plenty of clay, a little rock and mortar, and a few barrels of cement, and the leakage from most of our canals can be reduced to 5 per cent or less. . . .

T h e n there is the water grabber, who is so greedy that he begs, takes or steals, and misuses water, simply to keep it from his neighbor â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to maintain his claim upon it, as he says. I have heard of the ancient, and occasionally wholesome practice of riding certain fellow citizens out of town. I t would be delightfully wholesome if tried upon the greedy water-grabber, w h o does not know, or care to use the water right. (Dr. J o h n A. Widtsoe in Deseret Farmer, vol. 1, no. 1, Provo, U t a h , July 14, 1904)

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Newton Dam, an earthfill structure, stores up to 5,600 acre-feet of water for irrigation and recreational use.

The "First" Irrigation Reservoir in the United States: The Newton, Utah, Project

BY LEONARD J . ARRINGTON AND T H O M A S C. ANDERSON

T,

H E LATTER-DAY SAINTS are noted as "the first people to establish irrigation in Western America on an extensive scale." x This was accomplished by systems of dams and canals which diverted mountain streams Leonard Arrington is professor of economics and Thomas Anderson research associate in the water research laboratory at Utah State University, Logan. This article was written under a grant from the Utah State University Research Council. The writers are grateful for the suggestions of Paul T. Sant, chief, Economic Resources Branch, regional office of the Bureau of Reclamation, Salt Lake City; and the late Dr. O. W. Israelsen, emeritus professor of irrigation and drainage engineering, Utah State University.

4 George Thomas, The Development of Institutions Under Irrigation, With Special Reference to Early Utah Conditions (New York, 1920), 13—14.

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to irrigate cultivated crops. It was not until 1871 that a Mormon community (Newton, Utah) built what is possibly the first reservoir of substantial size in the United States to store water for purposes of irrigation. 2 When this pioneer reservoir was enlarged in the 1940s, it was also reportedly the first project to be financed under the Case-Wheeler Act of 1940. The story of this reservoir of "firsts" may be used to illustrate some of the problems connected with the supply of irrigation water in Utah and the West.

HISTORY AND SETTLEMENT

Newton is an agricultural village with a population of 444 persons in 1970 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; virtually all of them Latter-day Saints. It is situated in the western part of Cache Valley in northern Utah. This high mountain valley is bounded by ranges of the majestic Wasatch and was once completely covered with water of the prehistoric Lake Bonneville. Indeed, the Newton Reservoir is located on one of the terraces of this ancient lake.

Newton and its neighboring village of Clarkston (population 420) are separated from the rest of Cache Valley by some hills which create a small valley about four miles wide. The bench lands in this area are generally flat â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the only abrupt change in the topography is the channel of the Clarkston Creek, which is up to 100 feet deep and a quarter of a mile wide. The surrounding area is one of rolling hills and low, ascending mountains covered with sagebrush, June grass and legumes, and scattered clusters of maples and bushes. For thousands of years grasses grew abundantly on the valley floor, providing feed for buffalo, deer, antelope, and other wild game. However, the rainfall, which averages less than sixteen inches per year, is inadequate to grow and cultivate crops regularly without irrigation. 3 Although bands of the Shoshoni Indians regularly visited the region to hunt and fish, Cache Valley derives its name from trappers who first entered the valley in 1824 to trap beaver and other fur.4 In the southern end of the valley the second rendezvous of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company was held in 1825, and large caches of fur were made along the 2 U. S., Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Reclamation Project Data (Washington, D . C , 1961), 543.

8 Of course, dry farming can take place, under certain circumstances, when there is less than sixteen inches of rainfall.

4 The history of Cache Valley is related in: Joel E. Ricks, ed., Everett L. Cooley, assoc. ed., The History of a Valley: Cache Valley, Utah-Idaho (Logan, Utah, 1956) ; M. R. Hovey, "An Early History of Cache Valley," Logan Journal, August 4, 1923, et seq. (typescript, Utah State University Library, Logan, Utah) ; Edward W. Tullidge, Tullidge's Histories, vol. 2 (Salt Lake City, 1889), 346-49.

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banks of the Logan and Little Bear rivers. Although trappers described Cache Valley as one of the most beautiful places in the entire Rocky Mountains, it was not considered to be a likely place for settlement because of short growing seasons and killing frosts. Mormons who explored the region in 1847-48 confirmed this view and recommended its use for grazing livestock.

At the direction of Brigham Young, Peter Maughan led the first group of settlers into Cache Valley in 1856, where they established Maughan's Fort, later Wellsville. The northwestern part of the valley, including Newton and Clarkston, was not settled immediately because of the Indians' refusal to surrender this part of their hunting grounds.

There were also the difficulties of crossing the Bear River and of getting water to the land. A site was chosen and laid out for Clarkston in 1864.

Using a method typical of most Mormon colonies, the community was settled fort-style, as a group rather than individually. In the fall of 1864 dugouts and log cabins were constructed, and twelve families stayed for the winter. Additional settlers came the following spring.

These families, which are allotted five- and ten-acre plots of farm land, had a very difficult time the first few years. The first spring many of the crops were killed by frost, and some of the cattle died from eating poisonous weeds. In 1866 the Shoshonis were so troublesome that the people moved to the larger settlement of Smithfield. Many hours were spent that summer in traveling the thirteen miles from Smithfield to Clarkston to look after the crops. Clarkston was resettled in the fall of 1867, and the people built their homes so as to create a fort for protection. The fort was built on low ground which flooded in the spring, causing sickness and disease. The village was later moved farther west to higher ground. Because of periodic drouth and visitations by grasshoppers, Clarkston residents were never able to produce a crop surplus.

After some experimentation in the 1870s, each family was allotted a twenty-acre plot of dry farm land on which, with proper farming practices, wheat and alfalfa could be grown without irrigation. In this way, Clarkston came to be noted as the granary and dairyland of Cache Valley.5 Clarkston has always been and is today a place of long winters with deep snow. Many of the Clarkston settlers looked farther down the "Clarkston creek onto a sunny gentle slope which commands a view of 5

Joel E. Ricks, " T h e Expansion of Settlement," in History

of a Valley, 61.

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the entire southern part of Cache Valley." 6 Here grass was growing on the bare hills while more than two feet of snow remained at the Clarkston fort. Under the direction of their bishop and fellow farmer, William F. Rigby, a meeting was held at the newly proposed town site on February 28, 1869. By a vote of twenty-nine to three, they decided to abandon the Clarkston fort and establish a new town on the southern location. 7 New Town was laid out by the county surveyor, as were plots of ground to be divided among the residents for farming. The head of each family received five acres of land in the north field, ten in the south field, and five acres of meadow along the Bear River. A few families were established and lived there the winter of 1869-70. Some of the people changed their minds the following spring and decided to stay in Clarkston. Others who moved to Newton later returned to Clarkston. There was some disputation among the people as to where the town should be located. When Brigham Young visited the region in the summer of 1870, he advised that both Clarkston and the new site should be occupied. It was at that time that the name of Newton was adopted. 8 T H E PIONEER RESERVOIR

One problem that arose with the separation of the people into two groups was the apportionment of the rights to the waters of Clarkston Creek. Only one-fourth of the water rights belonged to residents of Newton, and this proved to be quite insufficient for purposes of irrigation.

Moreover, the small stream which left Clarkston Creek had seven miles to travel; with the seepage and evaporation enroute, little water reached the fields of Newton. Indeed, in the first year after settlement (1870), before the summer was well advanced, the small stream dissipated before reaching town. With no gardens or orchards and almost complete crop failure, the people were poorly prepared for the long winter ahead. Many planned to move away. In order to survive the winter and to have seed for the coming spring, the residents of Newton borrowed 600 bushels of wheat. So scarce was food in the region that they were required to pay one peck per bushel as interest and to give as security a first mortgage on the whole Newton south field. The new settlers were not able to pay off this mortgage for four years. 9 6 William F. Rigby, "Excerpts from the Diary of William F. Rigby," in K a t e B. Carter, ed., Our Pioneer Heritage, 13 vols. (Salt Lake City: D a u g h t e r s of U t a h Pioneers, 1957â&#x20AC;&#x201D;70), 4 : 255.

7 Ibid., 2 5 5 - 5 6 .

8 Hovey, "An Early History," 109; Ricks, " T h e Expansion of Settlement," 6 7 - 6 8 .

9 Hovey, "An Early History," 110; " T h e Newton Irrigation Reservoir â&#x20AC;&#x201D; U t a h ' s Oldest," The Utah Farmer (Salt Lake C i t y ) , M a r c h 16, 1961, 6.

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One possible source of new irrigation water was the Bear River which was less than two miles from the town but with a bed considerably lower than the elevation of the town. An imaginative alternative was the construction of a reservoir north of the town to store the heavy spring runoff into Clarkston Creek for use during the dry summer season. At a public meeting held in the spring of 1871, the colonists agreed to labor cooperatively to build such a storage facility.10 A committee was appointed to work out a plan and decide on a location. About three miles north of Newton the creek made an abrupt change in direction from east to south. There was a natural depression in the topography which they thought would make an ideal site for a reservoir. Simply by placing a dam across a narrow neck on the south end of the depression, they could easily impound water for irrigation purposes.

Construction began on March 30, 1871, at which time the entire community turned out with horse- and ox-teams and scrapers. Each family was to receive water from the dam in proportion to the amount of work expended in the dam's construction. The first dam was constructed of dirt and rocks. It washed out several times the first spring.

Repairs were made on each occasion, and the participants resolved to build a more substantial structure and create a larger reservoir the second year. Enough water was stored that season to make it all worthwhile.

After a permanent structure was built, they still had trouble keeping it from being washed away. Part of the face of the dam was riprapped, or walled, with rock, but the best method was to force planks into the mud and nail these to a horizontal pole which was anchored for support. 11 The dam was particularly threatened by a large spring thaw in 1877. To prevent it from being washed away, A. P. Welchman, one of the caretakers of the dam, dug a diversion ditch by which the water could run over grass sod rather than over the dam. Nevertheless, the dam was lost, and the incident has ever after been referred to as Welchman's Folly. With the failure of the clam, more years of poor crops were experienced. The shrunken grain could not be marketed, and several families became discouraged and left.12 10

Hovey, "An Early History," 110.

Senus Johnson, "Historical Events of Newton," Daughters of U t a h Pioneers Collection, Newton, U t a h ; Donald J a r m a n , "Pioneer D a m Replaced in U t a h , " The Utah Farmer, November 10, 1941, 6; Hovey, "An Early History," 109; K a t e B. Carter, Heart Throbs of the West.

12 vols. (Salt Lake City: Daughters of U t a h Pioneers, 1 9 3 6 - 5 1 ) , 6: 1 1 1 ; J. J. Larsen, board member of Newton Irrigation Company and Newton Water Users Association, personal interview, Newton, U t a h , November 28, 1964.

12 "History of Newton Reservoirs," "Newton W a r d History," Daughters of U t a h Pioneers Collection, Newton, U t a h .

11

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T h e colonists gradually learned some of the principles of improved d a m construction, and when the d a m was repaired in 1880 a wooden flume and spillway were installed to keep the d a m from washing out.

I n 1885 the d a m was raised in order to make a larger reservoir. T h e resulting d a m was 28 feet high and 127 feet wide. It backed water u p one and one-half miles, creating a reservoir with a capacity of approximately 1,570 acre-feet of water. T h e reservoir watered 1,660 acres. 13 T h e canal, which h a d been started in 1871, was completed to the town in 1886. With the completion of the canal and enlargement of the dam, sufficient water was stored to irrigate all the lots in Newton and all the farming lands twice during the summer. 1 4 (Usual practice today is to irrigate about eight times during a summer.) Other people in other areas had diverted streams for irrigation and to turn water wheels, and the Cottonwood Creek h a d been d a m m e d to float granite blocks on rafts a distance of sixteen miles to the famous M o r m o n Temple in the center of Salt Lake City — a project which was unsuccessful. But this was — we are unable to find contrary evidence •— the first large irrigation d a m constructed in the United States to impound water for irrigation.

N E W T O N IRRIGATION C O M P A N Y

Originally the d a m and irrigation facilities h a d been built and operated as a cooperative enterprise under the direction of the M o r m o n bishop. With the growing separation of religion and economics in U t a h , forced by the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887, 15 a secular organization was necessary. This was accomplished with the incorporation of a mutual company — the Newton Irrigation Company — on J a n u a r y 14, 1890.

With a corporate life of fifty years, it h a d 10,000 shares of stock with a par value of $1.00. T h e market value in later years rose to $3.00 a share.

T h e continuation of M o r m o n influence is reflected in the fact t h a t the meetings of the incorporated enterprise continued to be opened and closed with prayer and most were held in the Newton chapel. 1 6 13 J. J. Larsen, "Reviews Struggles of Newton in Building Irrigation D a m , " The Herald Journal (Logan, U t a h ) , September 3, 1 9 4 1 ; Hovey, "An Early History," 111. An acre-foot is a measurement of volume of water equal to the volume of a prism one foot high with a base one acre in area — in other words, 43,560 cubic feet.

14 "Newton W a r d History."

15 Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), chapter 12.

16 U.S., Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, "Newton Project, U t a h , Project Planning Report N u m b e r 4 7 - A " ( M S , Logan office, Bureau of R e c l a m a t i o n ) , September 1942, 1 2 - 1 8 ; "Newton Irrigation Company, 1892," M i n u t e Book in Newton T o w n Hall, Newton, U t a h .

The Newton

Project

213

T h e water was distributed pro rata on the number of shares held, as were the assessments for operation and maintenance. T h e annual delivery was about two-tenths of an acre-foot p e r share, measured at the reservoir.

T h e assessments for upkeep of the d a m and canals averaged only eight cents per share because most of the work was done by the members of the company.

Thus, though the d a m h a d been completed, along with ditches and facilities for channeling water to the fields, there were still problems and occasional washouts. A plank on the upper end of the large flume gave out in the spring of 1888. Sacks of dirt were thrown into the whirlpool created by the escaping water to try to stop it, but without avail. I n 1890, the farmers started to build another reservoir at a site farther down the creek. M u c h dirt was placed in the creek channel, but Samuel Fortier, an engineer from the U t a h State Agricultural College (now U t a h State University), and a student, T . H . H u m p h r e y (later the U t a h State Engineer), suggested raising the old d a m instead. This h a d been accomplished by 1897, raising it another three feet. 17 T h e spillway was improved in 1899, but in winter it filled with snow and was unserviceable. T h e bank on the lower side of the spillway was cut, allowing the water to run over it, but this caused a wash. Spill gates were placed at the head of the spillway and a cement floor was placed below that. T h e spillway was later lined with cobble stones over which cement was laid. This lasted a year before it, too, washed out.

E N T E R T H E FEDERAL

GOVERNMENT

With some additional improvements the d a m held for many years.

By the late 1930s and early 1940s, however, it was doubtful that it would last much longer. With the growth of the population and improved methods of farming, the capacity of the pioneer reservoir was insufficient to satisfy the demands of the area. A forty-five-mile cooperative canal, the West Cache Canal, h a d been completed in 1905 and served the southern fields of Newton as well as a part of the rest of northwestern Cache Valley. This solved the problems in the south field, but the fields north of the town h a d an inadequate water supply, and many additional acres could be brought under irrigation if more water was m a d e available. 18 17 18

Larsen, "Reviews Struggles."

Bureau of Reclamation, "Report N u m b e r 47â&#x20AC;&#x201D;A," 14 and 16.

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T h e old d a m provided less t h a n an acre-foot per acre of land, which was less t h a n half the quantity which would provide adequate irrigation.

There was also seepage, and engineers regarded the d a m as unsafe. For example, a quick thaw in the spring of 1939 would have washed out the entire structure if the farmers h a d not stood on the dike and broken the ice. An emergency spillway was constructed of railroad ties later that spring, but this did not satisfactorily solve the problem. Doggedly, the farmers continued to make efforts to repair, enlarge, and improve the facilities. 19 Investigations had been carried on for some time by state and private engineers. In 1938 the details of these investigations h a d been turned over to the United States Bureau of Reclamation which conducted further investigations in cooperation with the U t a h State Engineer's office. A report of the findings was submitted to the Bureau of Reclamation and the U t a h W a t e r Storage Commission in June 1940. 20 T h e r e were several ways to increase the water storage capacity. 2 1 T h e old reservoir could be strengthened and enlarged or a new reservoir could be constructed further downstream. Enlargement of the existing reservoir was favored at first, but this would have limited the capacity to 5,200 acre-feet. T h e Clarkston area would have received an additional 300 acre-feet more than they were getting and the Newton area a n additional 2,550 acre-feet. This plan would have required the construction of an entirely new d a m because of the poor condition of the old one. T h e new d a m would be higher and would create a lake with a surface of 980 acres. Not only would this m e a n high maintenance and upkeep costs because of the large d a m face which would be exposed to the waves, but the evaporation would be excessive, and cattails and other plants would grow in the water, entailing additional losses of water through transpiration.

Ultimately, a decision was reached to construct a new d a m one and one-half miles downstream from the old one. A reservoir of 5,200 acrefeet active capacity would be created at an estimated cost of $438,000.

This plan, it was decided, would "develop, within economic limits, the 19 Ibid., 17; interview with M . R. Cooley, Jr., past member of the Newton Irrigation Company, October 23, 1964.

20 U.S., Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, "Project History, 1941," (MS, Logan office, Bureau of R e c l a m a t i o n ) , 26; Bureau of Reclamation, "Report Number 4 7 - A , " 1-2.

21 Details on the proposed sites taken from U.S., D e p a r t m e n t of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, in cooperation with State of U t a h , U t a h Water Storage Commision, " R e p o r t on Newton Project, June, 1940" ( M S , Logan office, Bureau of Reclamation); Bureau of Reclamation, "Report Number 4 7 - A , " 16-19.

The Newton Project

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water supply of Clarkston Creek to a greater extent, without waste of water through excessive reservoir losses, than would an enlargement of the existing reservoir." 22 Because the new dam was further downstream, it would permit storage of the runoff from an additional 730 acres within the water basin.

With respect to financing this project, however, the farmers did not feel that they could pay — or that the dam would be worth more than — $2.50 per acre-foot of water. This would result in payment of about $7.50 per acre for sufficient water for a year. When Bureau of Reclamation representatives met with the New Reservoir Committee of the Newton Irrigation Company on July 25, 1940, they proposed a plan for the construction of a new dam under which the required $438,000 would be loaned by federal agencies, to be repaid by the farmers over a forty-year period with no interest. The annual payments were more than the farmers felt they could afford, and it appeared that the project would not go through. 23 Within three months, however, initiation of work on the project was assured. On October 17, 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt approved a report by Acting Secretary of the Interior A. J. Wirtz, finding the Newton project feasible for construction under the Water Conservation and 22 23

Bureau of Reclamation, "Report Number 47—A," 19.

Newton Water Users Association, "Minutes," July 25, 1940 (Newton, Utah).

View of Newton Dam showing rock riprap and the 300-acre the dam has created.

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Utilization Act of August 11, 1939, as amended (commonly referred to as the Case-Wheeler Act). Under this act, projects such as Newton could be constructed by the secretary of the interior using funds directly appropriated for the act, as well as funds, labor, materials, etc., supplied by other federal agencies, such as the Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Department of Agriculture, and also by state and local agencies. The real advantage of the act was that not all of the cost of constructing the project had to be repaid. Benefiting farmers were required to repay only to the extent of a determined ability.

The amount not repaid on this basis was declared nonreimbursable and became part of the cost of programs designed to provide labor for the unemployed. 24 The major obstacle to the Newton project â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that of repayment â&#x20AC;&#x201D; was thus cleared away and the stage set for the construction of the first project under the Case-Wheeler Act. It replaced, as we have mentioned, the first sizeable irrigation reservoir in the nation.

The Case-Wheeler Act required that a repayment contract had to be executed before water from the project could be delivered. Adhering to general reclamation law and policy, the Bureau of Reclamation required that the execution on behalf of the water user be by an organization legally formed with certain powers and authority. Thus, on May 12, 1941, the Newton Irrigation Company was reincorporated, under the laws of Utah, as the Newton Water Users Association. The new organization, with its 100-year charter, was granted all water rights and property owned by the old company. A quit-claim deed was issued for the stock in the old company, which was purchased for $5 per share and applied as credit toward the purchase of stock in the new company. The new company was empowered to issue 6,000 shares of stock with no par value. 25 The powers of the corporation were vested in an elected board of directors which consisted of seven men who chose the officers, fixed compensations, levied assessments, and were empowered to pay the assessment and direct the sale of stock or property mortgaged as security for payment in the event of a default.

As with the old company, the water was to be distributed and assessments made pro rata each share of stock. One share of stock in the com24

Bureau of Reclamation, "Project History, 1941," 27-28.

Bureau of Reclamation, "Report No. 47-A," 13; personal interview with M. R. Cooley, Jr.; Newton Water Users Association, "Minutes," August 29 and December 30, 1941. The Newton Irrigation Company had been organized January 14, 1890, for a period of fifty years, and was thus ended in 1940. The stockholders continued to meet and the group continued to function until the water users association was formed.

25

The Newton Project

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pany was to be worth 1.2 acre-feet of water, as there were 6,000 shares of stock and, hopefully, 7,200 acre-feet of water to be delivered each year. The corporation found it difficult to sell subscriptions to all the shares. An offer of 250 shares was made to Clarkston farmers, but they decided not to buy, although with the purchase of enough stock they could have used all the direct stream flow (the stored water, of course, was downstream) in the summer rather than let Newton have one-fourth of it. The Newton Town Corporation bought 360 shares of the stock, which gave them one-fourth interest in the Big Birch and Little Birch Springs above Clarkston, about one-half second-feet the year around.

In later years this gave the town free access to the waters from these springs for culinary purposes.26 The amount of stock was lowered to 5,000 shares and all were subscribed shortly. Some thought the company would go broke, and if they would but wait a few years they could buy the stock at a lower price.

This did not happen. At the time of this writing the shares are valued at upwards of $30 each.

The total estimated cost of the project was $618,000, of which $223,000 was expected to be obtained from the appropriation under the Case-Wheeler Act and the balance through work accomplished by the WPA, or the CCC, or both. The water users were to repay $350,000 of the total cost in forty equal annual installments. The contract with the United States government for the construction of the project and its repayment was signed by the board of directors of the Newton Water Users Association on August 29, 1941. 27 CONSTRUCTION OF THE N E W DAM AND RESERVOIR

As proposed by the Bureau of Reclamation in 1941, the Newton Project included the following structures: 28 1. A dam 90 feet high, consisting of clay, sand, and gravel rolled in sixinch layers and faced with rock. The crest length of the dam to be approximately 1200 feet, of which 600 feet would be across the Clarkston Creek channel, and the other 600 to "blanket" the right side. In addition to the dam a 2,100-foot dike would be placed across the right abutment, with an emergency spillway 1000 feet long. This dike would range up to 15 feet high.

26 Personal interview with M . R. Cooley, Jr. A second-foot of water is a unit of flow equal to one cubic foot p e r second.

27 Wirtz to Roosevelt, October 12, 1940 ( M S , Bureau of Reclamation, Salt Lake C i t y ) .

Some $88,000 of the non-reimbursable costs were to be provided by W P A . Also see N e w t o n W a t e r Users Association, " M i n u t e s , " October 8, 1940 a n d August 29, 1941.

28 Bureau of Reclamation, "Project History, 1 9 4 1 , " 5 1 - 5 2 .

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2. A reinforced concrete conduit outlet structure to be placed along the foundation of the dam, so constructed that 25 feet or more of dead storage water would be maintained in the reservoir at all times.

3. A canal starting at the end of the concrete outlet works having a length of approximately 4,000 feet and a carrying capacity of 18 second-feet.

4. A rock masonry parapet wall and a pole curb wall along the top of the dam.

Construction of the dam actually commenced on August 28, 1941.

The Works Progress Administration furnished the laborers and their supervisors, and Bureau of Reclamation engineers and employees directed how and in what order the work was to be done. During the first year the construction camp â&#x20AC;&#x201D; including a field laboratory building; a metal building to house machine, carpenter, and blacksmith shops, and a storehouse ; and other facilities for the storage of lubricants and fuels â&#x20AC;&#x201D; was completed. The dam was nearly stripped and a diversion canal for the creek almost completed by the end of 1941, 29 Because the project was make work in character, construction continued through the winter months, primarily with WPA laborers. The winter was so cold and severe that it was necessary to heat the ground, the materials, and the forms before concrete could be laid. After the concrete was laid the structure was heated until it was cured, a process which required many days.30 During the summer of 1942 the stripping was completed except for the creek, as was the temporary diversion canal. All the concrete was laid for the outlet works with the exception of the gate chamber or shaft that was to rise to the top of the dam. This was to be constructed as the height of the dam was increased. Another consideration affecting construction was the possibility that the old dam would give way. An attempt was made to construct the new dam in a way that it would not be damaged too much if this happened. As there was fear that the old dam would not hold much longer, there was some urgency in getting the new one completed.

In the meantime, however, Pearl Harbor had been bombed, causing the nation to be placed on an all-out war footing. This, of course, resolved the problems of depression and unemployment, and the WPA suspended operations on the Newton Project on November 30, 1942.

Fortunately, this action had little effect, as there were only four WPA 29 30

Ibid., 54-55.

Bureau of Reclamation, "Project History, 1942."

The Newton Project

219

workers employed at the time of the suspension. As anticipated, the War Production Board also issued a stop order on December 24, ordering all work halted on the Newton Project. The only work done at the project after the stop order was maintenance and necessary repair to equipment and property.

Upon the completion of a number of defense projects in Utah in 1943, information was received that the Newton Project would be reopened in the early fall of that year. The hope was that the project would be completed soon enough to add materially to the production of food.

Construction resumed on a small scale on August 17, pending official notice from the War Production Board, which was issued on September 16 and received at the project on September 20.31 During the fall of 1943, approximately 15,000 cubic yards of earth embankment was placed in the dam foundation and the rock riprap or facing (hauled from mountains six miles away) was placed on this completed portion. In addition, a channel was excavated from the end of the outlet works to the Clarkston Creek, and concrete was laid for this structure and for the gate chamber.

Early in 1944 the creek was diverted through the outlet works, and a cofferdam (a watertight structure built to hold the water out so that work can be accomplished) was built. The creek channel was stripped of all topsoil containing roots in order that the new dam could form an impervious bond to the ground and that there would be no leakage. This permitted the actual laying of the dam. Almost all of the earth embankment and the rock riprap was placed during the summer of 1944. The earth was laid in six- to twelve-inch layers, sprayed with water, and rolled with sheepsfoot rollers to make it tight and impervious. Work commenced on the rock masonry parapet wall, and work was also started on the siphon across the old creek channel to the main canal. 32 Work on the project in 1945 proceeded slowly because of the labor shortage and manpower ceiling. During the year the parapet walls were completed, as was most of the laying of the riprap. A highway was built across the dam; and the country road, which previously went over the old dam, was relocated to cross the new dam and run north. At the end of the year, eighty-five percent of the canal construction and rehabilitation was also completed. Some 1,560 acres of land were irrigated by project water that year. 33 31

Bureau of Reclamation, "Project History, 1943," 1 2 - 1 3 , 27.

Bureau of Reclamation, "Project History, 1944," 3 2 - 3 3 , 3 7 - 3 8 .

33 Bureau of Reclamation, "Project History, 1945."

32

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In April and May 1946 workmen completed the riprap, canals, flumes, and rehabilitation of the canals. The project was officially completed on June 15, 1946, making possible the irrigation of 2,225 acres under the new reservoir and canals.

The first 4,000 feet of canal was constructed by the government under the original project construction contract. This included two siphons across the creek bed, one just below the dam and the other almost a mile downstream. 34 From this point the water was divided and went to the west fields in the highline canal and to the fields east of Newton by another canal on the opposite side of the creek bed. At the time of the construction contract, the canals from this point to the fields were to be constructed by the water users with the help of government agencies such as the CCC and the WPA. Since these agencies had been discontinued, the Bureau of Reclamation agreed to construct the two canals: a six-mile highline canal to the west fields and another two-mile canal to the east fields. The diversion dam in the Clarkston Creek, which had been used under the old reservoir to serve the fields at the lower elevations and the town of Newton, was also repaired. Some ten miles of laterals from the main canals to the fields were constructed by the local farmers.

As stated, the cost of the Newton Project was originally estimated at $438,000. But with the increase in prices, the addition of a concrete spillway and the canals, the actual cost was considerably more. Also, the cheap labor of those being assisted by the Works Progress Administration was not used for the whole structure, as had been originally planned.

The construction costs of the project are summarized as follows: 35 Storage System _ Land and land rights Relocations ....

Clearing Dam and spillway Structures and improvements Canal System Land and land rights Relocations Clearing Waterways _ _ Structures Total, Newton Project

_

$622,249 _

$ 28,567 3,611 3,057 585,225 1,789 $ 90,343

_

1,049 8,218 173 31,044 49,859 $712,592

"Ibid., 14, 21; "Project History, 1944," 21, 37.

35 U.S.. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, "Project Financial Statement, June 30, 1965," (MS, Bureau of Reclamation, Salt Lake City). This includes, of course, various costs subsequent to the initial completion.

221

The Newton Project

|;Mi;f|lii||::

M^mmmmmmjmm

Sprinklers evenly distribute Newton Project water on sugar Grains and hay are other major field crops.

beets.

Upon receiving official notice on November 1, 1945, that the project was completed and water would be made available from the new facility in 1946, the Newton Water Users Association was allowed a two-year development period without payments, so construction charge installments commenced December 31, 1948. The contract called for the repayment of the $350,000 in forty equal payments of $8,750 each, the final payment to be made in 1988.36 On May 28, 1964, Congress passed a bill sponsored by Utah's Senator Frank E. Moss which extended the repayment period. Apprized that the water users were not getting the benefits of the project originally expected because of the relatively dry years since 1948, Congress permitted the payments to be based on the amount of water available rather than a fixed yearly rate. A contract amending the August 29, 1941, repayment contract and effecting the variable payment plan was made effective December 31, 1963. The full $350,000 will be repaid but over a longer period of time. All scheduled payments have been met through 1970, but the water available in recent years has varied to the point that farmer income and the ability to meet installments has been impaired. 37 36 U.S., Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Newton Project Utah . . .

Region IV (Washington, D . C , 1948), 177.

37 Personal interview with Harold H. Hiskey and Clifford I. Alldridge, Bureau of Reclamation, Logan office. December 4, 1964, May 21, 1971; The Herald Journal (Logan, Utah), June 4, 1964. See U.S.', Congress, Public Law 88-314, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., 1964.

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B E N E F I T S OF T H E N E W T O N P R O J E C T

In its present form, the Newton D a m is an earthfill structure, 101 feet high, with a volume of 410,000 cubic yards. T h e reservoir has a capacity of 5,600 acre-feet and stores water for the irrigation of more t h a n 2,000 acres of land. Operation and maintenance of the project works were transferred to the Newton W a t e r Users Association on J a n u a r y 1, 1948. 38 When the reservoir is full, it creates a lake with a surface area of almost 300 acres, providing excellent facilities for boating and water skiing. Originally the reservoir was stocked with rainbow and German brown trout; but, because of the small amount of water flowing through in recent years, trout no longer thrive. W h e n the contemplated Bear River Project is approved and completed â&#x20AC;&#x201D; perhaps a few years in the future â&#x20AC;&#x201D; sufficient water will be kept in the reservoir to maintain fish and to make possible better boating and swimming.

T h e following table summarizes the benefits received from the Newton Project. For the years from 1948 to 1970, an average of 4,115 acrefeet per year left the reservoir. Approximately eighty-one percent of this, or 3,340 acre-feet, reached the fields, irrigating an average of 2,049 acres.

This was about 1.6 acre-feet per acre each season. T h e annual payment of $8,750 during this period resulted in costs of $2.50 an acre-foot. T h e returns from this water (and other productive factors) have resulted in an average gross crop value of $131,830, or $66.64 an acre, including government subsidies.

M a n y farmers have m a d e use of rainmakers or sprinklers to irrigate their ground. This makes better use of the available water by evenly distributing the water and preventing waste. Gravity pressure systems have been cooperatively installed by groups of local farmers, thus eliminating open ditches and the expense of pumping water. This has helped to compensate for the inadequate supply of water.

T h e chief benefits of the Newton Project have been: (1) T h e stabilization of a small agricultural district by providing water to assure the maturation of sugar beets, grains, hay, and other crops; and (2) the enjoyment derived by the many visitors who have used the reservoir for recreation. While it is difficult to measure these benefits in dollars, they are nevertheless real benefits. Without the project, the population in the immediate area would undoubtedly be only a fraction of w h a t it is today.

38

Information on the completed facility from Bureau of Reclamation, Reclamation Data, 543-545.

Project

The Newton Project

223

In the years since 1946 this Mormon valley, with fewer than 500 persons in the single town of Newton, has distinguished itself by the quality of its human product. More than ninety percent of its youth has graduated from high school, and almost forty percent of those went on to receive degrees from colleges and universities. Almost fifty percent of those receiving bachelors degrees went on for advanced degrees, and most of those now have doctoral degrees.39 BENEFITS OF T H E NEWTON RECLAMATION PROJECT 4 0 Acre Feet to Fields

1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970

4,564 5,169 5,153 4,727 2,630 4,462 3,772 3,341 3,248 2,771 3,467 2,143 2,928 1,691 3,357 2,537 2,638 3,171 3,631 2,705 2,251 3,400 3,066

Acres Irrigated

1,346 1,948 1,836 2,035 2,020 1,872 1,766 1,893 1,918 1,969 1,874 2,030 2,194 2,127 2,108 2,059 2,051 2,116 2,101 2,025 2,195 2,266 2,498 2,247 2,434 2,346

Gross Crop Value

$ 62,131 119,223 131,138 129,143 130,756 124,922 142,971 130,133 124,257 111,235 106,265 122,469 149,783 132,982 139,814 117,996 94,390 137,751 141,516 128,914 166,458 187,949 199,036 185,147 211,210

Acre Feet Per Acre

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 2.24 2.56 2.74 2.41 1.51 2.35 1.92 1.70 1.54 1.24 1.59 1.00 1.33 .80 1.54 1.18 1.30 1.44 1.60 1.08 1.00 1.40 1.31

Average Revenue Per Acre

$46.16 61.20 71.42 63.46 64.73 66.73 80.96 68.74 64.78 56.49 56.70 60.33 68.27 62.52 66.33 57.31 46.02 65.10 67.36 63.66 75.84 82.94 79.67 82.40 86.77

39 It is also a curiosity that the village of Newton reared Utah's only candidate for the Presidency of the United States: Parley Packer Christensen, a lawyer, who ran (unsuccessfully) on the Farm-Labor ticket in 1920. Gaylon L. Caldwell, " U t a h ' s First Presidential C a n d i d a t e , " Utah Historical Quarterly, 28 (October 1960), 3 2 7 - 3 4 1 .

40 Compiled from project files in the Bureau of Reclamation, Logan, U t a h , office. I n 1945-47 crops were irrigated with water from the pioneer reservoir.

Construction camp near Battle Creek, Jdaho, ca. 1899, at the head of the West Cache. Courtesy Special Collections, Utah State University.

Water for the Big Range

BY A. J . S I M M O N D S

favored the agricultural settlement of Cache Valley. Numerous streams, easily diverted for irrigation purposes, flow from the surrounding mountains to the Bear River which bisects the valley floor. But there is one section of Cache Valley which is not so "EOGRAPHY H A S GENERALLY

Mr. Simmonds is special collections librarian at U t a h State University. This paper was first written in 1965 as partial fulfillment of the requirements for a course in economic history given by Professor Leonard J. Arrington. T h e author wishes to express thanks to Leland Cottle of Trenton, general manager of the West Cache Irrigation Company, for permission to use the records of the company.

The Big Range

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favored â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the area known in early pioneer times as the Big Range, which today embraces the villages of Cornish, Trenton, and Amalga. This area lies along the west bank of Bear River but is situated on bluffs a hundred feet above its wide, meandering channel. On the west, the few creeks which flow from the high mountains west of Clarkston are diverted to the south (and into the Newton Reservoir) by an outrider range of foothills â&#x20AC;&#x201D; too low to hold a large water supply. Thus, although Mormon colonization was typically accomplished by means of compact villages on streams large enough to provide irrigation water for the surrounding fields, the difficulty of diverting the Bear River to the Big Range meant that this area had to follow a different course of development from its Cache Valley neighbors.

By 1870 Mormon settlement with its concomitant village-irrigation orientation had circled Cache Valley. Along the base of the mountains, a dozen communities had come into existence, with the Big Range alone remaining uninhabited. 1 SETTLEMENT OF T H E BIG RANGE

As irrigation pushed settlement out from the first centers, the Cornish-Trenton area became used extensively as a herd ground for cattle from the older communities. Its lush grass, small springs, and lack of population proved especially attractive. It was grazed by town herds under the supervision of a community herdsman and by the herds of six or eight private owners who had more than a hundred head each. It was because of grazing that Trenton, the mother community of the Big Range villages, was settled â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the only Cache town to have this as the principal impetus for settlement. 2 The first permanent settlers of the Big Range, who began to arrive in the years following 1870, established ranches on the few springs in the western foothills or along the Bear River. There they ranged their own cattle as well as those from the private and town herds. Many of the Cache towns hired one of the settlers to herd their cattle, thus replacing the venerable institution of the community herdsman. An increasing number of settlers established themselves on the Big Range after the area was surveyed in 1876 by Deputy U. S. Surveyor A. J. Stewart and was 1 For a general discussion of irrigation in Cache Valley and in Utah see: Joel E. Ricks, ed., Everett L. Cooley, assoc. ed., The History of a Valley: Cache Valley, Utah-Idaho (Logan, 1956) ; and Charles Hillman Brough, Irrigation in Utah (Baltimore, 1898).

2 For a fuller discussion of the area and the sources on which it is based, see: A. J. Simmonds, On The Big Range: A Centennial History of Cornish and Trenton, Cache County, Utah (Logan, 1970).

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thrown open to settlement under the terms of the Homestead Act. However, the settlers remained largely stock raisers out of the sheer necessity imposed on them by this arid region.

Nevertheless, from the very beginning of settlement on the Big Range, the ultimate goal of the landowners was the irrigation type of agriculture common to other valley communities. Of the 208 residents of Trenton precinct in 1880, 145 were born in U t a h ; and at least 40 more had grown to maturity in the territory. 3 They were products of the institutions and culture of a society based on irrigation and did not expect to continue indefinitely in a ranching, dry-farming economy. 4 The first attempt at irrigation was made in 1872 when the South Field Ditch was dug south from Weston Creek as one of five canals irrigating the fields around Weston, Idaho. The ditch extended a mile and a half into Utah and irrigated about 170 acres for farmers on part of the Big Range. 5 In 1877 Congress passed the Desert Lands Act. Under the provisions of this legislation, a person could buy up to 640 acres of the public domain for $1.25 per acre if the land could be irrigated within three years. Abuses under this act were common throughout the arid west, and Trenton was no exception. 6 To take advantage of the act, in 1880 many Trenton residents and outsiders eager to gain title to more land incorporated the Weston South Field Irrigating Company and filed on as much water "as can be conducted through a ditch which is ten (10) feet wide at the top; six (6) feet wide at the bottom, three (3) feet deep with a fall of one and one half (1 y2) inches to the rod." 7 Though Weston farmers had been using water from Weston Creek since 1865, they had neglected to record such use under Idaho law. The appropriation by the South Field Irrigating Company included virtually all the creek's stream-flow.

During late 1880 and early 1881 the length of the canal was actually increased by almost four miles. While the circuitous line was surveyed (probably by Edward Hanson) to take advantage of the topography, sec3

Tenth Census of the United States (1880), Utah, 1:228-30, Trenton Precinct.

A discussion of the cultural patterns developed by Utahns under irrigation agriculture is found in George Thomas, The Development of Institutions Under Irrigation, With Special Reference to Early Utah Conditions (New York, 1920).

5 A. J. Stewart, Survey Maps tps 14 & 15 N, RIW, SLM. (MS, 1876. Originals, U.S. Land Office, Salt Lake City).

6 Benjamin Horace Hibbard, A History of the Public Land Policies (New York, 1939), 426-27.

7 Oneida County Miscellaneous Record "A," 105 (MS, County Clerk's vault, Oneida County Courthouse, Malad City, Idaho).

4

The Big Range

227

tions of the line required an extensive system of levees and fills which were laboriously built with slip-scrapers and wooden slides, the Mormon scraper and go devil of colloquial parlance.

From data furnished in 1889 to the Special Committee of the United States Senate on the Irrigation and Reclamation of Arid Lands, the enlarged South Field Ditch, or Trenton Canal, as it came to be called, was projected to irrigate 5,000 acres. Built from a mile south of the Idaho line to Ransom Hollow near the present site of Trenton, the canal actually carried water during 1881.8 That year witnessed a prolonged battle in district court. An injunction was placed on all canals but the South Field Ditch while arguments were heard in Malad City over Weston Creek water rights. In 1882 the lengthy suit was concluded when the court held that each man possessed the water rights noted since 1867 in the books of the Weston Creek Watermaster. 9 The decision dashed the hopes of the South Field Ditch promoters to secure irrigation water for Trenton from Weston Creek, but many of them did secure land under terms of the Desert Lands Act. In all 880 acres were so patented. 10 While the South Field Ditch was extended for the main purpose of securing title to the land, other plans were advanced to bring water in sufficient quantity for irrigation. In 1876 the Goodwin Brothers, largest ranchers on the Big Range, hired Edward Hanson of Logan to survey a possible canal route. 11 Mr. Hanson ran a survey up Bear River for twenty miles, the distance necessary to bring water out of the river bottoms onto the Trenton flats. However, Trenton was too sparsely populated in 1876 and the cost seemed too great when spread among the few families.

Various other plans were proposed. Artesian wells were dug in almost every quarter-section, but with the noticeable exception of the 8 R. T. Goodwin. Cornish, interview, September 5, 1962. Frank Wood, Amalga, interview, September 11, 1962. U.S., Congress, Senate Report 928, 51st Cong., 1st Sess. ( 1 8 9 0 ) , 2:85.

9 Lars Fredrickson, "Chronological History of Weston, I d a h o , " ( M S , Special Collections.

U S U ) , 1881â&#x20AC;&#x201D;1882. I have carefully examined the court records in the vault of the Clerk of Oneida County, but the transcripts of cases before about 1905 have disappeared.

10 Cache County Recorder, Deed Books " L , " 274; " I , " 339; " 2 , " 167, 3 4 4 ; " V , " 1; " 1 1 , " 233. It is perhaps significant that 660 of the acres patented under Desert L a n d entries were entered by non-Mormons.

11 Charles Isaac, William, James, Frederick, and George Goodwin were Logan merchants who h a d moved to the Big Range after pressure from the "Cooperative M o v e m e n t " h a d forced them to consolidate with the Logan Cooperative Mercantile Institution. See "Joel E. Ricks Notes," interview with Frank Wood (microfilm in U t a h State Historical Society Library, Salt Lake C i t y ) .

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Quarterly

Goodwin Brothers' well, the water was poor and not in sufficient quantity for irrigation. During the late 1880s and the early 1890s, two reservoir sitesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;one on Weston Creek and one on Clarkston Creekâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;were considered. Because of the cost and the limited amount of water, both proposals were dropped.

Once the Goodwin Brothers survey had demonstrated the practicality of tapping Bear River, whatever Charles Gilbert Wood, other plans were temporarily adprincipal promoter of the vanced, the Bear remained the lodeWest Cache Irrigation Company. stone of irrigation plans. In late Courtesy A. J. Simmonds.

1881 a Trenton correspondent for the hogan Leader noted that "When the water comes from Bear River, which it will do in the near future, this will be one of the best locations in the mountains." In 1889, O. J. Hollister, secretary of the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce, testified before a Senate committee on irrigation and reclamation that the Trenton area could be irrigated from Bear River with the use of Bear Lake as a reservoir to assure a stable stream flow.12 Aside from purely physical and financial reasons, another impediment to early development of irrigation in Trenton was the large number of non-Mormons â&#x20AC;&#x201D; more than forty percent, according to the 1891 school census. Even as late as 1900, Assistant LDS Church Historian Andrew Jenson estimated that one half of the Trenton area was nonMormon. 13 Unlike the Gentile population in the cities, these were farmers. As with their city cohorts, however, they were opposed to Mormon domination. "Ecclesiastical control over irrigation was effective only while the church was the sole authority and the people were of one 12

Logan Leader, December 23, 1881; Senate Report 928, 2:41-47.

The Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887 required Utah school districts to list the religion of the parents of all school children in the district. It is interesting to note that West Cache is one of the few farming areas in territorial Utah in which a substantial proportion of the people were non-Mormons. Gentiles were numerous in the cities and mining districts, but were rare among the agricultural population of the territory. Trenton District Minute Book, Census of 1891 (Special Collections, USU) ; MS History of Trenton Ward (LDS Church Historian's Office, Salt Lake City), 2.

13

The Big Range

229

faith." 14 Clearly, the old cooperative methods which had characterized early irrigation in Cache Valley would not serve the Trenton area. A more secular organization would be needed.

GENESIS OF T H E W E S T CACHE CANAL

In February 1894 Charles G. Wood, the school teacher and a recent graduate of Amherst College, called a meeting at the Red Brick school house in Trenton to consider any and all possibilities of obtaining irrigation water for the area. Wood was elected chairman of a standing committee of seven to investigate promising sites. The people of Trenton and the Silver Star district of southern Weston subscribed $1.00 per farm, and Professor Samuel Fortier of the Agricultural College at Logan ran a reconnaissance survey far enough up the Bear River to study the irrigation of the two districts. He recommended against construction of a canal â&#x20AC;&#x201D; largely because of the prohibitive cost of $180,000. 15 Two years later, a meeting was held at Weston to consider Mink Creek as a source of supply for Clifton, Dayton, Weston (in Idaho), and Trenton. The farmers paid J. H. Holiday to make a survey, "but it was feared there was not enough water for all." 16 Despite these setbacks, interest in a canal did not lag â&#x20AC;&#x201D; especially the interest of Charles G. Wood, who may rightly be considered as the father of the West Cache. Early in 1898 he talked with Edward Hanson who had conducted the 1876 survey for the Goodwin Brothers. Hanson reported the route favorable and estimated the probably cost at $50,000, mostly in labor. Money was again collected and a new route, ten feet higher than the original, was surveyed during March 1898. A meeting was called at the Red Brick and the report of the survey was submitted to the farmers of Trenton, Alto (Amalga), and Newton. 17 Bear River held an ample supply of water, and the cost did not seem prohibitive.

In order to build and manage the canal, it was agreed at the March meeting to incorporate a company with 10,000 shares at a par value of $10.00 per share. An interim board of directors was chosen. M. W. 14 Wells A. Hutchins, Mutual Irrigation Companies in Utah, U t a h Agricultural Experim e n t Station Bulletin No. 199 (Logan, U t a h , 1 9 2 7 ) , 25.

15 T H . Humphreys to Nebeker, T h a t c h e r , a n d Bowen, attorneys for the West Cache Irrigation Company, November 16, 1917, files of West Cache Irrigation Company, T r e n t o n , U t a h . " C h a r l e s G. Wood, "History of T r e n t o n " ( M S , 1924, Special Collections, U S U ) , 5.

This history by one _ of the principals in the West Cache Irrigation C o m p a n y is the source of m u c h early information presented in this paper.

17 T h e n a m e of Alto was changed in 1918 to Amalga after the construction there of a plant of the Amalgamated Sugar Company.

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Red Brick School, Trenton, site of meetings of the West Cache Irrigation Company, was demolished in 1963.

Courtesy Special Collections, Utah State University.

Butler was elected president of the board with Parley Merrill, George W. Adams, William Bingham, and Joseph Wood as directors. C. G. Wood was elected secretary-treasurer.

The Secretary was instructed to consult Attorney W. W. Maughan and have Articles of Incorporation and By-laws drawn u p ; and the President and Secretary instructed to canvass the district for stock subscriptions and to collect ten percent of each subscription in cash or negotiable notes.

It was decided to hire Washington Jenkins of Ogden as field engineer and A. F. Parker, also of Ogden, as consulting engineer. 18

Jenkins and Parker placed a party in the field on July 11, 1898, which re-surveyed the proposed canal route. Flumes at Battle Creek, Deep Creek, and Weston Creek were recommended to save distance and fall.19 On September 26, 1898, at a meeting in the Red Brick, it was reported that about 2,500 shares of stock had been subscribed. The Articles of Incorporation were read and adopted, and the West Cache Irrigation Company was born. On December 17, 1898, the by-laws were adopted and the interim officers were made permanent. 20 George H. Champ of the Utah Mortgage and Loan Corporation [in Logan] agreed to lend the company $40,000 on a twenty year bond issue if the right-of-way deeds for 100 feet of ground were secured and if each contractor who worked received one-third of his pay in cash and twothirds in stock. 21 18

Wood, "History of Trenton," 6.

Humphreys to Nebeker, et al.

20 Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws of the West Cache Irrigation Company (Logan, 1899), 15.

21 Wood, "History of Trenton," 6.

10

The Big Range

231

A final survey and cross-section of the work was ordered and the secretary began letting contracts following Champ's guidelines. On October 10, 1898, near the Idaho line, C. G. Wood turned the first scraper of dirt to begin work on the canal.

CONSTRUCTION OF THE W E S T CACHE

Construction work centered around three or four camps scattered along the length of the canal route. The workers lived in tents or boarded with neighboring farmers. A large cook-tent was a prominent feature of each camp, with local women hired by the company to cook for the men. Much of the work force consisted of farmers whose lands were to be served by the completed canal and who wanted to secure more stock in the company as well as extra money. The work continued all year, but it was most vigorous in the winter months when farm work (which would ordinarily occupy most of the available help) was at a minimum. 22 In actual construction the soil was first loosened by plowing and then taken out with slip-scrapers. A good part of the canal was dug with the aid of nothing more than a pick to loosen the frozen soil and a shovel to build up the bank. 23 Work continued slowly from 1898 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; too slowly to please field engineer Washington Jenkins. In a letter to C. G. Wood in August 1900 he complained: T h e r e is altogether too m u c h t i m e lost in traveling u p t h e c a n a l from Butler's place a n d r e t u r n to suit m e , a n d I would like to m a k e as n e a r o n e job of t h a t cross-section work as it is possible â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a n d t h a t too before t h e rush of graders comes on, (if it is ever coming) ! 2 4

In the same letter the engineer issues a special plea that sagebrush be cleared off the land "where the bank is to be built. The brush built into the bank will decay and be sure to leave vacancies through which the water will be apt to find a way and cause a rupture."

In 1900 when the canal had been built almost to Weston, an additional bond issue of $20,000 was sold. The new funds went for headgates, flumes, bridges, railroad crossings, and for additional construction work. Already the canal had cost more than the first estimate. In 1898, before work had actually begun, the Utah Construction Company of 22 Moses Andreason, Logan, interview, March 28, 1962. Andreason was a construction worker on the canal.

23 Ibid.

24 Washington Jenkins to C G. Wood, August 5, 1900, files of West Cache Irrigation Company, Trenton, Utah.

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Ogden — equipped with steam shovels — had bid to build the West Cache for $80,000. Their offer was declined because the stockholders and management thought they could build it cheaper themselves. That refusal was to cause many a second thought before the canal was completed. 25 The construction work on the north half of the canal (that part in Idaho) was a slow process because the channel had to be carved out of the bluff along the river bottoms. By late 1901, however, two of the three construction camps had moved out onto the Trenton flats where work could proceed more rapidly. By January 31, 1902, there were three camps at work: William Dopp's near the Cannon Station (the Union Pacific station which sat astride the Utah-Idaho line), B. F. Bingham's in northern Trenton, and B. Y. Benson's in southern Trenton. By May of that year the canal was completed southward to the Utah line, and in August the first water was temporarily turned into the West Cache as far south as Battle Creek. 26 In May 1904, after a delay in construction caused by the Panic of 1903, the West Cache reached Trenton, and the water was turned in to wet the whole line. Some finishing work was done on the main line in 1904, mainly installation of fixtures and shoring of already completed banks. Water was turned into the main canal on March 25, 1905. As completed, it was the second largest canal in Utah — exceeded only in capacity and acres irrigated by the Bear River Canal in Box Elder County (which was partially constructed by the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company).

Watering roughly one-fifth of the irrigated land in Cache Valley, the West Cache was built by a precinct which included less than a thousand people. Seven years of work had been rewarded; Trenton, Cornish, and Amalga lands were under irrigation !27 Various laterals branched off the main canal. These in turn fed the water into the smaller ditches and finally into the fields themselves. The laterals, of varying capacities, were largely built and maintained by the farmers who drew water from them, though the company held title to the land and company engineers surveyed their courses.

For the management of a canal so large as the W'est Cache, there was no precedent in the region; organization evolved with need. On 25 The contemporary records of the company have disappeared, but the offer and the amount are verified by various people concerned with the construction of the canal whom this writer has interviewed.

26 Jenkins to William Bingham, January 31, 1902, files of West Cache Irrigation Company. Prudence Butler, "Settlement of Trenton" (MS, May 1902, Special Collections, USU).

27 Humphreys to Nebeker, et al. Minutes of the Board of Directors, West Cache Irrigation Company, vol. 1, p. 1.

The Big Range

233

June 12, 1905, the board decided to hire two ditchriders who were to patrol the canal on horseback and check for possible dangerous places in the banks. Several weeks later Directors B. Y. Benson and B. F. Bingham were authorized to employ a watermaster to oversee the whole canal from the Idaho line to southern Trenton. The ten miles from the head of the canal to the Idaho line was to be handled by one of the ditchriders. 28 BUILDING THE BRANCH L I N E S

Even with the main canal finishing, much construction remained to be done. At Trenton the West Cache divided: one branch went east and south to Alto (Amalga) and the other south and west to lower Newton. Work began simultaneously on both branches in 1905, but financial difficulties prevented completion until 1909.29 Money â&#x20AC;&#x201D; or rather the lack of it â&#x20AC;&#x201D; was the greatest problem which the West Cache Irrigation Company faced during its early years. The company's files are filled with bills demanding early payment; but none equals the directness of the July 12, 1900, letter from attorney J. Z. Stewart, Jr.: Gentlemen: â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Please send in w h a t you are owing for sand.

W e need the money.

By the time the water reached Trenton in 1905, the company had floated bonds worth $60,000. In addition, numerous loans were made at Utah Mortgage and Loan Corporation, Thatcher Brothers Bank, and other Logan institutions. By 1905 the company's credit rating was so poor that the directors were forced to borrow $3,500 on their personal notes to meet some of the canal's pressing financial obligations.30 Assessments of thirty, forty, or fifty cents per share were levied almost quarterly on the company's stock, with much of this money used to pay interest on the outstanding bonds. Most of the farmers who held West Cache stock were forced to mortgage their land in order to meet the assesments. In 1906 the company paid a dividend in unissued stock equal to the amount paid in assessments in 1905 above the face value of the stock already held !31 Income was at such a low ebb that at the annual 28

ibid.

Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws of the Trenton Irrigation Company 1910), 2.

30 Minutes of the Board of Directors, vol. 1, p. 9.

31 Ibid., 25.

29

(Logan,

234

Utah Historical Quarterly

stockholders' meeting on February 3, 1906, it was decided to give "any person who desires work, and who will work for stock, a contract on the construction of the Newton Branch." 32 On June 27, 1906, the stockholders approved an additional $85,000 bond issue to the Peoples Bank and Trust Company of Rockford, Illinois, to retire old debts and to provide additional working capital for work on the Amalga and Newton branches. 33 This provided a breathing spell for the harried company. Work was pushed vigorously on the two branches, and new fixtures were installed.

With a temporary respite from fiscal worries, the company began organizing to implement its prime function of distributing water. Though from 1905 to 1910 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and even later â&#x20AC;&#x201D; water was out of the canal more than half the time because of breaks and washouts, conditions kept improving. Permanent employees were hired. In 1906 C. A. Brown of Trenton agreed to serve as watermaster at $2.50 per day, and on July 13, 1907, a watermaster was employed for $75.00 per month. 34 For the year 1907 the directors ordered that water be distributed to the stockholders at the rate of five hours per share "providing that not more than onefourth of the allotment be used at the first watering." 35 Even these liberal rates did not prevent the temptation to use more; the directors found it necessary to provide each headgate with a lock and key.36 With the Panic of 1907, financial crisis returned to plague the company. As the two branch lines were brought to completion, the treasury was exhausted. By 1909 the West Cache could not pay the $137 tax on its Idaho holdings, and on July 8, 1910, the Idaho section of the canal was sold to the county for tax arrears. A. H. Thompson of the Utah Mortgage and Loan Corporation, which held notes on the canal, wrote to the secretary of the company with considerable understatement: "We do not remember whether you have been paying taxes in Idaho or not, but anyway they seem to have sold your right-of-way!" 37 The continual assessments forced many farmers to sell or mortgage their capital stock. By 1910 the great majority of the $100,000 in capital stock was either owned or held in trust by twenty-five people. The 32

Ibid.

Ibid., 4 7 - 5 1 .

34 C A. Brown to the Board of Directors, M a r c h 7, 1906, files of West Cache Irrigation C o m p a n y ; Minutes of the Board of Directors, vol. 1, p . 87.

35 Ibid., 84.

36 Ibid., 76.

37 A. H . Thompson, secretary-treasurer of the U t a h Mortgage and Loan Corporation, to T. N . J u d a h , secretary, West Cache Irrigation Company, August 5, 1910, files of the West Cache Irrigation Company.

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Trenton, Utah, ca. 1915, after irrigation enabled planting of orchards and truck farms.

Courtesy Special Collections, Utah State University.

capitalization already exceeded by debts, the twenty-five owners and trustees, on December 22, 1910, reincorporated the company as the Trenton Irrigation Company, with an authorized capital of $400,000. The company's seat of business was transferred from Trenton to Logan.38 But the Trenton Irrigation Company was short-lived. Most of the stock (and hence water rights) was held by a few men who rented the water to the farmers. Their monopoly was not only resented but was costly to those who were without water rights. Taking advantage of Utah's liberal irrigation district laws, a movement was started to eliminate the stock company and form an irrigation district.39 The climate was favorable. The men who held the stock found it expensive to maintain their monopoly, for they had to bear the high assessments. Rather than pay exorbitant rents to the company, many farmers simply let their lands revert to a dry-land type of agriculture. Faced with an abundance of unused water and mounting costs, the principal stockholders were not adverse to a change.

On January 6, 1912, a committee of three was elected to superintend the organization of an irrigation district, and a month later the first meeting of the board of directors of the Cache Valley Irrigation District was heldâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;back in Trenton. The board consisted of B. F. Bingham, C. G. Wood, L. P. Peterson, M. C. Rigby, and W. H. Thain. T. H. Judah held the triple role of secretary, treasurer, and general manager at a 38 Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws of the Trenton Irrigation Company, 5 - 6 , 20. An excellent account of the West Cache Canal (with emphasis on 1910-1953) by an eyewitness to much of its history is found in Harold E. Bergeson, " T h e West Cache Story" (Typescript, 1970, copies in Special Collections, U S U , and U t a h State Historical Society L i b r a r y ) .

39 Contemporary U t a h laws relating to irrigation districts are discussed in some detail in Thomas, The Development of Institutions under Irrigation, 117â&#x20AC;&#x201D;38.

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yearly salary of $1,350. On April 8, 1912, the residents of the Cache Valley Irrigation District voted a $40,000 bond to purchase water rights from the defunct Trenton Irrigation Company. 40 The objective of broad community control having been achieved and maintained, there was no longer strong incentive to continue the irrigation district, and in 1923 it was dissolved and the canal returned to a stock company under its original name, the West Cache Irrigation Company. It was capitalized at $150,000, divided into 15,000 shares. 41 W E S T CACHE REVIVED

Begun in the depression of the late 'nineties and built during the Panics of 1903 and 1907, the West Cache enterprise now faced the Great Depression. Though it delayed solution, by late 1937 final payments were made. For the first time since its organization in 1898, the West Cache Irrigation Company was solvent.42 But now troubles beset the individual stockholders. Considering the low farm prices, many farms were lost to mortgage holders or sold for taxes. Much stock defaulted to the company and more to the banks which held farm mortgages. On April 8, 1941, the company's secretary noted in the minutes that stock held or being sold under contract by the Federal Land Bank at Berkeley, California, totaled 6,923 shares. Since one of the by-laws forbade proxy voting, he added: Therefore, for the Federal Land Bank to vote its stock, it would be necessary for either the Bank's president or secretary to be present at the meeting to vote its stock in person.

The problem now arises since the bank represents a majority of the stock, that if they did not come to the meeting there is a question as to whether a meeting could be held without them. 43

Not worrying about the niceties of Robert's Rules, the meeting was held.

High agricultural prices during World War II brought stability to both the company and to the farmers â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but there was yet another reincorporation. After the demise of the Irrigation District in 1923, the company had been re-incorporated as a shareholding concern for a period of thirty years. By 1953, the time had expired, and another re-incorporation was necessary â&#x20AC;&#x201D; this time for 99 years. 44 40

M i n u t e s of the Board of Directors, vol. 1, p p . 165, 1 6 8 ; vol. 2, p . 4.

Ibid., vol. 3, p . 1.

42 Ibid., vol. 4, p . 8.

43 M i n u t e s of the Board of Directors, vol. 4, p . 120.

44 Articles of Incorporation of the West C a c h e Canal C o m p a n y , November 16, 1953 (typescript in the company's files).

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Built at a cost of $267,000, with another $250,000 spent on the line for laterals, railroad crossings, headgates, and the branch lines, the West Cache Canal takes water from both Bear River and Deep Creek. It delivers about 33,000 acre-feet of water, though the company has recorded rights to 40,000 feet. The main canal is 25.5 miles in length; the Amalga branch 10 miles; the Newton branch 8.7 miles; and the various laterals 14 miles, making a total of 58.2 miles in the whole West Cache system.45 Water from the canal irrigates 14,832 acres of land â&#x20AC;&#x201D; approximately one-tenth of the total irrigated acreage in Cache Valley. 46 The company is governed by a board of five directors. By an informal agreement, there is one director from each of the five political divisions through which the canal flows: Idaho, Cornish, Trenton, Amalga, and Newton. The president of the company is elected by the board from one of their number. The actual managing of the canal is handled by the general manager from the company's headquarters in the West Cache Building at Trenton.

Irrigating nearly 20,000 acres with a population of 1,032 persons under the canal, the West Cache makes possible the cultivation of sugar beets, barley, oats, wheat, corn, peas, beans, and alfalfa, which additionally supports the extensive dairy industry of western Cache Valley.

The annual income from farm enterprises directly dependent upon the canal is in excess of $2,000,000. The contribution of the enterprise is measured by the fact that, in a very real sense, without the West Cache Canal there would be no "West Side" -â&#x20AC;&#x201D; no villages of Cornish, Trenton, or Amalga. The waters of the Bear, diverted through the West Cache Canal system, are truly the lifeblood of the Cache Valley West Side.

45

Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws of the Trenton Irrigation Company, 2. Humphreys to Nebeker, et al.

46 Stuart H. Richards, et al., Irrigation and Canal Companies of Utah, Utah Cooperative Extension Service Circular No. 331 (Logan, 1966), 14.

Albert F. Potter's Wasatch Survey, 1902: A Beginning for Public Management of Natural Resources in Utah

BY CHARLES S. PETERSON

A

T ELEVEN O'CLOCK

on July 1, 1902, Potter of Division ment of

Chief Grazing Officer Albert F. the D e p a r t m e n t of the Interior's of Forestry (later the DepartAgriculture's Forest Service) arrived by train in Logan,

Albert F. Potter, 1892, on Pet Brownie, a wild colt he caught and broke himself.

S. Forest Service photograph. t4?M'MMM-M:-«MmM$M

iMm'-mMMMM::

"MyMlMriBW' M^:>-":M\MM

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**%«Hfc^

:

•

.

.

Wasatch Survey

239

Utah. Before sundown he had begun work on what was not only a pioneering effort in public management of natural resources in Utah but was probably the most important forest survey ever made in the state.

Lasting five months and carrying Potter on a crisscross exploration through the Wasatch Mountains and Colorado Plateau from the Idaho border on the north to Escalante on the south, the survey led directly to the establishment of a series of forest reserves in Utah.

Though not the first survey made in Utah's forested areas, it was by far the most general. Potter was primarily concerned with ecological balance, conservation, and with the relation of forest resources to the social needs of Utah's people; and his work was unique in that it served as an administrative step in the process of creating a reserve system in Utah.

In his report Potter laid the groundwork for dividing the forests into manageable units. In part, this was a matter of recognizing geographic and economic entities. In part it was an exercise in public relations, as Potter was attentive to the attitudes of the people using the forests and living adjacent to them. Nor did he neglect to preach the gospel of what his superior, Gifford Pinchot, and President Theodore Roosevelt were beginning to call conservation.

Unlike the work of John Wesley Powell, Potter's survey did not result in the development of a grand theory of the relationship of water, land, vegetation, and people. Potter's job was the more practical one of determining how the immediate needs of both the people and the lands could best be met. Rather than a theory of development, Potter's was a study in practical ecology. Because of its practicality, Potter's could be immediately implemented where Powell's could not. 1 Potter's 1902 visit in Utah was cast in the grand pattern of the far ranging tour which Gifford Pinchot had already made famous. Beginning in 1896 while a member of President Grover Cleveland's Commission on Forestry, Pinchot had traveled widely in western forests. Moving rapidly through a region and touching on as many facets of forest environment as possible, Pinchot immersed himself in the forest sensing its nature and relation to the society of which it was part as well as gainDr. Peterson is the director of the Utah State Historical Society. This article was written with the cooperation of the Manti-LaSal National Forest and will constitute part of a larger study of that forest now being completed.

1 Thomas Alexander, "The Powell Irrigation Survey and the People of the West," lournal of the West, 7 (January 1968), 48-53 and Alexander, "John Wesley Powell, the Irrigation Survey, and the Inauguration of the Second Phase of Irrigation Development in Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly, 37 (Spring 1969), 190â&#x20AC;&#x201D;206. See also Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Medidian: John Wesley Powell and the Opening of the West, (Boston, 1962), 202-42.

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ing some idea of its administrative needs. In the beginning, Pinchot's concern was limited almost entirely to trees. But as time passed and his contact with western forests broadened, he came to recognize the importance of other factors. One of these was the relationship of grazing and livestock to mountain areas. 2 Unlike Pinchot and so many other foresters, Potter was neither highly educated nor an easterner. Indeed, in many ways he was a westerner's westerner. His background was that of the livestock frontier.

Finding his way at an early period from California into the Little Colorado country of northern Arizona, he, like Will C. Barnes whom he later brought into the Forest Service, ran a small herd of cattle. 3 His operation, which initially promised to do well, fell on hard times after 1884 when the Aztec Land and Cattle Company from Texas purchased railroad grant lands from the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. Herded by Texas toughs, the 40,000 head of cattle belonging to the Hash Knife (as the company was locally known because of its brand) soon filled a block of land nearly one hundred miles square from Holbrook on the east to Flagstaff on the west, and south to the Tonto Basin and north to the Navajo reservation. 4 Potter might have survived the Hash Knife but in the 1890s an extended drought killed thousands of cattle on northern Arizona's overgrazed deserts including stock belonging to both the Hash Knife and Albert Potter. 5 Jobbing about northern Arizona Potter held several public offices during the late 1890s and became secretary of the Eastern Division of the Arizona Woolgrowers' Association. It was in this position that Pinchot found him in May of 1900. Since Potter was well acquainted with both grazing and northern Arizona, he was assigned to guide Pinchot along the Mogollon Rim and the White Mountains which sweep east and south from the San Francisco Mountains across Arizona to New Mexico.

2

Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground (New York, 1947), 177-82 and 319-26.

For background material on Albert F. Potter see Paul H. Roberts, Hoof Prints on Forest Ranges: The Early Years of National Forest Range Administration, (San Antonio, 1963), 21-32, and Roberts, Them Were the Days, (San Antonio, 1965), 63-4, 98-100, and 114.

4 For the role of the Atlantic Pacific Railroad and the Hash Knife Company in the range development of northern Arizona see the author's Cradles of Destiny: Mormon Villages on the Little Colorado, 1870-1900, to be published next year by University of Arizona Press, Chapter VII. Joseph Fish, The Life and Times of Joseph Fish, Mormon Pioneer, ed. John H. Krenkel (Danville, UL, 1970), also contains illuminating references to the Hash Knife as do William S. Greever, Arid Domain: The Santa Fe Railway and Its Western Land Grant, (Palo Alto, 1944), 46, and Will Barnes, Western Grazing Grounds and Forest Ranges, (Chicago, 1913), 115.

5 James W. LeSueur, "Trouble with the Hash Knife Cattle Company," LeSuer Papers, Arizona Pioneers Historical Society, Tucson, 5, and Joseph Fish, "Autobiography of Joseph Fish," (typescript, author's possession), 298.

3

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Departing from the railroad town of Winslow, Potter led Pinchot south through dry hills towards the rim. This leg of the journey provided opportunity for each man to make an appraisal of the other. According to Pinchot, Potter tested his mettle early. Running out of water, the Arizona stockman hunted up "a stagnant pool of terrible green water.

Sticking out of it were the horns of rotting carcasses of cattle that had waded in and drunk till they bogged down and died." 6 Without giving further details Pinchot opined that he passed his first test in Potter's eyes when he drank from it. On the other hand, by the end of the trip Potter had so risen in Pinchot's esteem that he was soon made head of the branch of grazing that Pinchot came to regard as a necessary part of forest administration after the Arizona experience. 7 Following a pattern well established in Forest Service administration, Albert F. Potter kept a daily log from his arrival in Logan on July 1 to November 22 when heavy snows finally forced him to abandon his reconnaissance. His notes ran to fifty-eight single-spaced typed pages.

The diary is, in effect, a report on Utah's mountain resources and a most perceptive analysis of the condition of these resources after something more than a half-century's use by Utah's white inhabitants. Although Potter indicated his intent to make specific recommendations, his Wasatch diary did not include his recommendations as such.8 His 145-day tour of Utah was notable for its extent and duration and for the urgency with which he proceeded. He worked 122 days in the field â&#x20AC;&#x201D; twenty-two days in July, twenty-nine in August, twenty-one in September, twenty-eight in October and the first twenty-two days of November. During this time there were two periods of nine days each when his diary is silent. Discounting these two periods he worked nearly every day of his sojourn in Utah. One suspects the reason for his arduous schedule may have been more compelling, but it may be that the quiet nature of Mormon communities had something to do with the way he drove himself. He noted with bemused regret, for instance, that Logan's Fourth of July celebration, "was made up entirely of patriotic speeches 6

Pinchot, Breaking New Ground, 178; Roberts, Hoof Prints in Forest Ranges, 29-30.

Roberts, Hoof Prints in Forest Ranges, 29â&#x20AC;&#x201D;32.

8 Albert F. Potter, "Diary of Albert F. Potter's Wasatch Survey, July 1 to November 22, 1902," Region IV Papers, Record Group 95, (National Archives, Washington, D . C ) . This diary was located several years ago by Arnold R. Standing, a remarkable Forest Service career man who devoted much of his time to the history of the Forest Service and Utah. Along with other writings, Standing contributed articles to the Utah Historical Quarterly. See his and L. A. Fleming's "The Road to 'Fortune': The Salt Lake Cutoff," UHQ, 33 (Summer 1965), 248-71, and Standing, "Through the Uintas: History of the Carter Road," UHQ, 35 (Summer 1967), 256-67.

7

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and music." His second sabbath in the area he sought relaxation in Logan — it was his only try. Rarely equalled in pungent brevity, his entry for that day tells much: "Sunday at Logan — nothing doing." 9 From July 1-18 he canvassed the region of the proposed Cache reserve which unlike the present Cache National Forest did not extend into Idaho. After a lapse of nine days he resumed work at Murray on July 26 traveling up Big Cottonwood Canyon — the upper reaches of which he found so denuded of timber that in his words " I t would be difficult to find a seedling big enough to make a club to kill a snake." 10 Working every day until August 16, he gave what he called the North Wasatch Forest close inspection. O n the seventeenth he turned to the Wasatch Plateau at Thistle. Dog-legging his way back and forth, he spent the remaining days of August, all of September, and to the tenth of October examining the region north of Salina Canyon. T h e next twoand-a-half weeks saw him pushing into the progressively more primitive regions of the Fish Lake Reserve and the Thousand Lakes and Boulder mountains. 1 1 Then, as early snows began to impede his progress, he rushed to cover the proposed Sevier reserve most of which lies within the present-day Dixie Forest. Toiling past snowed-in bands of sheep, he came twenty-seven miles from Orton to Circle Canyon near Circleville on the twenty-second of November to complete his tour.

In the course of his 145 days in the field he traveled far. Failing to record mileage in Cache Valley, his incomplete record logged a total of 3,077 miles. Of this amount 808 were by train. In 84 working days he traveled 2,269 miles by wagon, horseback, and on foot — making an average of 27 miles per day. Though his estimates may well have erred, the distances are nevertheless impressive, especially when one considers the terrain through which he passed. Indeed, the feat is awesome in view of the fact that he visited every mine, sawmill, dipping vat, mountain resort (there is no evidence that his interest was other than business), rancher, town meeting, and public official that he passed en route.

For the most part he traveled alone and by horseback. Where wagons could pass he sometimes availed himself of this means of traffic.

Prompted by occasional moods of enthusiasm for the public weal, or 0

Potter, "Diary," 2 and 7.

Ibid., 10.

11 T h e Fishlake Reserve had been established in 1900 in response to an effort that had originated as a petition to have the Fish Lake area granted to the State of U t a h as a state park.

T h e secretary of interior rejected this proposition but suggested the reserve as an alternate plan and with the concurrence of U t a h officials the reserve had been created. See Annual Message of Heber M. Wells, January 10, 1899, 32.

10

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Survey

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possibly by some nagging administrative curiosity, he sometimes left his horse to scramble several thousand feet up some mountain peak. 12 Often some friend of conservation accompanied him on his trek and at least twice, once near Nephi and once in the lost tangles of Boulder Mountain, he hired local guides. If he had troubles in these travels or found them inconvenient he kept it to himself, although not long after the reconnaissance began he was kicked by a mule. Laconically recording this event on August 8, a day during Boulder Creek on Boulder which he logged twenty-five miles Mountain as it may have looked up Daniels Canyon and along to Potter. Photograph by S t r a w b e r r y C r e e k , h e n o t e d J. K. Hillers in 1873.

"Commenced the day by being kicked by a mule. Fortunately I have become thoroughly toughened and no serious damage was done." 13 But what of the country through which Potter moved? Much was common to the entire region. Aside from the physical similarity of the mountains, there was sameness both in the drought of that year and in the burden of the ravenous livestock licking leaves down from high on the trees or chewing mole-like into the dust after errant roots.

But there was also diversity. While Potter does not dwell upon the point specifically, he saw striking differences in the intensity of nongrazing uses. In 1902 the far south, particularly the Thousand Lakes and Boulder mountains area, was still a wilderness. It is true prospectors and stockmen knew it well, but the embellishments of civilization were largely lacking. T o the north, by contrast, society seems to have swarmed over the entire range in its quest for livelihood. This fact was especially apparent in Cache Valley. There settlers had encroached far up the mountains in a wide variety of ways. The forested areas had been heavily lumbered for years. Potter found evidence of cutting and recutting. He saw it in place names â&#x20AC;&#x201D; names such as Temple and Tie canyons or Pole Heaven Potter, "Diary," 7.

Ibid., 14.

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which all bespoke earlier industry. Stark evidence of cutting and then cutting again before reproduction had occurred was easily seen. The result was a product of decreasing value, and it was a rare area indeed where top-grade timber was to be found. Many spots had been worked successively for lumber, for ties, and piling timber, and finally for telephone poles until no living timber was left. Sawmills, abandoned mill sets, wagon roads, ugly gouged dump sites where logs had been pushed down sharp inclines, he found in plenty. To reach inaccesible plots of virgin timber one operator had laid out $3,000 in road construction at one site and $1,000 at another â&#x20AC;&#x201D; sums Potter thought him unlikely to regain. 14 Though obviously hard-pressed to find saw timber, the same operator ran two mills, one for summer work and one for winter.

Civilization in the form of power plants had long since invaded the mountains adjacent to Cache Valley. One power plant, which was of such antiquity that Potter referred to it as the "old plant of the Logan Electric Company," had already been abandoned and was falling in decay. 15 Other plants belonging to the Logan Company and the Hercules Power Company that supplied Ogden were noted. Elsewhere, in what was to become the Cache Forest, a surprising number of mining operations scratched for subsistence. Potter visited at least a dozen which were in the main lead mines, although some of them produced copper as well.

Humanity's scar had likewise been laid on the Cache highlands in the form of farms and gardens, fenced areas, roads both private and public, as well as the inevitable livestock operations. Interestingly, Potter noticed that ground squirrels were a great pest all over the proposed Cache reserve and especially to farming operations. WTith reference to this problem he wrote: At Mr. Dewitt's ranch on Logan Creek a little field, which was formally [formerly] farmed had to be abandoned on account of their ravages. At Montrose sawmill I saw men catching them with fish poles and a string noose. The squirrels being baited with grain spread out upon canvas.

They caught 100 in about one hour. At Meadowville some of the farming lands have been abandoned and the settlers removed on account of the damage done by these pests.1G

In sum, Potter's survey of the Cache Valley area portrayed a hard working but not overly productive forest whose users were beginning to 14

Ibid., 6.

According to Joel E. Ricks and Everett L. Cooley, the Logan Electric Company's first power plant dated back to 1880, only one year after Thomas Edison perfected the incandescent lamp. See Joel E. Ricks and Everett L. Cooley, eds., The History of a Valley: Cache Valley, Utah-Idaho, (Logan, 1956), 227.

M Potter, "Diary," 7.

15

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245

recognize the need for regulation and restraint if its long-run potentials were to be achieved.

An impelling concern to Potter on the entire tour of Utah's forests was the livestock industry, which was well established with both cattle and sheep running on every mountain range. In the main, the cattle business was one of small holding. Settlers and Mormon villagers, who characteristically owned small irrigated farms, generally made from 10 to 150 head of cattle part of their operation. These they ran on mountain pastures during the summer and grazed and fed on lowland bottoms and fields in the winter. For cattlemen of this kind the mountains with their grazing resources as well as water for irrigation were absolutely essential.

Betraying strong sympathy for them as well as a clear understanding of the realities of their situation, Potter emphasized their basic stake in the region's forests and recommended that all caution should be exercised to protect their rights in the new forest reserves. 17 While most of the cattle operations were small, several outfits of more than modest size were observed, but these stand out by merit of their uniqueness. At Heber, for example, owners pooled their stock and ran them jointly. Although they did not limit their operation to reservation lands, they leased range from the Indians at a cost of $12,000 per year. At Potter's stated lease price of $100.00 per section, this amounted to nearly 77,000 acres and constituted one of the largest ranges held by any single interest. Charles Carter, also of Heber, leased 45,000 acres of reservation lands. 18 But the largest cattle operation observed by Potter was the Ireland Land and Cattle Company. Headquartered at its Gilson Canyon Ranch near Salina it sprawled through several locations and ran thousands of animals. It had also used the heft that came with its size to take over government lands, having, according to some accounts, as much as 40,000 acres of the public domain under its fence. Taking advantage of state lands, the Ireland Company had also claimed most of the water holes in its vicinity and, using the so-called "rubber forty" technique, stretched control of the water to the domination of the entire area. 19 Farming was very much part of its operation and hundreds of tons of meadow and alfalfa hay were raised and fed to wintering stock.

17

Ibid., 36.

Ibid., 13.

19 "Rubber Forty" was a term applied by early foresters and other land management officials to the practice of acquiring deeds â&#x20AC;&#x201D; by means of entry under federal programs, manipulation of state lands or purchase â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to small plots adjacent to streams and springs and using control of water thus acquired to monopolize vast arid ranges, 18

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Potter's investigation of the region south of Spanish Fork Canyon indicated the past existence of numerous dairy operations, A few miles south of Thistle Station lay Dairy Fork; at the south end of the Sanpete Mountains, Dairy Canyon was a conspicuous feature; and on the remote Boulder Mountain were sites of numerous abandoned dairies. None of these lay near any market and all had been in long decay. Potter's inquiry verified a well-known fact of Utah history — that many of the first cattle operations to follow withdrawing Indians onto the Wasatch Plateau were summer dairies. Milking up to 150 cows, these mountain dairies took advantage of good feed to raise a calf crop and at the same time make cheese and salt down butter. However, in 1902 the day of mountain dairying had passed. Such places had not been able to compete with sheep herds, which in Potter's words, "grubbed away at the grass roots," and had been "given up for dairying on account of the scarcity of feed." 20 But sheep were Utah's big forest industry. Reaching peak numbers in 1893 when a wool clip of 14 million pounds had been recorded, the count was still high when Potter made his survey.21 While Potter saw sheep — and lots of them — on the entire Wasatch Range, Cache Valley and the mountains adjacent to the Sanpete Valley were areas of concentration. Potter himself estimated sheep numbers on the Cache reserve at 150,000 though tax forms showed only one-half that number. Sanpete residents, in boasting moods, claimed that a million head ran their forests, a fact — if indeed it were a fact — which gave them claim to being the nation's largest sheep county.22 In a lament one Salina cattleman woefully informed Potter that no fewer than 150,000 sheep had scoured the Salina watershed during the summer of 1901. 23 Unlike the cattle industry, sheep raising was not tied to farm property and winter feeding but was a matter of running summer and winter on the public domain and of unbridled competition for feed.

Given this condition and the other modes of the era, one could get into the sheep business with little or no cash outlay. Many sons of Sanpete found no land to farm and turned to sheepherding. It was a quick step from a wage-earning sheepherder to a manager on shares and from that into the status of full-fledged sheepman. By this process, growth had been rapid and with it came change and tensions. Traditions such as 20

Potter, Manti 22 W. H. 23 Potter, 21

"Diary," 43-4.

Messenger, July 17, 1897.

Lever, History of Sanpete and Emery Counties, Utah, (Ogden, 1898), 39.

"Diary," 46.

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accustomed ranges and the rights of prior use still had some validity, and some sheepmen ran close to home. But the general picture in Potter's time was one of foraging far afield. The transient herd, cutting feed and mountain cover to ribbons as it rushed the season to beat some other tramp to a bit of grass, was a well-known phenomenon. Grazers with whom Potter came in contact ran on Utah's West Desert in the winter and in the summer trailed to Idaho or through northeastern Utah and on into Colorado. 24 Conversely, Colorado herds invaded the East Desert and crisscrossed what later became the Manti National Forest. One Fountain Green writer, well aware of the money coming to his village in herding and shearing pay as well as profits, complained: T h e sheep industry is important. It keeps money in circulation. Rapid growth nearly demolished and ruined all the stock range. Cattle have some rights and should be protected and encouraged as well as their bleating relatives. The first thing to protect them from are the inroads of the sheep themselves. When a man gets sheep he loses his conscience and gets a good supply of gall instead; for he never hesitates to move in and eat the last vestige of feed intended for the village folk's cows, say nothing of their range for dry stock.

24 Interview in September 1968 with Soren M. Nielsen of Mt. Pleasant, who ran sheep in the country in the years around the turn of the century.

Sheep eating their way to winter range on the desert were the bane of cattlemen in the early days. Utah State Historical Society photograph.

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And finally, sounding just a little like Brigham Young or Heber C. Kimball in an early address to the Saints, the Fountain Green writer emphatically declared: "This should not be, sheep are all right in their place, but their place is not a community's cow range." 25 Potter also exhibited a lively interest in mines, reporting visits to many mines and conversations with some operators. In the Cache area he found a dozen or so small lead and copper mines. Between American Fork Canyon and Park City he observed many worked-out mines, slopes denuded for mine timbers, and the old Alta tramway, as well as some working mines and much evidence of claims. Hopes were still high that a "mineral belt" extending from American Fork Canyon to Park City would yield unprecedented quantities of gold and silver.

In Carbon, Emery, and Sanpete counties Potter visited scores of coal mines and their attached camps. The largest of the latter were probably Scofield, which by the end of the decade came near capturing the county seat from Price, and Winter Quarters where he saw "300 houses and a population of 2500." 26 In Huntington Canyon there were dozens of mines and claims, some of them producing coal, and at least one producing coke for an eastern syndicate. 27 He learned that the Utah Coal Company was working one Huntington Canyon mine from which it supplied the Sanpete County towns often loading out as many as "fifty teams per day." Referring to the coal lands generally he wrote, "I do not think there is any doubt but that these lands are more valuable for the coal they contain than for timber or grazing." 28 Also passed in the course of his tour were a paraffin mine and several oil drilling operations. None of the latter appears to have resulted in oil producing wells, but they did contribute names to several landmarks.

Throughout his entire survey Albert Potter was deeply concerned with people and their attitudes, particularly those attitudes that impinged upon the creation of forest reserves. As indicated previously, he found some animosity toward sheep and those who ran them. Often sheep were charged with violations quite beyond their powers. For example as early as 1869 a short item in an Ogden daily had noted that pastures in the flats between that town and the Great Salt Lake had been 25

" F o u n t a i n Green I t e m s , " Manti Messenger, February 27, 1896.

Potter, "Diary," 2 1 . T w o years prior to Potter's visit Winter Q u a r t e r s h a d suffered one of the most devastating disasters of American mining history when 200 m e n were killed on M a y 7, 1900 in a n u n d e r g r o u n d explosion.

27 Ibid., 29._ T h e site of this operation was probably Connellsville some miles above the forks of the H u n t i n g t o n , where ruins of coking ovens may still be found.

28 Ibid., 30.

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"poisoned by the breath of sheep." 29 The Mormon bishop and others at Fountain Green in Sanpete County had protested the "pestilence" of encroaching herds for some time and did not hesitate to unburden themselves to Potter and make known their desire to have certain areas designated under the proposed reserve as town range for milk stock. A year or two later, prominent Utah artist H. L. A. Culmer would find the country to be "sheep-cursed" and that it was necessary to medicate water because of its "sheepy flavor" when he traveled from Thompson Station on the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad by way of Moab and Monticello to San Juan County's great natural bridges.30 And Utah was not without her occasional sheep-cattle feuds. In 1897, for example, masked cowboys had tied and blindfolded herders, then slaughtered 800 head of bucks near Vernal. In the same outburst a Basque herder disappeared, apparently murdered by the marauding riders. 31 Yet to Potter's eyes, made wise to the sheep-cattle controversy's potential for bloody violence by firsthand observation of Arizona's Pleasant Valley War, relations between Utah sheep and cattlemen seemed remarkably amicable. Time after time he referred to working modus vivendi whereby the parties accepted mutually agreeable range divisions.

Among the cattlemen (the majority of whom it should be remembered were also small farmers) he found some feeling that cattle should be protected from sheep but also a willingness to give the devil his due that boded well for "give and take" as forest regulations came to be applied.

In Cache Valley, at least, sheepmen too were submissive, agreeing to cooperate with regulatory efforts, and nowhere did Potter's overtures elicit downright hostility. In sum he was optimistic that the human elements in the grazing equation could be adjusted to the added dimension that would come with the creation of forest reserves.

But what of the more direct attitudes toward forest conservation?

Potter was concerned about this question and constantly attentive. It appears, however, that he was more interested in allowing people to vent themselves than in weighing their opinions. Reference has been made to his contact with public officials. Church and economic leaders too were sought out, and he rarely missed an opportunity to meet the gathered public. Everywhere he found interest and in most cases clear-cut though 29 Salt Lake Daily Telegram, M a y 14, 1869. T h e Daily Telegram h a d recently been transferred to Ogden in anticipation of the new importance the transcontinental railroad would give t h a t city.

30 H . L. A. Culmer, "Personal Diary of H . A. Culmer," Charles Steen, ed., The Supplement [National Park Service Monthly Report] ( J u n e 1 9 3 7 ) , 385 and 387.

31 Manti Messenger, July 3 1 , 1897.

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differing opinions. Division in public opinion varied geographically.

Beaver County, having experienced neither shortage of timber nor difficulty with its watersheds, was generally opposed to the entire concept of conservation. T h e town of Levan was, according to Potter's notes, not "interested in the forest reserve" which apparently meant it was in opposition. 32 Elsewhere the pros and cons divided mainly according to economic interest in sheep. Cattlemen, farmers, and townspeople generally favored reservation. Sheepmen and associated industries were opposed. I n addition to this dividing line, Potter also observed a deep-seated commitment to private ownership. T i m e after time he was told that the problem of management would best be solved by opening lands to entry or purchase.

Some thought the appetite for private land was insatiable, and one Sanpete sheepman of rugged optimism opined that every acre in the vast Wasatch Plateau would be quickly purchased if offered for sale. 33 Sentiment for private ownership seemed most prevalent in the Sanpete-Sevier region. T o Potter, with less than a year in the Forest Service (he had become head of the Branch of Grazing on October 1, 1901), their arguments seemed to have much to back them. H e noted on repeated occasions the superiority of both management and land where private ownership prevailed. It should be noted that he also recorded that the best lands had somehow become state lands and then opened to purchase.

Where private interests were expressed in leasing, more intelligent and effective use was also discernible. Sympathetic to private management, he recommended that the mountains west of Fountain Green be left open to let the process of entry via homesteading and application to the State Land Commission take its course. T h e comment that accompanied his recommendation follows: T h e lands which have already been applied for are well distributed b e tween the different stockmen a n d t h e general sentiment of the people in the vicinity of these lands is t h a t they be allowed to complete their title.

I t is believed t h a t the range will be taken care of by the owners fully as well as the Government could care for it u n d e r forest reserve m a n a g e ment. 3 4

Cache Valley welcomed Potter's survey and appears to have petitioned that a forest reserve be established and established quickly. People there had observed the decline of their forests and were likely somewhat Potter, "Diary," 25.

Ibid., 29.

Ibid., 28.

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251

influenced in their favorable disposition by the Agricultural College.

An organized movement headed by a Forest Reserve Committee existed though it is difficult to tell from Potter's diary just how influential it was.

On arriving in Logan, he had been met by the Forest Reserve Committee's representative, Tom Smart, who was himself a sheepman. Smart was anxious to see transient herds excluded entirely and sheep and cattle numbers reduced generally to restore the ecological balance of the forest, thus normalizing water runoff which had been tending to spring floods during the years just past. Lyman R. Martineau, also a member of the Forest Reserve Committee, was deeply concerned about culinary water.

Sheep, he said, "fouled the water and tramped the range up so that the amount of silt in the streams was much greater after a heavy rain." 35 But residents of Cache Valley and Utah generally surprised Potter by their failure to connect unregulated lumbering with floods and erosion.

Characteristic of their failure and of Potter's response to it is the following from his report of a meeting with a Cache County citizens group: Said they wanted stock excluded from it so as to prevent them fouling the water; they think the health of the town is endangered by stock dying near the stream and by the pollution of the water by the manure and the urine. Denudation of the slope by timber cutting diminishing the water supply does not seem to alarm them. 36

Not surprisingly Potter found a few who advanced bizarre theories favoring the status quo. One such was a Cache Valley sawmill operator who: Said it took a 10 inch pine tree 12 years to grow, consequently there is no need of any alarm regarding a scarcity of timber. Said the timber did not increase water supply, as the snowbanks were all outside of timber in canyons where it had a chance to drift. Said after a snowstorm the first place that the ground was bare was next to the trunk of the trees. Said sheep were the cause of water shortage; they tramp the ground up into a dust which is full of air and when the rain falls it does not soak into the dust but just runs off on the air bubbles in the dust, consequently the theory of packing the ground is all wrong as the water never gets through the air in the dust. 37

Potter's evident disgust with such arguments was somewhat offset by support for the Division of Forestry's ideas about deforestation from a faculty member of the Agricultural College. Professor G. L. Swendsen was quoted as favoring nonuse for at least two years and: 35

Ibid., 2.

Ibid.

37 Ibid., 8.

30

252

Utah Historical Quarterly gave measurements of L o g a n R i v e r a n d S u m m i t Creek showing t h a t since deforestation a n d d a m a g e to r a n g e , floods h a v e come d o w n earlier in the spring a n d streams h a v e almost gone dry later in season w h e n t h e w a t e r was most needed. 3 8

Sawmills, fires, floods, and various other forest-related themes also came under close scrutiny by Potter, but the materials discussed above provide an adequate basis from which to consider his tour in the broad sense. In 1902 Utah was well into its social and economic development.

Hundreds of agricultural villages and towns had been established, most of them near or in the area of Potter's survey. For fifty-five years the stewardship of the state's natural resources had been almost entirely in private hands. Mormon cooperation and frugality had led to careful development of primary water resources. Mining had come late but played the major economic role in 1902. Western railroading had brought two important railroads into Utah and sent numerous local spurs through its valleys. After a slow beginning in the early decades, livestock had boomed following 1885 to become a major industry. Each of these and other forces had affected Utah's forests.

Potter's mountain survey evaluated the impact of this human use, finding that it had seriously impaired the productivity of the state's natural resources and that floods, erosion, and polluted water supplies were becoming threats to human life and property. Potter also sampled attitudes and found that the balance of opinion — both public and official •— favored the protection and management of forest resources.

His own character and commitments are apparent in the day to day notations of his diary. He was practical rather than theoretic. He was obviously a practitioner of Gifford Pinchot's "conservation through wise use" concept but was at the same time strongly oriented to people and in his observations and recommendations was sympathetic to private ownership, to the needs of the many as distinct from special interest, and to the public interest generally.39 His own preoccupation with livestock and long experience with the practical aspects of grazing show clearly in the diary and in the geographic and administrative arrangements that grew from his survey. On the other hand he was not blinded to other develop38

Ibid., 9.

For a concise statement of a typical "conservation through wise use" see Henry Clepper, ed., Origins of American Conservation, ( N e w York, 1966), 4—5. James Wilson, secretary of agriculture at the time the Forest Service was transferred from the D e p a r t m e n t of the Interior to the D e p a r t m e n t of Agriculture, gave official expression to the concept when he wrote Gifford Pinchot " t h a t all land is to be devoted to its most productive use for the permanent good of the whole people. . . .", letter of February 1, 1905, in Manti-LaSal National Forest Historical Files.

39

253

Wasatch Survey ments by his interest in livestock and recognized in the coal fields of the Wasatch Plateau, in the watersheds of numerous villages, and in many other cases that mining, drinking water, or other resources were more important to an area than grazing.

The survey of 1902 was a pioneering step â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a beginning for resource management. It led directly to the establishment of most of Utah's national forests and indirectly to the practices of other land management agencies. The months of Potter's visit were in this sense a time of beginning and the tour itself an event of considerable importance to Utah's development.

m^m:

W\

:::.:.:.:"

Potter with fawn in Teton National Forest in the early part of this century.

U.S. Forest Service photograph.

P U R E W A T E R . â&#x20AC;&#x201D;â&#x20AC;˘ A n old writer said t h a t cleanliness is akin to godliness, and a good m a n y people now think it is a p a r t of it; b u t there is a possibility of attempted cleanliness being something very opposite. W e have all reason to admire the pure streams of water t h a t gush from the canon a n d gurgle down by our sidewalks; but it is not so pleasant to those in the south a n d west parts of the city, when the dwellers nearer the m o u t h of the creek wash bedsteads, buggies, tubs, a n d other articles in them, or allow pigs to take their ablutions there. D o n ' t defile the water near the head of the stream. Bug juice isn't pleasant, nor even the grease a n d dirt off buggy wheels! {The Salt Lake Herald, J u n e 15, 1870)

Reclamation and the Economic Development of Northern Utah: The Weber River Project

BY S T E P H E N A. MERRILL

X

H E STREAMS W H I C H CUT through the precipitous Wasatch Mountains and flow over the flat plain toward Great Salt Lake have always been one of the principal attractions of Weber Valley. T r a p p e r s who first explored this area in the 1820s came to regard it as one of the best sources of beaver in the Intermountain region. Peter Skene Ogden of the British Hudson's Bay Company and Jedediah S. Smith of the rival American Rocky Mountain Fur Company are just two of the mountain

Echo Dam, 1935, showing the spillway and the reservoir which stretches four and one-half miles behind the dam. Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce photograph.

Weber River Project

255

men who trapped, camped, and rendezvoused near the junction of the Weber and Ogden rivers (present site of the city of Ogden). 1 Twenty years later, in 1845, Miles Goodyear found the same site amenable for his Fort Buenaventura, a "Half Way House" for immigrants to California and Oregon. 2 By then, however, the days of profitable trapping in what later became Weber County were numbered.

Soon after the Mormon arrival in Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young sent parties north, south, and west to find the areas most suitable for large-scale settlement. 3 To secure Mormon dominion over Cache and Weber valleys for the purpose of exclusive colonization, the church authorized James Brown, former captain in the Mormon Battalion, to negotiate with Goodyear for title to his land and improvements. The settlement, for $1,950, was concluded in November of 1847.4 The following January, the James Brown family became the first Mormon settlers in the Weber Valley. In the summer of 1848 Brown's two sons, Alexander and Jesse, built a dam on Canfield Creek and turned water onto their land to raise wheat, corn, watermelon, cabbage, and turnips, thus becoming the first irrigators in Weber Valley. 5 The early history of Davis County to the south of Weber followed a similar course. Trappers were the first white men to explore the area, followed in 1847 by Mormon pioneer Hector C. Haight known as the founding father of Farmington, the county seat. The rich loam soil was ideal for agriculture, but the spring-fed streams from the Wasatch Mountains ran, unchecked, into Great Salt Lake. Diverting this water for irrigation was a problem for the early settlers to solve.6 The Weber settlers soon proved the northern portion of the valley of the Ogden and Weber rivers to be one of the most productive areas in Utah. Agriculture (soon expanding to include alfalfa and fruit raising Stephen A. Merrill is a Kellett Fellow from Columbia University in politics at Oxford University in England. This paper was written under a grant from the Utah State University Research Council and is one of a series on the histories of federal reclamation projects in Utah prepared under the direction of Professor Leonard J. Arrington.

1 See Dale L. Morgan, Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West (Indianapolis, 1953) and also David E. Miller, ed., "Peter Skene Ogden's Journal of His Expedition to Utah, 1825," Utah Historical Quarterly, 20 (April 1952), 159-186.

2 Dale L. Morgan, "Miles Goodyear and the Founding of Ogden," UHQ, 21 (July 1953).

195-218.

3 Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), 42—43.

4 Ibid., 47—48. See also Charles Kelly and Maurice L. Howe, Miles Goodyear: First Citizen of Utah (Salt Lake City, 1937), 86-90 and Utah Historical Records Survey, WPA, Inventory of the County Archives of Utah, No. 29, Weber County (Ogden, 1940), 6-8.

5 Milton R. Hunter, Beneath Ben Lomond's Peak, A History of Weber County, 1824—1900 (Salt Lake City, 1966), 67.

6 G ] en Milton Leonard, A History of Farmington, Utah, to 1890 (MA thesis, University of Utah, 1966), 1-29.

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as well as grains and vegetables) and stock raising became the two most important pioneer industries. Weber, unlike other parts of the territory, did not initially suffer from a lack of water. The natural flow of the two rivers and their streams could provide a full water supply to about 3,000 acres of land. Two problems did develop, however, in the years that followed: first, was the problem of obtaining water for additional lands, and second, that of controlling the flow of the two rivers, which after the winter thaw either soaked into the valley floor or poured into Great Salt Lake, leaving little water available for irrigation in the late fall months.

The expansion of irrigation facilities met the settlers' pressing need for food during the first years and solved the first water problem during the remainder of the century. Canals were dug in 1848 and 1849 to divert water from the two rivers; they were extended to other settlements in the county in 1851. Originally small ditches, the canals were enlarged, lengthened, and multiplied into extensive irrigation systems to meet the demands of an increasing population. Perhaps the most important of these enterprises was undertaken in 1852. With funds advanced by the Weber County Court from county revenue ($2,970 to 1855), Ogden city constructed a seven-mile canal from the Weber to Riverdale in order to provide water for the lower area of the city. Stock in the canal was issued by the city in payment, and construction was completed in 1854 on the condition that control remain in the hands of the city and county. Farmers using the water were directed to pay an annual fee per acre for its upkeep. 7 Although the organization of canal enterprises into stock companies was characteristic of irrigation development among the Mormons, only Weber and Salt Lake among the Utah counties appropriated public revenue for the construction of irrigation systems.8 Water soon became important for other uses as the Weber economy became more diversified: for waterwheels, for lathes, sugar mills, and gristmills; for the raising of sheep and cattle and the production of meat, dairy, leather, and textile products; and, of course, for culinary use. With the arrival of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, Utah began to export its products and Ogden became one of the territory's most important commercial as well as agricultural centers. Economic development was 7

80-81.

George Thomas The Development

of Institutions

8 Ray Teele, Economics of Land Reclamation 1927),143.

Under Irrigation

(New York, 1920),

in the United States (Chicago-New York,

Weber River Project

257

accompanied by more efficient organization of irrigation. In 1865 the Utah territorial legislature passed the first irrigation district law in the United States, providing that districts organized under it be permitted to tax the lands within their boundaries to raise the revenue necessary to provide a water supply and meet the costs of operation and maintenance.

Around 1890 a movement among irrigators in Ogden and Salt Lake to make local governmental bodies relinquish control of these districts resulted in the organization of the Weber Canal Company. Farmers became stockholders (in proportion to the amount of water they used) in the firm and took over management of the irrigation facilities.9 Yet, as water needs climbed, Weber and Davis county users found serious irrigaion problems unsolved.10 Civil engineers Willard Young and Frank C. Kelsey, in the last months of 1907, made an investigation of these problems and reported on a proposed Weber River Irrigation Project. They recommended that a private irrigation company construct the necessary storage dam, canals, and laterals and purchase the land which would be served. This land would then be subdivided and sold in tracts with water rights. Among the proposed facilities was a dam and storage reservoir on the Weber River, near Echo.

The United States government, which became involved in reclamation under the Carey Act of 1894 and moved into the business under the Federal Reclamation Act of June 17, 1902, demonstrated interest early in the problems of Weber County. The Reclamation Service made a reconnaissance survey of the area in 1904 and 1905 which resulted in the establishment of stream gauging stations by the Geological Survey in the latter year. A contract dated January 3, 1922, (and renewed as late as 1929) between the Reclamation Service and the Utah Water Storage Commission of the state of Utah, provided for federal investigation of irrigation projects in the whole Salt Lake Basin of northern Utah.

The investigations, conducted to begin with at state expense and later at joint federal-state expense, were intended to yield specific construction proposals. 11 Activity and interest centered immediately on the Weber River area, which became known as the first or Wasatch Division of the envisioned 9

Thomas, Institutions Under Irrigation, 81.

"Elizabeth Tillotson, ed., A History of Ogden (Ogden, 1961), 70.

11 U.S., Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Report of the 1932, 69.

Commisioner,

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Salt Lake Basin Project.12 In 1924 engineers selected a site on the river for the first dam and reservoir â&#x20AC;&#x201D; forty-two miles southeast of Ogden â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and simultaneously proposed a secondary feature, a nine-mile canal above the dam to divert some water to the Provo River and, consequently, to lands in Utah County. Receiving congressional approval in 1924, the Echo Dam was designed to provide supplemental irrigation water for 60,000 acres of land in the lower Weber and in Ogden Valley and 20,000 acres of land in the Provo Valley.13 On December 16, 1926, the secretary of the interior contracted with the then newly-formed Weber River Water Users Association to construct both the dam and the canal. The United States agreed to create a reservoir with an estimated capacity of 74,000 acre-feet, to construct a canal with a capacity of 210 second-feet, and to furnish the members of the private corporation with water between April 1 and October 31 of each year. In turn, the association agreed to distribute the water in compliance with the federal reclamation law to individual stockholders in the association (individuals and canal companies) and to operate and maintain the reservoir at its own expense after construction, and to pay the United States in annual fixed installments the cost of the facilities and the supply. That cost, not to exceed $3 million, was to be paid in twenty equal annual installments (the first to be made on December 1 of the year of completion). 14 By the time these contracts were filed (March 19, 1927), the thirtytwo canal companies (serving 80,000 acres of land) had subscribed to 59,411 shares of stock. Among the most substantial subscribers were the Provo Reservation Water Users Company, the Davis and Weber Counties Canal Company, and the Hooper, North Ogden, Plain City, Warren, Western, and Wilson Irrigation companies. 15 12 T h e title "Salt Lake Basin Project" has since been dropped and its broad plans incorporated into such smaller present-day area projects as the Weber Basin Project, the Ogden River Project, and the Central U t a h Project. Since the construction of the Echo D a m a n d Weber-Provo Diversion Canal, the Wasatch Division has been known exclusively as the "Weber River Project."

13 U.S., D e p a r t m e n t of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Report of the Commissioner, 1930, 39.

14 U.S., D e p a r t m e n t of Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, "Project History, Salt Lake Basin Project," ( M S , Bureau of Reclamation, Region 4, Salt Lake City, U t a h , 1928), 15-16.

15 U . S . D e p a r t m e n t of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, "Final Report on Design and Construction of Echo D a m and Reservoir, Salt Lake Basin Project" ( M S , Bureau of Reclamation, Ogden, U t a h , 1934), 210.

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' T h e president of the United States approved the project on January 8, 1927, under congressional acts of 1910 and 1924; funds were appropriated by acts in 1925 and succeeding years. 16 The construction of the Echo Dam, the first federal reclamation project in northern Utah, commenced on November 26, 1927, under the direction of the A. Guthrie Company of Portland, Oregon. 17 The zoned, 1,540,000 cubic-yard earthfill structure, 158 feet in height, was constructed by sprinkling and rolling eight-inch layers of clay, sand, and gravel. Both upstream and downstream slopes are blanketed by heavy layers of conglomerate rock fill. A concrete cut-off wall, bonded to bedrock, extends the full length of the dam. The spillway, with a capacity of 15,000 cubic feet per second, is fed by a concrete-lined horseshoe tunnel conduit, and the flow is regulated by four 18 foot by 17 foot radial gates. The Echo Reservoir stretches four and one-half miles behind the dam, with a surface area of 1,470 acres and an active capacity of 73,900 acre-feet. It has an average annual inflow (measured from 1928 to 1955) of 202,000 acre-feet from a drainage area of some 735 square miles.

Construction of the dam was completed on October 7, 1930, at a final cost of $1,609,209. 18 Although the dam proved to be a relatively simple project, auxiliary works presented some difficulties. The location of the dam and reservoir necessitated the relocation of a portion of the Park City branch of the Union Pacific Railroad and a portion of the Lincoln Highway to routes above the reservoir flow line. Contracts with the Union Pacific (dated September 24, 1927) and the Utah State Road Commission (of September 28, 1927) cost the United States $189,000 and $161,076 respectively.19 Several miles above the reservoir (near Kamas, Utah) the diversion canal was dug in a generally southerly direction nine miles to the Provo River (and completed in April of 1931). The plan was to divert water to subscribers in the Provo Valley only at flood times when the priorities 18 U l

'Project History," 7.

FY 1925 (December 5, 1924) $ 375,000 FY 1926 (March 4, 1925) 900,000 FY 1927 (unexpended balance reappropriated) FY 1928 (unexpended balance reappropriated) FY 1929 (March 7, 1928) 1,750,000 Total - $3,025,000 17 It was also Utah's second federal reclamation project, the Strawberry Dam and Reservoir having been completed in 1913.

18 U.S., Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Reclamation Project Data (Washington, D . C , 1961), 815-16.

19 "Project l( History," 9-10.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

on the Weber River received their full quota or at lower stages of the river when water could be released from the reservoir to supply early priorities in place of the water taken out by the canal. Having built the canal for a capacity of only 210 second-feet, the bureau nonetheless foresaw its enlargement following the construction of a dam on the Provo River. The United States therefore retained full title to the canal and the right to dispose of its capacity "so that the United States may enlarge said canal for other possible developments which the U.S. may undertake in the future in connection with the Salt Lake Basin project." 20 The construction of the dam and enlargement of the canal were, in fact, completed as part of the Provo River Project in 1947.

This, however, under the terms of existing contracts, was not the disposition of the Echo Dam. In June of 1931 the United States informed the Weber River Water Users Association that construction of the Weber River Project was essentially completed and instructed the corporation to assume control over the maintenance and operation of the dam and reservoir on July 5, 1931. The association was also instructed to assume as of December responsibility for the repayment of the total 20 "Contract for the Construction of the First Division of the Salt Lake Basin Project, U t a h , " Reclamation Era, 18 (August 1927), 122.

Fertile farmland along the Weber as seen from Witches Rock in Weber Canyon. Utah State Historical Society photograph.

(A. J. Russell)

Weber River Project

261

construction cost of the project, amounting to $2,869,975. General economic distress during the depressed years of the 1930s, however, forced a deferral of payments. Authorized by moratorium acts of Congress, payments of $148,158, $143,853, $143,853, $143,853, and $71,926 were deferred for the years 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, and 1936, respectively. 21 In December of 1938 the contract between the United States and the Weber River Water Users Association was redrafted, extending the repayment period to thirty years. Charges deferred were included in the new repayment schedule. Since 1938, the association has established a notable record in adhering to the terms of that schedule; charges accruing have equalled payments made for every year. Repayment was completed in 1967.

According to original expectations, as a Bureau of Reclamation report has noted: "Under normal operation spring flood waters are stored and later released during the irrigation season for use on project lands.

This cycle is repeated each year with very little carry-over of stored water from one year to the next." 22 Although Echo Reservoir did not reach full storage capacity for some years, the project had an immediate and vital impact on the economy of the Weber and Ogden River Valley.

Not only did the 1930s wreak havoc with farm prices and costs but they also brought years of drought to the Mountain West as well as to other parts of the country. Few statistics are available, but Commissioner of Reclamation Elwood Mead graphically expressed the importance of the just-completed Weber River Project in a speech in Salt Lake City on June 23, 1931: T h o s e of y o u w h o will g o t o O g d e n . . . will see a c o u n t r y t h a t w o u l d h a v e b e e n in d e s p e r a t e straits h a d n o t t h a t reservoir b e e n p r a c tically c o m p l e t e d for storage of w a t e r this year. 2 3

In his report for the fiscal year 1931, the commissioner further stated that although only 12,000 acre-feet of water had been stored in the reservoir during the summer of 1930 (the final months of construction), they had proved "very valuable in maturing fruits, vegetables, and other crops on the project lands under the Weber River."

T h e g e n e r a l e c o n o m i c c o n d i t i o n of t h e f a r m i n g districts w a s very g o o d , a l t h o u g h they w e r e affected s o m e w h a t by t h e g e n e r a l depression.

21 U.S., Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, How Reclamation Pays (Washington, D . C , 1947), 300.

22 U.S., Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, "Silt Survey of Echo Reservoir," prepared by V. D. Jensen (MS., Bureau of Reclamation, Ogden, 1949), 1, 23 The Salt Lake Tribune, June 24, 1931.

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Practically no farms were abandoned in 1930, and mortgage foreclosures were quite unusual. T h e population of the rural districts is stable, as is indicated by the constant increase in the construction of modern farm homes. The value of farm crops in 1930 varied from $15 per acre on hay and grain lands where the water was deficient to as high as $200 per acre on fairly well-irrigated fruit lands. T h e average crop value was estimated at $35 per acre for 75 per cent of the division and $100 per acre for the remainder. With a dependable later season water supply from the full use of the Echo Reservoir, there will be a decided increase in the higherpriced crops. 24

The commisioner's predictions were not, in fact, fulfilled in 1931â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 32, primarily because the Utah stream flow was the lowest on record in the history of the state. The value of farm crops in that year varied from $9 per acre on hay and grain lands where water was deficient to as high as $150 per acre on irrigated fruit lands. The commisioner, however, in his report for the fiscal year 1932, termed the 19,200 acre-feet of water stored in Echo Reservoir "exceptionally valuable" for such crops as fruits, vegetables, and sugar beets, and concluded that "at least 30 per cent of the gross value of all crops resulted from the use of the storage water."

Although all farmers by then were feeling the effects of the depression, their general economic condition remained "good"; few farms were abandoned and there were few mortgage foreclosures.25 In these and subsequent years water released from Echo Reservoir has been diverted from the river into more and more privately-built canals and laterals leading to irrigable land. The project now provides its supplemental irrigation service to approximately 109,000 acres included in 3,900 farms, primarily in Weber and Davis counties. The soils of the area, being generally deep, fertile, and well drained, are suitable for the abundant production of sugar beets, fruits, vegetables, alfalfa, potatoes, berries, barley, and wheat â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the fruits and vegetables being produced for both canning and trucking. "The stored water in Echo Reservoir has continuously boosted these crops values," which, in recent years, have averaged in total appoximately $9.5 million.26 In addition, the project has directly encouraged the growth of dairying and stock raising and the formation of cooperative associations for the production and sale of canning and packing crops, sugar beets, dairy and poultry products, and livestock.27 24 U.S., Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Report of the Commissioner, 1931, 46.

25 Report of the Commissioner, 1932, 54.

26 Reclamation Project Data, 1961, 815â&#x20AC;&#x201D;16.

27 See "Cooperative Community Poultry Plant, Salt Lake Basin Project, Utah," Reclamation Era, 19 (August 1928), 119.

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Weber River Project

The continued prosperity of agriculture in the Weber area (encouraged also by the second federal reclamation enterprise in the area, the Ogden River Project, 1934) has not been the only important economic trend in Weber and neighboring counties.

During and following the World War II, military and industry expanded very rapidly in the Weber River and this trend has continued with a tremendous growth These facts made it necessary to increase the water supply

establishments drainage area, in population. . . . .28

In 1946 the Ogden Chamber of Commerce formally requested the Bureau of Reclamation to investigate the entire drainage area and the feasibility of an extensive water resource reclamation project to harness all possible surplus water. The bureau initiated that study in 1947 and discovered that despite the Echo, Pine View, and East Canyon improvements, approximately 400,000 acre-feet of water were still wastefully pouring into the Great Salt Lake from the Weber River and its tributaries. As the bureau secured authorization of the Weber Basin Project in 1947, various water users associations and chambers of commerce had formed the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District to negotiate and contract with the United States.

28

Tillotson, A History of Ogden, 71.

Irrigation projects throughout the state have made the sugar beet industry thrive. Courtesy Utah-Idaho Sugar Company. (Bill Shipler)

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Although the Weber Basin Project was initiated under similar circumstances and followed a similar course of development to the Weber River Project, it was one of the first entirely multipurpose projects in the United States, providing for the development of recreation, municipal, industrial, fish and wildlife, and flood control, as well as irrigation water.

The project includes five storage dams and dam enlargements (Wanship, Lost Creek, East Canyon, Pine View, and Willard), two diversion dams (Stoddard and Slaterville), several large canal and canal improvements, laterals, pumping plants, and two hydro-electric power plants. 29 The Weber River Project has always been basically a single purpose facility, and current negotiations between the Bureau of Reclamation and the Weber River Water Users Association for flood control development signify its only direct relationship to the extensive Weber Basin complex. Even though the identity and significance of the Weber River Project seem diminished beside this vast new federal enterprise, it is undoubtedly true that the project is important not simply for its benefits to agriculture, nor merely for its initiation of federal reclamation work in northern Utah, but also certainly for its contributions to the entire economic development of the Weber Valley.

23

Ibid.; Reclamation

Project Data, 1961, 807-14.

GONE EAST. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; The grasshoppers have taken their departure eastward we are reliably informed, making devastation by the way. Not one is said to be left in Weber valley, and but little, if anything, else is left that was green. The last heard of them they had made forced flights from Castle Rock to Wasatch, from Wasatch to Bear river, and were retarding the trains at points between Bear and Green rivers.

(The Salt Lake Herald, July 18, 1870)

Typical CCC stream improvement project on Hobble Creek, Uinta National Forest, 1935. Utah State Historical Society photograph.

(K. D. Swan)

Reclamation Work of the Civilian Conservation Corps 1933-1942

BY K E N N E T H W . BALDRIDGE

of the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933 gave X a major boost to the cause of reclamation in Utah. Projects that had H E ESTABLISHMENT

long been planned by the Departments of Agriculture and Interior were finally consummated with an input of financial and labor resources sufficient to spell the difference between demise and fruition.

Dr. Baldridge is associate professor of history at Church College of Hawaii.

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president in 1932 by a stricken America that hoped the progressive New York governor would be able to help the country rise from the morass of its worst depression.

On March 9, 1933, five days after his inauguration, F D R closeted himself with several aides to present his ideas for putting 500,000 men to work and to ask them to prepare the draft of a bill to be submitted to Congress.

Work on the bill lasted over the next few days, and the measure, accompanied by a relief message from the president, went to Congress on March 21. 1 Identified as "An Act for the relief of unemployment through the performance of useful public work, and for other purposes," the bill gave the president authority to hire unemployed men for works of a public nature on state and federal lands for "the prevention of forest fires, floods and soil erosion, plant pest and disease control, the construction, maintenance or repair of paths, trails, and fire lanes." Provision also was made for the extension of work into private and municipal lands when deemed in the public interest. 2 Within ten days after its introduction, the bill had passed both houses by voice vote and had been signed by the president. Although a few congressmen and senators of both parties had made spirited opposition, the measure enjoyed a generous bipartisan support, and no one had seriously denied that the country was in severe economic difficulties.3 The number of unemployed in the country in 1933 is often set at twelve million, but estimates ranged to over sixteen million. Of these, experts estimated that five to seven million were young people sixteen to twenty-five years of age who were out of work. 4 Equally apparent was the fact that work was needed on the land.

In 1933 the Department of Agriculture estimated conservatively that soil erosion cost the country over $200 million annually and that 17.5 million acres were even then beyond reclamation or cultivation. 5 This represented approximately six billion tons of top soil that had been eroded by 1

John A. Salmond, The Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942: A New Deal Case Study (Durham, N . C , 1967), 12.

2 U.S., Congress, An Act for the Relief of Unemployment Through the Performance of Useful Public Works and For Other Purposes, Public Law 5, 73rd Cong., 1st Sess. (1933), 1.

3 For a detailed description of the debates on the bill see U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Education and Labor; House, Committee on Labor, Joint Hearings on Unemployment Relief, S. 598, 73rd Cong., 1st Sess. (1933).

4 Paul Webbink, "Unemployment in the United States, 1930-1940," Papers and Proceedings of the American Economic Association, 30 (February 1941), 248-72. Alfred C. Oliver, Jr., and Harold M. Dudley, The New America (New York, 1937), 30.

5 E . A. Sherman, "Saving Our Soil," Nation, 136 (April 12, 1933), 401-3.

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the forces of wind and water. 6 Unwise timber management had wasted and despoiled millions of acres of forest resources, and, in the western portion of the country, arid areas offered optimum utilization only if water resources could be developed. The proposed conservation and development programs provided an ideal opportunity both to help alleviate unemployment and to preserve America's resources.

Officials in Washington completed initial plans, and on April 5 the president issued Executive Order 6101 to officially begin the program. 7 Chosen to head the Emergency Conservation work — as the CCC program was originally called — was highly-respected Robert Fechner, a vice-president of the American Federation of Labor and member of the General Executive Board of the International Association of Machinists. 8 An advisory council made up of representatives of the four participating departments—War, Labor, Agriculture, and Interior—assisted in establishing policy. Labor handled the selection of men to work in the program; War took care of them from enlistment until delivery to the camps which were to be supervised and administered by the "technical agencies" in charge of the actual work under Agriculture and Interior. 9 Under the leadership of Miss Frances Perkins, secretary of labor, enlistment instructions were soon on their way to the states where existing state welfare agencies did the actual enrolling.

Enlistment was initially limited to unemployed single men between eighteen and twenty-five who were members of families on relief rolls.

Utah's regular quota, based on the state population, was set at 1,000.10 To the regular enrollees, the CCC added 1,300 "local, experienced men," or LEMs, hired from the ranks of unemployed carpenters, lumbermen, miners, and others who could serve as project leaders. Later 100 veterans, 200 Indians, and another 1,400 LEMs were added to the rolls.11 Population also determined the twenty-nine county quotas for Utah's original 2,300 enrollees which ranged from 812 for Salt Lake County down to 11 for Daggett County. 12 Throughout the state quotas were oversubscribed as applicants swarmed into welfare offices seeking employment in May 1933.

6

Salmond, Civilian Conservation Corps, 4.

Samuel I. Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 5 vols. (New York, 1 9 3 8 - 5 0 ) , 2 : 1 0 7 - 8 .

8 Salmond, Civilian Conservation Corps, 28.

9 T h e role of the army was soon expanded, however, to a position of nearly complete control with the technical agencies responsible for the m e n during working hours only. Rosenman, Public Papers, 2 : 1 0 7 - 8 .

10 Deseret News, April 20, 1933.

11 Ibid., M a y 24, July 4, 8, 12, 1933.

12 Ibid., M a y 6, 1933.

7

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T h e first enrollment took place in Salt Lake City on M a y 4 when 140 men were selected from among 4,000 applicants. Wasatch Forest Supervisor A. L. Nord certified an additional 85 LEMs. 1 3 T h e entire group of 225 received medical examinations and traveled to Fort Douglas where the army issued equipment and clothing. T h e group was designated Company 940, the first to be organized in Utah. 1 4 President Roosevelt approved the creation of twenty camps in the national forests of the state and one in Zion National Park. 1 5 I n addition, five state camps were also authorized, primarily to work on erosion control projects. Construction on the twenty-six regular camps began in late May as advance units of men began pouring into the state, mostly from Fort Monroe, Virginia, to be joined by local boys from the Fort Douglas headquarters of the district. T h e first camp, located in American Fork Canyon, was completed by J u n e 7, and within a short time all camps were operating. 1 6 From the first, officials planned an active campaign against soil erosion. State and federal conservation agencies had been concerned with the twin problems of flooding and erosion within arid U t a h for several years. T h e Bureau of Agricultural Engineering, in cooperation with U t a h agencies, had begun an organized program of flood control in 1922 with projects near Nephi for controlling Salt Creek. T h e control structures proved successful the following year during the severe storm of August 3, 1923, when other parts of the state received much serious damage. Willard and Farmington, two of the places most severely hit, received flood control barriers the following year under an agreement involving federal, state, county, and private agencies. I n the years following, similar structures were built at more t h a n a dozen sites in western and central Utah.

T h e availability of labor under the Reconstruction Finance Corporation advanced the program somewhat in 1932, but the major boost came from the Civilian Conservation Corps. Now, in the first enrollment period, the five state camps were specifically located where they could most effectively carry on the work.

13

Ibid., May 4, 5, 1933.

Company numbers were assigned by corps area headquarters in San Francisco. The designation indicated that this was the fortieth company to be created in the army's ninth corps area.

15 An additional two camps were administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and manned entirely by Indians. T h e army h a d no connection with the Indian camps which maintained an identity quite separate from the rest of the C C C program.

10 Eventually 116 C C C camps were established in U t a h , although only about 35 were ever in operation at any one time.

14

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These five camps, although designated state camps, were under the technical supervision of the Forest Service and included in Forest Service reports. The selection of projects was the distinguishing factor. Forest Service officials determined the work of the Forest Service camps, although they took the wishes of the state and the citizenry into consideration where practicable. The work of the state camps, on the other hand, was on projects selected by a state committee appointed by the governor.

The two governments, state and national, worked together, however, as the Forest Service handled the fiscal responsibilities and was represented on the state committee. Companies from the Second Corps Area â&#x20AC;&#x201D; New York, New Jersey, and Delaware â&#x20AC;&#x201D; occupied all five camps about the middle of June. 17 Two of the camps did extensive work on the Davis County and Willard watersheds; the others worked on erosion control in central and southern Utah. They all kept busy that first summer. In litle more than three months they carried out erosion control measures on 779 acres, built 100 stone dams and 200 miles of surface ditches, constructed 12 fire breaks and 24 miles of truck trails, and replanted 85 acres in trees. 18 These five camps were discontinued after the first enrollment period, but the vital work of erosion control was carried on by others, as official reports and newspaper accounts can testify.

The men of the CCC tried many approaches to solving the problem of controlling the torrential rains that occasionally hit the mountains and deserts of Utah. The earliest devices were quite simple. Small check dams usually were built at the heads of canyons along the western face of the Wasatch Range. Some of these dug into the canyon walls at each end and curved upstream just like a regular dam, but others were even more elementary and simply diverted water into the brush to dissipate its eroding force. 19 This technique persisted for many years in one form or another.

The terracing of mountain slopes most subject to erosion met with greater success. It was cheaper, got right at the source of the trouble, and had the added advantage of permitting vegetation to grow with a minimum of disarrangement. Although terracing was used throughout the state, the most outstanding examples were in Davis County east of Bountiful and near Willard in Box Elder County.

17

The Salt Lake Tribune, July 1, 1933.

U.S., Emergency Conservation Work, "Summary of Work, Utah State Gamps," September 30, 1933, in author's possession.

19 Evening Herald (Provo, U t a h ) , August 1, 1933.

18

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Dr. Reed W. Bailey of the Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station attracted much of the attention given to terracing for erosion control.20 Davis Mountain behind Bountiful served as his laboratory to test various combinations of terracing methods. After four years of study he published his findings which became the standard of flood and erosion control in many parts of the West.

Bailey conceded that contour terracing certainly was not a new technique, but he felt that the trenching which he utilized did constitute a revolutionary approach. Under the earlier system about seventy-five percent of the rainfall ran off, but with the trenches the figures reversed with seventy-five percent of the rainfall retained. CCC personnel constructed nine-foot-wide trenches spaced five to twenty feet apart and following the contours around the slopes. The steepness of the slope and the condition of the vegetation and soil determined the varying distances between trenches. The trench, instead of being one huge ditch, was divided into compartments or elongated reservoirs separated by low cross dams or "equalizers" constructed at right angles to the axis of the trench. These ran about four inches lower than the leading edge of the trench and permitted the transverse flow of water from one compartment to another before the trench itself overflowed. The standard depth of the trench was about one and one-half feet with greater or lesser depths depending upon the degree of slope.

The trenched terraces were designed to control melting snow and for torrential rains of up to two inches an hour which, although they occurred very rarely, caused the most serious damage. 21 The system took its test in July 1936 when more than an inch of rain â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the heaviest rainfall on record to that time â&#x20AC;&#x201D; fell in the project area in less than thirty minutes. The ninety miles of trenches kept the run-off under control and averted flooding.22 Within three years the system had been enlarged to include approximately 700 miles of trenches, enough, as one of the foremen on the job pointed out, to construct a ditch from Bountiful to Los Angeles.23 20 Most of the material in the following p a r a g r a p h comes from a p a m p h l e t Bailey wrote with A. R. Croft, Contour-Trenches Control Floods and Erosion on Range Lands (Washington, D . C , 1937).

21 I n 1923 and 1930 floods in this area h a d taken eight lives and caused a million dollars in damage to farms, utilities, a n d roads. The Salt Lake Tribune, April 2 1939.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid. Interview with W. Merrill Miller, Bountiful, U t a h , July 22, 1968. Davis M o u n tain was reterraced in 1964. _ Nearly three decades after working as a Forest Service foreman on the project, # Miller again directed the terracing work, this time using heavier equipment. A photograph in his possession shows the present larger terraces with the remains of the old CCC terraces in between.

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In the meantime, work continued at the Willard watershed in Box Elder County to the north. Forest Service officials had long known the need for rehabilitation of the denuded slopes laid waste by overcutting of timber and by overgrazing. During the winter of 1934-35 a short-lived camp in Willard did some terracing with plows and horses.24 The regional forester had advised community and county officials that the Forest Service stood ready to act on the problem but could not do so until the land shifted to public control. Not until after the disastrous flood of July 31, 1936, did the Utah State Road Commission and the commissioners of Box Elder County and Willard City succeed in acquiring the private holdings on the watershed. 25 By September, the Forest Service acted, and a group of about seventy-five enrollees, four foremen, an engineer, and project supervisor John J. Wise were dispatched from the CCC camp in Hyrum to set up a spike camp on the divide between the heads of Perry Canyon and the north fork of the Ogden River. 26 The purpose of the camp was to build a road about six miles long into the Willard Basin where the erosion-control work was to take place at an elevation of 9,000 feet. The enrollees, nearly all from Arkansas, began work with jackhammers and three caterpiller bulldozers. The road extended to the east rim of Willard Canyon by October 1, and part of the crew drew assignments to work on the watershed rehabilitation. Two crews felled the dead trees in a burned-over area and laid them horizontally along the contour of the side slopes of Willard Canyon. The boys also planted several thousand conifers in the burned area as well as smooth brome and orchard grass. In the meantime the rest of the men continued the road into other parts of the basin.

There was some disagreement among personnel from the Cache National Forest and those from Dr. Bailey's Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station over the best type of terrace to use under the circumstances, the " V " type or the flat-bottom type. After "considerable discussion," said Wise, the engineers determined that flat-bottom 24 Interview with J. J. Wise, Ogden, Utah, August 28, 1969. J. Whitney Floyd, however, stated in an interview June 20, 1968, that he thought the camp had some machinery, although hand labor was used on most of the work. Floyd remembers surveying the Willard Basin with two enrollees in February 1935, though the flood control project began the following summer.

There was no camp in Willard, however, from the time the state camp left until the Soil Conservation Service camp was set up on the same site in October 1936.

25 A. G. Nord, "Historical Information Concerning 'The Willard Watershed Rehabilitation Program'," n.p., n.d. Mimeographed copy in author's possession.

26 J- J- Wise, "Historical Information Relative to the Willard Basin Watershed Rehabilitation Project," n.p., n.d. Mimeographed copy in author's possession. Wise, still working for the Forest Service in 1969, was project supervisor on the Willard Basin Project. Most of the material on this project comes from accounts written by him and Supervisor A. G. Nord, who took over Cache National Forest in September 1936.

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CCC camp on the Soapstone east of Kamas.

Utah State Historical Society photograph.

trenches with check dams installed twenty-five to thirty feet apart would be a better design for the area because they provided a greater surface area for water to penetrate into the ground.27 The engineer carefully laid out plans for the terraces. Beginning at the top of the slope and working downhill, the completed terraces might protect the work in progress below should any summer storms hit the area. On completion, crews immediately seeded the terraces with domestic rye grass to provide a quick cover and with perennial grasses such as smooth brome and orchard grass to provide a slower-growing, longer-lasting cover.

During seeding operations an early snow storm provided enrollees with an adventure. The storm began on a Friday night after most of the foremen had been permitted to leave camp. By the next day snow stood waist-deep and men had to keep brushing it off the tents to prevent their collapse. Wise, in charge of the crew, radioed that the road was impassable and they would wait another day or two. On Monday the boys received orders to prepare to walk out the next morning if it became necessary to evacuate the camp. Tuesday morning, after an early breakfast of frozen onions, the caravan of about eighty apprehensive southern boys began its march. Two or three of the more husky boys led the group and the same number trailed the column to prevent straggling. They left their clothes and equipment and took only their valuables. After an exhausting eight-mile hike, they reached the trucks that had been sent to meet them and returned to the comfort of the base camp in Hyrum.

After a partial thaw a few days later, they returned to scatter the final seeds on six inches of snow.28 The camp moved out November 20, 1936, 27 28

Wise, "Historical Information."

Interview with J. J. Wise, August 28, 1969.

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having completed construction of a low-standard road, rehabilitation of the bumed-over area, and terracing and seeding of approximately forty acres of the Willard Basin.29 The Soil Conservation Service established a CCC camp in Willard about that time to carry out watershed work in the basin under the direct supervision of the Forest Service. Company 736, composed of enrollees from Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas, arrived in Willard and continued to work on fencing, terracing, and planting in the basin until completing the project in 1940, after which the company transferred to Tremonton.

On August 2, 1938, the Willard City Commission unanimously approved the donation of its watershed lands to the federal government. The solicitor general of the United States accepted title to the tract of 1,807 acres on October 20, 1941. 30 CCC personnel used many techniques in the constant battle against the harrassment of nature. Cloudbursts often damaged roads, threatened towns, and raised the possibility of overflowing rivers. As a result, enrollees spent much time controlling stream flow. The camp at Henrieville built three rock diversion walls about four feet high to divert flood waters which might threaten the little community of Cannonville. Cedar posts faced each other in two rows in the ground three and one-half feet deep and four feet apart. Heavy wire netting secured both sides of the framework and ran along the ground between the rows of posts. Crews carefully filled the elongated basketlike affair with rocks and lashed cedar posts across the top to complete the wall. 31 There were probably more cribs and other types of rock retaining walls built along the Virgin than any other river in Utah. In addition to the state camps working on the river in 1933 and 1934, camps attached to Zion National Park spent much time at similar tasks. Crews from the Green River camp did considerable riprapping along the Green to protect farm land as well as the community itself.32 Where possible, flood control activities were combined with water storage projects, especially in the desert areas in the western part of the state. Huge herds of sheep and cattle grazed in western Utah during the 29

Wise, "Historical Information."

Nord, "Historical Information."

31 U.S., Department of Agriculture, Division of Grazing, September 30, 1937. Reports of the Division of Grazing camps enrollment period in Boxes 8606 and 8607 in the files of the Federal Records Center, Denver, Colorado.

32 Letters to the author from Earl Partridge, Orem, Utah, Moffitt, Orangeville, Utah, June 9, 1968.

30

Ninth Period Report, DGâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;33, are filed by camp number and Bureau of Land Management, April 10, 1968, and George L.

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winter months, and facilities for livestock were often in short supply.

Because of the lack of suitable water sources throughout the desert range, nearly all the Division of Grazing camps spent much time and labor constructing reservoirs, developing springs, and erecting water troughs.

Construction of large dams and reservoirs got off to a slow start in Utah, but in 1937 CCC crews built 91 large dams in the state. A total of 423 large impounding and diversion dams and 309 small reservoirs were built during the program's nine years, primarily by the Soil Conservation Service and the Division of Grazing.33 Many different types of reservoirs were built to meet a variety of situations. The Milford camp built one of the most unusual at a site near Granite Peak. There a narrow gap about ten feet wide provided an outlet for a natural granite bowl into which water flowed from a spring. Enrollees built a concrete dam eighteen feet high to plug the gap and provide easy storage for 576,000 gallons of water. By April 1938, the reservoir had filled and water flowed over the top. A 357-foot pipeline carried water to troughs on a flat below, eventually opening up an entirely new range area west of the Mineral Mountains between Milford and Beaver.34 The dams were originally built of earth strengthened by a lengthwise core which was usually dug out down to bedrock after the dam had been roughly shaped. Looking like a giant sandwich, the dam was then filled with carefully selected clay mixed with water, or puddled, as it was poured into the core. When dry, the core became almost as hard as adobe and nearly impervious. The camp at Castle Dale built such a dam in the bottom of a wash 20 feet deep and 115 feet wide. The natural walls of the dam were solid rock, and the ample clay on the bottom of the wash proved excellent for dam building. However, water was so scarce crews had to haul it in by tank truck for puddling the core.35 Later, other types of cores were regarded as more successfully watertight and became, in their turn, standard for the region. Instead of earthen dams with a core of puddled clay, these were built of rock rubble or some form of dry masonry with the faces about four feet apart and capped with rock crowns. A cement mixer stirred the core material of sand and adobe clay to be puddled into the gap. Sometimes a big drum 33 U.S., Civilian Conservation Corps, Annual Reports of the Director, 1 9 3 3 - 1 9 4 2 ; Photographic Report of Representative Work Projects being Done by Division of Grazing Camps in Utah to November 1, 1937 (National Emergency Council, n.p., n . d . ) ; "National Emergency Council, Civilian Conservation Corps," Box Fâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;1, U t a h State Archives, Capitol Building, Salt Lake City.

34 Ninth Period Report, DG-35, September 30, 1937; Tenth Period Report, DG-35, M a r c h 3 1 , 1938.

35 Sixth Period Report, DG-27, M a r c h 3 1 , 1936.

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was connected to one end of the core by a short ditch. A dump truck with another drum mounted on its bed would back up on an overhanging ledge to discharge water into the drum for the core. 36 After filling the core, tractor operators drove their "cats" back and forth, packing it to adobe hardness. Thin layers of dirt were also spread over the entire dam which would be further compacted by trucks.

Earth dams remained popular in many situations. The upstream side was lined with rock, or riprapped, usually to a depth of at least one foot. If practical, the entire reservoir was riprapped to reduce erosion from waves and to make it easier for livestock to drink without damaging the sides of the reservoir. Often the toe of the reservoir wall was riprapped to prevent erosion from spillway backwash. J. V. Bollwinkel, engineer of the Vernal camp, described the CCC dams as having wide tops with flat sides, principally to reduce erosion and prevent seepage.

Extra-wide spillways dug out of solid rock, or rock lined, proved essential to relieve the flooding which often occurred during heavy rains. Dams and spillways were constructed to handle the occasional big storm that might come only once every fifty years but which would have the destructive potential to wash out a less sturdy structure. 37 The Antelope Springs camp built one huge reservoir holding 952 acre-feet which, notably, enabled five herds of sheep to water there in one day. Known as the Long Ridge project, the reservoir required the excavation of 12,000 cubic yards of earth and opened new grazing land for 125,000 sheep. 38 Crews from the Division of Grazing camp at Cedar City worked from December 1935 to March 1936 to construct the Big Hollow Reservoir fifteen miles north of town. Stretching 760 feet across and impounding 112 acre-feet of water, the dam was designed to take care of 500,000 sheep and 5,000 cattle as they traveled between summer and winter ranges. Four months after completion of the reservoir, floodwaters from several consecutive cloudbursts washed out a fifty-five-foot-wide swath, but by September the damage had been repaired with the reservoir reportedly stronger than before the flood.39 36 Both the Seventh and Ninth Period Reports of Dalton Wells camp, DG-32, spoke of "new types" of dams. The prototype listed in the former report was identified as the Hook and Ladder Reservoir. One called Art's Pasture Tank was the new type referred to in the Ninth Period Report. See also Tenth Period Report, DG-35, March 31, 1938.

37 Vernal Express, April 4, 1939; Ninth Period Report, DG-27, September 30, 1937; Tenth Period Report, DG-27, March 31, 1938.

38 Tenth Period Report, DG-29, March 31, 1938.

39 Seventh Period Report, DG-30, September 30, 1936.

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Although Division of Grazing camps carried on other projects, they usually devoted most of their attention to the development of water resources for livestock. Reservoir construction required the most men and money, but spring development was also a major activity. As with the reservoirs, CCC supervisors designed the springs to suit the situation.

Crews at Castle Dale built five fourteen-foot hewn log troughs which captured water brought from a higher spring and gave up about two gallons a minute. They also installed four twenty-foot troughs of galvanized iron. The ingenious Clover Creek camp used the two halves of a boiler in developing a spring. Crews from Dalton Wells developed Seven-Mile Springs by sinking a large steel cylinder down into the bottom of a wash until it struck the water-bearing strata below. Water piped up from the gravel strata through the cylinder flowed to ten log troughs.

Additional troughs were blasted out of sandstone.40 Another major water development project was the Cisco Spring pipeline constructed by the Dalton Wells camp. Utilizing available drought-relief funds, crews spent nearly 4,000 man-days and $8,601 in materials building a pipeline to carry water seven miles across dry rangeland. A special thirty-five-man spike camp located sixty-five miles from the main camp at Dalton Wells built the pipeline. To develop Painter Springs in western Millard County, crews from the Antelope Springs camp trucked in thirty-five miles in sub-zero weather. Fifty sheep outfits, running a total of 75,000 head, benefited.41 The land of Utah has always been difficult to conquer. As the CCC struggled to overcome the inhospitable terrain and unruly climate, nature occasionally threw hordes of animal and insect pests into the fray. The so-called Mormon crickets had plagued Utahns since pioneer days in the 1840s; they proved troublesome again in the mid-1930s. In late 1935 residents of little Scipio in eastern Millard County reported seeing clouds of crickets descend upon the area from the northwest. The Forest Service, CCC crews, WPA workers, and farmers battled the insects all through 1936, but the traditional methods of spraying poison dust, burning with gasoline, even pasturing turkeys failed to do any good. In the spring of 1937 the crickets still ran the scene.42 40 Ninth Period Report, DG-30, September 30, 1937; Ninth Period Report, September 30, 1937; Seventh Period Report, DG-32, September 30, 1936; Sixth Period DG-32, M a r c h 3 1 , 1936.

41 Eighth Period Report, DG-32, M a r c h 3 1 , 1937; Sixth Period Report, DG-29, 31, 1936.

42 Eureka Reporter, April 8 and 15, 1937.

DG-28, Report, March

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Crickets also hit the Uintah Basin. A spike camp of twenty men from the Vernal camp was assigned to work on cricket control. Using bells and other noisemakers to attract the crickets, the men then sprayed them with a powder of arsenic and lime. Crews also burned sagebrush across the path of the insects in an attempt to destroy them. Still another method was to erect galvanized iron sheets ten inches high across the crickets' line of march. Gaps left in the barricade led into deep pits.

Upon falling in, the cannibalistic insects began devouring each other.

At the conclusion of the orgy, the pits were filled with dirt. In this manner over 250 bushels of crickets were eliminated and hopes were high that the infested area would see the problem eliminated in another year. 43 At Clover Creek, CCC crews worked with farmers in constructing the ten-inch fences which ran 500 feet on either side of the pits. Perhaps unwilling to trust the crickets' cannibalism, workers then set the pits afire and reported a successful kill.44 During the same period a twenty-five man spike camp from Antelope Springs was stationed near Oak City to battle the pests. Pictures from the Division of Grazing report of the period show how the five-man crews dusted the crickets with poisonous arsenic. Wearing a handkerchief over his mouth and nose and with his pants legs tied at the ankle, an enrollee would venture into the field armed with a back-pump operated by a lever worked with his right hand.

In licking the annoying powder off their legs the crickets would take the arsenic into their stomachs. Death soon followed.45 Even more time-consuming was the battle against burrowing rodents. A honeycomb of tunnels could make the ground surface unsafe for a galloping horse. Holes were equally hazardous, and the excavated dirt covered up valuable grass. Burrowing pests also attacked the sides of roads and reservoirs. Even more serious was the loss of vegetation as a result of the eating habits of the animals. Thirty-two ground squirrels could eat as much as one 120-pound sheep. The same amount of grass could be consumed by twelve jack rabbits or twenty-five prairie dogs or pocket gophers. 46 As grasses disappeared from the rangeland, unpalatable bush varieties came in to take their place. The rodents constituted a health menace as well, since the prairie dogs occasionally carried 43 Vernal Express, June 18, 1936; Vernal Express-Roosevelt Standard (special edition), August 6, 1936.

"Seventh Period Report, DG-28, September 30, 1936.

48 Seventh Period Report, DG-29, September 30, 1936.

46 E. Scott Zimmerman, "Rodent Control â&#x20AC;&#x201D; A Seasonal Project," The Utah Farmer, April 10, 1934, 1.

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bubonic plague and rabbits carried tularemia, both of which may be transmitted to man. 47 Rock chucks, kangaroo rats, and deer mice also troubled the stockman. To combat the rising menace, thought to be due to the decrease in the natural enemies of the pests, Director Robert Fechner announced on April 8, 1936, that an intensive program of rodent control would be carried out by the CCC. The Vernal camp conducted one of the most active campaigns against the little animals. Normally CCC crews of the Division of Grazing worked only on government land, but, in some instances special concessions permitted adjacent private lands to be treated by the CCC with the cooperation of the landowners. In the Uintah Basin the CCC used poisoned grain as its chief weapon. Here, a rodent control crew consisted of twelve men who would treat rolled oats with strychnine and place a few grains on hard surfaces near the holes or along regular paths to apparent feeding grounds. Enrollees spread the grain carefully to prevent livestock from getting poisoned. They soon learned that it was useless to put grain down the holes as the animals got suspicious of food so easily obtained and it quickly went to waste. By early June 1936, Vernal crews had treated over 1,500 acres with a 90 percent kill of prairie dogs, kangaroo rats, and deer mice. Another project later that same summer resulted in the treatment of 5,580 acres and the death of 111,000 prairie dogs.48 The CCC carried on vigorous campaigns against plant pests as well.

Cedar City enrollees grubbed out and burned huge piles of poison milk weed and silky lupine while clearing stock trails. Men from the Jericho camp worked on larkspur control to rid rangeland of the poisonous weed and also cleared cockleburs from the driveway between Salt Lake City and Grantsville just before the annual drive to the winter range. The Blanding camp cleared 306 acres of burrs during one six-month period. 49 After reclaiming good rangeland from plant and animal pests, it was also necessary to see that man himself did not abuse it. Under the provisions of the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, ranchers were restricted in the number of livestock they could run on a particular area. The Division of Grazing took the responsibility for enforcement of these restric47

Seventh Period Report, DG-34, September 30, 1936.

Vernal Express, May 21, 28, June 4, August 20, 1936. The campaign against prairie dogs and rock chucks continued for at least the following two summers, ibid., September 16.

1937, July 14, 1938.

49 Seventh Period Report, DG-30, September 30, 1936; Eureka Reporter, June 16, 1938; Sixth Period Report, DG-28, March 31, 1936; Seventh Period Report, DG-34, September 30, 1936.

48

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CCC plantings to protect banks of the Virgin River from erosion are fullgrown.

U.S. Soil Conservation Service photograph.

tions, and the CCC erected drift fences to ease the work of range control.

During the first few years of the program, the Utah camps averaged 140 miles of fence-building a year; the figures increased somewhat beginning in 1939 and the over-all average reached 230 miles a year, or a total of 2,069 miles of fence.

Beginning in 1939, the CCC camps â&#x20AC;&#x201D; especially those under the Division of Grazing â&#x20AC;&#x201D; commenced a vast program of reseeding the rangeland denuded by rodents, erosion, or overgrazing. Of the 214,290 acres eventually reseeded in Utah, approximately one-third received treatment during the twelve months ending in June 1940.50 The Hanksville camp carried on what was described as the largest single project in that particular area. After 8,000 acres had already been reseeded, preparations proceeded for the reseeding of another 10,000 acres with a mixture of crested wheat grass, rice grass, clover, and rye. First, seed was scattered over the land, about four pounds per acre. Next, a tractor pulling a disc harrow followed to cover the seeds and scarify the land with contour-following trenches. Seed money came from the so-called twenty five percent fund which came out of the grazing district's share of fees paid by range users. 51 With water holes and stock trails provided, with successful inroads against nuisances ranging from cockleburrs to ground squirrels, and with attempts under way to revitalize the rangeland with new strains of grasses, the Utah stockman had ample reason to bless the CCC. The construction of twenty to thirty corrals throughout the state each year was an added benefit. The Goshen cattle corral east of Eureka was a typical cooperative venture. Local stockmen provided the hardware and 50 51

Reports of the Director, 1940, 1942.

Richfield Reaper, October 16, 1941.

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lumber for the gates and chutes; aspen poles came from the Forest Service; the scale, lumber, cement, and other materials came from the State Road Commission; CCC enrollees under the Division of Grazing did the work. The Union Pacific Railroad also aided in construction by donating old railroad ties for building corrals. 52 Serious contenders for the title of major CCC project in Utah would have to include those completed by the Bureau of Reclamation — especially the Moon Lake Project, Pine View Dam, and the Provo River Project. The Bureau of Reclamation first became involved with the CCC program in 1934 when nine camps sprang up during the third enrollment period. Two camps assigned to Utah worked on canal-building projects in Wasatch and Sanpete counties during that first summer. In October of that year, both camps transferred: Company 1968 to Bridgeland, and Company 1967 to Huntsville.

The Moon Lake Project developed in the Uintah Basin of northeastern Utah north of the Duchesne River and west of the Uintah River.

The Bureau of Reclamation became interested in the project in 1927, less than a quarter of a century after white settlers moved into the region.

The bureau conducted an investigation in cooperation with the Utah Water Storage Commission and submitted a report to the federal government in 1933. Funds for construction were allotted November 29, 1933, and President Roosevelt approved the Moon Lake Project November 6, 1935. 53 The work was divided into two parts. Under private contract, a San Francisco construction firm built the Moon Lake Dam on the west branch of the Lake Fork River. The balance of the facilities — the Yellowstone Feeder Canal, the Midview Dam, the Midview Lateral, and the Duchesne Feeder Canal — were built by the CCC between 1934 and 1941 under the general supervision of E. O. Larson, engineer for the Bureau of Reclamation in Utah. 54 The Midview Dam was dedicated on September 10, 1937, in a ceremony attended by Congressman Abe Murdock and officials from Fort Douglas, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the surrounding area. The enrollees of Company 1968 saw to it that the reservoir received the name 52 Ninth Period Report, DG-26, September 30, 1937; Eureka Reporter, June 3, August 12, 1937.

63 U.S., Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, "Moon Lake Project," Reclamation Project Data (Washington, D . C , 1961), 528—29 (hereinafter cited as "Moon Lake Project").

54 Ibid. Today, the project can provide water to over 75,000 acres, and farmers in the Uintah Basin annually harvest irrigated crops worth between one and two million dollars.

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Lake Bauram in honor of Charles L. "Chip" Bauram, killed while changing the blade on a bulldozer during construction of the dam in February 1936.55 Work on the various canals continued as late as 1941.

The CCC was also involved with the Pine View Dam and the Ogden River Project. Enrollees participated in nearly all the activities except the construction of the dam itself which was built by two private firms. The enrollees performed many odd jobs not covered by the contract including sloping of embankments, bridging Wheeler Creek where it enters Ogden River just below the dam, and doing some riprapping.

Other work carried on by CCC personnel included constructing stream gauging stations to determine water flow, building drains along the highway, and widening the highway in the canyon to provide viewing areas of the lake and to make snow removal easier.

One of the most unusual aspects of the project was the dismantling of an old seventy-two inch pipeline running the length of the canyon below the dam and replacing it with a seventy-five inch pipeline built of wooden staves. This Ogden Canyon Conduit carried the water about five miles from a dam outlet to two canals that branched north and south from the mouth of the canyon. When a CCC inspector saw the hazardous work the enrollees did along the wall of the canyon, he threatened to take them off the job before they all got killed. Supervising Engineer E. O. Larson replied, "Don't do that; they're nine-tenths done and nobody got hurt yet!" 56 Considerable canal construction advanced in connection with the dam. The South Ogden Highline Canal extended seven miles from the mouth of the canyon along the edge of the mountains to the southwest ; the Ogden-Brigham Canal was constructed to take irrigation water from the canyon mouth twenty-five miles north to Box Elder County.

These two projects were virtually completed by 1938.57 Over the next three years enrollees built distribution laterals and concrete-lined equaliz55 Vernal Express, September 16, 1937; The Salt Lake Tribune, September 12, 1937; interview with Glen A. Ingalsbe, Orem, U t a h , April 11, 1968. T h e spelling appears on the Ashley National Forest m a p as B a u r a m ; in the newspaper articles on the dedication as Boreham; and in the P.G. Bee (camp newspaper of B R - 9 1 , Pleasant Grove), February 16, 1940, as Borum.

T h e camp educational adviser spelled it Borem; a former member of the company had it Baurem. Although Forest Service and Bureau of L a n d Management maps designate the reservoir today as Lake Bauram, all Bureau of Reclamation maps and printed information refer to it as the Midview Reservoir. One Bureau of Reclamation official said he had never h e a r d i t called anything else, although E. O. Larson, engineer in charge of all the bureau projects in U t a h , remembered Lake Bauram as "the C C C n a m e " for Midview Reservoir. Interview, July 22, 1968.

56 "Ogden River Project," Reclamation Project Data, 562 (hereinafter cited as "Ogden River Project") ; interview with E. O. Larson, July 22, 1968.

67 U.S., Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, History, Ogden River Project, Utah, 4 (1938), 2 3 ; "Ogden River Project," 560.

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ing reservoirs; they lined canals with concrete; they even removed part of the Ogden-Brigham Canal and rebuilt it. As the numbers of enrollees declined in 1941 other laborers were brought in and the work ended that summer.58 CCC crews were also involved with the Provo River Project after a camp was set up in Heber in December 1937. Another camp, also under Bureau of Reclamation supervision, was established at Pleasant Grove just under two years later. The project consisted of the Deer Creek Dam and a reservoir on the Provo River about sixteen miles upstream from Provo, dams, tunnels, and canals to bring water from the Weber and Duchesne rivers into the reservoir, a forty-two mile aqueduct from the reservoir to Salt Lake City and various distributing canals. The purpose of the latter was the distribution of domestic and irrigation water for the cities and farms between Salt Lake City and Provo.59 The first year that Company 4792 resided in Heber, enrollees constructed the Deer Creek government camp near the dam site as residences and offices for the construction personnel. They also began work on a bridge across Round Valley Creek and installed some culverts and guard rails. When they could be spared from other tasks, enrollees cleared the reservoir site, burning willows and bushes and salvaging several buildings and the phone line. By the end of 1939, the reservoir clearing stood about sixty percent complete.60 The development of the reservoir necessitated the relocation of several structures, providing the enrollees with the opportunity of developing a variety of skills. The Denver and Rio Grande Railroad moved its tracks; nearby, enrollees strung sixteen miles of five-wire barbed wire fence, built seven timber road crossings, and fourteen cattle guards along the new right-of-way. At Charleston enrollees built the only CCC-constructed railroad depot in Utah and built loading pens and corrals. They also relocated about nine miles of telegraph line under supervision of Western Union personnel. Since the highway between Charleston and Midway ran a few feet below the ultimate water level of the reservoir, 3,200 feet of roadway had to be relocated. In 1939 they dismantled a 100-foot bridge and reconstructed it on concrete pillars to serve the new 58 History, Ogden River Project, 9:37. T h e facilities were subsequently enlarged under the Weber Basin Project development from 1955 to 1957. Nearly 163,000 persons were served with project water the following year. " O g d e n River Project," 562.

59 U.S., D e p a r t m e n t of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, History, Provo River Project, Utah, Deer Creek Division, 7 ( 1 9 4 3 ) , 2 5 ; "Provo River Project," Reclamation Project Data, 614.

60 History, Provo River Project, 2 : 7 1 , 3 : 8 7 - 8 8 .

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road.61 Work began to taper off in 1941, and on August 20 the camp in Pleasant Grove disbanded. The Heber camp continued doing odd jobs around the dam until it closed down in July 25, 1942, one of the last CCC camps to exist in Utah. 62 The CCC worked on other reclamation projects in the state, although none of the magnitude of the Moon Lake, Pine View, or Deer Creek projects. In 1941 the Bureau of Reclamation hoped to get CCC forces for work in the area of the Gooseberry Reservoir and on the proposed Scofield Dam. Inspectors from Fort Douglas looked over various sites and in May announced that two new camps would be established: one in Sanpete County near Fairview and the other near Scofield in Carbon County. It was too late in the life of the CCC, however, and the projects never materialized.63 Bureau of Reclamation projects were among the most significant to be attempted in Utah. Project engineers supervised every aspect of the work and CCC men carried it out to strict specifications. Those associated with the direction of the projects spoke highly of the work of the enrollees and the director's reports indicated official CCC satisfaction with their efforts. In addition to commenting on the assistance being given the Bureau of Reclamation, the director stated that "The enrollees have acquired a reputation for building sound and permanent structures, durability being the objective of all CCC construction on reclamation projects." 64 Most of the work done by the CCC proved much less demanding, even monotonous. Some of it was dangerous. Some even may have been hastily planned and poorly directed as critics and a few former participants have claimed. Deterioration has no doubt taken place. A quality analysis would be impossible to determine, but over the years the work has been regarded as being of generally high standard and the projects themselves most worthwhile. Certainly many projects were carried out that could never have been attempted without the infusion of CCC funds and labor. K. C. Balcomb, regional CCC administrator for the Soil Conservation Service, described the accomplishments of his agency as follows: ". . . if one Utahn was to do the erosion-control work of the state's SCS camps over one year, he would have to work every day including 61

Ibid., 3:90, 4 : 1 0 6 , 5 : 7 0 , 3 : 8 8 .

Ibid., 7:25. T h e Salt Lake Aqueduct and the Deer Creek powerhouse, now integral parts of the Deer Creek Project, were not constructed until the 1950s, "Provo River Project," 615.

63 The Salt Lake Tribune, April 4, 1941; Vernal Express, M a y 1, 1941.

64 Report of the Director, 1940, 42.

62

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Sunday for 643 years; if a crew of twenty men tried to accomplish the work done by the SCS between 1935 and 1941 it would take 104 years." 65 At no time since the 1930s have the Forest Service, Park Service, and other technical agencies had the opportunity to carry out planned projects on such a scale. Fortunately, most of the agencies had had long-range plans prepared so that when the CCC got underway there was little boondoggling or featherbedding.

Analysis of the financial value of the projects is difficult. The value of crops irrigated by the reclamation projects in which the CCC participated would total nearly $8 million a year for the past thirty-odd years. The difficulty arises, of course, in attempting to determine the relationship between the existence of the CCC and the completion of the project. Some of the projects would have been completed anyway; others would not. The Midview Dam, for example, was built entirely with CCC labor and reports at the time indicate that construction would not have been planned then had CCC labor not been available. The Moon Lake Dam, on the other hand, would have gone ahead in either case. The Pine View and Deer Creek projects were done primarily by bureau or contract forces and the CCC did only the accompanying tasks necessary to implement the use of the dams. Had the corps not existed the work would have been accomplished, but probably at greater cost.

The terracing projects of the Forest Service are another matter. The Forest Service did not receive budgetary considerations comparable to the Bureau of Reclamation. The tangible benefits of a dam attract more support and financial assistance than the somewhat intangible prospect of a downpour which might take place at some vague time in the future.

Had the CCC not been in existence it is unlikely that sufficient state or local monies would have been available to carry out the erosion-control projects, even in make-work situations that might have been part of a state relief program.

The conservation and reclamation work of the CCC between 1933 and 1941 can be quantitatively measured in terms of the 423 dams that were constructed, the 792 springs, water-holes, and small reservoirs the enrollees developed, or the 5,231 miles of terracing that were excavated.

The Federal Security Agency has estimated the CCC spent $52,756,183 in Utah. 66 Difficulty arises, however, in calculating the cost of a flood that did not occur because of CCC terracing work or of a rampaging river 65

K a n e County Standard ( K a n a b , U t a h ) , October 23, 1941.

U.S., Civilian Conservation Corps, "Total Work Completed During the Periodâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;-April, 1933 to J u n e 30, 1942, U t a h . " 68

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kept within its channel due to rock and concrete embankments constructed by enrollees from New Jersey, Ohio, or Salt Lake City. The monuments to the Civilian Conservation Corps may be found throughout the state: the riprapping along the Virgin River, Lake Bauram, the bridge over the San Rafael Wash, the campgrounds up Logan Canyon, the rodeo grounds at Tooele, the Bear River Bird Refuge, the terracing overlooking Willard and Bountiful, and the dozens of reservoirs and springs on the western desert. That those accomplishments represent a "great leap forward" in the area of reclamation in Utah that may never be repeated is contemplated by conservationists with considerable foreboding.

S H E E P H E R D I N G IN W I N T E R On the 31st day of December the same year 1886. I left my newly acquired home and went to heard sheep for Al. Hatch and Thomas Karren I was to have $37 00 dollars a month and my board. My wife managed to keep her self and Four children on what was left of my wages, after I had bought my shoes and my tobacco.

I stayed with it for about 13 months, it then being the latter part of January 1888: The snow was quite deep during the winter of 1887. - 1888, and it was extremely cold. During January the thermometer registered as low as 40 below zero for several days. That same winter I was blessed with a partner by the name of James Hunting.

One of those extremely cold days, we failed to get the sheep into camp that evening, They bunched up on us and we had to leave them when it got dark on us, so we started out for camp with out them. The snow was about a foot deep and it was crusted quite hard but not hard enough to hold us up. When we got within a half mile of camp, I had to sit down and I told Jim that I could go no farther until I had rested for awhile. . . . I quit herding afew days after that. I rented a farm from Jim Henry, that was situated just South west of Vernal. ("The life History of our Father.

John Nielsen.," compiled by May Nielsen Andersen, typescript, Utah State Historical Society, 59-61)

Tunnel looking toward portal 1,200 feet away. Utah State Historical Society, gift of Mrs. Lewis M. Hammond and Engineers Society of Milwaukee.

An Investment in Progress: Utah's First Federal Reclamation Project, The Strawberry Valley Project

BY THOMAS G. ALEXANDER

IN

of the 100th meridian, water rather than land has controlled development. As Arizona Delegate Marcus Aurelius Smith observed in the debates over the appropriation of money for the Powell Irrigation Survey in 1890, anyone in the West might take an almost unTHE AREA WEST

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limited area of land covered by sagebrush, cactus, and thistles and do "himself no good nor others any harm." x Though irrigation had gone ahead on the public lands without federal authorization, it was not until 1866 that Congress recognized its need by granting land for rights-of-way for ditches and canals. 2 After much pressure, Congress followed this with the Desert Land Act of 1877 which allowed 640 acres to anyone who could water it, and the General Revision Act of 1890 which limited acquisitions to 320 acres. 3 Not until 1888 did western groups place sufficient pressure on the federal government to secure action on the problem of irrigation. Before this time, the government had published the famous Report on the Lands of the Arid Region by John Wesley Powell in 1878 and a study of irrigation practices by Richard J. Hinton in 1886.4 In 1888, Senators William M. Stewart of Nevada and Henry M. Teller of Colorado secured approval of a resolution calling upon the secretary of the interior to report on the feasibility of an investigation to determine the water resources of the arid west. Congress then authorized the Irrigation Survey under Powell's direction, and Stewart headed a committee to report on the need for reclamation in the arid West. 5 Before the 1890s irrigation was accomplished on an individual and corporate basis. Beginning in 1886, however, Joseph M. Carey, delegate and later senator from Wyoming, sponsored bills to turn lands over to Thomas G. Alexander is associate professor of history at Brigham Young University and assistant editor of the Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois. The author is appreciative of an appointment as summer research professor in economic history at Utah State University and grants from the Utah State University Research Council, the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, and the Brigham Young University Research Division.

The author expresses appreciation also to Wayne Hinton for his assistance with part of the research, to Leonard J. Arrington who directed one phase of the project, and to Arthur W. Finley, president of the Strawberry Valley Water Users Association, for his suggestions.

1 U.S., Congress, Congressional Record, 51st Cong., 1st Sess., 1890, appendix, 548-87.

For the role of some western delegates in securing funds for the survey see Thomas G. Alexander, "The Federal Frontier: Interior Department Financial Policy in Idaho, Utah and Arizona, 1863-1896" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1965), 331-334. For a further consideration see: Alexander, "The Powell Irrigation Survey and the People of the Mountain W'est,"Journal of the West, 7 (January 1968), 45â&#x20AC;&#x201D;48 and Alexander, "John Wesley Powell, the Irrigation Survey, and the Inauguration of the Second Phase of Irrigation Development in Utah," paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Utah State Historical Society, September 21, 1968, at Logan, Utah.

2 14 U.S., Statutes at Large, 251.

3 17 U.S., Statutes at Large, 622; 26 U.S., Statutes at Large, 391.

4 Powell's report is U.S., Congress, House Executive Document 73, 45th Cong., 2nd Sess.; Hinton's is U.S., Congress, Senate Miscellaneous Document 15, 49th Cong., 2nd Sess.

5 Theodore M. Schad and John Kerr Rose, Reclamation Accomplishments and Contributions: Report by the Library of Congress Reference Service (Washington, 1959), 2â&#x20AC;&#x201D;3. For views of the activities of the Irrigation Survey see William Culp Darrah, Powell of the Colorado (Princeton. 1951) ; Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West (Boston, 1954); and the dissertation and articles by the author cited above in note 1.

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states for irrigation development. In 1894, the proposal finally became law as a rider to the Sundry Civil Appropriations bill. The act provided that any state could secure up to a million acres if it would reclaim the land and settle it in quarter section plots.6 The act was not very successful and ultimately states developed only about 1.1 million acres under its provisions.7 By 1900 it had become obvious that private enterprise did not have the resources to finance the irrigation of large sections of America's arid lands. In that year, the platforms of both major parties called for federal support of reclamation projects. Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson, President Theodore Roosevelt, Representative and later Senator Francis G. Newlands of Nevada, and George H. Maxwell of the National Irrigation Association all worked for enabling legislation. Newlands got Frederick Haynes Newell of the Geological Survey, who had earlier worked with the Irrigation Survey, to draft a reclamation bill and House and Senate committees held hearings on the proposal early in 1901. After the death of President William McKinley on September 14, 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt put the prestige of his office behind the proposal. 8 In Congress, the principal opposition to the reclamation bill came on the question of its constitutionality. Supporters observed, however, that the federal government had already taken money from general revenues to dredge rivers and harbors and construct works for flood control. If such undertakings were constitutional, they asked, how could irrigation works be illegal when financed from funds derived from sales of public lands to farmers. Some supporters, such as Senators Teller and Benjamin F. (Pitchfork Ben) Tillman of South Carolina, argued that the government ought to, in fact, take money from general revenues for the projects. Senator Stewart said that even the repayment of construction costs would not be the principal return to the government, but that increased business would more than repay the investment.9 Major opposition in the House came from eastern and midwestern congressmen who feared that increased cultivation of lands would lower farm prices and exacerbate local farm problems. Had this argument been accepted earlier, supporters argued, there would have been no 6

29 U.S., Statutes at Large, 413.

Schad and Rose, 4.

8 Ibid., 5 - 7 ; George Warton James, Reclaiming the Arid States Reclamation Service (New York, 1917), 14â&#x20AC;&#x201D;17.

9 Schad and Rose, 7â&#x20AC;&#x201D;8.

7

West: The Story of the

United

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reason for the United States to have opened lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains. The westerners received the support of some eastern manufacturing interests who wanted to establish commercial contacts for their products. The act passed June 17, 1902.10 Soon after the passage of the Newlands Act, citizens of various western states began to lobby for federal funds for reclamation projects.

About 1900, State Senator Henry Gardner of Spanish Fork and his friend John S. Lewis, while visiting the Strawberry Valley in the Green River Basin on a summer outing, conceived the idea of building a reservoir to store water on the east side of the Wasatch Mountains which could be transferred through a tunnel to the Great Basin. As early as 1851, Mormon pioneers had diverted the Spanish Fork River and other smaller streams to irrigate lands in southern Utah Valley, but these streams depended upon water released from seasonal snowfall and were not always reliable. As a result, farmers had to restrict their crops to those maturing early and not requiring intensive watering during the late summer. 11 In 1902, the Spanish Fork East Bench Irrigation and Manufacturing Company, and promoters including Senator Gardner and others from Spanish Fork and Payson, undertook preliminary investigations. The group employed an engineer to examine both the project and water rights on the Strawberry and the Spanish Fork rivers. The engineer reported that the project would be so expensive that neither a small company nor individual citizens from Utah Valley could complete it without outside aid. In January 1903, therefore, the group organized a committee to request an investigation by the newly-established federal Reclamation Service.12 The Reclamation Service investigated the situation in 1903 and 1904, and in January 1905 approximately 1,200 citizens owning more than 26,000 acres of land petitioned Frederick Haynes Newell, who had since been appointed head of the service, for a federal irrigation project.

The investigations showed that 50,000 acres of land south and east of Utah Lake currently under private ownership were partly irrigated.

When the farmers had water, the land was very productive, but the old 10

Schad a n d Rose, 8â&#x20AC;&#x201D;9; James, 16.

U.S., D e p a r t m e n t of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Reclamation Accomplishments: Strawberry Valley Project, Utah (Salt Lake City, 1955), 5. Hereafter cited as Reclamation Accomplishments.

12 U.S., D e p a r t m e n t of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Ninth Annual Report of the Reclamation Service, 1909-10 (Washington, 1911), 286. Hereafter, these annual reports will be cited as Bureau of Reclamation Report with the date of the fiscal y e a r - â&#x20AC;&#x201D; i n this case, 1910.

11

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canals which served the lands did not reach bench lands which might have produced bountiful crops if sufficient water had been available.

The seasonal runoff made about 57,200 acre-feet of water from the Spanish Fork River, Hobble Creek, and Payson Creek available, mainly in May and early June. The report showed that the project could supply an additional 50,000 acre-feet at least half of which could be stored until July and August. An additional argument for the feasibility of the project came from the fact that two railroads provided excellent access to markets for the increased products of the valley.13 Thus emerged plans for the first large scale diversion of water from the Colorado River Basin into the Great Basin. In August and October 1905, two boards of engineers recommended authorization of the project and on December 15, 1905, Secretary of the Interior Ethan A. Hitchcock authorized the project and set aside $150,000 from the reclamation fund to begin work.14 The preliminary investigations had already determined the scope of the project. By early September 1904, E. F. Tabor, assistant engineer in charge of reconnaissance, had submitted a preliminary report on the feasibility of diverting tributaries of the Duchesne River to Utah Valley.

A compass-stadia line approximately on grade contour determined that a canal from the Strawberry River, in order to contact other streams, would have had to follow a 190-mile course to cover 50 air miles. The most efficient system, the bureau engineers believed, would divert water only from the Strawberry River.15 The project itself would consist of diversion works and a reservoir on the Colorado River side of the Wasatch Mountains and a tunnel through the mountain to divert the water into the Diamond Fork of the Spanish Fork River and thence into southern Utah Valley.

To facilitate construction of the tunnel and reservoir, the bureau built roads and other service facilities at various project sites. The main road from Diamond Switch, the government forwarding point on the Denver and Rio Grande thirty-two miles from the proposed west portal of the tunnel, was constructed between early March and late October 1906. Most of the workmen were water users who were anxious to get the precious fluid. Although government engineers expected that the 13

Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1905, 3 3 0 - 3 2 ; 1907, 214.

William Peterson, "History of Federal Reclamation in U t a h by Projects," in Wain Sutton, ed., Utah: A Centennial History (New York, 1949), I, 9 1 ; Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1910, 268.

15 Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1904, 5 0 9 - 1 3 .

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road, when completed, would be a shorter and better route for settlers from central Utah to the recently opened Uintah Indian Reservation in eastern Utah, conditions on the road were so bad that it was impassable during the winter and early spring by any but light buggies. The road was continued from the west portal to the proposed dam site. Additional roads were constructed to maintain project facilities. Between 1910 and 1916 about twenty-five miles of wagon roads were built to connect various project features. By 1916 it was possible to drive completely around the reservoir. Along Diamond Fork Creek, four light wagon bridges were constructed to permit land owners to cross when water was turned into the stream. 16 At Diamond Switch, the government leased land and constructed buildings. The Rio Grande Company laid a siding and the government put up three large storehouses, a stable for twenty-four horses, and several houses for employees. Telephone wires were strung from Spanish Fork by way of Diamond Switch to both portals of the tunnel. 17 As work progressed on the roads, the power plant was constructed.

On December 4, 1906, the bureau authorized construction of three miles of power canal together with settling basins, and other structures to carry 500 second-feet of water from the Spanish Fork River to the Upper Spanish Fork Power Plant in Spanish Fork Canyon. Though local companies entered bids, General Electric Company won the contract for electrical machinery for $26,119, and the Dayton Globe Iron Works submitted the low bid of $12,500 for the turbines. 18 Though the principal purpose of the power plant was to furnish electricity for the construction of the tunnel and other project features, during October and November 1909, a three and one-half mile transmission line was constructed from the power house to Spanish Fork to supply electric current for lighting and other purposes. By 1914 power was being furnished on a contract basis to Payson, Salem, and Spanish Fork. In 1918, the government erected a 5.3 mile high-tension line to the south boundary of Springville to furnish power to that city. Two subsidiary power plants, operated by the water users association, were opened in 1937 and 1941.19 16 Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1905, 334; 1906, 271; 1915, 266; 1918. 312-15; 1917, 285; 1919, 320; 1921, 326.

17 Ibid., 1907, 216 and 222.

18 Ibid., 1907, 215-220; 1909, 185.

19 Ibid., 1910, 271; 1914, 273; 1915, 266; 1917, 283; 1918, 312-314; U.S., Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Reclamation Project Data (Washington, 1961), 729-31.

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TAe corewall trench. Utah State Historical Society, gift of Mrs. Lewis M. Hammond and Engineers Society of Milwaukee

After the government had begun construction of some of these auxiliary structures, it began work in August 1906 on the key feature of the project which was the 19,500-foot concrete lined tunnel from the reservoir to the head of Diamond Fork. 20 The government was unsuccessful in securing private bids for the tunnel work, and work was commenced from the west portal by a bureau-supervised labor force. At first, gasoline engines supplied power to electric rock drills, but after the power plant was completed in late 1909 power was made available from that source. With the increased power, the government brought in additional electrical equipment such as electric locomotives for pulling the loads of muck and an electrically driven ventilating blower. In October 1911, a year after the work of lining the tunnel with concrete had begun, workmen began to push westward from the east portal. On the morning of June 20, 1912, the two crews met, and in 1913 crews poured the last of the concrete lining. An estimated 10,000 people attended festivities in Spanish Fork on July 2, 1912, to celebrate the completion of digging the tunnel. On September 13, 1913, the gates at the east portal were raised for the first time and water was allowed to pass through the tunnel to clean out accumulated debris. The first irrigation water was turned through the tunnel on June 27, 1915. 21 20

Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1905, 332; 1906, 278.

Ibid., 1907, 216-17; 1908, 186; 1909, 185; 1910, 270; 1911, 218; 1912, 172; 1913, 214; 1914, 272-73; 1916, 409. Provo Herald June 21 and July 12, 1912.

21

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It was thought at first that it might be necessary to construct a new distribution system for the Spanish Fork area, but, though the existing system was not completely satisfactory, the engineers decided to leave it as it was and to construct additional canals to supply newly opened lands.

In 1908 a preliminary survey and a cost estimate were made for a highline canal which was to extend from the power canal around the foot of the mountains to Payson Creek. Contract construction on this unit was begun during fiscal year 1915. To prevent excessive seepage, it was necessary to line about five miles of the main canal and almost all of the laterals with concrete. On this phase of the project, the contractor employed about 800 men and 400 head of stock. The government forces, including engineers and inspectors, comprised about 125 men and 30 head of horses.

By early 1916 the canal had been completed, and on April 7, 1916, the Strawberry High Line Canal Company Water Users' Association entered into a contract with the bureau whereby it took over operation and maintenance of the unit. The company agreed to repair the facilities and deliver water to each of the users or to allow the government to repair the works and to reimburse it for its efforts.22 In 1918, work was begun on the Mapleton-Springville canal which stretched north 6.7 miles almost to Hobble Creek. In addition to the canal, the project consisted of headgates, a line over the Spanish Fork River, and a concrete siphon under the Denver & Rio Grande Western tracks. By 1921, the government was capable of delivering 69,100 acrefeet of stored water to the system which included the government constructed Highline Division and Springville-Mapleton Division and the existing Spanish Fork canal companies, 23 As early as April 1913 as the bureau pushed the tunnel to completion, residents of Juab County and southern Utah Valley began agitating for inclusion in the project. Engineers from the project told a mass meeting at the Juab County Court House in Nephi of the possibility of diverting water adequate for 10,000 to 15,000 acres into that water-starved region. Residents pledged money to meet the costs of a preliminary study.

In 1917, settlers near Goshen and Elberta, in southern Utah County, asked for an extension of the Strawberry Valley Project to include water for them. In 1919, negotiations were opened with settlers near Mona and Nephi in Juab County for a possible highline lateral, and a preliminary survey was undertaken looking to the possibility of the construction 22

Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1905, 3 3 3 ; 1908, 186; 1915, 2 6 7 ; 1916, 4 1 0 - 4 1 4 .

Ibid.. 1918, 3 1 2 ; 1919, 3 1 8 ; 1921, 372. F o r engineering statistics on the structures see Reclamation Project Data, 728â&#x20AC;&#x201D;29.

2S

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of a forty-five-mile lateral with a capacity of 150 to 200 second-feet.

None of the proposed extensions was made at the time, and the Republican administrations of the 1920s, with their financial conservatism, did not undertake them. The Bureau of Reclamation's Central LItah Project which is currently (1968) being constructed will supply these areas and others further south with transmontane water.24 As the storage unit on the project, the bureau planned to construct a dam forty-five feet in height to retain a capacity of 100,000 acre-feet.

But before the construction of the dam actually began in 1911, the height of the dam was changed to seventy-one feet, which gave the reservoir a capacity of 298,000 acre-feet. The dam was a loose rock structure with a concrete core wall backed by earth. The bureau asked for bids, but as with the tunnel, no bids were received and the work was done by the bureau's labor force. Actual work on the dam was begun on June 18, 1911, when the Strawberry River was diverted through a sluicing tunnel.

Storing of water in the reservoir began July 14, 1912, riprapping was completed September 20, 1913, and work on the concrete-lined wasteway was finished May 25, 1917.25 After work on the dam was completed, workmen noted that seepage through the dam face increased after water had risen to 7,550 feet. Engineers decided to cover the surface with a clay blanket to cut off seepage.

This was done in the summer of 1916.26 To prevent water from flowing across a saddle to the south of the reservoir and to collect water from Indian and Trail Hollow creeks, plans were laid for the construction of the Indian Creek and Trail Hollow Diversion Canal and the Indian Creek Dike. Construction on the thirtyseven-foot dike began by contract in 1911 and was completed in September 1912. The diversion canal was completed a year later. In 1934 a feeder canal of 4.7 miles was constructed from Currant Creek, about fourteen miles north of the east portal in a southerly direction, to Co-op Creek which flowed into the Strawberry Reservoir. It was completed in 1936.27 24 Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1917, 287; 1918, 2 1 3 ; 1919, 218; 1921, 3 2 5 ; Provo Herald, April 23, 1913.

25 Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1905, 332; 1907, 215; 1912, 172; 1913, 214; 1911, 217; 1906, 2 7 1 ; 1914, 272; 1917, 238. Of the 298,000 acre-feet of water in the reservoir, 286,000 acre-feet are available for use and 12,000 acre-feet are below the base of the tunnel. Interview with Arthur W. Finley, president of the Strawberry Valley Water Users Association, J a n u a r y 27, 1969. ^'Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1917, 238.

21 Ibid., 1911, 219; 1912, 172; 1913, 214; 1914, 272; Reclamation Project Data, 731.

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Work on the Strawberry Valley Project was anything but easy.

Some idea of the difficulty of doing winter work on the project can be gathered from the burden of working in eighteen inches of snow which fell at the project site in one week of February 1912. In January 1909, ninety-one inches of snow fell at the project and on January 20 the freight road from Diamond Switch to the tunnel was blocked with snow. Yet, in spite of the heavy snow, the power plant operated continuously and two shifts worked at the tunnel. Transportation from the railroad to the project and back could only be accomplished by sleigh during the long winters. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on the point of view, the most serious accident on the project occurred in summer when W. B. Lancaster became entangled in a cement mixer. He had to be taken to the Provo Hospital for treatment of a fractured skull, broken left leg and broken jaw. 28 As the project continued, other difficulties impeded progress. Wages ranging from $2.25 for laborers and $3.00 to $3.25 per eight-hour day for foremen and carpenters, in the fall of 1911, were insufficient to entice enough workmen to either the tunnel or the Indian Creek Dike project.

Work had to slow down as a shortage of labor ensued. In May 1911, workmen in the tunnel encountered a constant flow of underground water averaging six to seven second-feet. To cope with the problem, they constructed a plank platform under which the water was diverted. 29 In 1915, operation and maintenance of the facilities began. A ditchrider and gate tender took care of the storage works and a ditchrider inspected the Spanish Fork Diversion Dam and power canal. In 1918, swellings were noticed on the face of the dam, and a gang of twenty-four men put timber sets at four different places to strengthen the sides. During the First World War, guards were placed at the dam site to protect it from saboteurs. In 1920, bureau employees laid tile at the foot of the dam to conduct seepage away and prevent accumulation of backwater.

Considerable repair was necessary on the Diamond Fork Road to permit use of the road while the creek was wearing a new channel. In 1922, some 2,800 linear feet of floor were placed in the tunnel. The project was declared complete on June 30, 1922, and in 1926 the water users assumed control of the project. 30 28 Provo Herald, January 4, February 28, June 21, and August 23, 1912; Salt Lake Tribune, February 16, 1909.

29 Provo Herald, January 3, 1909; and May 12, September 28, October 3, and December 5, 1911.

30 Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1919, 318; 1920, 343-44; 1924, 73; Reclamation Project Data, 729; Reclamation Accomplishments, 7, 9; "Strawberry Valley Project, Utah," Reclamation Record, 13 (February, 1922), 36.

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Beyond delivering water and power to the residents of the Strawberry Valley Project area the Bureau of Reclamation performed other services. Bureau engineers made plane table surveys of irrigable land to study existing conditions and plan the best use of distribution systems.

Studies were also made to determine the probable water consumption of various lands and the character and extent of crops which could be raised. Subsidiary investigations were made to determine the possible sites for further development of hydroelectric power. Flow records were made of all streams and investigations were undertaken into seepage and drainage from lands on the project. Farm unit surveys were made to classify various lands on the project. In addition, the Bureau of Reclamation aided the state in keeping cooperative weather reports at Provo, Spanish Fork, and the east portal of the tunnel. 31 The service which the government performed in drainage was of considerable help to farmers on the project. In 1913, it was reported that, owing to the high level of the water table, numerous areas near Utah Lake were unfit for cultivation. In 1918, investigations were undertaken to determine what action could be taken to form drainage districts.

In 1919, owners of land in the project petitioned the government to investigate the situation, and the bureau's Denver office sent a drainage engineer. On the basis of these investigations, by mid-1921 farmers had organized five drainage districts in the project area. 32 Some advantages accrued to the government itself through the project owing to the greater efficiency which it found in the experimental use of automobiles. In 1917, two autos were in use on the project and two more had been ordered. Studies determined that the cars could be operated for an average cost of 8.4 cents per mile. By using automobiles for hydrographic and inspection work an engineer and an assistant could cover distances varying from 50 to 100 miles per day. With a team and driver, only 25 miles could be covered at an average cost of 18 cents per mile. 33 A major difficulty which the bureau had to overcome before the project could be successful was the satisfaction of those with water interests in the project area. The water rights in Utah County were among the oldest in Utah, and farmers holding primary rights were apprehensive about merging their holdings with other landowners. In an attempt to n Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1906, 272; 1908, 186; 1909, 185; 1912, 173; 1913, 215; 1914, 273; 1915, 267; 1917, 284; 1918, 313; 1919, 218, 320.

32 Ibid., 1913, 215; 1918, 316; 1919, 321; 1921, 329.

33 J. L. Lytel, "The Automobile on the Strawberry Valley Project," Reclamation Record, 8 (December, 1917), 586.

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297

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unify the interests, the government tried to promote membership in the Strawberry Valley Water Users' Association. Those with vested interests, however, were fearful of trying anything new and resisted the movement. 34 In 1912, Frederick Haynes Newell met with the directors of the association and tried to explain the requirements of the contract which the farmers had signed in 1906. A difference of opinion had arisen as to the apportioning of the cost of the project, particularly the rather expensive Highline Canal, which was to serve Payson. Payson water users argued that these costs should be charged to the whole project; those at Spanish Fork believed they should be borne only by that part of the project which directly benefited. The secretary of the interior gave notice that the association would be required to carry out the terms of its contract or answer a suit for breach of contract. In an attempt to resolve the conflict between the two groups and the government, Senator Reed Smoot, project engineer J. L. Lytel, and officials from Washington including C. S. Whitbeck, legal examiner for the Bureau of Reclamation, held various meetings with members of the board of directors in August 1913.35 Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1905, 333; 1913, 316.

Ibid., 1913, 216; 1914, 273-75; Provo Herald, July 31, August 18 and 21, 1913.

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No definite results were reached at the meetings, so in October the secretary sent a letter to the association giving it sixty days to approve one of two propositions to adjust the water rights on the river. He proposed as a first alternative to supply water at $80 per acre plus operation and maintenance cost and to allow those with water rights a credit of $20 per acre for their existing systems. Newly irrigated land would pay the full $80. Under this arrangement, the old canals would be operated by the canal companies under the direction of the water users' association, though the bureau reserved the right to perform the maintenance if that were not done by the companies and to see that proper distribution of the water was made. The second possibility was that landowners under the old canals might subscribe to the water users' association and secure a credit of $65 per acre rather than the $20 they might receive by remaining in the old organization. After some discussion, the water users divided into two units and on December 19, 1913, they sent a letter to the secretary of the interior refusing to accept either plan. On March 25, 1914, the secretary wrote the project manager authorizing him to abrogate the contract between the government and the association.36 Despite the difficulties, terms were eventually reached with the companies. An agreement with the highline users on the southern end of the project in 1915 gave them two acre-feet of water per acre per year at a cost of $80 per acre. In the contracts with the northern half of the project the existing water rights were not changed, but the land owners agreed to purchase water in units ranging from one-half to two acre-feet at a price of $45 per acre-foot. This arrangement allowed them credit for existing water rights and meant they only had to pay the extra charges for supplementary water. Negotiations with some of the water users were so difficult, however, that the last of the contracts was not completed until 1920.37 Water supplied by the Strawberry Valley Project released water which had formerly filled rights on the Spanish Fork River for use on the Upper Spanish Fork, and on Soldier and Diamond Forks. Irrigation districts were formed to use the more than 800 acre-feet thus made available. In 1916, the project delivered a total of 42,928 acre-feet to the project and in 1921 the government was capable of delivering 69,100 acre-feet to the system.38 30

ibid.

Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1914, 2 7 6 ; 1915, 268-76; 1917, 2 8 6 - 8 7 ; 3 1 5 ; 1916, 4 1 9 ; 1920, 346; Provo Herald, November 3, 1913.

38 Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1916, 4 1 1 , 4 1 9 ; James, Reclaiming the Arid West, 321-25.

37

Strawberry Valley Project

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A thorny problem to both the federal government and the farmers was that of repayment. The original contract, executed in 1906, provided for repayment on a graduated scale over a ten-year period. At the end of the first year $1 per acre was due. This was graduated to $5 per acre on the fifth year where it remained for the next four years. The balance of the project cost was due on the tenth year. It became abundantly clear that such a schedule was completely unrealistic, so the Reclamation Extension Act of August 1914 provided for existing projects a twenty year repayment schedule beginning at two percent for the first four years, increasing to four percent for the next two, and six percent for the next fourteen. The first annual installment was not due until the fifth calendar year after delivery of the water. 39 Repayment went along quite well under the new agreement until the depression of 1921. By mid-1922, the prices of wheat and hay had advanced slightly, but market conditions were so unsatisfactory that the water users' association took active steps to secure deferment of construction charges or to make repayment over a forty-year instead of a twentyyear period. Conditions by 1923 were still bad, as the index of farm prices paid producers for Utah crops stood at 122 as compared with 233 in 1920 (1935-39=100) and by 1925 the index still stood at the low figure of 127. As a result of these conditions, which were quite general in agriculture throughout the United States, Congress passed the Fact Finders Act of 1924, which fixed the repayment schedule at five percent of the average gross annual crop production for the preceding ten years.

On the basis of this act the government entered into an agreement with the users' association in September 1926 to begin payment on a new schedule. Revenues from power and grazing contracts were used to pay the costs of operation and maintenance and additional funds from these sources were used to help pay construction costs. By January 1, 1969, the water users had repaid all but $39,361.69 of the more than $3.3 million cost of the project. 40 39 38 U.S., Statutes at Large, 686; Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1914, 275; 1916, 574; Reclamation Accomplishments, 7; Provo Herald, December 31, 1914.

40 Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1919, 317; 1923, 108-09; "Administrative and Statistical Progress Reports for December, 1922: Strawberry Valley Project, Utah," Reclamation Record. 14 (January 1923), 43; "Contract Between the United States and the Strawberry Valley Water Users' Association," New Reclamation Era, 18 (January 1927), 8; Reclamation Accomplishments, 2; Department of Agricultural Economics of Utah State University, Utah State University, Utah Agricultural Statistics (Logan, Utah, 1963). 140. Finley interview, January 27, 1969.

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Reclamation projects such as the Strawberry Valley Project have come under heavy attack from opponents of federal reclamation.41 They have argued that money for such projects constitutes an interest-free subsidy to project farmers and that such subsidization is not a proper function of the federal government. To be sound, they believe, total project benefits must not only exceed the total cost of the project, but it must be shown that the best use is being made of capital and resources and that the method employed is the best way to achieve a desired end.

Some groups have recommended that benefits and costs be expressed only in terms of money and that estimates be, by their definition, accurate and realistic. Interests should be computed at not less than the average paid on the federal debt, and gross revenues should be based on the fair market value of commodities which are produced. In some cases, they argue, the repayment schedule is longer than the life of the project.

Opponents point out that there are sixty million acres of land in humid areas which are suitable for crop agriculture if they were properly drained and cleared. The cost of drainage on the Misissippi River Delta ranges between $8 and $25 per acre, whereas some irrigation projects have cost as much as $500 to $600 per acre. They have also argued that food and fibre requirements can be met from existing acreage until 1975.

These are, of course, general criticisms, but it may be fairly regarded as the duty of the historian to determine the accuracy of such charges as they apply to actual projects. To what extent can one justify the expenditure of money on the Strawberry Valley Project?

One of the advantages claimed by proponents of reclamation has been the general economic uplift and development of depressed areas. In the Strawberry Valley Project area, population growth has been continuous while population in adjacent areas with comparable soils and climate, but without adequate water, has declined. The effect of the project on Payson alone has been notable. Between 1900 and 1905, Payson was a dying town. Population was on the decline and homes could be purchased for twenty percent of their construction cost. With the completion of the project and the introduction of water to 25,000 heretofore arid acres, Payson began to grow. By 1922, population had increased by fifty percent over the 1905 figure, bank resources had increased 1,000 percent, and a sugar factory and interurban railroad had been added. A city 41 T h e case against reclamation projects is based upon U.S. Library of Congress, Legislative Reference Service, The Case Against Federal Reclamation (Washington, n.d. [ca. 1957]).

Strawberry Valley Project

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waterworks, paved streets, new schools, new homes, and new churches were also new features of the city.42 After the additional water was assured, the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company built not only the 600-ton plant at Payson, but another 1,000-ton plant at Spanish Fork. In 1918 an independent sugar company erected a 500-ton plant at Springville. In 1906 the area covered by the project produced only 1,900 acres of beets, but by 1919 14,000 acres were planted. By 1924 sugar companies were paying nearly $400,000 annually to growers on the project. Many farmers found it possible to grow beets in the summer, harvest them in the fall, work at one of the factories later, and feed stock in the winter from the beet pulp. In the mid-twenties, a large packing company opened a canning factory near Spanish Fork to take advantage of the newly available truck crops. 43 Until 1910, Juab and Sanpete counties grew at about the same rate as the area of Utah County covered by the project. In 1915, the Strawberry Valley Project delivered its first storage water to southern Utah County, and population spurted upward. In the other two areas, growth was controlled by the available water and the maximum population growth was reached between 1910 and 1915. It is true that such industries as the Ironton steel plant have located near the Strawberry Project area and helped stimulate growth, but one of the main reasons for the development of such industry has been the project itself. Water and power from the project have undoubtedly played a major part in local industrial growth. 44 Personal income associated with the project has been estimated at $18 million per year in 1955 and the impact of such income has been great. From 1950 to 1955 an average of 658 new autos, 225 new trucks, and 156 new tractors have been added annually to project farms. The annual volume of retail sales attributable to the project was more than $8 million, of which $4.5 million left the state of Utah. (The amount which left the state each year by 1955 alone was more than the entire project cost.) In 1915 the assessed property valuation in the project area was $7,476,837. By 1920 it had grown to $26,890,847. By 1955 it had ^Reclamation Accomplishments, 2, 17; Henry Erlandson, "What the Strawberry Valley Project has done for Payson," Reclamation Record, 13 (June 1922), 124.

43 "Sugar Beets on the Strawberry Valley Project," New Reclamation Era, 15 (June 1924), 95; "Strawberry Valley Project Notes," New Reclamation Era, 16 (August 1925), 125.

See also W. H. Olin, "A Utah County Truck Farm," New Reclamation Era, 17 (August 1926), 138-39. ^Reclamation Accomplishments, 21; Mack Corbett, "Reclamation in Utah Past, Present, and Future," Utah, 10 (June 1948), 4-5.

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The portal works, 1911. Utah State Historical Society, gift of Mrs. Lewis M. Hammond and Engineers Society of Milwaukee.

increased to 500 percent of the 1910 figure. Adjoining areas without adequate water had increased only 200 percent.

The Strawberry Valley project was relatively small compared with more recent projects. Only thirty-five new farm units were opened for entry on the public domain. Farmers used project water to develop about 16,000 acres of land which were privately owned but not irrigated, and about 26,000 acres benefited from the supplement of water supplies from the project. Studies by private and federal agencies indicate that by 1955 12,000 of the 24,000 persons in the project area lived there as a result of the project. As Albert Swenson, one of the early farmers put it, "Before the Strawberry was finished we used to get one crop of alfalfa on the east bench â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and that was it. During a dry year we just burned up."

By 1955 three cuttings of alfalfa were the rule. To utilize the newly available alfalfa, new alfalfa mills were erected in Spanish Fork in 1919 and Payson in 1920. Two new vining stations for threshing peas and beans were established at Keeler and Mapleton. 45 Benefits from the project have passed through several stages.46 In the first, or construction phase, which lasted from about 1906 to 1915, in4o George D . Clyde, " T h e Case for Federal R e c l a m a t i o n : Extension of Remarks of H o n .

Carl Hayden of Arizona in the Senate of the U n i t e d States, Tuesday, April 15, 1 9 5 8 " (Washington, 1958), 6, 8; Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1919, 3 2 3 ; 1920, 248.

46 This analysis of the periods of development on the project is adapted from Reclamation Accomplishments.

Strawberry Valley Project

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creased employment, the growth of retail sales, and increased real estate value resulted from the anticipation of the water. An increase in inbound shipments and increased revenues from the activities of the contractor also helped promote development. Wholesale trade increased in the region, existing plants expanded, and transport facilities enjoyed increased revenues.

In the period between about 1915 and 1926, the project lands were undergoing development. Homes, schools, churches, and roads were constructed. People began to purchase more farm machinery and home furnishings. Government units began to reap the increase in property tax revenues, and the effects of the new investments in consumer durables were felt in the area beyond the project.

The period since 1926 has been an operational stage. The local economy was somewhat stabilized, though at a low level during the 1920s and 1930s. Permanent industries such as the sugar factory came into the area. Sales of municipal power and water and available recreation facilities contributed to development during the two latter stages until by 1955 the value of the power, municipal water, and recreation facilities provided by the project amounted to $500,000 per year or about one-seventh of the project cost.

Commercial development of electric power, though not at first anticipated as a feature of reclamation projects, came to benefit those in the project area. After it was learned that power would be utilized to construct the dam and tunnel, water users petitioned the government to leave the power plant. From 1907 it was contemplated that power should be furnished to local towns. The Strawberry Valley Project was one of the government's earliest power projects. The Townsite Act of 1906 authorized installation of generators on the Roosevelt Dam in Arizona.

It used to be believed that the first power plant constructed and operated by the bureau was located on the Minidoka Project in Idaho. Neither the generator on the Minidoka Project nor that at Roosevelt Dam began operation until 1909. The Upper Spanish Fork Power plant was in operation on December 13, 1908; as nearly as the author can determine this was the first power plant to be operated by the Bureau of Reclamation. 47 Part of the development has come through the recreation facilities offered by the reservoir area. As early as 1911, sports enthusiasts such as Governor William Spry visited the waters of Strawberry and caught their "Reclamation Accomplishments, 15; Bureau of Reclamation Report, 1907, 2 2 2 ; 1909, 185; Shad a n d Rose, 22. For the Starting dates of the delivery power on the Roosevelt D a m and on the M i n i d o k a Project see Reclamation Project Data, 357, 668.

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limits. The reservoir was stocked by game fish from state hatcheries; deer and other big game are found in the mountains near the reservoir; and land near the reservoir harbors upland game birds. As early as 1917 a number of cabins had been built near the lake and by 1955 more than 300 private cabins had been located there. In addition, four camp sites and 60 public cabins were available for use. More than 600 private boats had been licensed for use on the reservoir. More than eighty-five percent of the fishermen who came to fish lived within a ninety-mile radius of the reservoir and thus contributed to Utah's sporting goods businesses. In 1955 it was estimated that a total of 175,000 people visited the reservoir and that they spent an average of $5.80 each. 48 In the thirteen years between 1955 and 1968, the recreational use of the reservoir and surrounding lands increased tremendously. Arthur W. Finley, president of the Strawberry Valley Water Users' Association reported that an estimated 1,700 boats and a total of 20,000 people used the lake and other facilities of Strawberry Valley on the opening day of the 1968 fishing season. The same year, the association sold 5,407 boat permits, 111 permits to leave trailers in the valley for the season, and 489 cabin permits of which 18 were new. The increase in boat permits alone in the thirteen-year period amounted to more than 900 percent, and the increase in cabins to more than 130 percent. 49 On the basis of the evidence, it is difficult to conclude that the Strawberry Valley Project has been anything but successful. Southern Utah Valley, which might have gone the way of its neighboring areas to the south, has prospered. In recognition of this fact, the federal government authorized what amounted to an expansion of the project to include the diversion of further water from other tributaries of the Colorado River into the Great Basin. This expanded project which was initially approved in 1956 has been named the Central Utah Project. Since that time, further federal appropriations have continued the project which will divert water into Juab County and other areas further to the south, with the hope that they will prosper as southern Utah County has prospered. 50 48 J. L. Lytel, "Our Reservoirs as Pleasure Resorts: Strawberry Reservoir, Strawberry Valley Project," Reclamation Record, 8 (October 1917), 479â&#x20AC;&#x201D;80; Reclamation Accomplishments, 17, 20; Provo Herald, July 25, 1911.

49 Finley interview, January 27, 1969.

50 Edward Leo Lyman, "More Water for Utah Through the Central Utah Project," (Senior Seminar Paper, Brigham Young University, 1965), 18 and map.

U T A H STATE H I S T O R I C A L SOCIETY R E C E N T PUBLICATIONS In keeping with its legal responsibility to collect, preserve, and publish materials on Utah and related history, the Utah State Historical Society has recently published two important studies which it warmly recommends to readers of the Quarterly. Copies of these fascinating new books are available from the Society. Both volumes are indexed and include footnotes plus numerous historic photographs. Please add fifty cents per book for postage and handling on mail and telephone orders.

The First 100 Years: A History of The Salt Lake Tribune, 1871-1971,

by O. N. Malmquist. $8.00.

A 496-page informative analysis of Utah's social and political development as chronicled by a major newspaper. The author, acknowledged dean of Utah political reporters, draws upon private Tribune files, interviews, and his own forty years of experience to give the modern Utah story meaningful perspective.

William Spry: Man of Firmness, Governor of Utah, by William L. Roper and Leonard J. Arrington. $6.50.

The Society joined with the University of Utah Press in publishing this important 272-page biography of the man who rose, Horatio Alger-style, from stable boy to serve as chief executive from 1909 to 1917. Co-authors William L. Roper, a professional freelance writer, and Leonard J. Arrington, noted Utah historian and economics professor at Utah State University, examine Spry's role in the "Joe Hill" case, plus his important contributions in expanding Utah educational programs, initiating tax reforms, encouraging conservation efforts and leading the drive to build the state's magnificent Capitol building.

MEMBERSHIPS Membership in the Utah State Historical Society is open to all individuals and institutions interested in Utah history. The different classes of membership are: Student, $3.00; Annual, $5.00; and Life, $100.00. Tax-exempt donations for special projects of the Society may be made on the following membership basis: Sustaining, $250.00; Patron, $500.00; and Benefactor, $1,000.00.

Your interest and support are most welcome.

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UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

BOARD O F STATE HISTORY Division of Department of Development Services MILTON

C. A B R A M S , S m i t h f i e l d ,

J A C K G O O D M A N , Salt L a k e C i t y , 1 9 7 3

197:!

President D E L L O G. D A Y T O N , O g d e n ,

Vice

M H S . A. c . JENSEN, S a n d y , 1 9 7 5

1975

THERON

President

Ex

MELVIN T . S M I T H . S a l t L a k e C i t y Secretary DEAN R. BRIMHALL, F r u i t a , MRS.

J U A N I T A B R O O K S . St. G e o r g e ,

I.I'KE,

Provo,

1975

CLYDE L. MILLER, S e c r e t a r y of S t a t e officin

H O W A R D c. P R I C E , J R . . P r i c e .

1975

1973

MRS.

1973

M R S . .NAOMI WOOLLEY, S a l t L a k e C i t y . 1 9 7 5

ELIZABETH SKANCHY. M i d v a l c , 19715

ADVISORY BOARD O F EDITORS M R S . H E L E N z . PAPANIKOLAS, Salt L a k e C i t y

THOMAS G. ALEXANDER, PrOVO

L A M A R P E T E R S E N . S a l t Lake. C i t y

S. GEORGE ELI SWORTH, L o g a n M R S . P E A R L JACOBSON,

H A K O I . D SCHINDLER, Salt L a k e C i t y

Richfield

J ER O ME S TO F i •• E1., L< >ga n

DAVID E . M I L L E R , Salt L a k e C i t y

ADMINISTRATION MELVIN JOHN

T. S M I T H .

J A M E S , JR., L i b r a r i a n

T h e U t a h S t a t e H i s t o r i c a l S o c i e t y is a n organization devoted t o t h e collection, prese r v a t i o n , a n d p u b l i c a t i o n of L^tah a n d r e lated history. I t w a s organized by publicspirited U t a h n s i n 1897 for this purpose. I n f u l f i l l m e n t of i t s o b j e c t i v e s , t h e S o c i e t y p u b lishes t h e Utah Historical Quarterly, which is d i s t r i b u t e d t o i t s m e m b e r s w i t h p a y m e n t of a $ 5 . 0 0 a n n u a l m e m b e r s h i p fee. T h e S o c i e t y a l s o m a i n t a i n s a sj)ecialized r e s e a r c h library' of b o o k s , p a m p h l e t s , p h o t o g r a p h s , periodicals, microfilms, newspapers, m a p s , a n d m a n u s c r i p t s . M a n y of t h e s e i t e m s h a v e c o m e t o t h e l i b r a r y a s gifts. D o n a t i o n s a r c e n c o u r a g e d , for only t h r o u g h such m e a n s c a n t h e U t a h S t a t e H i s t o r i c a l S o c i e t y live u p t o i t s r e s p o n s i b i l i t y of p r e s e r v i n g t h e r e c o r d of U t a h ' s p a s t .

|

Director IRIS S C O T T . Business

Manager

T h e p r i m a r y p u r p o s e of t h e Quarterly is t h e p u b l i c a t i o n of m a n u s c r i p t s , p h o t o g r a p h s , a n d d o c u m e n t s w h i c h relate o r give a n e w i n t e r p r e t a t i o n t o Latah's u n i q u e story.

C o n t r i b u t i o n s of w r i t e r s a r e s o l i c i t e d f o r t h e c o n s i d e r a t i o n of t h e e d i t o r . H o w e v e r , t h e editor assumes n o responsibility for t h e r e t u r n of m a n s c r i p t s u n a c c o m p a n i e d b y r e turn postage. Manuscripts a n d material for publications should b e sent to t h e editor.

T h e U t a h State Historical Society docs n o t a s s u m e r e s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r s t a t e m e n t s of fact o r opinions expressed b y c o n t r i b u t o r s .

T h e Utah Historical Quarterly is e n tered as second-class postage, p a i d a t Salt Lake City, U t a h . Copyright 1971. U t a h State Historical Society, 6 0 3 East South T e m p l e Street, Salt Lake City, U t a h 84102.

HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

FALL 1 9 7 1 / V O L U M E 39 / NUMBER 4

Contents STATEHOOD FOR UTAH: A DIFFERENT PATH

BY HOWARD R. LAMAR

_

307

A REEXAMINATION OF THE WOODRUFF MANIFESTO IN THE LIGHT OF UTAH CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY

BY H E N R Y

J. WOLFINGER

_

328

THE MAKING OF THE CONVENTION PRESIDENT: THE POLITICAL EDUCATION OF JOHN HENRY SMITH

BY JEAN BICKMORE WHITE

350

THE PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR THE FISCAL YEAR 1970-1971

370

REVIEWS AND PUBLICATIONS

379

INDEX

-

EDITOR

MELVIN T. SMITH

MANAGING EDITOR

G L E N M . LEONARD

ASSISTANT EDITOR

395

MlRIAM B . M U R P H Y

THE COVER When Utah finally achieved statehood in 1896, the event marked the culmination of many years of effort by the territory. Represented on the cover are: President Grover Cleveland and the silver pen he used to sign the Enabling Act, a Harper's Weekly cartoon poking fun at polygamy, the facade of ZCMI draped with banners to honor the forty-fifth state, and a parade scene from the Pioneer Jubilee held the following year. Design by Keith Montague.

Books Reviewed

BROOKS, JUANITA, Story,

Uncle

Will Tells

BY SAM WELLER

His

__

379

HAFEN, LEROY R., ed., The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, Vol. IV,

BY DALE L. MORGAN

380

TYLER, S. LYMAN, ed., The Montana Rush Diary of Kate Dunlap,

Gold

BY LEROY R. HAFEN

381

WINTHER, OSCAR OSBURN, and RICHARD A. VAN ORMAN, A Classified Bibliography of the Periodical Literature of the Trans-Mississippi West, A Supplement (1957-67),

BY S. GEORGE ELLSWORTH

382

TAYLOR, RAYMOND W., and SAMUEL W. TAYLOR, Uranium Fever: or No Talk Under $1 Million,

BY GARY L. SHUMWAY

._

._

383

BATEMAN, WALTER L., The Navajo of the Painted Desert,

BY BROTHER JUNIPER

384

GLASS, MARY ELLEN, Silver and Politics in Nevada: 1892-1902,

BY J O H N M. TOWNLEY

385

SCULLY, VIRGINIA, A Treasury of American Indian Herbs: Their Lore and Their Use for Food, Drugs, and Medicine,

BY HERBERT Z. LUND

__

386

BURT, OLIVE W., The Story of American Railroads and How They Helped Build a Nation,

BY ROSALIE C. BARBOUR

386

FOWLER, CATHERINE S., comp., Great Basin Anthropology . . . A Bibliography,

BY MARK P. LEONE

__

387

CROSSETTE, GEORGE, ed., Selected Prose of John Wesley Powell,

BY ROBERT W. OLSEN

388

FITZPATRICK, DOYLE C , The King Strang Story: A Vindication of James J. Strang, the Beaver Island Mormon King,

BY RUSSELL R. RICH

389

The fagade of ZCMI proclaims the good news of Utah statehood in 1896 Utah State Historical Society photograph.

Statehood for Utah: A Different Path

BY HOWARD R. LAMAR

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X o SUGGEST THAT UTAH achieved statehood by pursuing a different path from that of other territories is but to repeat the obvious. What other territory began with a government which was run largely by a church operating through an informal but partially invisible Council of Fifty?1 What other territory during a time of peace has been declared in rebellion against the United States and has been occupied by a federal army? What other continental territory has been the subject of so much special legislation, appointive commissions, and exceptional judicial control? What other territory has had to abandon cherished domestic institutions by manifesto, formally declare separation of church and state, and deliberately create national parties in order to get into the union? 2 That Utah's course was unique seems clear. If one views Utah's path to statehood on the occasion of its seventy-fifth anniversary of statehood, however, it tells us as much about American beliefs and values as it does about the distinctive values of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From the vantage point of 1971 it also begins to look as if the conflict was not so much between American and Mormon values and institutions as it was between a so-called WASP-American view of American values and a Mormon adherence to and espousal of values which they, too, could argue were "as American as apple pie."

To explore this argument let us begin with the history of the Mormons as portrayed in American history textbooks. There we are usually told that the Latter-day Saints are a fine example of a burgeoning native American religion born during a period of great millennial, spiritualist, and transcendentalist fervor in the United States.3 Such Dr. L a m a r is professor of history at Yale University. This article was first presented at the Eighteenth A n n u a l M e e t i n g of the U t a h State Historical Society in September 1970 a n d has been edited for publication.

1 Klaus J. Hansen, Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom, of God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History (East Lansing, 1 9 6 7 ) , amply demonstrates the role the Council played in the governing of early U t a h .

2 Virtually every major work on U t a h and the M o r m o n s treats the difficult territorial years in detail. S t a n d a r d accounts a r e : Brigham H . Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (6 vols.. Salt L a k e City, 1930), vols. I I I - V I ; Leland H . Creer, Utah and the Nation (Seattle, 1 9 2 9 ) ; T h o m a s F. O ' D e a , The Mormons (Chicago, 1957) ; L e o n a r d J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830â&#x20AC;&#x201D;1900 ( C a m b r i d g e , Mass., 1958) ; N o r m a n Furniss, The Mormon Conflict (New H a v e n , 1960) ; H o w a r d R. L a m a r , The Far Southwest, 1846-1912: A Territorial History (New H a v e n , 1966). Specific aspects are treated in R o b e r t J. Dwyer, The Gentile Comes to Utah: A Study in Religious and Social Conflict, 1862â&#x20AC;&#x201D;1890 (Washington, D . C , 1941) ; Everett L. Cooley, " C a r p e t b a g R u l e : Territorial G o v e r n m e n t in U t a h , " Utah Historical Quarterly, 26 (April 1958) ; a n d R i c h a r d Poll, " T h e Political Reconstruction of U t a h Territory, 1 8 8 6 - 1 8 9 0 , " Pacific Historical Review, 27 ( M a y 1 9 5 8 ) , 111-26, as well as m a n y others.

3 T h e M o r m o n C h u r c h "was indigenous," wrote R a l p h H . Gabriel. "Its creed a n d its theology were u n d e r debt to a wide variety of American folk beliefs." The Course of American Democratic Thought (New York, 1 9 4 0 ) , 55. See also F a w n M . Brodie, No Man Knows My

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comments imply that the Saints started with basic American premises and a home-grown philosophy and tradition. We are told, for example, that the Mormons developed the mysticism which Puritans suppressed in Congregationalism while adopting the often contrary strains of communitarianism, capitalism, millennialism, and manifest destiny so dominant in the age of Jackson.4 Yet most nineteenth century accounts see the Mormons as so different that by 1850 they were not only out of the mainstream, they had become, as David Brion Davis has observed in his brilliant article, "Some Themes of Counter Subversion," the arch symbol of evil subversives to the American public.5 It is doubtful that any accusation — apart from questioning the sincerity of their religious beliefs — so angered the Saints as the charge of un-Americanism. In an effort to reconcile or partially explain the assertion that the Mormons had an American religion but were unAmerican, I wish to argue that building on themes and premises in the American tradition they have taken a different but essentially American path and by so doing helped further define, explore, test, and reveal some fundamental American political beliefs. From the beginning they demonstrated that, like the federal Union with its theory of divided sovereignty, the so-called American tradition was ambivalent, contradictory, and subject to many interpretations. 6 Indeed, one of the difficulties the American historian has with Jacksonian Democracy — the period in which Mormonism began — is that to so many groups democracy meant so many things.7 To the Brook Farm intellectuals it meant one course of action, to the Shakers another, to Robert Dale Owen another, and to the Whigs, History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York, 1963), 67, in which Mrs. Brodie calls the majority of sources for the Book of M o r m o n "absolutely American." See also W. W. Sweet, The Story of Religion in America (New York, 1920) ; Whitney R. Cross. The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800—1850 ( I t h a c a , N Y . , 1950), as well as many fresh new discussions in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 1 ( S u m m e r 1966) to present.

T h e American theme is also borne out in such representative texts as: J o h n D. Hicks, A Short History of American Democracy (Boston, 1 9 4 0 ) , 3 1 3 ; Leland D . Baldwin, The Stream of American History (New York, 1952), 1: 6 2 7 ; D u m a s M a l o n e and Basil Rauch, Empire for Liberty: The Genesis and Growth of the United States of America (New York, 1960), 1: 514.

O n the other h a n d , J o h n M . Blum et al., in The National Experience (New York, 1963), 26768, and R a y A. Billington, Westward Expansion (New York, 1 9 4 9 ) , 532 ff., stress M o r m o n desire to escape rather t h a n any indigenous American qualities.

4 Merle Curti, The Growth of American Thought (New York, 1943), 311-12.

5 David Brion Davis, "Some Themes of Counter-Subversion: A n Analysis of AntiMasonic, Anti-Catholic, and Anti-Mormon Literature," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 47 (September 1960), 205-24; see also Leonard J. Arrington and J o n H a u p t , "Intolerable Zion: T h e Image of Mormonism in Nineteenth Century American L i t e r a t u r e , " Western Humanities Review, 32 (Summer 1968), 243-60.

6 T h e problem of American heterogeneity is discussed in Davis, "Some Themes of Counter-Subversion," 209 a n d 214.

7 E d w a r d Pessen, Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics (Homewood, Illinois, 1969), 5-38, catalogues an extraordinary list of contradictory tendencies and beliefs.

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Democrats, States Rights Southerners, and to abolitionists yet other things. America is useful for proving things before untried, the aged James Madison â&#x20AC;&#x201D; inventor of divided sovereignty â&#x20AC;&#x201D; is supposed to have shouted into Miss Harriet Martineau's ear trumpet.

In retrospect it appears that while the Mormons likewise tried new ideas, they also drew on both the spiritual and temporal traditions of the United States and in many instances pursued their implications further than anyone else dared or troubled to do. After most groups had abandoned milliennialism and communitarianism, the Mormons pursued the idea of a practical gathering of the Kingdom until the end of the nineteenth century.8 Long after Brook Farm and New Harmony were a memory, and George Rapp's Utopian colony had declined, the Mormons experimented with the United Order of Enoch in various Utah communities. 9 But what has this to do with statehood? A great deal, for defined social and religious goals, experience in practicing them, and persecution to test conviction and provide challenge, had created a true community of Saints before the first Mormons set foot in Utah. 10 Such a community is the basis of a true state. Because they came as a coherent society rather than as individual pioneers who would eventually form a community and then a state, the 1849 Constitution of the State of Deseret was the symbolic expression of an existing condition and not a blueprint for, a future commonwealth. The Mormons, as Dale Morgan has said, "simply elaborated their ecclesiastical machinery into a government." 11 Let us avoid arguments about the real motives which lay behind the 1849 Utah statehood movement and pass on to implications. Whatever the motive, one of the purposes of the proposed State of Deseret was not to bring law and order but to keep lawlessness and disorder out. In so doing the Mormons took the then respectable doctrines of states rights and popular sovereignty and demonstrated that the doctrine could be used to protect an unpopular religion and its adherents as well as to defend freedom or a domestic institution such as slavery. Just as John C. Calhoun found in states rights a way to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority, the Mormon statehood proposal was a way to protect a minority religion from the tyranny of a Gentile nation.

8

Hansen, Quest for Empire, 147-79.

Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 323-49.

10 E. E. Ericksen, The Psychological and Ethical Aspects of Mormon Group Life 1 9 2 2 ) , 17 ff.

11 Dale L. M o r g a n et al., " T h e State of Deseret," Utah Historical Quarterly, July-October 1940), 83-87.

9

(Chicago, 8 (April-

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Statehood did not come in 1849, nor was the statehood effort of 1856 destined to succeed. By that time the doctrine of polygamy had become general knowledge and had added a vast new dimension to the issues of religious toleration and the protection of unpopular domestic institutions. It is significant that the Republican platform of 1856 not only promised to rid the country of the twin evils of slavery and polygamy, but it beautifully demonstrated what David Brion Davis calls a tendency to see all enemies as one no matter how disparate they may be.12 In this case the early association of Mormonism and the slavocracy in the public mind was to endure for nearly half a century. Further, the 1856 statehood movement coincided with the Utah rebellion and tested both the theories of states rights and the concept of popular sovereignty by raising the question as to who was supreme in the territories. The irony that it was James Buchanan, leader of the States Rights party and future upholder of the Dred Scott decision, who sent an army to Utah has been noted by most historians. His actions simply revealed â&#x20AC;&#x201D; four years before the Civil War â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the limits of American middle-class tolerance for what it considered an un-American domestic institution whether it was polygamy or an unpopular religion. It illustrated what Calhoun had been arguing all along, that a majority could not be trusted to respect minority rights or dissent without strong guarantees. The Mormon troubles of the 1850s also suggest that in a country as democratic and heterogeneous as the United States was, the Mormons were certain to experience fundamental problems of social, political, and regional alienation from the mainstream even without the presence of such an explosive issue as slavery.

Of particular interest is the way events in Utah tested Stephen A. Douglas's theory of popular sovereignty. Briefly put, Douglas argued that Americans on a frontier are capable of self-government. And certainly actual events seemed to support his thesis: Oregon, California, Texas, Kansas and Nebraska, and the future territory of Dakota had all established their own provisional or squatter governments which had led, or would lead, to regular territorial or state governments between 1836 and 1860. Certainly Utah's State of Deseret deserved to illustrate Douglas's premise as well. After the Kansas-Nebraska issue had erupted into a national crisis, Douglas added a second interpretation by asserting that laws or institutions unpopular with the local citizens would never be upheld locally. Douglas's most famous statement of this argument was at Free12

Davis, "Some Themes of Counter-Subversion," 206 ff.

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port in 1858 during the Lincoln-Douglas debates when he applied the principle to the problem of slavery in Kansas. 13 When it came to Utah, however, how far was Douglas willing to follow his own credos? Admittedly Douglas was hostile to the Saints because his Illinois constituency had disliked Mormons ever since the days of Nauvoo. When he heard that Utah was defending polygamy he urged in 1857 that the territory be divided between other territories or revert to the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, In either case non-Mormon courts could try Utah people for their crimes.

Repeating most of the charges which anti-Mormon federal officials had filed in Washington since 1854, Douglas maintained that nine-tenths of the Mormons were aliens and were dominated by an all-powerful Brigham Young who wanted statehood for evil purposes. Therefore he urged repeal of the Organic Act, for, said he, "you can never rely on the local tribunals and juries to punish crimes permitted by Mormons in that territory." 14 Utah, unlike Kansas, was not to be allowed to practice home rule or popular sovereignty. Abraham Lincoln was quick to note that in backing down on self-government for Utah, Douglas had demonstrated what was "plain from the beginning, that the doctrine was a mere deceitful pretense for the benefit of slavery."15 Douglas's arguments bore some resemblance to those used by the Radical Republicans ten years later: namely, that the South, having taken itself out of the Union by certain un-American acts, could be treated as conquered territory. The arrested logic of the anti-Mormons was also borne out by a Republican congressman, Austin Morrill, who said in 1857 that the Mormons were hostile to the republican form of government and favored slavery, polygamy, and violence, but worst of all, they were Democrats !16 The theorizing was not all on the congressional side. When a Utah memorial asking for admission finally reached Washington in 1858 after the Mormon War had subsided, it is interesting to see Brigham Young arguing that the Ordinance of 1787 was directly contrary to the genius of the Articles of Confederation â&#x20AC;&#x201D; an American constitution of which 13 T h e so-called "Freeport D o c t r i n e " was not spelled out until August 27, 1858, b u t it was an integral p a r t of Douglas's p o p u l a r sovereignty concept from the beginning. See H e n r y Steele Commager, Documents of American History (New York, 1 9 4 6 ) , 348-49.

14 Speech of Hon. S. A. Douglas on Kansas, Utah, and the Dred Scott Decision, Springfield, III., June 12, 1857, P a m p h l e t in Yale Western A m e r i c a n a Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University. Hereafter cited as Y W A .

15 "Speech at Springfield, Illinois," J u n e 26, 1857, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, N . J., 1 9 5 3 ) , I I , 398-99.

16 Speech of Hon. Austin S. Morrill in the House of Representatives, February 23, 1857 (Washington, D . C , 1 8 5 7 ) , 4. P a m p h l e t in Y W A .

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he approved. It was not without careful forethought that the memorial asked that Utah be given admission "as a free and sovereign State in the great confederacy of our republic." 17 Some historians have not seen the efforts of 1849 or 1856 as serious attempts to achieve statehood or as being different, since the constitution presented to Congress on each occasion was virtually the same. But while the 1858 Constitution still asked for the creation of the State of Deseret, the memorial of that year stressed that Utah had a republican form of government and was "another link in the chain of states" between the east and the west and could serve as a path to the Orient. Seeing the state as a "star shedding a mild radiance from the tops of the mountains midway between the borders of eastern and western civilization," the memorial represented both a step away from a policy of total isolation and a step towards some role as a geopolitical middleman. A legislative memorial of that same year exclaimed: "Withdraw your troops, give us our constitutional rights, and we are at home." 18 Patriotic Mormon public rhetoric certainly did not reflect private Mormon feelings of anti-Americanism but it reflected an awareness of the situation they were in.

In carrying out the abortive statehood efforts of 1861-62, Young, Delegate William H. Hooper, and George Q. Cannon used arguments familiar in most territorial statehood movements: a desire for full rights in the Union, a wish to be governed by local residents, and the ploy that statehood would save the federal government money. Young posed a bargain: the Mormons would be loyal and stay in the Union in return for statehood and home rule.19 But in this case the argument was particularly unpersuasive, for the Mormons were handicapped more than they knew by the tyranny of the analogy between Utah and the South, the church hierarchy and slavocracy, polygamy and slavery, and the 1857 Rebellion and Southern secession.

If the curious juxtaposition of Southerners and Mormons affected the public's views of Utah before the Civil War, the war itself was to have a profound effect on both federal and Mormon policies for the territory. On the congressional side, for example, the war established preced17 U.S., Congress, Senate, "Letter of the Delegate of the Territory of U t a h in Congress."

Misc. Doc. 240, 35th Cong., 1st sess., April 20, 1858, Y W A . Emphasis mine.

18 Ibid.; see also Memorial to Congress . . . March 16, 1858. Y W A .

19 Besides the usual printed account the Letters of Brigham Y o u n g to W. H . Hooper, 1853-1869, M S S in Y W A , are useful in tracing the statehood efforts of 1861-62 as well as for later efforts. See also U.S., Congress, House, Memorial to Congress. . . 1862, Misc. Doc. 78, 37th Cong., 2d. sess., J u n e 9, 1862. YWA.

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ents of authority for the federal government which before 1861 would have been considered unthinkable. Pursuing a theory of congressional supremacy, Radical Republican congressmen were to use control of courts, disfranchisement, practice of discretionary appointive powers, and economic attrition both in the Reconstruction of the South and in accomplishing what Richard Poll has called the "Political Reconstruction of Utah." 20 Not only are the parallels between Utah policy and Southern policy remarkable, but the authors of the two policies overlapped like an interlocking directorate.

In April 1866, a Civil Rights Act sponsored by Congressman James M. Ashley of Ohio was passed by Congress giving federal district courts jurisdiction over all civil rights matters. 21 The Freedman's Bureau Act and the First Reconstruction Act also circumvented Southern state and local courts. Three months after the Civil Rights Act was passed, Ashley's friend and fellow radical, Senator Benjamin F. Wade, introduced a bill to circumvent Utah's courts,22 During the next three years other bills affecting Utah courts were introduced by Senator Aaron H. Cragin (in 1867) and by Ashley (in 1869) in which the theme of federal control was reiterated. 23 Then in 1869 Senator Shelby M. Cullom introduced a bill to disfranchise polygamous Mormons just as leading Southerners had been disfranchised in the Second and Third Reconstruction Acts.24 Utah citizens would have done well to listen to Senator George F. Edmunds of Vermont who said in February 1873 that "the Supreme Court has decided that no one of the provisions of the Constitution has any application as it respects what we may do in the territories." 25 Such thinking led to the enactment of the Poland Act of 1874 which established further federal control over courts and juries in Utah.

Two years before Congress passed the Poland Act, Utah once again tried to gain statehood by holding a constitutional convention and by 20 R i c h a r d Poll, " T h e Political Reconstruction of U t a h " , 111-26, stresses the economic aspects a n d concentrates on the period 1886â&#x20AC;&#x201D;1890.

21 " A n Act to protect all Persons in the U n i t e d States in their Civil Rights. . . ." U.S., Statutes at Large, vol. 14, p . 27 ff. See especially Section 3.

22 U.S., Congress, Senate, Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st sess., 1865-66, July 12, 1866, 3750.

23 Ibid., 49th Cong., 3rd sess., 1868-69, J a n u a r y 14, 1869, p . 363 ff.; Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church, V, 227.

24 For the bills a n d predictable M o r m o n reactions see Deseret News Weekly, December 1869-February 1870. For the Second a n d T h i r d Reconstruction Acts see U.S., Statutes at Large, vol. 15, p . 2 ff a n d p . 14 ff.

25 U . S., Congress, Senate, Congressional F e b r u a r y 26, 1873, p . 1789.

Globe,

4 2 n d Cong., 3rd sess., 1872-1873,

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Mormondom — a fresh supply of wives — going out to the settlements."

So read the caption on this Harper's Weekly cartoon published in January 1875.

ratifying the proposed state constitution which it produced. 26 While the memorial which accompanied the 1872 document used the standard argument for statehood — that the territorial system was an "inherently oppressive and anti-republican" colonial system run by non-residents — the Mormons began to pursue a policy at this time which for want of a better term one may call a policy of superior virtue. The policy was simply to demonstrate beyond any doubt that the Mormons were not only good Americans but super-Americans in their habits, virtues, and patriotic loyalty. In 1872 this policy was manifested first by Mormon willingness to let non-Mormons represent them in Congress. Tom Fitch, the silver-tongued orator-politician from Nevada and Arizona who had been invited to Utah to help the statehood cause, was to be a United States senator; and Frank Fuller, the territorial secretary, was to be a congressman. Further, Brigham H. Roberts suggests that at this time the Saints were willing to let Congress present conditions for entry and have them submitted to a vote of approval by the people of Utah. 27 26

Adopted 27

Constitution of the State of Deseret, with Accompanying March 2,1872 (Salt L a k e City, 1 8 7 2 ) . Y W A .

Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church, V , 457 ff.

Memorial

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Congress,

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The Mormons also argued that they were overburdened with court cases, and if that seemed a plea for escape from prosecution as polygamists, it was also a plea for a restoration of their civil rights. The Saints would, in fact, soon take a stand that they were crusaders for civil rights.

Still another argument using the virtue theme was that because of Mormon industry and energy the territory was now economically developed both in agriculture and mining. Unlike virtually all other territories Utah's warrants were worth ninety-eight cents on the dollar. It was not only fiscally sound to a remarkable degree, it was non-colonial in its economy and had as yet escaped the clutches of the national railroad monopolies.28 The argument that Utah was exceptionally virtuous in areas of endeavor where other territories were usually wracked by scandals was a solid one.

Equally significant was the constitutional clause providing for female suffrage which the legislature had enacted by territorial statute two years before. However cynical one may be about the basic motives behind the decision to give women the vote in Utah at this time, it is clear that once again Utah carried to its ultimate point a long delayed promise of equality by realizing a goal of suffragettes everywhere while demonstrating the unusually ambivalent meaning equality and civil rights had for most Americans. As both Thomas Alexander and T. A. Larson have shown in recent articles, Congressman George W. Julian, a Radical Republican, had urged in 1868 that Congress give Mormon women the vote.29 Again the Southern analogy is applicable. Julian saw plural wives as slaves of a sort and felt the vote would liberate them just as the vote was supposed to give the ex-slave equality. Upon reflection, however, both Julian and Congress decided that voting Mormon wives would simply echo their husbands. By 1878 Governor George B. Emery was urging the abolition of female suffrage in Utah. 30 If the proposed 1872 constitution for Utah represented the beginning of a politics of superior virtue and patriotism for the next two decades, it was paralleled by increasing control of Utah by the federal government.

With the passage of the Poland Act in 1874 the theme of court control became established policy. Governor Eli Murray — obviously reflecting the thought of certain senators — set the second theme when he wrote in 28

Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 245-56.

T h o m a s G. Alexander, "An Experiment W o m a n Suffrage in U t a h in 1870," Utah Hist or .—•son, " W o m a n Suffrage in Western America," A. Larso 30 U . S . , D e p a r t m e n t of the Interior, Annual . . . , 1878 (Washington, D . C , 1878). Y W A .

29

Report

of the Governor

of Utah

Territory

Statehood for Utah

317

his 1880 annual report: "Time will not prove the remedy. It is revelation (so-called) against statute law." Murray was rebutting those who said the transcontinental railroad would americanize Utah. 31 The governor proposed a return to a discarded form of territorial rule which had been used in the Old Northwest, Louisiana, and Michigan: a federally appointed council or commission to govern Utah. Council government had been justified in these territories by the fact that they had a nonAmerican population which was presumably unready for self-rule.

Murray's suggestion eventually found elaborate expression in the Edmunds Act of 1882 which created the five-man Utah Commission.32 The role of that controversial body in the history of Utah is not the subject of this paper, but it is useful to note that the commission was, among other things, a compound of the governing council of the Old Northwest and ideas taken from the Second and Third Reconstruction Acts. The compounding was symbolized by one of the few light moments in the debate over the important act. The Edmunds bill was opposed by Southern Democrats and especially by Senator Joseph E. Brown of Georgia who used every opportunity to question Edmunds. On this occasion Senator Brown referred to the brass plates of the Book of Mormon. Edmunds replied that they were gold. Brown insisted over and over that they were brass. Finally the annoyed Edmunds said: "We will compound it and call it silver, which is a popular thing.[Laughter]" 33 Perhaps the greatest irony about the first Edmunds Act was that the bill would not have passed without the pressure exerted on members of Congress by Protestant churches and the national religious press.34 The coalition of churches and government to achieve separation of church and state in Utah again demonstrates what a limited and ambivalent meaning "separation" had for most Americans. At the very moment this crusade was taking place the government turned Indian agencies over to sectarian religious bodies to run. Under this portion of the "Peace Policy" the Episcopal Church in Dakota Territory became so strong it emerged as a major patronage force in local 31

U.S., D e p a r t m e n t of the Interior, Annual Report of the Governor of Utah Territory (Washington, D . C , 1 8 8 0 ) , 8-9. Y W A .

32 T h e U t a h Commission has been covered in a n u m b e r of works b u t the a n n u a l Reports of the Utah Commission are extremely useful. See also Stewart Lofgren Grow, "A Study of the U t a h Commission, 1882-1896" (Ph.D. diss., University of U t a h , 1 9 5 4 ) , a n d Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 358 ff.

33 Joseph E. Brown, Defence of the Constitutional and Religious Rights of the People of Utah, February, 1882 (Washington, D . C , 1882). P a m p h l e t in Y W A .

34 Dwyer, The Gentile Comes to Utah, 151-89. . . . ,1880

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politics.35 At the same time, the Catholic Church was so powerful in New Mexico it determined elections. Throughout the north Protestant churches were involved in legislative struggles to curb Catholic educational and social policies. These ironies reach an absurd climax when it is remembered that Gentile missionaries brought religious schools to Utah to save education from Mormon "church" influence.36 It was in the shadow of the recently passed Edmunds Act of 1882 that the fifth major effort to gain statehood took place in Utah. While all of the seventy-two delegates to the 1882 convention were Mormons, several women were present, and elaborate committees drew up a long constitution which contained many clauses on education. This time the theme of superior virtue was stronger than ever. Listen to the words of the legislative memorial which justified the calling of the convention: "It is the right and duty of the people of U t a h . . . to plead for and demand a republican form of government, so that they and their posterity may enjoy the blessings and liberties, to secure which the founders of this great nation lived, labored, and struggled and died'."37 The close — if new — identification with the American past was made even greater three years later when John T. Caine, speaking at a Mormon protest meeting against the injustice of the Edmunds Act, explained that in Utah in 1849 it was not a government of church and state, but a "government of the Church without the State" and exhibited "in modified form the influence which the pilgrim fathers exercised in the settlement of the New England states, and from whom we receive much of our civilization and the fundamental principles of our republican institutions."38 That same year Governor Eli Murray reported to the secretary of the interior that "a good Mormon cannot be a good citizen."39 Yet the evidence begins to suggest that by 1882 the beleaguered Saints had begun to identify themselves with what they saw as a true and ideal American republic, a republic whose freedom was in danger from the excesses of Gentiles in Congress. It was a very different republic, however, from the states rights confederacy which Brigham Young had espoused in 1858.40 35 H o w a r d R. Lamar, Dakota Territory, 1861—1889: A Study of Frontier Politics (New Haven, 1956), 180.

36 Dwyer, The Gentile Comes to Utah, 165-66.

37 Q u o t e d in Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church, V I , 71.

38 Mormon Protest Against Injustices — An Appeal for Constitutional and Religious Liberty (Salt Lake City, M a y 2, 1885), 10-14. P a m p h l e t in YWA. 39 U.S., D e p a r t m e n t of the Interior, Annual Report of the Governor of Utah Territory . . . ,1885 (Washington, D . C , 1885), 4.

40 T h e debate over entering the American mainstream and the decision to do so is well treated in Chapter 9 of Hansen, Quest for Empire; see also Lamar, Far Southwest, 399 ff.

Statehood for Utah

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At the same time, important changes were occurring in Washington.

It is probable that the election of Grover Cleveland as president of the United States in 1884 was as significant a development for the history of Utah as the theories of congressional Reconstruction had been after the Civil War. For the first time since Andrew Johnson's administration a Democrat sat in the White House — a Democrat with strong Southern backing. Even before Cleveland was elected, a proposal to extend and expand the Edmunds Act aroused some Southerners nearly as much as it did the Saints, for they saw it as a threat to civil rights generally and specifically as an attack on freedom of religion more than on the domestic institution of polygamy. Senator Brown of Georgia urged Edmunds to forget the bill and instead to lead fifty thousand New Englanders to Utah to convert rather than crucify. Then said Brown, "the whole state will adopt the more refined, delicate, voluptuous and attractive practices of the people of New England." 41 Cleveland and the Democratic party exhibited signs of sympathy for very practical reasons. If territories could be made Democratic in their party politics, they might become states and add Democratic senators to Congress. The political efforts the Democrats engaged in to make solidly Republican Dakota, New Mexico, and Wyoming Democratic overnight ranged from serious, intelligent maneuvers to absurd and laughable sleights of hand, but they engendered a statehood fever so widespread that by 1887 the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, Washington, New Mexico, and even Arizona were full of great expectations about admission.42 Here at last was a situation in which Utah might find a way to bypass the anti-Mormon Republicans in Congress — and the hated Liberal party in Utah — and gain statehood by declaring for the Democrats.

Such hopes had dramatic results. Not only did embryo Republican and Democratic parties spring up in Utah, but Delegate John T. Caine was identified as a Democrat in Congress and appears to have been encouraged by the administration to try for statehood. Rumors of debates within the Mormon Church as to the best way to achieve statehood implied that the church itself might split along party lines.43 41 Speech of Hon. Joseph E. Brown of Georgia on the Mormon Question, January 11, 1884 (Washington, D . C , 1884). Pamphlet in Y W A .

42 J o h n D . Hicks, The Constitution of the Northwest States, University of Nebraska Studies, no. 23 (Lincoln, 1923), remains the standard account of the statehood efforts of the Omnibus States.

43 T h e internal church debates over party affiliation are nicely depicted in J e a n Bickmore White, " T h e M a k i n g of Convention President: T h e Political Education of J o h n H e n r y Smith," Utah Historical Quarterly, 39 (Fall 1971), 350-69.

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Given all these hopes it is wrong to suggest that the 1887 constitutional convention in Utah was but another response to new anti-Mormon federal legislation which in March 1887 took the form of the famous Edmunds-Tucker Act. Moreover, the policy of superior virtue reached a climax in this convention. Not only were the delegates all non-polygamists, but only non-polygamists voted at the time of ratification.

Further, women did not vote on the document in order to avoid any accusation that the ratification vote might be rigged. The constitution itself declared polygamy a misdemeanor and guaranteed that the clause containing this declaration could not be changed without specific repeal

by Congress. In effect the clause was made unrepealable. 44 This policy of super-conformity was also reflected in the statehood memorial to Congress in 1887. "Congress has not imposed unusual requirements upon a new state, but the people have placed these restrictions upon themselves in order to meet prevailing objections and secure political harmony with the existing states." Then the memorial went on to say: "Virtually the whole population are desirous of becoming fully identified as a State with the institutions of this great republic and of taking part in national affairs as loyal and peaceful citizens."45 With the exception of the Liberals who boycotted the ratification election, the voting population of Utah declared strongly for statehood.

Despite all these extraordinary efforts the statehood movement of 1887 was unsuccessful. The failure was a bipartisan one in a way. Not only did the majority of the Utah Commission and the territorial governor still oppose statehood, but a non-Southern reform group of Democratic congressmen was unhappy about the burgeoning Mormon Democratic alliance. The split in ranks came when Congressman Samuel J. Randall, whom Delegate Caine had failed to consult about Utah's admission, announced his opposition. Other Democrats began to back away from the issue and once again Utah failed to achieve statehood.46 Meanwhile Senator Edmunds, backed by religious pressure groups, managed to pass the harshest of the anti-Mormon laws, the EdmundsTucker Act of 1887, which marked the high tide of Reconstruction legislation against Utah, for it allowed seizure of church property and dissolved the Nauvoo Legion, the Perpetual Emigrating Fund Company, 44

Constitution

45

" M e m o r i a l " in ibid., 24.

Chicago Tribune, J a n u a r y 5, 1896, 3.

of the State

of Utah,

and Memorial

YWA. 46

to Congress

(Salt Lake City, 1887).

Statehood for Utah

321

and the church itself as a property-holding institution. The act also extended court control and instituted a test oath.47 As had been the case earlier, Southerners opposed the new Edmunds-Tucker bill. Their arguments about an invasion of rights and freedom of religion were familiar ones. As Senator Brown had done previously, Congressman Risden T. Bennett of North Carolina used humor to attack the 1887 bill. "This bill," he said, "should be entitled a bill to put the Mormon church in liquidation. We are going to appoint a receiver for the assets of the Lord." The test oath, he declared, was one of "the sharp weapons which young oppressives first learn to wield."48 While the evidence presented here represents only a sampling, it looks as if the passage of the first Edmunds Act marked the point at which disinterested parties began to see the Mormons as basically good citizens who were being deprived of their civil rights. When such distinguished lawyers as George Ticknor Curtis agreed to defend Mormon Church officials during the 1880s, the good citizen case became stronger. It also seems significant that the pro-Mormon pamphleteers began to defend their cause with exceptional decorum and propriety during the decade.49 A new variation of the virtue theme appeared in the annual report of Cleveland's appointee, Governor Caleb West. There is, he said, a "bridging of the chasm that has separated the Mormon and non-Mormon people." The former were now helping in school matters, trade associations, Fourth of July celebrations, and were electing liberalized municipal governments. West himself felt that he might be able to declare for statehood once he could be sure there would be a lasting separation of church and state.50 Another kind of psychological barrier fell in 1889 and 1890 when, after a decade of statehood movements, six western states were admitted 47 U.S., Statutes at Large, vol. 24, p p . 635-41. As to the vigor with which trials would be conducted, the bill reminded Bennett of the Arkansas frontier judge who ordered the sheriff to bring in a jury, "or else," After a while the sheriff came in panting. " H a v e you got the jury, d e m a n d e d the judge. T have got eleven of them,' replied the sheriff, 'and have got the dogs after the others'."

48 Risden T . Bennett, Speeches in the House of Representatives, January 12 and February 17, 1887, against the Edmunds-Tucker anti-Mormon Bill (Washington, D . C , 1887).

Pamphlet in Y W A .

49 See A. M . Musser, The Fruits of Mormonism

by Non-"Mormon" Witnesses (Salt Lake City, 1878) ; James W. Stillman, The Constitutional and Legal Aspect of the Mormon Question (Boston, 1882) ; Federal Jurisdiction in the Territories. Rights of Local Self-Government. Judge Black's Argument for Utah before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, February 1, 1883; T. W. Curtis, The Mormon Problem: The Nation's Dilemma (New Haven, 1 8 8 5 ) . Y W A .

50 U.S., D e p a r t m e n t of the Interior, Annual Report of the Governor of Utah Territory . . . 3 1888 (Washington, D . C , 1888), 19. Y W A .

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to the Union.51 A desire to round out the Union of states had begun which was not to end until New Mexico and Arizona were admitted in 1912.

But that trend, while important for Utah, was far less significant than the psychological impact of the famous and dramatic Manifesto of 1890 which seemed to settle the questions of polygamous marriages and of a church dominated political party once and for all. Both the Saints and the Gentiles of Utah would undoubtedly agree that the Woodruff Manifesto of 1890 seemed a reversal, a turning point, and a surrender on the part of the church. In the perspective of time the Manifesto appears to be less of a reversal than the true climax of the policy of superior virtue and hyper-conformity in public life which brought the Gentiles around to a more tolerant view.52 It would be misleading to say that after 1890 all was a bed of roses in Utah. Many federal officials remained skeptical; the Liberal party and its anti-Mormon friends in Congress died hard; the Utah Commission continued to be split between pursuing severe and lenient policies.53 Harrison's gubernatorial appointee, Arthur Thomas, remained deeply suspicious of the Saints, Within the church itself there were bitter fights between the older and younger generation of leaders and over secular and religious policies. But there had been a remarkable shift. Governor Thomas himself reported as early as 1889 that not only had a marvelous change taken place, but he implied that the change had been effected by the Mormons themselves. By 1890 he was reporting that the happy, stabilized mining conditions in Utah were due to Mormon resistance to uncontrolled mining development in the territory.54 By 1891 even the doubting Thomas had come to accept as sincere the Mormon commitment to a two party system. "I believe," he wrote, "the mass of the people have gone into the party movement in perfect sincerity and that it is their present determination not to retrace their steps."55 Ironically, the first legislature elected on clearly national party lines behaved so badly, Thomas was disgusted with it. Progress in the thinking of Congress was also evident. In 1892 Congressman William Springer of the House Committee on Territories saw that polygamy was 51

M o n t a n a , N o r t h and South Dakota, and Washington in 1889; I d a h o and Wyonr'n"

in 1890.

52 A fresh perspective is fully presented a n d carefully documented in H e n r y Wolfinger, " T h e Woodruff Manifesto in t h e Light of U t a h Constitutional History," Utah Historical Quarterly, 39 (Fall 1971), 328-49.

53 See Reports of the Utah Commission, 1889â&#x20AC;&#x201D;1891.

54 U.S., D e p a r t m e n t of the Interior, Annual Report of the Governor of Utah Territory . . . , 1889, (Washington, D . C , 1889), 19; ibid., for 1890, 17. ^ Ibid. JOY 1891, 56.

Statehood for Utah

323

no longer the question; it was whether Congress would exclude Utah simply because a majority of her population belonged to one church.

If that proved to be the case, Springer felt that Congress, not Utah, would be guilty of faulty thinking.56 From 1892 until statehood was achieved the policy of superior virtue and patriotic conformity continued to pay off. Harrison and Cleveland granted acts of amnesty to former polygamists; a return of church property followed; and Utah entered the final stages of the statehood movement. Governor West, who had succeeded Thomas, paid an unconscious tribute to such a policy when he wrote in 1893: I k n o w of n o people w h o , in their p r e p a r a t i o n for statehood, h a v e been confronted with as delicate a n d grave questions a n d as radical differences, requiring the cultivation a n d exercise of t h e highest public qualities. Yet the responsibility has been m e t w i t h patience a n d forb e a r a n c e , a n d our people, after years of earnest effort, h a v e peacefully solved their difficulties a n d satisfactorily settled their differences. 57

It seems especially ironic that the church, by means of exercising its traditional power over the Saints and by pursuing a conscious policy, managed to create the image of the disciplined, virtuous MormonAmerican whom the Gentile now admired and respected.

By 1894 Utah's path to statehood seemed a broad road unobstructed except for lingering Gentile suspicions and the usual partisan problems.

The Enabling Act of July 1894, was followed in September by Cleveland's allowing ex-polygamists to vote. In effect, the national administration was now vying for Utah's vote. The constitutional convention, meeting from March 4 to May 8, 1895, wrote an acceptable constitution and on January 4, 1896, President Cleveland signed the act admitting Utah as a state.

When news of admission arrived in Utah, Salt Lake City gave itself up to expressions of joy and celebration. The ceremonies attending the inauguration of the state government on Monday, January 6, were such a mixture of Gentile and Mormon, local and federal, military and civilian that one could call it a cultural, social, and political proportional representation ritual. Governor West was not present at the ceremonies, but he was so profoundly moved by the account of that day that he congratulated both the Cleveland and the Harrison administrations on the 58 William Springer in U.S., Congress, House, Report of the Committee on Territories on the Admission of Utah as a State (Washington, D . C , 1889), 12.

57 U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Governor of Utah Territory . . . , 1893, (Washington, D.C, 1893), 19.

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success of the federal government's wise, "firm and beneficent policy" which had resulted in statehood.58 One could also argue, however, that the policy was successful because the Mormons had decided it would be, for they, too, had worked out a policy which allowed them to adjust their beliefs and reverse their unfavorable public image as American subversives without disastrous results. What Saint need be bothered by a separation of church and state when such statements as one made by Brigham Roberts, on the occasion of admission, represented the new Mormon rationale. "It is the mission of the church to make men," Roberts wrote, "leaving the men to make the state â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the community." 59 It is amusing and instructive to see what newspapers around the nation felt about statehood for Utah. The New York Times, suspicious 58 59

Ibid., for 1896.

Roberts, A Comprehensive

History

of the Church,

V I , 346.

Part of the Pioneer Jubilee parade of 1897 which celebrated not only fifty years of Mormon settlement but also the achievement of statehood the previous year.

Statehood for Utah

325

and uncertain, simply remarked that the public had better watch out for the constitutional implication of Utah's coming into the Union as less than an equal state because of Congress's unusual right to pass on polygamy.60 The Washington Post admitted jealousy.61 Utah had finally escaped government by the infamous Commission, it noted, but poor Washington was still being ruled by an autocratic congressional commission. Such parochial responses were even more pronounced in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the San Francisco Chronicle. The former acted as if a very distant region of Mongolia had joined the Union, and in a search for relevance, noted that Albert Sidney Johnston, a Southerner, had been in Utah during the 1857 Rebellion.62 The Chronicle, on the other hand, welcomed Utah into the Union and wished her well, but for a selfish reason: I n o n e respect U t a h is a n enormously valuable accession to t h e family of States. She is sound as a dollar o n t h e financial question. T h e Citizen of U t a h , n o m a t t e r w h a t his political affiliation m a y be, is not to b e p e r s u a d e d t h a t silver is not a true, genuine, historical a n d necessary m o n e y metal, or t h a t t h e prosperity of the A m e r i c a n people is n o t to b e p r o m o t e d by a r e t u r n to free coinage. 6 3

The Chicago Tribune put the admission story on the front page and gave it full coverage by printing a short history of Utah and a special message by Governor Wells.64 Elsewhere Utah statehood was pushed aside by news about Venezuelan guerrilla activity, English problems in South Africa, and the appointment of a new poet laureate.

Three final observations about the different course of Utah's statehood struggle and the genuine Americanism of the state by 1890 seem pertinent. First, a reading of documents and speeches from 1849 to 1896 suggests that while Utahns were exceptionally proud of their pioneering heritage, the local subculture was not necessarily western and certainly not "cowboy" western. Utah became American by following paths different from those posed by Frederick Jackson Turner while coming to accept as gospel some of Turner's precepts about America. Second, Utah's achievement of statehood was due in part to deliberate change of the unpopular stereotype of the Mormon of the 1850s to that of the solid, energetic, conservative American citizen of the 1890s. Third, 60

New York Times, January 5, 1896, 4.

Washington Post, January 6, 1896, 6.

62 New Orleans Times-Picayune, January 5, 1896, 4.

03 San Francisco Chronicle, January 7, 1896, 1.

64 Chicago Tribune, January 5, 1896, 1.

61

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Utah Historical

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while church revision of the Mormon image may have been begun cynically or to escape persecution, by 1880 the Saints had convinced themselves of their own true Americanism.

The genuine Americanism was dramatically demonstrated at the famous 1897 jubilee held in honor of Utah's fiftieth anniversary of settlement. There the pioneer theme was strong as floats depicting the handcart expeditions, the pony express, overland coaches, Jim Bridger's cabin, the first house, and the first saw pit in Utah came down the main street of Salt Lake City. For those pioneers present who had come to Utah fifty years before, there were gold badges but they had been made by Tiffany's in New York.65 The celebrations featured a "wild east" show at which the celebrated Sie Hassan Ben Ali and his band of Bedouin Arabs did acrobatic and gymnastic feats. Bannock and Shoshoni warriors from Fort Hall danced war and ghost dances. A daring balloon ascension and parachute jump by Professor Wayne Abbott and the Leadville Drum Corps doing their sensational silent drill were featured highlights of the jubilee.

But there were also fireworks at Saltair, baseball, concerts, baseball, operatic solos, baseball, and 1,000 children singing "How Like a Voice from Heaven" by Donizetti, as well as the "Pilgrim's Chorus" by Verdi.

Billed as a "Pageant of Progress," it was also a sincere expression of middle-class American values and habits. 66 The image of the Mormon as super-American has waxed rather than waned in the years since 1896. A recent article in the popular French magazine UExpress suggesting that the young Mormon missionary abroad is perhaps the best representative of the true American "silent majority," indicates how consistent the devotion to middle-class values has been.67 What larger meaning, if any, does the history of the statehood struggle suggest? Certainly it is clear that in trying to establish cultural and institutional pluralism in the United States in the nineteenth century, the Mormons came up against deepset conformist beliefs, in defense of which anti-Mormon Americans proved to be willing to suspend civil rights, use force, and violate traditional constitutional limitations on the power of the government. Today, once again, we see groups urging variations of cultural pluralism, whether it be in behalf of 65

Utah Pioneer Jubilee, 1847-1897, July 20-25. Official Invitation.

Brochure in Y W A .

Ibid.

67 A n d r e Bercoff, " E t a t s - U n i s ; Les Disciples de la Bonne Parole", UExpress, November 2-8, 1970. See also Wallace T u r n e r , The Mormon Establishment (Boston, 1966), 3 3 1 .

66

Statehood for Utah

327

Hispanos, Black Americans, women's liberation, or genuine social and political radicalism. Both they and the forces which oppose them, whether government or private, might study the long history of the difficulties Utah experienced before achieving religious toleration and cultural survival through home rule within the Union. In looking back over the history of Utah from the vantage point of seventy-five years of statehood, one can even say that the difficulties ended because both sides thought they had won. It was an outcome which neither group had predicted. Back in the 1860s Brigham Young is reported to have said to Delegate Hooper as he was boarding the stage for Washington: "Remember Brother Hooper, anything for Statehood. Promise anything for Statehood." 68 In the light of history, that was a prophetic, positive, and even patriotic remark.

68

Chicago Tribune, January 5, 1896, 3.

F I R S T STATE LAW PASSED "I am about to sign the first bill passed by the State Legislature," said Governor Wells to the delegation, "with the pen behind my ear, which is the one used by President Cleveland in signing the Enabling act. This table," said he, pointing to the one on which the bill lay, "was made by J. R. Wilson of this city from woods furnished by the Governors of the various States, and the bill will be signed on it at Mr. Wilson's request.

"What time shall we say it i s â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 3 : 5 0 ? " inquired the Governor, as he consulted his watch. Seven other watches appeared simultaneously, but their owners, with becoming respect for the watch of the State Executive, repressed all inclination to challenge the correctness of the Gubernatorial time-piece, and 3:50 o'clock was indorsed on the bill and became the historical minute. (Salt Lake Tribune, January 8, 1896)

AKTI-POLYGAMY BILL. Mr. Scott's proposed amendment to the Edmunds-Tucker E:::mSMkmffMMv. Bill: (BMmm, IG):: : ; : .

MUMm.mM . 1 (,d he it further enacted, That this act shall not take effect till six months after its approval by the President.

And there shall be an ejection held in the several precincts of said Territory on the third Monday of March, 1SS7. at which the qualified electors of said Territory may elect from each legislative district double the number of delegates they are now entitled to elect of Councillors and Representatives to the legislative assembly of said Territory. Ami the delegates <-•» elected sh.il^r^^V^-'t^jJt L a k e City on the first Monday of April. IS.^SSiMJ Mock noon, and shall form a ConstiMM3 (MJi

An v

M:: .

hm saitIL

the vofc* for that v^£ on the fir3 this

hall form and adopt a eonstituwhich shall ]»r<>!:il)it. polygamy shall be ratified by a majority of Sectors at an election to be held teral precincts of that Territory ii-i';,ne, 1887, then the provisions of . rhuiu inoperative until such eonl e d in the usual .maimer to and fed for to be held, conducted* : • manner now provided b • county tm I pv< ••>•••+ off 1

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A Reexamination of the Woodruff Manifesto in the Light of Utah Constitutional History

BY H E N R Y J . WOLFINGER

The Woodruff Manifesto

329

\^} NE OF T H E QUALITIES which attracts readers and scholars alike to the study of late nineteenth century Utah history is the drama of the protracted and bitter controversy between the territory and the federal government over the practice of polygamy. Although the polygamy question placed a severe strain on Utah's relations with the government throughout the territorial era, it was not until the 1880s that the simmering issue erupted into conflict as the federal government launched a full-scale campaign to suppress polygamy. The United States Supreme Court opened the way for such a campaign in 1879 when it declared the federal anti-polygamy law of 1862 constitutional. In 1882 Congress laid the legal ground-work for a successful prosecution of polygamists by establishing the offense of "unlawful cohabitation" through the Edmunds Act. Two years later federal officials in Utah moved to eradicate polygamy through a relentless enforcement of this statute. Literally hundreds of polygamists were arrested, convicted, and imprisoned in the following years. The campaign was broadened in 1887 with the passage of the Edmunds-Tucker Act, under which the government moved against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints itself and escheated nearly a million dollars worth of its property. Finally, in 1890, the church found its members threatened with imminent disfranchisement when the Cullom-Struble bill gained a favorable report in both houses of Congress.

Under such pressures as these, the church capitulated to the government by surrendering the practice of plural marriage. The turning point, according to the standard accounts, came with the issuance of the Woodruff Manifesto in 1890. Through the Manifesto the president of the church stated publicly, for the first time, that he was submitting to the laws of the land and advising the members of the church to do likewise.

Not only did this announcement signal an end to Mormon resistance to the anti-polygamy laws, but it opened the way for a final settlement of the polygamy issue. The terms of this settlement were written into the Utah Constitution of 1895, under which the territory gained admission to the Union: polygamy was prohibited, but those who had married polygamously were not required to sever relationships then existing.

The standard accounts of this period have interpreted the Woodruff Manifesto as the dramatic highlight of the struggle over polygamy. HisDr. Wolfinger is an archival trainee at the National Archives in Washington, D . C This article was first presented at the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Utah State Historical Society in September 1970 and has been edited for publication.

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torians, almost to a man, have regarded it as the turning point by which the church relinquished the practice of plural marriage. 1 However well this "turning point" thesis has served the purpose of dramatizing Utah history,2 it has tended to obscure the possibilities of reexamining the significance of the Manifesto. This paper seeks to offer a new approach to the Manifesto, one which argues that the church's surrender was a slow process of yielding up the practice of polygamy rather than a sudden moment of capitulation. As a result, the analysis does not focus on the events of 1890, but on the church's efforts to meet the pressures of the anti-polygamy campaign during the late 1880s. It will examine specifically the first of the steps which indicated that the church was yielding its position in the late 1880s: the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution for Utah during the early summer of 1887. By agreeing to adopt a constitution which prohibited and punished polygamy, the leaders of the church offered a concession to the federal government on the polygamy issue. Such a concession involved a major shift in the church's policy of coping with the federal anti-polygamy campaign. While the adoption of the constitution did not indicate that the church had surrendered to the government or that it was ready to abandon the practice of plural marriage, it did suggest that the attitude of church leaders had undergone a significant change. Recognizing the need for settling the polygamy issue with the government, they were now willing to make concessions to reach such a settlement. Such an attitude made the complete surrender of polygamy much more likely.

T H E POLITICAL CLIMATE

The significance of the 1887 constitution can become clearer by examining the context in which it originated. This context was the political situation in Washington, D . C , in early January of 1887. It was at this time that the proposal for a constitutional convention was drafted by church representatives who were protecting Mormon interests at the national capital. These representatives, who might be described more ac1 Note, for instance, any of the following: B. H . Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (6 vols., Salt Lake City, 1 9 3 0 ) , V I , 210-29; Nels Anderson, Desert Saints: The Mormon Frontier in Utah (Chicago, 1942), 3 0 7 - 3 3 ; Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900, (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), 353-79; H o w a r d Roberts Lamar, The Far Southwest (New Haven, 1 9 6 7 ) , 398-406; Gustive O. Larson, The "Americanization" of Utah for Statehood (San Marino, California, 1 9 7 1 ) , 243-64.

2 As an example of dramatic development, one may note the m a n n e r in which H o w a r d Roberts L a m a r culminates his account of the turbulent 1880s, " T h e n suddenly it was over. O n September 28, 1890, the news came t h a t the C h u r c h now forbade plural marriage, . . . ."

L a m a r , Far Southwest, 404.

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curately as political agents or lobbyists, included John T. Caine, the Utah delegate to Congress; railroad promoter John W. Young; the church attorney, Franklin S. Richards; and his Gentile legal associate, George Ticknor Curtis. Congress was close to passing another piece of special legislation for Utah at this time, and the political position of the Mormons was greatly endangered. This new measure was the Tucker bill, which the House Judiciary Committee had drafted as a substitute for the Edmunds bill, an earlier measure which had passed the Senate in 1886.

From the Mormon standpoint, the Tucker measure was much harsher and more oppressive than the original Edmunds bill, or, for that matter, the compromise version of both bills which would later pass Congress and become law in March of 1887 as the Edmunds-Tucker Act. The first of these measures, the Edmunds bill, had been named after its sponsor, Senator George F. Edmunds, the Yankee Republican from Vermont who had been chiefly responsible for the passage of the Edmunds Act in 1882. His new bill aimed to broaden the provisions of the earlier act in two major respects. First, it would facilitate prosecutions of polygamists by expanding the powers of the federal judicial officials as well as by altering legal procedures in polygamy cases.3 Second, and more important, the measure proposed to break the temporal power of the Mormon Church by disincorporating the church, escheating the bulk of its property, and regulating its business affairs through the appointment of government trustees.4 Senate Republicans, led by Edmunds and assisted by a few Democrats, had passed this bill in the early months of 1886.

Senate passage of the Edmunds bill did not please the leaders of the church, but it came as no surprise. The Senate had passed a similar measure during the previous Congress, but it had made no progress in the House of Representatives, controlled by the Democrats. Congressional Democrats repeatedly had given but lukewarm support to anti-polygamy legislation. Although the Mormons in Utah were aligned with neither of the national political parties, preferring to act politically through their own independent People's party, they were regarded generally as Democrats. This view was given substance by the support that the Mormons gave the Democratic organizations in both Idaho and Arizona territories.

Moreover, Southern Democrats saw a dangerous parallel between the 3 A copy of the E d m u n d s bill as passed by the Senate can be found in U.S., Congress, Senate, Congressional Record, 49th Cong., 2nd sess., 1886-87, p p . 581-82. Note sections 1, 2, 3, and 19 on this particular point.

4 Ibid., sections 12, 13, and 14.

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William L. Scott, courtesy Library of Congress.

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J. Randolph Tucker, courtesy Library of Congress

expansion of federal authority in Utah and the tribulations which the South had endured during the years of Reconstruction. Hence, church leaders and their agents in Washington anticipated a quiet death for the Edmunds bill when it was brought before the House and referred to the judiciary committee. J. Randolph Tucker, chairman of the judiciary committee, was a vigorous States' Rights Democrat from Virginia who had opposed the Edmunds Act in 1882. Initially he did not appear to favor the new Edmunds bill. He granted Mormon representatives more than a month of open hearings before his committee, seriously delaying House consideration of the bill and presenting the Mormons with a needed opportunity for publicizing their arguments that the bill was harsh, unnecessary, and unconstitutional. During these hearings Tucker publicly announced that he intended to delete several sections of the bill toward which he had serious objections.5 But church leaders soon discovered that they had seriously misjudged the political situation. Their early optimism turned to gloom when they learned of the judiciary committee's report on the Edmunds bill. As 5 John T. Caine to John Taylor and George Q. Cannon, May 22, 1886, John T. Caine Papers, LDS Church Historian's Office (referred to hereinafter as GHO) ; Taylor and Cannon to Enoch Farr, May 4, 1886, John Taylor Letterpress Copybooks (henceforth identified simply as Letterbooks), CHO.

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Manifesto

m

Mm, Mt L^*r+*v*.._<*^:

:

H i Ife^

Franklin S. Richards, Utah State Historical Society photograph.

John W. Young, Utah State Historical Society photograph.

promised, Tucker had modified the bill substantially, but the substitute which he offered in its place was far more dangerous than the original measure. This substitute, which became known as the Tucker bill, retained many features of the Edmunds bill, including the provisions for the escheatment of the church's property. Still more threatening were several new features which the committee had added to the bill.

One new section was designed to ease the talk of prosecuting polygamists by redefining the crime of polygamy. Up to this time few Mormons had been prosecuted on the specific charge of polygamy, due to the difficulty of securing evidence of the performance of plural marriages.

Most accused polygamists had been convicted of "unlawful cohabitation," a lesser charge for which the prosecution had only to prove that the defendant had acknowledged or associated with more than one woman as his wife. The Tucker bill proposed to alter this situation radically by defining polygamy as a continuing crime. Under this definition, federal officials no longer would need to prove the fact of marriage, but merely that a relationship of marriage did exist between one man and more than one woman. 6 This provision would have made it criminal for 6 A copy of the Tucker bill as passed by the House of Representatives can be found in U.S., Congress, House, Congressional Record, 4 9 t h Cong., 2nd sess., 1886-87, p p . 582-83. A

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a Mormon to have remained a polygamist, and prison terms of one to five years awaited those convicted of polygamy under this section of the bill. Church attorney Franklin S. Richards pronounced these measures "the most dangerous and mischievous feature of the bill," explaining, "There would have been no escape for the brethren, because nothing short of judicial proceedings to dissolve polygamous marriages, to have them declared void, would have saved the parties from prosecution."8 The institution of polygamy was already beleaguered by the enforcement of the anti-polygamy laws. This provision of the Tucker bill threatened it with utter eradication.

Another section of the bill was equally as dangerous, It proposed to destroy the church's political influence by making almost every public office in the territory appointive rather than elective. The express purpose of this provision was to fill key positions with Gentiles by placing the power of appointment in the hands of the president and the territorial governor.9 Gentile control of county law enforcement agencies would have provided the government with yet another tool for the complete suppression of polygamy. The church attorney predicted that the enactment of this provision would inaugurate "a reign of terror throughout the Territory," and he explained his assertion with a graphic illustration: Instead of a dozen policemen in this City we may expect a hundred, with innumerable "specials" â&#x20AC;&#x201D; all paid out of the public funds to spy and capture persons who are seeking to avoid arrest. Numerous Deputy Sheriffs would draw pay from the County for like detective service, and eventually it would become impossible for any fugitive to live in the country. 10

This feature of the bill threatened to place the Mormons within the power of their most dangerous antagonists, the local Gentile minority.

Although the Tucker bill was an extreme measure, church agents realized that they stood almost no chance of defeating it once it reached the floor of the House of Representatives. They therefore pursued a strategy of delay, mobilizing influence with the Democratic party to detailed section-by-section explanation of the bill's provisions is contained in House R e p o r t No. 2535, Part 1, "Suppression of Polygamy in U t a h , " 49th Cong., 1st sess., 1886-87. N o t e section 11 of the bill (explained on page 2 of the report) on this particular point.

7 Richards to Caine, [n.d.], copy enclosed in Richards to Taylor, J u n e 28, 1886, Franklin S. Richards Papers, C H O .

8 Richards to Joseph F. Smith, M a y 3, 1887, Franklin S. Richards Letterbooks, U t a h State Historical Society.

9 U.S., Congress, House, Congressional Record, 4 9 t h Cong., 2nd sess., 1886-87, p p . 58283 sections 26, 27, a n d 28 of the bill, with explanatory comment to be found in H o u s e Report N o . 2535, P a r t ' l , 4 9 t h Cong., 1st sess., 1885-86, p . 10.

10 Richards to Taylor ( c o p y ) , November 17, 1886, Franklin S. Richards Papers.

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block consideration of the bill. Utah Delegate John T. Caine informed the First Presidency, "Our efforts have been directed . . . to prevent the Bill from coming up, for we fully realize that, if it ever gets to the floor, it will in all probability go through with a boom." 11 This strategy proved successful during the remaining summer months of 1886, but soon after Congress reconvened the following December, advocates of the bill persuaded the House Rules Committee to set aside a special legislative day for the consideration of measures from the judiciary committee.12 This move assured Tucker of the opportunity of placing his anti-polygamy bill before the full membership of the House. The passage of the measure was thus almost assured.

At this point church agents reassessed the political situation. They recognized the need for changing Mormon strategy on the polygamy question. Not only had uncompromising hostility toward the enforcement of the anti-polygamy laws proved unavailing, but it had served to arouse pressure for more radical measures to eradicate the institution.

Measures such as the Tucker bill indicated that Congress was willing to broaden the scope of its attacks on polygamy to the point of dispossessing the church of its property and eliminating Mormons from control of Utah political affairs. Formal arguments and political maneuvering had proved equally ineffective in defending polygamy from further government attack. The church attorney described public opinion toward the Mormons as "determined, bitter, and unrelenting." 13 His associate in Washington, George Ticknor Curtis, similarly informed the First Presidency: I am perfectly convinced that public opinion has become so crystallized on what is called "the Mormon question," that it is idle to expect to modify or change it. I have never known anything in the course of my life that presented such a phenomenon. In the ante-bellum period, when the whole country was so much excited about slavery, there were great and powerful States interested in defending it, which could combine for that purpose; and throughout the North there were at least large masses of people who, before actual war had begun, cordially and heartily stood by the South. But you are a mere handful of people; 150,000 against 50 or 60 millions, and those millions have made up their minds that polygamy shall be exterminated per fas ut nefas.14 11 12

Caine to Taylor and Gannon, December 19, 1886, Caine Papers.

U.S., Congress, House, Congressional Record, 49th Cong., 2nd sess., 1886-87, p p . 25-26

a n d 503.

13 14

Richards to Taylor, February 9, 1887, Richards Letterbooks.

Curtis to Richards ( c o p y ) , J a n u a r y 23, 1887, George Ticknor Curtis Papers, C H O .

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Under these conditions, in the midst of a political situation that could only be described as desperate, church agents decided that a concession to public opinion offered the only hope of blocking passage of the Tucker bill. Time was at a premium, and without the usual consultation with the First Presidency they drafted a resolution to be offered as an amendment to the Tucker bill. The resolution proposed to postpone by six months the date on which the bill would become effective after its approval by the president. During this six month interim the territory was authorized to hold a constitutional convention. Should this convention adopt a constitution prohibiting polygamy, and this in turn be ratified by the voters of the territory, the Tucker bill would not become operative until Congress had received the constitution and decided whether Utah should be admitted as a state.15 This resolution was meant to suggest that the Mormons might respond to public sentiment and place polygamy under a ban, provided they could escape, at least temporarily, from the perils of the Tucker bill. Church agents presented their resolution to an influential House Democrat, William L. Scott of Pennsylvania, who was friendly to the Mormons and opposed to the Tucker bill. He agreed to offer the resolution as an amendment to the bill, and from this point the resolution became known as the Scott amendment.

In terms of preventing House passage of the Tucker bill, the Scott amendment was a concession which offered too little, too late. Well aware of longstanding Mormon opposition to the operation of the anti-polygamy laws, congressmen suspected that the amendment was a bald attempt to buy time for the church, rather than a meaningful offer to eliminate polygamy. Representative Scott's effort to attach the amendment to the Tucker bill failed, and the House passed the measure by an overwhelming voice vote.16 The bill was then referred to a conference committee, for Senator Edmunds, displeased with the modifications which had been made in his original measure, had prodded the Senate into refusing to accept the Tucker substitute.

While the conference committee undertook to hammer out the differences between the two bills, one of the church agents, John W. Young, approached President Grover Cleveland with the Scott amendment.

Young presented the amendment to the president as a proposal for the settlement of the polygamy question. The amendment, he explained, would allow the Mormons to place polygamy under a permanent ban.

15 16

[William L. Scott], "Anti- Polygamy Bill," printed sheet, C H O .

U.S., Congress, House, Congressional Record, 49th Cong., 2nd sess., 1886-87, p . 596.

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The institution never could be eliminated effectively without Mormon cooperation, he argued, and the government could elicit this cooperation by extending an olive branch in the form of the Scott amendment. On the other hand, Young warned, the enactment of the Tucker bill without the Scott amendment would simply embitter the Mormons. The failure of the House to incorporate the amendment in the bill had demonstrated already, as far as the Mormons were concerned, that the sponsors of the bill were more interested in the destruction of Mormon political liberties than in the eradication of polygamy. Conciliation, rather than further oppression, Young concluded, provided the best approach for reaching a settlement of the polygamy question.

Although Grover Cleveland had called for an end to polygamy in his inaugural address of 1885, he had never been hostile to the Mormons.

In meetings with Mormon delegations he expressed his hope that the Mormons "could become like us" and promised a fair enforcement of the laws. Moreover, he had made special efforts to mediate and settle the polygamy question. In the early autumn of 1885 he had dispatched a personal emissary to Utah for consultations with the First Presidency.

But this mission had ended in failure when the leaders of the church reported that they were unable to offer any concessions on the polygamy question. Now, in response to the presentation of the Scott amendment, President Cleveland stated that the measure might provide a means for resolving the issue. But he gave no indication of what action he would take toward the pending anti-polygamy bill. Nonetheless, this conference encouraged church agents to nurse hopes that he would use his influence and urge the conference committee to accept the Scott amendment, and, if necessary, veto any measure which did not contain it.17 Church agents at the national capital had drafted and promoted the Scott amendment with several related purposes in mind. Their most immediate aim was the defeat of the Tucker bill, thus relieving polygamy from the threat of extinction and preserving the church from the dangers of possible political and economic devastation. But they also hoped, in the long run, that the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution would dampen national sentiment on the polygamy question, thus affording the Mormons an opportunity for securing statehood. Statehood, the ultimate goal, would bring the anti-polygamy campaign to an abrupt end by eliminating federal jurisdiction over the issue. However, neither of 17 [John W. Young] to Taylor and Cannon, telegram, J a n u a r y 14, 1887, J o h n W. Young Papers, C H O ; Young (endorsed by Franklin S. Richards a n d J o h n T. Caine) to James Jack [in behalf of the First Presidency], telegram, J a n u a r y 14, 1887, James Jack Letterbooks, C H O .

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these goals could be fully pursued until the president of the church had accepted the Scott amendment and approved the proposition that the Mormons should adopt an anti-polygamy constitution. And despite political conditions in Washington, church agents realized that such approval would not be given automatically. John Taylor, the president of the church, had enunciated a policy of rigid adherence to the principle of plural marriage throughout the anti-polygamy campaign. While the church's political agents were intent on improving Mormon relations with the government, President John Taylor was intent on maintaining the religious principles of the Latter-day Saints. The church president and his representatives in Washington viewed the political situation with different sets of priorities. This led to a serious conflict of opinion over the desirability of accepting the Scott amendment as a course of action.

DEBATE W I T H I N T H E C H U R C H

This proposition that the Mormons themselves should move to abolish polygamy had been discussed in church circles in the past, but it had never gained the support of President Taylor. The church president had made it a matter of strict policy that Mormons could not declare unlawful a principle that God had placed before them as a commandment.

In an address delivered less than a month before the 1884 legislature began its deliberations, he ruled out the possibility that the territorial assembly as a matter of political expediency might "do away with polygamy." He reminded his audience that the Lord and not the federal government would determine the fate of the Latter-day Saints, and he counseled those who were suggesting that the legislature should intervene against polygamy, "No yielding up of principles that God has revealed."18 Even the proposition of adopting an anti-polygamy constitution in return for a grant of statehood had been considered by the church president. In the spring and summer of 1879, soon after the United States Supreme Court had upheld the constitutionality of the anti-polygamy law of 1862, several leading congressional Democrats had carefully examined the possibility of admitting Utah as a state. They hoped to gain her electoral votes for the party in the presidential election of 1880. The project developed to the point where the Speaker of the House, who was favorable to Utah's admission, suggested that a committee of prominent congressional Democrats should visit the territory.

18

Journal

of Discourses,

X X I V , 355, delivered at Kaysville, December 9, 1883,

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One of the objects of the committee's visit would be the arrangement of an anti-polygamy constitution with leaders of the church. Under such a constitution the Democrats could admit the territory on the claim that the polygamy question had been settled. But the project was scuttled when the Utah delegate, Apostle George Q. Cannon, informed party leaders that there was no possibility of gaining Mormon consent for a constitutional prohibition of polygamy.19 Hence, it was not surprising that President Taylor initially regarded the Scott amendment as a deviation from church policy and a concession of religious principle. Upon learning of the proposal to adopt an antipolygamy constitution, he ordered his representatives in Washington to "go slow."20 Although his agents had informed him that the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution would not require the church to surrender plural marriage, President Taylor still feared that this move would prove compromising. Speaking for the membership of the church, he said, "It will not do for us, after enduring what we have for the sake of our religion and its principles, to put ourselves in a position where our words and actions may be construed into a surrender of that for which we have ever contended." 21 In other words, the church president would not permit the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution for fear that it might give the appearance that the Mormons intended to' surrender plural marriage.

In addition to these religious considerations, President Taylor felt that the Scott amendment was politically unwise. Public sentiment demanded the eradication of polygamy, and he did not believe that it would be content with the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution.

Skeptical congressmen in examining such a constitution would discover that it did not provide for a Mormon renunciation of plural marriage and would reject it. Even President Cleveland's conciliatory response to the Scott amendment did not indicate that he would agree to the admission to Utah on the basis of an anti-polygamy constitution. Under these circumstances, the church president felt that no good would result from the adoption of such a constitution: We should have the mortification of proposing a concession that would be spurned and thrown back at us with contempt. We should, thereby, not only lose our self-respect, but our people would be weakened, 19

Gannon to Taylor, J u n e 4, 1879, George Q . C a n n o n Papers, C H O .

Jack [in behalf of the First Presidency] to Young, cited in Taylor to Jack, [n.d.] (probably J a n u a r y 27, 1 8 8 7 ) , J o h n Taylor Letterbooks, C H O .

21 Taylor and C a n n o n to Caine and Young, J a n u a r y 27, 1887, Taylor Letterbooks.

20

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a n d the world would say t h a t we h a d offered to b a r t e r away principle for t h e sake of expediency. 2 2

In short, John Taylor thought that Mormon acceptance of the Scott amendment would simply undermine the church's position on plural marriage without significantly improving its long-term political prospects.

Although President Taylor would not permit his agents to present the amendment to the administration as a concession on the polygamy question, he did leave an opening for further discussion of the subject within church circles. He offered to reconsider his decision rejecting the amendment if Congress passed a measure, such as an enabling act, indicating that the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution would fully satisfy the requirements for Utah's admission as a state. In other words, the church president would not permit the Mormons to concede an antipolygamy constitution to the government, but he might accept such a constitution from the government as a condition for admission as a state.

22 Taylor and Cannon to Charles W. Penrose and Richards, February 19, 1887, Taylor Letterbooks.

The Rouche home near Kaysville where John Taylor hid to avoid arrest on polygamy charges from August 1,1886, to July 25,1887, the day of his death. Photograph by Walter Claudell Johnson.

Gift of Gustive O. Larson.

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From his standpoint, what the Mormons could not voluntarily concede to the government they might still accept as a requirement for statehood.23 In the following weeks, through letters as well as the dispatch of representatives to Utah for personal consultations with the First Presidency, church agents tried to meet these objections to the Scott amendment. In response to President Taylor's fears that the amendment would compromise the church position on plural marriage, Charles W. Penrose, editor of the Deseret News, and Franklin S. Richards, the church attorney, submitted a lengthy letter arguing that the adoption of an antipolygamy constitution would be a purely political matter in which Mormons would be acting in their capacity of citizens. The decisions reached by a constitutional convention would have no effect on the position of the church, they contended, and the church could remain neutral when they were made. Church leaders themselves would not have to take a stand for or against the constitution, since, as polygamists, they were disfranchised and barred from participation in politics. Throughout the process of adopting and ratifying the constitution the church had only to inform its members that their acceptance of the constitution would not endanger their church standing.

Penrose and Richards also insisted that the monogamous Mormons who endorsed the anti-polygamy constitution would not be yielding any principle of their religious faith. Rather, they would be bowing to an inevitable political development. Polygamy was banned already in the territory, and it would continue to be banned when Utah became a state, for the nation demanded this. In addition, Penrose and Richards emphasized that under statehood the anti-polygamy clauses of the constitution would afford a measure of protection for plural marriage, since the Mormons, rather than the federal officials, would be implementing and enforcing the prohibition of polygamy. It was possible, they suggested, that statehood would permit the Mormons so to define the civil law of marriage as to exclude celestial marriages from its provisions. Under such a statute more than one celestial marriage would not expose a Mormon to charges of polygamy, for his marriages would not be legally recognized.

At the very minimum, should the state legislature construe the crime of polygamy to encompass celestial marriages, the enforcement of the prohibition of polygamy would lie with the Mormons. As Penrose and Rich23 Taylor and Cannon to Caine and Young, January 27, 1887, and to Penrose and Richards, February 19, 1887, Taylor Letterbooks.

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ards explained, should the Mormons choose to obey the law of God and violate the anti-polygamy provisions of the constitution, "We [will] have our friends to adjudge us guilty and mete out the penalties which will have a minimum as well as a maximum limit, while now it is maximum and no minimum in practice." 24 With this understanding of the operation of the prospective constitution, a Mormon could endorse its antipolygamy features in the firm belief that he was sustaining and protecting the principle of plural marriage.

While this discussion continued, the Scott amendment was being quietly promoted in Washington despite President Taylor's injunction that his representatives should "go slow" on the measure. Continuing his negotiations with high administration officials, John W. Young had moved to counter the church president's fears that the amendment would not satisfy public opinion by attempting to secure Grover Cleveland's endorsement of the proposal as a means of completely settling the polygamy dispute. But time for such negotiations was running out insofar as the defeat of hostile legislation was concerned. On February 15, 1887, after a full month of deliberations, the conference committee produced the Edmunds-Tucker bill, a compromise version of the two bills. Although church agents had not succeeded in persuading the committee to include the Scott amendment among its provision, they had used the proposal to obtain the deletion of certain key features of the Tucker bill.

Of particular importance was the elimination of those sections which provided for redefining the crime of polygamy and for replacing Mormon elective officeholders with Gentile appointees. The Edmunds-Tucker bill was still a dangerous measure, but not nearly so threatening as the Tucker bill had been. The church attorney was later to comment, "The most diabolical provisions were struck out of the bill, and, although it is still very oppressive, the Saints can live under it and to some degree observe the laws of God."25 The Edmunds-Tucker bill quickly passed both houses of Congress with ease and appeared on the desk of the president. John W. Young made yet another appearance at the White House to present further arguments for a veto of the measure. Again he urged the president to take a more conciliatory approach toward the Mormons by adopting the terms of the Scott amendment as a settlement of the polygamy question. This conversation proved much more substantive and satisfactory 24 25

Penrose and Richards to Taylor, February 16, 1887, Penrose Papers, CHO. Richards to Smith, May 3, 1887, Richards Letterbooks.

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to Young than prior ones. In a telegram sent to the First Presidency immediately following the conclusion of the interview, he described Grover Cleveland as being "entirely satisfied with the wording of the Scott amendment, and [he] said [that] no good man could ask more." Therefore, concluded Young, the Scott amendment could now be regarded as a "private overture" from President Cleveland to the Mormon people.

Young recognized that John Taylor had expressed doubts about Cleveland's willingness to accept the amendment as a concession sufficient for a complete settlement of the polygamy issue. Hence, he emphasized that Cleveland had given more than simple verbal approval to the amendmeent. The amendment now represented a formal offer on behalf of the administration, complete with the following commitment: "Scott amendment now offered by them [the] same as if it had passed Congress, and they [the administration] to back up this programme now and next Congress when Constitution is offered." Moreover, knowing that President Taylor would be equally as concerned about the continued practice of plural marriage, Young announced that "the question of the cessation of plural marriages has never been mentioned." He ended his telegraphic report by urging the First Presidency to accede to the opening offered by the administration's acceptance of the Scott amendment. 26 When this lengthy dispatch arrived in Salt Lake City, discussion of the Scott amendment was reopened. The following day, February 27, 1887, President Taylor reversed his previous instructions and decided to accept the proposal as an administration offer for a complete settlement of the polygamy question. He informed John W. Young, "If Scott amendment will satisfy President Cleveland, it will be acceptable to us.

If it shall become law see no objections to people carrying out its provisions." At the same time, however, the church president emphasized in the most striking terms that Mormon acceptance of the amendment did not alter the church's position on plural marriage.

We desire it distinctly understood we accept terms of Scott amendment as a political necessity, and that in doing so we neither yield nor compromise an iota of our religious principles. If by consenting to its terms we should be understood as conceding anything religiously or giving up any doctrine or principle for which we have been contending we should recoil from it and emphatically reject it. If a constitution should be adopted according to its provisions it would, at worst, only be punishing ourselves for what our enemies are now punishing us.27 26 Young to Jack [in behalf of the First Presidency], telegram, February 25, 1887, Jack Letterbooks.

27 Taylor to Jack, February 27, 1887, a n d Jack [in behalf of the First Presidency] to Young, telegrams, February 27, 1887, Jack Letterbooks.

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Despite these qualifications, signifying a lingering distrust of the Scott amendment, John Taylor had committed the Mormons to the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution.

Despite the First Presidency's acceptance of the Scott amendment, Grover Cleveland did not reveal whether he intended to accept or reject the Edmunds-Tucker bill. It was known that his feelings towards the measure were mixed. Although the conference committee had eliminated several features of the Tucker bill which the president had regarded as objectionable, the Edmunds-Tucker bill still did not satisfy him. He particularly opposed those sections of the measure escheating the property of the church and granting the federal marshal exceptional powers for the attachment of witnesses.28 In addition, Cleveland surely must have recognized that the passage of the bill might jeopardize future negotiations with the church over the implementation of the terms of the Scott amendment. On the other hand, Democratic members of both the House and Senate had supported the bill overwhelmingly. A veto not only would risk a breach within the party over the polygamy issue, but it could expose the president to damaging Republican charges that he was "soft" on Mormonism. At the opening of his administration Cleveland had committed himself publicly to ending polygamy, and this stance made it extremely difficult for him to oppose a measure which was antipolygamic. In the words of John W. Young, Grover Cleveland was "a man whose makeup is such that it is difficult for him to crawfish gracefully on any subject."29 Trapped by these conflicting pressures, the president hedged his bets on both sides and allowed the Edmunds-Tucker bill to become law without his signature.

Although one might have expected that the enactment of the Edmunds-Tucker bill would have endangered the administration's negotiations with the church, this did not occur. Church representatives in Washington, anxious to see the terms of the Scott amendment carried into effect, excused President Cleveland's actions with the explanation that he had made no promises to veto the bill. Indeed, John W. Young interpreted the president's failure to sign the bill as a "favorable" act, given the pressures on him, for it publicly indicated that the measure was not entirely satisfactory to the president. Thus, the Mormons could anticipate 28

Papers.

29

Caine to Jack [in behalf of the First Presidency], telegram, March 6, 1887, Caine Young to Taylor and Cannon, March 4, 1887, Young Papers.

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that it would not be enforced zealously by the administration. In any event, Young advised, the president was still fully committed to implementing the Scott amendment. 30 John W. Young's reaction to the enactment of the Edmunds-Tucker bill revealed the importance that he, as well as other church agents, attached to the successful implementation of the amendment. Although the church representatives had devised the Scott amendment as a last-ditch means of defeating special legislation for Utah, the passage of such legislation did not cause them to consider abandoning the proposal. They remained convinced of the need to carry through on the measure. This suggests that, in the broader perspective, it had been the pressure of the anti-polygamy campaign rather than the Tucker bill alone that had produced the Scott amendment. That pressure still existed with the passage of the Edmunds-Tucker bill, and church agents believed that it would not abate until the Mormons began to manifest a determination to settle the problem of polygamy themselves. The Scott amendment, with its provisions for the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution, afforded the Mormons an opportunity to ban the institution which the nation found so obnoxious. Church agents were determined not to allow this opportunity to slip away.

With the First Presidency's acceptance of the Scott amendment, church agents had eliminated the major obstacle to the adoption of the 1887 constitution. In mid-June of 1887, after three months of further negotiations between the church and the Cleveland administration, the People's party of Utah Territory issued a call for the election of delegates to a constitutional convention. The convention itself met at the end of June and adopted an anti-polygamy constitution. Under the terms of the constitution, polygamy was prohibited and declared a misdemeanor.

This prohibition was made self-executing by establishing criminal penalties for polygamy. A three-year statute of limitations was placed over the offense, and the governor was forbidden to extend pardon to convicted polygamists without the approval of the president of the United States.

Finally, all these features of the constitution were made absolute and perpetual in the sense that they could only be modified with the consent of Congress and the president. The constitution was presented to the Utah electorate in August 1887 and ratified by an almost unanimous vote.

30 Young to Jack [in behalf of the First Presidency], telegram, M a r c h 4, 1887, Jack Letterbooks.

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The terms of the Scott amendment, accepted by John Taylor six months earlier, had now been fulfilled. A movement for statehood lay ahead. 31 T H E MANIFESTO IN PERSPECTIVE

While the Scott amendment was under discussion in Mormon leadership circles, church agents frequently referred to it as a "political settlement" of the polygamy question. By this they meant that the amendment, with its provisions for the adoption of a constitution prohibiting polygamy, would not affect the principle or practice of plural marriage.

This contention underlay much of the debate on the amendment -â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in fact, it was one of the essential arguments which church agents utilized to gain John Taylor's acceptance of the proposal for an anti-polygamy constitution. The debate on the point was more than academic. From the historical standpoint, the validity of the contention that the terms of the Scott amendment were no more than a "political settlement" of the polygamy question has a direct bearing on the significance of the 1887 constitution. If, as church agents asserted, the constitution bore no religious implications, it becomes difficult to relate it to the Woodruff Manifesto, which was of the utmost religious significance for the principle of plural marriage. On the other hand, if the constitution did significantly affect the church position of plural marriage, its relationship to the Manifesto becomes easier to define. The conclusion of this paper, therefore, reopens this important question and seeks to determine whether the Scott amendment was a matter of politics or principle, whether, indeed, the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution did alter the church's position on plural marriage.

On the one hand, it is obvious that the Scott amendment was designed and utilized as a means of protecting plural marriage from further attacks by the federal government. From the time of its drafting to the passage of the Edmunds-Tucker bill, the amendment served as a proposal to counter and offset pending legislative programs which threatened to broaden the scope of the anti-polygamy campaign. Its acceptance by the church president did not signify any abandonment of plural marriage.

Moreover, should the Mormons have succeeded in gaining statehood through the 1887 constitution, church agents already had indicated that its anti-polygamy clauses might not affect Mormon marriages. Even if the state should have brought these marriages within the scope of the 31

For a brief summary of the statehood campaign of 1887-89, see Larson's "Americanization" of Utah, 217-22.

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constitutional prohibition of polygamy, Mormon control of local law enforcement agencies would have guaranteed that polygamists would be prosecuted only with the greatest reluctance. From these standpoints, the Scott amendment appeared admirably suited to the purpose of defending the principle of plural marriage. The amendment was eminently a political document, drafted in a time of political stress as a "political settlement" of the polygamy question.

Nonetheless, the Scott amendment was a two-edged sword which might also undermine plural marriage. Although the prohibition of polygamy in the 1887 constitution might have no practical application, as the Mormons chose to interpret it, it was still a symbolic concession signifying that the leadership of the church recognized the need for conciliating public opinion. Even more important, the immediate and long-term political benefits which the Mormons hoped to derive from the adoption of the constitution were contingent on the appearance which the constitution presented to the American public. The abatement of the anti-polygamy campaign, as well as the more distant goal of statehood, were directly dependent on convincing Congress and the nation that progress was being made towards the eradication of polygamy. Church leaders and church agents might assure one another privately that the prohibition of polygamy did not affect the principle of plural marriage, but they dared not utter these comments publicly, for such remarks would have thrown grave doubt on the claim that the Mormons were yielding to national sentiment on the polygamy question. In these circumstances it is not surprising that once the monogamous Mormons had ratified the antipolygamy provisions of the 1887 constitution, church leaders no longer advocated or defended polygamy publicly.32 The adoption of the con32 Compare, for example, the message of the First Presidency delivered at the General Conference of April 1887, with those delivered at conferences in 1885 and 1886. T h e former message is singular for its failure to mention "the principle." [James R. Clark, ed., Messages of the First Presidency (5 vols., Salt Lake City, 1965-70), vol. I I I . ] This policy applied to all public discourses, and it is revealing to notice the reaction of the church leadership on the rare occasions when polygamy was mentioned in violation of this injunction. One such incident occurred at the General Conference of 1888, when R u d g e r Clawson, recently released from the penitentiary after serving a lengthy term for polygamy, defended the doctrine. Wilford Woodruff, giving the reaction of the Council of Twelve, reported: " W e were considerably annoyed, not to say mortified, at the w a n t of care which was manifested in cautioning the brethren who spoke not to touch on topics t h a t at the present time, were likely to arouse prejudice." Woodruff then explained t h a t he h a d explicitly cautioned Lorenzo Snow, the senior apostle attending the conference, on this point, going so far as to instruct him that, "if anyone attempted to speak about polygamy, to throw his h a t at him." [Woodruff to Richards and Penrose, April 12, 1888, Wilford Woodruff Letterbooks, C H O . ] After the d e a t h of J o h n Taylor in July of 1887 the church leadership even censored theological works dealing with plural marriage. O n e such work, written by an elder teaching at the Brigham Young Academy at Provo, was analyzed by a church reviewer who reported, " T h e arguements [sic] on the pre-existence of m a n a n d eternal marriage form almost the entire m a t t e r of the religious portion of this work, other principles of the gospel are simply worked

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stitution had pushed the church into a position of public silence so far as the principle of plural mariage was concerned. This was a practical rather than a symbolic concession. It meant that the church could never reopen its public defense of plural marriage without laying its monogamous members open to the charge of having misled the government in adopting the anti-polygamy constitution of 1887.

Most important, acceptance of the Scott amendment revealed a significant shift in the thinking of the church leadership. When the federal officials launched their campaign of prosecutions in 1884-85 and drove a large portion of the church leadership underground, many within the church anticipated that "the raid" would be a brief episode. In his last public address, John Taylor had compared the outbreak of prosecutions to a natural storm, one which would temporarily rage and then quietly subside. He advised the Latter-day Saints not to submit to the laws of the land, but to place their trust in the Lord for the interim. The church president expressed the metaphor in the following words: I would do as I said some time ago. If you were out in a storm, pull up the collar of your coat and button yourself up, and keep the cold out until the storm blows past. This storm will blow past as others have done; and you will see the miserable sneaks who are active in these measures . . . will be glad to crawl in their holes by-and-by. 33

But the storm had not weakened in the next two years; if anything, it had intensified. By early 1887 church agents in Washington had lost all hope that the anti-polygamy campaign would "blow past" in the course of time. They concluded that concessions to public opinion were absolutely necessary to shield the church and its institutions from destruction, and they proceeded to draft the Scott amendment to meet the needs of the moment. Likewise, John Taylor's acceptance of the amendment, in his own words, "as a political necessity," implicitly acknowledged the argument that circumstances were forcing the church to give way to the government. Through the Scott amendment the church had taken the first step in the process of yielding up concessions to the government on the polygamy issue.

Even at this early date some church leaders realized that a series of small concessions could lead to a major surrender. When Apostle John into this main thread." The reviewer found the work theologically sound, but doubted whether "so strong an arguement in favor of plural marriage" should be published "under the present political aspect." Woodruff advised that "it would scarcely be wise" for the work to be published "at the present time." [George Reynolds to Woodruff, with penciled reply at bottom of page, February 6, 1888, Woodruff Papers, CHO.] 33 Journal of Discourses, XXVI, 155, delivered in Salt Lake City, February 1, 1885.

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W. Taylor, a son of John Taylor, was asked his opinion of the Scott amendment in late February of 1887, he expressed opposition to the proposal. His statement displayed remarkable foresight: I t has taken quite a time to school t h e L a t t e r - d a y Saints to w h a t w e believe to day, a n d I find t h a t it is getting to be believed t h a t Prest.

T a y l o r will yet receive a revelation to cancel the revelation on Celestial m a r r i a g e . A n d you let a n y t h i n g officially a b o u t this [the Scott a m e n d m e n t ] , a n d it will create quite a stir a m o n g t h e people. 3 *

George F. Gibbs, one of the secretaries to the First Presidency, voiced a similar sentiment at the same time. He regarded the policy of conciliating the government as "dangerous in the extreme," so long as the basic conflict over polygamy was unsettled and the church remained the inferior party in the dispute. His analysis of the situation laid bare a central issue, which he phrased as a question: "If it be a concession to concur in the Amendment, . . . our position, which, to us, is everything, at once becomes assailable; and if made assailable, who can compute the consequences?"35 Who, indeed, could compute the consequences of the slow retreat on the polygamy issue? Only time would tell, and the process of retreat would take three more years until complete surrender came about through the issuance of the Woodruff Manifesto.

34 Handwritten report in pencil contained in the George Q. Cannon Papers, CHO. The report is untitled, but it can be identified by its opening lines, "The following remarks indicate the mind of the brethren expressing them, relative to the Scott amendment referred to in telegram of John W. Young of this date â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Feb. 25, 1887 . . . " ss Gibbs to Cannon, February 26, 1887, George F. Gibbs Papers, CHO.

SCENES IN CONGRESS O V E R

UTAH

Jan. 29th. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; By appealing to the H o u s e C a p t a i n [ U t a h Delegate W i l l i a m H.] H o o p e r succeeded in obtaining half a n h o u r to deliver his speech in. As h e finished [ M o n t a n a Delegate William H.] Claggett j u m p e d u p a n d requested ten m i n u t e s for reply. T h e n succeeded a scene which I scarcely ever saw paralleled in Congress. T h e m e m b e r s gathered a r o u n d h i m a n d listened t o h i m with great interest. W h e n his ten m i n u t e s were exhausted, cries of "go on, go o n , " were h e a r d from all sides. T i m e was g r a n t e d h i m to continue, not a n objection being m a d e . O h it was pleasure to m a n y to h e a r t h e " M o r m o n s " denounced, t o h e a r B r i g h a m Y o u n g villified a n d U t a h held u p to public o d i u m , a n d execration H e h a d not finished his t r i a d e [sic] w h e n his t i m e was r e n e w e d ; b u t on motion of M r . [Samuel S.] C o x of N e w York, on t h e condition t h a t t h e Delegate of U t a h h a v e five m i n u t e s to reply. W i t h these extrao r d i n a r y evidences of sympathy from his a u d i e n c e Clagget was greatly fired u p . ( A n o n y m o u s diary of a "leading M o r m o n " q u o t e d in Tullidge's Quarterly Magazine, 3 [October 1883], 77)

The Making of the Convention President: The Political Education of John Henry Smith

BY JEAN BICKMORE

WHITE

6, 1895, J o h n O Henry Smith stood before the N MARCH

Constitutional Convention of the territory of U t a h and accepted the honor of being president of that convention.

H e observed that it was a proud day in his life and a landmark date in the history of the territory.

H e pointed out to his fellow delegates that previous constitutional conventions in the territory h a d been exercises in futility. But now, with an Enabling Act of Congress to guide them and with A photographer in Nottingham, England, took this portrait of John Henry Smith, ca. 1882.

Courtesy Western Americana, University of Utah.

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a different atmosphere in the territory, it seemed likely that the fruit of their efforts would be the constitution of a state in the federal Union.

The delegates were entrusted by the people, he pointed out, "with the grave responsibility of presenting to them for their consideration a fundamental law, under which they expect to live, under which their children and their children's children in all likelihood may live . . . , m John Henry Smith was correct in observing that in the American tradition, a constitution is a fundamental law. It is superior to statutory law and not as easily changed. It provides for the most important agencies of government. Constitutions also commonly set forth the fundamental rights of citizens.

When all of this is said, there are still other characteristics of constitutions to consider. Constitutions are commonly recognized by those who study them to be political documents. That is, they allocate power and legal authority between competing individuals and interests in society. As a familiar example, they describe the powers and limits on the powers of the various branches of government. They specify who shall have the privilege of voting and who shall not. In the thorny area of taxation, they m a y exempt certain groups of citizens or certain types of property from sharing in the financial support of government. Writing a constitution setting forth these rights, responsibilities, and allocations of authority is essentially a political task.2 This is so because the writers of constitutions, like legislators, must use the processes of discussion and voting to settle conflicts. They must make painful decisions between the competing claims of different citizens and interest groups, They must make compromises and reach consensus on a myriad of controversial matters. It is in this sense that constitution writing is a political task. With these thoughts in mind, I suggest that constitutions should be (and usually are) written by men with a background in political life, not by men untouched by the conflicts and struggles of their times.3 D r . W h i t e is assistant professor of political science at Weber State College and a m e m b e r of the U t a h Constitutional Revision Commission. This article was presented at the Eighteenth A n n u a l M e e t i n g of the U t a h State Historical Society in September 1970 and has been edited for publication.

1 U t a h , Constitutional Convention, 1895, Official Report of the Proceedings and Debates (2 vols., Salt Lake City, 1898), I, 4 1 . Hereinafter referred to as Convention Proceedings.

2 Definitions of "politics" a n d "political" vary, even among political scientists. Some emphasize the gaining of domination over others, some the relation to public policy, some the struggle for advantages or power. A fairly comprehensive definition was given by William T. Bluhm, who described politics as " a social process characterized by activity involving rivalry a n d cooperation in the exercise of power, a n d culminating in the making of decisions for a g r o u p . " See Theories of the Political System (Englewood Cliffs, N . J., 1 9 6 5 ) , 5.

3 T h e social a n d economic culture of U t a h Territory in the 1890s has been explored by several writers, notably R i c h a r d D . Poll in "A State is Born," Utah Historical Quarterly, X X X I I ( W i n t e r 1 9 6 4 ) , 9 - 3 1 ; L e o n a r d J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the

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There is another consideration. A writer on state constitutional development has pointed out that "Constitutions must be developed out of the life and aspirations of the people, not borrowed from others. Their fundamental concepts, to be useful and lasting, must be in tune with the particular culture and times."4 This paper explores the political background and education of the president of the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895, John Henry Smith.5 Hopefully, it will be shown that he was particularly well equipped with the political skills and the understanding of Utah's special problems in the 1890s that suited him for the position. Much of the story will be told in his own words as recorded in his personal journal and letters.6 The convention president was not plucked from political obscurity.

He was an active politician who by 1895 had spent more than two decades developing political skills and friendships. Smith always described himself as a "lifelong Republican" and was intensely partisan to that cause. He was faithful to the political aims of the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In addition, he seems to have realized that the non-Mormon citizens of the territory had to be reached across bridges of personal friendship and trust before statehood could be achieved. He was aware, then, of the special problems of writing a constitution for a state with Utah's unusual social, religious, and economic culture.

John Henry Smith was a big man, with a commanding presence and a talent for oratory.7 Although his formal education was brief, he read a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), especially chapter 13, "Aftermath," 380-412; and S. George Ellsworth, " U t a h ' s Struggle for Statehood," UHQ, X X X I (Winter 1963), 60-69.

4 Harvey Walker, " M y t h and Reality in State Constitutional Development," in W. Brooke Graves, ed., State Constitutional Revision (Chicago, 1960), 10.

5 For an overview of convention personnel, see Stanley S. Ivins, "A Constitution for U t a h , " UHQ, X X V (April 1957), 95-116.

6 T h e sources from which most of the information for this paper is drawn are J o h n Henry Smith's "Journal," covering the period from 1875 through 1895 a n d two letterbooks covering the period from April 30, 1884 through 1897. These materials are in the Smith Family Papers, Western Americana, University of U t a h Library, and the writer is most grateful to Dr. Everett L. Cooley, Western Americana curator, for his generous assistance in making them available.

Unless otherwise noted, letters are all from this collection. T h e use of materials in the archives of the C h u r c h Historian's Office of the C h u r c h of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is also deeply appreciated. " J o u r n a l " entries which are dated in the text have not been cited again in footnotes.

7 H e was born at Carbunca, Iowa (later known as Council Bluffs), on September 18, 1848, a son of Apostle George A. a n d Sarah Ann Libbey Smith. His parents had been driven from Illinois and Missouri with the rest of the members of the M o r m o n Church, a n d p a r t of the family did not come to U t a h until J o h n H e n r y was one year old. W h e n he was eighteen years of age he married Sarah F a r r ; ten years later he married Josephine Groesbeck.

Additional biographical information is available in Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia, 1850-1941 (4 vols., Salt Lake City, 1901-1936), I., 141-44. See also, for the later period of his life, obituary articles in Salt Lake City newspapers, October 13

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Smith

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great deal, mostly in history, biography, a n d essays, often noting the titles a n d commenting on the contents in his daily journal. H e seems to have enjoyed visiting and, as the sociologists of today would put it, "interacting" with other knowledgeable h u m a n beings. These social interactions seem to have added to his knowledge a n d understanding of others â&#x20AC;&#x201D; particularly the non-Mormon people whose backgrounds and political aspirations h a d to be taken into account in the movement for statehood.

T h e governmental positions held by J o h n Henry Smith were not numerous. I n 1872 he was appointed assistant clerk of the territorial house of representatives, and in the same year he was chosen assistant clerk of the constitutional convention. I n 1876 he was elected to the Salt Lake City Council, and in 1881 he won a seat in the territorial legislature.

I t was primarily as an informal actor in the political process, rather than as a n officeholder, that John Henry Smith gained his political education.

His experience in politics may be traced through three roles that he played in the two and a half decades prior to the achievement of statehood: one, as a church leader; two, as a participant in the political planning and actions of the church leadership; and, three, as a Republican party organizer and promoter.

I t is not always easy to sort out these roles. O n many occasions he seems to have worn three hats at once. At times it is not easy to decide whether Smith's political actions were directed by the First Presidency or undertaken on his own (although probably with their tacit a p p r o v a l ) .

I t must not have been easy for his contemporaries in the outlying stakes to distinguish between his role as a church authority at conference on Sunday and his role as a Republican party organizer in the same town on Monday. 8 Yet, he seems to have seen little conflict between the demands of his various roles.

CHURCH

LEADER

A prominent member of the M o r m o n Church, Smith served as a missionary and later as mission president in Europe. H e became a member of the Q u o r u m of Twelve Apostles in October 1880. As a churchm a n he traveled widely in U t a h and in the surrounding states and territories of Idaho, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. H e also transacted church business in Mexico and traveled on the European continand 14, 1911. J o h n Henry was the father of George Albert Smith, who became a n apostle and president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

8 For an example of his combined religious-political trips see J o h n Henry Smith " J o u r n a l , " November 23 and 24, 1891.

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ent. John Henry Smith knew there was a world outside of U t a h , and he knew that the destiny of the M o r m o n people was to a great extent in the hands of powerful individuals outside the church.

Besides giving him the opportunity to travel and enlarge his understanding, his position as a church leader provided him with opportunities to develop the art of settling conflicts between individuals and factions.

Smith seems to have been a favorite "troubleshooter," for he was sent by the church leadership on many occasions to wards a n d stakes where some dissension h a d been noted. His mission was to settle the difficulty or to decide appeals from the decisions of the ecclesiastical courts so common at that time. 9 During these journeys, he formed a wide circle of friendships, an asset to anyone in political life.

POLITICAL

MISSIONARY

A second role was that of furthering the political aims of the church leadership, both within and outside the territory. Among the most important of these aims during the 1880s and early 1890s were the repeal or softening of the enforcement of anti-polygamy laws and test oaths, the defeat of any legislation aimed at weakening the church (such as confiscation of church p r o p e r t y ) , and most important-â&#x20AC;&#x201D;statehood. T h e latter was the most desired because it would rid the territory of the federal officials and permit a greater degree of law-making autonomy.

T o further these aims, Smith was sent on several political missions. I n the limited scope of this paper it will be possible to present only a few typical examples of these activities.

O n e of the most impressive experiences of Smith's lifetime occurred in the winter of 1882. I n mid-February President J o h n Taylor asked him to go with Apostle Moses T h a t c h e r to Washington, D. C , to see what might be done to block passage of an anti-polygamy measure, the Edmunds bill. H e met and visited with several members of Congress and presented a petition of protest bearing more t h a n fifty-one thousand signatures to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. His efforts were fruitless, but he learned a bitter lesson about the power of numbers in politics and about the depth of feelings in other parts of the nation against the Mormon practice of plural marriage. 1 0 9

See, for example, ibid., M a r c h 15 and 16, September 20, 1890.

T h e atmosphere surrounding passage of the Edmunds bill, the actions of both houses of Congress, the efforts of U t a h n s to have a commission appointed to investigate conditions in the territory, and the provisions of the act are detailed in Orson F. Whitney, History of Utah (4 vols., Salt Lake City, 1892-1904), I I I , 166-94.

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After sitting all day in the House gallery, he described his sense of anger and frustration over the course of events. This staunch Republican also acknowledged that the Democrats in the House had struggled against the bill's passage. He wrote in his journal on March 13: The speaker made a most dastardly ruling, both cowardly and wicked.

It was a strictly party vote, the democrats standing by law and order and the Republicans by misrule and misgovernment[.] it was a manly fight on the part of the democrats in the face of popular clamor. . ..

Today has been one of the most exciting of my life [he concluded]. The liberties of my people hanging on a thread and I powerless to do any thing only sit and look on and ask the Lord to strengthen our friends and make them equal to the task.

On the following day, March 14, he sadly observed in his journal that the Democrats who had voted for the bill were really opposed to it but "could not in their judgement vote against the bill without ruining their chances for reelection." He now understood, if he had not before, how strongly the tide of national opinion was running against the Mormons.

After the bill was signed by President Chester A. Arthur, John Henry Smith returned to Utah. Here numbers counted, too, but part of the purpose of the Edmunds Act was to cut down the number of Mormons who could vote or hold office in the territory by eliminating any who practiced polygamy.11 The act also provided for a five-man committee (known as the Utah Commission) to supervise registration and elections.

The challenge of the Edmunds Act called for a plan of action, and for the next few months Smith's journal shows a mounting activity aimed at holding political control of the territory. He played a part in much of this activity, as a member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles of the church and as a member of the somewhat mysterious Council of Fifty.12 Almost as soon as he returned from Washington, he met as one of the members of the secret Council of Fifty (made up mostly of the top leadership of the church) to discuss plans for a new convention to draw up a constitution. On April 5, 1882, he noted that the council had met 11 Estimates of the number of disfranchised vary from 12,000 by Richard D. Poll, " T h e Political Reconstruction of U t a h Territory, 1866-1890," Pacific Historical Review, XXVI ( M a y 1958) 120, to 15,000 in Everett L. Cooley, "Carpetbag R u l e : Territorial Government in U t a h , " UHQ, X X V I (April 1958), 121.

12 Klaus J. Hansen states in Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History (East Lansing, 1967), 173-74 and 211, n. 69, that J o h n Henry Smith became a member of the Council of Fifty in April 1880.

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and decided that no minority representation would be put in the new constitution. "It was also decided," Smith added, "that nothing should be done or said in regard to plural marriage." He also described a meeting of the Twelve Apostles in which provisions of the proposed constitution were discussed. A few days later the convention of 1882 adopted the document.13 It can be seen that although formal political power lay with officeholders, such non-governmental structures as the church's Quorum of Twelve Apostles and the unique body known as the Council of Fifty exercised an enormous â&#x20AC;&#x201D; often decisive -â&#x20AC;&#x201D; power in the political affairs of the territory. This informal power was soon to be challenged with the arrival of the Utah Commission to administer the election laws and with the intensification of the federal government's "crusade" against polygamists.

This called for strengthening the political solidarity of Mormon voters. It also greatly increased the desire for statehood and freedom from the administration of anti-polygamy laws by federal officials in the territory.

At the end of 1882 John Henry Smith was called to preside over the European mission of the Mormon Church, with headquarters in Liverpool, England. Upon his return to the United States in the spring of 1885 he took some time to travel in the East and to visit non-Mormon relatives in New England. Summing up the predicament of the Saints in a letter to his cousin, Joseph F. Smith, who was in Hawaii to avoid prosecution for unlawful cohabitation, he observed that there were bitter feelings against the Mormons by easterners, who, he said, were "wrought up by the false stories, and I see no chance to change the current of public opinion."14 In Utah, he found conditions appalling. He recalled that he had "found regular panic existing among the people," with men, women, and children slipping from place to place," his own family in four different places, and the church president and several apostles in hiding. He added somewhat critically, "We seem to have no defined policy but are trusting to luck. I don't know how it is possible for men with large families to continue the dodging business very long when they have no 1 3 See John Henry Smith " J o u r n a l , " April 24 and 27, 1882.

J o h n Henry Smith Letterbooks, April 23, 1885, Smith Family Americana, University of U t a h Library.

14

Papers,

Western

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means to support themselves or families with. I can see no way out of the present business only to stand and take it."15 It was another time of helplessness and frustration for John Henry Smith.

There was still some political power to be wielded within the territory, through the legislature, and this could be largely controlled through the Mormon People's party. That summer Smith and Heber J. Grant set about to pick and put into office cooperative candidates, but they were not entirely successful. Smith indicated in a letter to Francis M. Lyman that he could not purge some of the uncooperative legislators in Morgan and Summit counties "without hurting the feelings of the people." He was learning that when persuasion fails in politics it is sometimes wise not to force an issue.16 At this same time â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in July of 1885 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Smith noted that "the heat" had become intense, and he was not referring to the weather. On July 2 he recorded in his journal that he had been arrested by U.S. Marshal H. F. Collin for illegal cohabitation but released for "lack of evidence."

On July 21 he observed that the federal officers were keeping a close watch on him and that his mother's home in Provo had been raided.

He had noted earlier in the year that "everyone of us may have to go to the pen. I feel perfectly willing to do so if needs be, but I had much rather stay out. I know that plural marriage is from the Lord and I hope to be able to meet with fortitude whatever he may require of me."17 Why was Smith fortunate enough not to have to spend time in the penitentiary? In describing his arrest and immediate release by the commissioner, he acknowledged that many polygamists had been "sent to the pen for half what they proved against me, but it was my good fortune to have a friend or two at Court and the commissioner was one of them. . . . Personal friendships are my only security at the present, but I cannot as yet make up my mind to run."18 In letters to Joseph F. Smith, who was then second counselor to President John Taylor, he was candid about the value of his non-Mormon friends. He said he felt that the Lord was using some outsiders "who are personally my warm friends and will do all they can for me . . . ."19 But there was still a note of caution: is Ibid.

16 July 2 1 , 1885, Letterbooks.

1 7 John Henry Smith to S. W. Sears, April 30, 1885, Letterbooks. is John Henry Smith to George W. Libbey, April 21, 1886, Letterbooks.

19 May 4, 1886, Letterbooks.

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#m **>

Charles S. Zane.

C. W. Bennett.

G. M. Bartch.

The Alta Club here are very largely the instigators of these prosecutions, and in that body I have many acquaintances. Greenman told me that Pat Lannan [business manager of the Salt Lake Tribune] always stood up in my defense. McKay the Commissioner told me awhile ago to keep a little quiet[.] I feel that if it becomes necessary for me to run the Lord will use some of these fellows to say look out. When I was before the Commissioner last year he told me that the outsiders did not want me put in prison. So they may lull me to sleep and come and take me away.20

It is evident that by this time John Henry Smith had built some bridges of friendship into the non-Mormon community; it is also evident that he was not sure just how much weight they would bear.

During the late 1880s the prospects for statehood often seemed dim.

With the passage of the Edmunds-Tucker Act in 1887, church property was escheated, and tighter controls over the electoral process were instituted. Consequently, the desire for statehood was intensified, and efforts to gain this elusive goal frequently were noted in Smith's accounts of meetings with the First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve Apostles. He reported in his journal on August 4, 1887, that it was unanimously agreed by a group of the leading brethren that the statehood question would be pushed. On August 12 he wrote that costs of attaining statehood had been discussed and that a half million dollars probably would be required. The next day, action was taken at a council meeting.

20

July 28, 1886, Letterbooks,

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359

Wilford Woodruff, George Q . C a n n o n a n d Joseph F. Smith were sustained as a committee to get statehood if possible, and one h u n d r e d thousand appropriated to set the ball in motion. 2 1

Besides church funds, private contributions evidently were also needed.

John Henry Smith noted in his journal on October 10 that he was arranging to borrow some money and would give one thousand dollars to the state movement.

Money was not all that would be needed to attain statehood. There was the nagging question of polygamy. Although this may have been more of an emotional than a real issue for those who opposed statehood because they feared economic and political domination by church leaders,22 it had a powerful appeal in Washington, D. C. It could not be ignored. Could it be abandoned â&#x20AC;&#x201D; at least temporarily? Smith appears to have entertained the idea. In a letter to his cousin on April 3, 1888, he wrote: T h e brethren are all in good health a n d spirits but I a m of the opinion t h a t m a n y of t h e m are losing faith in the State M o v e m e n t if they ever h a d any. I t looks to m e as if the only chance on t h a t score is to give the whole business away, renouncing our faith say for five years a n d then taking it u p again when once inside of the great Governmental fold. 23

This seems to have been only a bit of speculation on the part of Smith. For despite the fact that the constitution drawn up in 1887 contained an anti-polygamy clause, Wilford Woodruff did not seem inclined at that time to remove this barrier to statehood. President Woodruff was quoted by Smith as stating at a meeting in the Manti Temple in May of 1888 that "We won't quit practising Plural Marriage until Christ shall come."24 The political fortunes of Mormons outside of Utah were also affected by polygamy. In Idaho a test oath effectively disfranchised all Mormons, causing some to withdraw from the church temporarily in order to vote.25 In Arizona, where Mormons were felt by many to hold the balance of political power, it was agreed that those who were practicing plural marriage should not try to run for office. It was also agreed that 2

i John Henry Smith "Journal," August 13, 1887.

See statement of Idaho Senator Frederick T . Dubois on "political domination of the church" as more important than polygamy, in Klaus J. Hansen, Quest for Empire, 170.

23 Letterbooks.

24 J o h n Henry Smith "Journal," May 17, 1888.

25 Ibid., entries for October 11, 26, and 29, 1888.

22

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they would vote with the Democratic party for that territory's delegate to Congress.26 The election of 1888 brought a new sense of urgency to those in Utah who were working for statehood, for it brought a change in the presidency of the United States. The election of a Republican, Benjamin Harrison, over Democrat Grover Cleveland was greeted with misgivings by many in the territory. Rightly or wrongly it was felt that the Democratic party nationally was more sympathetic to the Mormons, less inclined toward vigorous enforcement of the anti-polygamy statutes, and more likely to grant statehood for Utah.27 A contemporary of John Henry Smith, Abraham H. Cannon, reported that a majority of the speakers at a meeting in the opera house "seemed to feel that the election of Harrison meant death to 'Mormonism.' "28 A group of the apostles and other leaders met on November 13 and agreed to make a last-minute effort to get into the union before the Democrats left power.29 Not only were they unable to do so, but it was soon evident that new legislation designed to break the political power of the Mormons might be passed. Within two years, victories of the nonMormon Liberal party in Salt Lake City and Ogden showed that a reconsideration of the political strategy and tactics of the church leaders was in order.

By the early months of 1890, church leaders faced some pressing problems with regard to party politics, not only in Utah but in other areas where Mormon political strength was felt and feared. In the deliberations and actions of the next few years, John Henry Smith was deeply involved.

Evidently the church political strategists at this time were following a "reward your friends and punish your enemies" policy. The journals of Smith, Abraham H. Cannon, and others show that the time had come in the surrounding areas of Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Arizona to reward those who were likely to be effective in furthering statehood for Utah and in keeping test oaths out of their own constitutions. Sometimes this involved active support of Republicans; always it involved 26

Ibid., September 2, 1888.

Richard D. Poll discusses reasons for this in " T h e Political Reconstruction of U t a h Territory," especially 119-22.

28 Abraham H. Cannon "Journal," November 10, 1888. Original in Brigham Young University Library; photocopies in the U t a h Historical Society Library and in Western Americana, University of U t a h Library.

29 John Henry Smith "Journal," November 13, 1888.

27

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361

efforts to keep from appearing to "meddle" in partisan politics — for fear of adverse reactions.

By mid-1890, the church leaders came to grips with the problems of political support for candidates in Idaho, Wyoming, and Arizona. At a meeting of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, First Presidency, and other leading churchmen on July 31 it was resolved that the Mormon people in Idaho be instructed "not to vote or meddle in politics, because the anti-Mormon sentiment is so strong that trouble would most likely follow those who cast votes."30 Smith was sent to Wyoming to urge the Saints as far as possible to vote the Republican state ticket, "as a reward to Delegate [J. M.] Carey and his party forgetting Wyoming admitted as a State without any anti-Mormon legislation in the charter, and giving women the franchise."31 It was noted by Apostle Abraham Cannon that "the Democrats when they had the power to do us good were afraid, and betrayed us so that now we feel as though the Republican Party should be tried to see if they will be fair to us."32 A hands-off policy was adopted for Arizona in 1890. Although church leaders were by now doubtful of the ability of Arizona Democrats to help further their goals, they feared that they would be open to charges of ingratitude and fickleness if they switched to the Republican.

"It was finally decided," Abraham H. Cannon noted, "to leave it with our people there to divide and vote either Republican or Democratic as their inclinations might direct."33 The following year, when a constitutional convention was in progress in Arizona, this policy was changed. An instrument of this change was John Henry Smith, who went with John Morgan, a member of the church's First Council of Seventy, on a combined political and religious mission to that state. Not only did he carry written authorization from the First Presidency to counsel the Saints in prudent courses of action, but he also had glowing letters of introduction to Arizona Republicans from three of his non-Mormon friends who were federal judges — Charles S. Zane, C. W. Bennett, and G. M. Bartch — and from United States Marshal E. H. Parsons. They praised him as a staunch Republican and pointed out that he had considerable influence with Mormon voters.34 30 31 32 33 34

Abraham H . Cannon "Journal," July 31, 1890.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid., August 7, 1890.

Texts of notes in John Henry Smith " J o u r n a l , " September 19 and 2 1 , 1891.

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He had a mission of some diplomatic delicacy to perform, one in which Mormons, Republicans, and Democrats would figure. One aim was to block a Republican-supported test oath that would have disfranchised polygamous Mormons.35 He started by traveling to San Francisco to renew an old friendship with a former Democratic governor of Arizona, Conrad M. Zulick, then continued on to Arizona. Reporting on the visit to the constitutional convention in Phoenix, the two men wrote to the First Presidency: W e were m e t very kindly by m e n of both political parties a n d every courtesy extended to us. W e h a d interviews with the leading m e n of t h e R e p u b l i c a n party, a n d found t h e m perfectly willing to meet us half way, b u t stating frankly t h a t a united vote in Arizona by o u r people, for t h e Democracy, m e a n t w a r to the d e a t h on their p a r t ; Division m e a n t favors a n d friendships. 3 6

Evidently the time had come to divide the Arizona Mormons between the national parties, which meant encouraging Republicanism among the Saints. No assignment could have brought more joy to John Henry Smith. He told the First Presidency that the situation was "quite favorable for the organization of the two parties" since there were "brethren ready and prepared to take hold of the Republican party and perfect its organization among the people."37 This is only one of many examples that could be cited to show the wide range of Smith's political activities in the early 1890s outside of Utah. He had ample opportunities to dabble in politics in Colorado, where he frequently visited his second wife, Josephine, in Manassa. In 1890 he reported that he had thrown influence to Senator Henry M. Teller (a Republican at that time) who had asked for Mormon aid and promised to do all he could for the Mormons.38 In 1892 he wrote to relatives in Colorado requesting their help in keeping Mormons from going to the Populist or the Democratic party because it would affect the welfare of the entire Mormon people.39 Similar political activities of Smith in Wyoming and Idaho can be seen during this same period.

The entire story of the Woodruff Manifesto in 1890, the division of the Mormon People's party and the non-Mormon Liberal party along 35 For a discussion of the test oath (it was not included in the constitution) see J a y J. Wagoner, Arizona Territory 1863-1912 (Tucson, 1970), 289.

36 J o h n Henry Smith to President Wilford Woodruff a n d Counsellors, October 6, 1891, in J o h n Henry Smith Papers, 1889-1897, C h u r c h Historian's Office.

37 Ibid.

38 J o h n Henry Smith to Woodruff, November 4, 1890, in J o h n Henry Smith Papers, 1889-1897, Church Historian's Office.

39 J o h n Henry to S. S. a n d A. R. Smith, November 1 and 2, 1892, in Letterbooks,

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Smith

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national party lines from 1891 through 1893 need not be recounted here.

Switching from a policy of official neutrality toward national political parties agreed upon in 1890,40 church leaders decided in 1891 to disband the church-dominated People's party and help organize along national party lines. John Henry Smith played a part in these activities, along with a number of other prominent Mormons and non-Mormons, Smith reported that he, President Woodruff, and George Q. Cannon, first counselor in the First Presidency, had talked over the political situation with some non-Mormon friends and decided it was best to organize the Republican party. 41 "President Woodruff said he was a Republican and I said I was." 42 The following day Smith reported that he had spent most of the day buttonholing men to find out what their politics were if they had any. He was given the approval of President Woodruff, who told him to select men he wanted to go with him in that work.43 At this time, according to Abraham H. Cannon, the aim of church leaders was to keep the two political parties evenly divided in the ter40

See A b r a h a m H . C a n n o n " J o u r n a l , " April 5, 1890, for statement of policy.

Both parties had already been organized b u t the People's and Liberal parties had not been dissolved.

42 J o h n H e n r y Smith " J o u r n a l , " May 14, 1891.

43 Ibid., M a y 15, 1891.

41

John Henry Smith, Francis M. Lyman, and Anthon H. Lund (front row) and three unidentified men pose in front of the Beehive House, ca. 1909.

Courtesy LDS Church Historian's Office.

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ritory. Mormons were to refrain from seeking political office and to try to find "honorable Gentiles" to fill positions. T h e bitterness between Mormons and the non-Mormon federal office holders was beginning to dissolve, and everything possible was to be done to foster this atmosphere as a necessary condition for statehood. 44 During this time, John Henry Smith was frequently in the company of prominent non-Mormon Republicans in the city — or out in the territory pursuing his religious and political duties.

At this point, the activities of church leader, political missionary for the church, and Republican partisan seemed to be entirely harmonious and all furthering the goal of statehood. 45 REPUBLICAN

PARTISAN

If all these activities seemed entirely compatible to J o h n Henry Smith, they would not always seem so to others. As he played his third role of Republican partisan — often indistinguishable from his other roles — he was to learn that in party politics you can lose friends as well as make them. H e was caught u p in the controversy over whether church leaders should be in partisan politics at all. H e was also criticized for being overzealous and personal in his attacks on Democrats.

A b r a h a m H . Cannon wrote that Smith's political activities were the subject of a lengthy discussion by the Q u o r u m of Twelve Apostles early in 1892. H e recalled: John Henry Smith next told of the way in which he had become mixed up in politics, and of the work he had been doing. If it had not been for his labors he said we might every one have been disfranchised by this time. It seemed to me that he took considerable honor to himself for the present mildness which is shown towards us. He then spoke of the principles of his party in such a partisan spirit that it caused several interruptions from Bro. Thatcher who is as strong a Democrat as John is a Republican. Bro. [Lorenzo] Snow [president of the quorum] had to interfere and check the spirit which was starting. 46

A call for a vote of approval of Smith's activities was too much for the Democratic apostles. Franklin D . Richards said he knew of times when John Henry h a d "caused great offense by calling those w h o did not believe as he did some pretty h a r d names, and he for one did not approve of such talk. H e gave Bro. Smith a rather severe rebuke." T h e matter was 44

Abraham H. Cannon " J o u r n a l , " J u n e 29, 1891.

See, for example, his activities in the amnesty request in "Journal," December 19 and 21, 1891.

46 Abraham H. Cannon "Journal," J a n u a r y 12, 1892.

45

John Henry Smith

365

withheld from a vote.47 John Henry Smith confessed that he was somewhat hurt by remarks at the meeting but felt that the apostles had parted feeling "first rate." 48 Perhaps.

The following month John Henry Smith went to Washington, D. C , as part of a Republican delegation urging statehood immediately. This was in opposition to the limited self-government or home rule bill sponsored by Utah's Delegate-to-Congress John T. Caine, a Democrat. This trip gave him an opportunity to meet prominent Republican office holders, including Secretary of State James G. Blaine. Again he carried letters from his friends among the non-Mormon Republicans of the territory, certifying to his support of the Republican cause and his influence among the Mormons of Utah. The visit of Smith and other Republicans was regarded by Democrat Caine as a political ploy to seize credit for furthering statehood and to see that Democrats did not get credit for passing a home rule bill. Caine also commented on the spectacle of Mormon Democrats and Republicans opposing one another along party lines and expressed fears that "party feeling" would lead to bitterness and estrangement among the brethren.49 This was only a prelude to the election of 1892, in which both John Henry and Joseph F. Smith participated actively on the Republican side. As a counterweight to these two prominent churchmen, Apostle Moses Thatcher spoke at the Democratic territorial convention and subsequently entered into an exchange of public letters with John Henry Smith.50 These were not confined to lofty debates cn the issues but sometimes included personal innuendos and speculations on the Democratic or Republican leanings of Lucifer. No wonder some of the Saints were surprised and puzzled by the sight of such political dissension in the highest councils of the church, where unity had always been the ideal.

Was it proper for church leaders to be in partisan politics at all?

There was much pressure on the First Presidency to show â&#x20AC;&#x201D; publicly at least â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a kind of benign impartiality toward the two national parties.

This was frequently pressed by Democrats, who feared that the church 47

Ibid.

J o h n H e n r y Smith " J o u r n a l , " J a n u a r y 12, 1892.

49 J o h n T . Caine to George Goddard, February 1, 1892, J o h n T. Caine Letterbooks, C h u r c h Historian's Office.

50 See J o h n Henry Smith letter in the Ogden Standard, M a y 24, 1892, and Moses T h a t cher reply in the Salt Lake Herald, M a y 28, 1892. See also Apostle Moses Thatcher's The Issues of the Times (Salt Lake City, 1892) a n d Joseph F. Smith's pamphlet, Another Plain Talk, Reasons Why the People of Utah Should be Republicans (Salt Lake City, 1892), both in Pamphlet Collection, U t a h State Historical Society.

48

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Utah Historical Quarterly

leaders' influence in strengthening the Republican party was going too far. To avoid this, should all the highest leaders withdraw from partisan politics and take vows of political silence? President Wilford Woodruff stated, in essence, that all church members were free to participate in political affairs and that no one would be coerced to vote for one party or another. He did not put a stop to the partisan activities of John Henry Smith.51 It would have been exceedingly difficult for Smith to have hidden his Republican sympathies in 1892, or at any other time. For him the Republican party was the instrument of his secular faith; it was his "political church," so to speak. He believed profoundly and sincerely in the principles of the party as he understood them. He felt the Republican party was the salvation not only of the Mormons but of the nation, despite such blows to his faith as the passage of the Edmunds Act by Republicans in 1882. He believed that when Mormons had studied the history of both parties, Utah would be Republican. Good sense would dictate this, he felt, not the Republican influence of prominent church leaders.52 Did Smith ever realize that his influence as a church leader might make it difficult to resist his appeals on behalf of his "political church"?

The answer is, clearly, yes. He sometimes warned others against using pressure or "church influence" in politics, and he sometimes emphasized that he was speaking as an individual in asking for political support.54 But it was difficult for him to see how a Mormon could be a Democrat.

He wrote to a friend: I t is to my m i n d a strange t h i n g t h a t any latter day saint c a n link his destiny with the D e m o c r a t i c p a r t y considering all of the history of the past a n d the disorder t h a t m u s t of necessity follow t h a t idea of governm e n t , b u t you have the right to be w h a t you please a n d I would not curtail you in any way. do w h a t you concieve [sic] to be right a n d m a y t h e L o r d bless you. 5 5

John Henry Smith continued to do what he thought was right in partisan politics. At a meeting of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles on 51 See account of this campaign in B. H . Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (6 vols., Salt Lake City, 1930), V I , 301-10. For statement of President Woodruff and Joseph F. Smith on political freedom of the Saints, see 309.

52 This view is explained in John Henry Smith to H . E. Baker, M a y 20, 1892, Letterbooks.

53 For a concise explanation of his Republican philosophy see J o h n Henry Smith to Messrs. Saxey, Holbrook & Keeler, November 12, 1891, Letterbooks.

54 See for example, John Henry Smith to Jesse N. Smith, M a r c h 14, 1892, a n d to William Halls, October 12, 1894, Letterbooks.

55 John Henry Smith to W. W. Damron, M a y 7, 1892, Letterbooks.

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October 12, 1893, it was decided that "all of the Presidency, Twelve, Presidents of the Seventies, Presidency of Stakes and Bishopric keep out of politics. Except as the Presidency of the Church might wish."56 Apparently the Presidency wished John Henry Smith to continue his work, for his letters and journals for the next two years show no abatement of his political activity. He was playing all three roles with zest and satisfaction.

In 1894 Utahns elected a Republican delegate to Congress, Frank J. Cannon, son of George Q. Cannon of the First Presidency. They also elected delegates to a constitutional convention, in accordance with the Enabling Act which had finally been passed by Congress earlier in the year. Utah was at last on the threshold of statehood â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and voting Republican in the bargain. John Henry Smith's fondest dreams were coming true!

He reported that on November 6 he had voted the straight Republican ticket. The day after the election he recorded with much satisfaction that the internal interests are saved. The flag again floats for the American people. F. J. Cannon is elected to Congress. My precinct has gone Republican. I am elected a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. 57

His joy was short-lived. There were charges of fraud in the Salt Lake City Third Precinct and demands for an examination of the ballots by the Utah Commission. This Democratic-dominated body was the last group of men in the world in whom John Henry Smith wanted to rest his fate. He was not surprised when their examination showed that he was fifty votes short of election.58 He was determined to fight for his seat and did so through the courts. Several of the most prominent nonMormon Republican judges and lawyers in the territory handled his case; three prominent non-Mormon Democratic lawyers defended the action of the commission in denying the certificate of election. The result was a standoff. The Utah Commission was prohibited by the court from opening all the ballot boxes but it retaliated by refusing to certify Smith's election on the basis of the first count.59 He filed an affidavit with the 56 J o h n H e n r y Smith " J o u r n a l , " October 12, 1893. See also A b r a h a m H . Cannon Journal, same date. H e emphasized that church leaders were to "hold themselves in such a position as to counsel the brethren, and act as arbiters between both parties."

57 J o h n Henry Smith "Journal," November 7, 1894. ss Salt Lake Herald, December 19, 1894.

59 Accounts of the controversy were carried in the Salt Lake City newspapers during December of 1894 through February of 1895. J o h n H e n r y Smith's journal entries show his anxieties over the case, while the U t a h Commission report for 1895 includes a summary of the case in M i n u t e Book G, pp. 340 and 341, U t a h State Archives.

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convention on the opening day and placed the issue in the hands of the convention. This political hot potato was handed to the credentials committee, which promptly reported that it wanted the matter settled by the whole convention. Forced to make a decision, the committee voted to recommend the seating of the delegates who h a d filed affidavits. T h e following day J o h n Henry Smith was elected president of the convention. 60 THE

CONVENTION

PRESIDENT:

AN

OVERVIEW

Constitutions, it may be said in summarizing, are political documents, written to reflect the needs a n d desires of the people w h o are to be governed under them. T h e finished products are always less t h a n perfect in the eyes of any one segment of society, for conflicting claims must be reconciled and compromises must be made. This, it would seem, must be the work of politicians â&#x20AC;&#x201D; m e n who are skilled in the arts of diplomacy, compromise, and consensus building. This is not to suggest that they should be lacking in principles or a high sense of purpose. As John Henry Smith observed, convention delegates are making decisions that will affect not only their own generation but the lives of their children and their children's children, if they do their job well. Their task, then, is to produce a document t h a t will be accepted by various and conflicting groups in their own time, and still survive in years to come.

I n 1895, Mormons and non-Mormons, Republicans and Democrats, sat down together to complete the last task remaining before finally attaining statehood. Some m a y prefer to think that this job was done by "statesmen" who were above the religious and political conflicts of their times. T h e evidence shows that t h e opposite is true. Both Mormons and non-Mormons among the delegates h a d lived through the bitter battles of the past a n d were eager to move into a new era. I t was not because they stood above the events of their times but because they understood t h e m so well that they were determined to succeed.

For their president they chose a m a n whose life reflected the long struggle for statehood. H e h a d shared the burdens a n d fought the battles of his own people. At the same time, h e h a d realized how dependent the Saints were on overcoming the hostility of the rest of the nation. H e h a d cultivated friendships among the non-Mormons of the territory through 60

seating.

See Convention

Proceedings,

I., 12-40, for a complete account of the debates over

John Henry Smith

369

his business and political activities. If he lost a little lustre and hurt a few feelings in his zeal for the Republican cause, this was a price he was willing to pay for his convictions. It was all part of his political education.

Perhaps Smith's greatest contribution to the statehood effort was his ability to reach across religious lines. The attainment of statehood did not mean the end of Mormon and non-Mormon conflicts over church influence in Utah politics. There was a new era of bad feeling in the first decade of the twentieth century, arising out of the hearings on seating Senator Reed Smoot and the role played by Mormon President Joseph F. Smith in Utah politics. On October 13, 1911, John Henry Smith died suddenly. The editor of the bitterly anti-Mormon Tribune paid him a tribute that must have been galling to his colleagues in the church leadership.

I n general it may be said that Apostle Smith belonged to that b r a n c h of the church which reached out for a new departure, a turning away from the bigotries, the intolerances, and the exclusiveness of the past, and for getting into touch with American life and American institutions. H e was handicapped in this by being a polygamist; but he did not obtrude his polygamy, as so many of the elders are in the habit of doing. In church councils he was always on the side of broadmindedness, and the loosening u p of the restrictive bands which have held the people together as "a peculiar people," hostile to all "outsiders." H e did not consider every one not of the faith as his enemy, as so many of the Saints do, and as the tendency always is in the bigoted, fanatical clique that is so powerful in the general management of the church's affairs. . . .

I t is unfortunate for the people of U t a h to lose such men as J o h n Henry Smith. T h e r e are too few of his way of thinking left in the c h u r c h ; a n d his influence in modifying the exclusiveness and bigotry of the old order has been m u c h needed, and never more so than at the present time. 6 1

Men like John Henry Smith are always needed to carry out difficult political tasks. Not because they are above the battle, but because they have been part of it. Not because they lack firm convictions, but because they realize their views cannot be forced upon others in a free society. Not because they are untouched by contemporary conflicts, but because they have learned to understand the needs and desires of their opponents.

Such a man has had a political education to fit him for a political task.

Such a man was John Henry Smith.

61

Salt Lake Tribune editorial, October 14, 1911.

The President's Report for the Fiscal Year 1970-1971

BY MILTON C. ABRAMS

The Utah State Historical Society works under a very prosaic mandate to collect, preserve, and disseminate Utah's history. Its work has been done through a traditional program of publishing the Quarterly and Newsletter, by providing library services to patrons and researchers, and by two more recent programs â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the Utah Humanities and Historic Preservation projects â&#x20AC;&#x201D; both of which have given to the Society a new and needed visibility.

Dr. Abrams, librarian at Utah State University and chairman of the Utah Historic and Cultural Sites Review Committee, has served on the Board of State History since 1965 and as president since 1969.

Keynote speaker at the annual dinner of the Utah State Historical Society was Robert M. Utley, chief historian, National Park Service.

President's Report

371

Utah Humanities Project: The purpose of the Humanities Project has been to disseminate relevant ideas in the humanities to a broad general audience through museum kits, slide presentations, community displays, and programs of local organizations.

1. Museum kits have been developed in cooperation with state and district school officials to dovetail with Utah history curricula. This past year kits on communications, building materials, and rock art were distributed. Kits now being developed will focus on historical geography, dinosaurs, and transportation. Teachers of Utah history have responded favorably to this project, and many who helped evaluate the kits have asked to have them back again. Cooperating with the Humanities Project in the evaluation of the kits were teachers and supervisors in four districts : Davis, Salt Lake, Granite, and Nebo.

2. Slide presentations dealt with "The Rock Art of Prehistoric Utah" and "Utah: Then and Now." The Bertha Eccles Community Art Center in Ogden adapted the rock art presentation to its tour program.

The slides have been in great demand by elementary classes visiting the the art center. The presentation on Utah's changing landscape â&#x20AC;&#x201D;- "Then and Now" â&#x20AC;&#x201D; made use of two slide projectors operated simultaneously.

This program was especially well received at senior citizens centers throughout the state. Both programs were circulated in schools and were shown to church, club, and civic groups.

3. Under the community display phase of the fifteen-month pilot project the Society and local chapters attempted to inform the general public of local history. The Society sponsored exhibits at the Utah State Fair, at the social studies section of the Utah Educational Association convention, and at the Mansion. The Humanities Project cooperated in a display of local industry at the Weber County Library and is helping plan a Carbon County historical display for the College of Eastern Utah this winter. Community exhibits were set up in banks and local business establishments by the officers of the Iron County, Sevier Valley, and Sanpete Valley chapters.

4. To assist local chapters in their activities the Humanities Project assembled an Officer's Notebook, initiated a chapter newsletter, sponsored a workshop for chapter leaders, and compiled an extensive list of speakers.

Chapter officers will now have more than 120 qualified specialists to select from in planning their 1971-1972 lecture schedules.

The humanities grant has now been renewed for a second fifteenmonth period by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Programs

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Quarterly

of museum kits and aid to local chapters will be expanded under this second phase. Two new projects have begun. One of these is a Father Escalante slide presentation which, it is hoped, will begin to focus the attention of Utah citizens on the approaching National Bicentennial in 1976. The Escalante expedition of 200 years ago brought Europeans into Utah in their first recorded excursion and has significance regionally and nationally. The second new project will establish a program of guided tours and interpretive history exhibits for the Mansion.

Museums'. During the past year the Historical Society has strengthened its support of museums. The Emery County Museum at Castle Dale joined the Society as a local chapter and has conducted an energetic program of field trips. The museums in San Juan County, at Monticello and Branding, have both called on the Society for advice. In contacting and working with local history museums. Dr. Glen M. Leonard has encouraged the use of interpretive displays and assisted museum personnel in getting help through the publications and technical leaflets of the American Association for State and Local History. He also assisted in the updating of the membership lists for the Utah Museums Conference.

The Humanities Project's proposed museum display at the Mansion will help interpret the story behind this historic old home to the thousands who visit it each year. Volunteer guides will be enlisted to conduct regular tours of the home for interested student and adult groups. The use of the Keams Mansion as a museum of social and mining history is expected to multiply many times through this expanded tour program.

Local Chapter Activities: The major concern of the Historical Society has been its effort to reach the communities throughout Utah.

The Society has long had local chapters, and a number of these have been very active for years, However, with new thrust special advances have been made during the last year. The Daggett County Chapter has led the way in percentage of the local population enrolled and has pursued an active program of meetings, tours, and preservation projects, including a program of documenting early cabins, The Society's newest affiliate is the Alta Canyon Chapter, organized early in August.

The older chapters have continued their enthusiastic sponsorship of monthly lecture meetings and summer treks to historic sites. The Iron County Chapter has expanded its successful oral history project. The Rio Virgin Chapter has progressed in its efforts to preserve and restore the Washington County Courthouse. Sevier Valley Chapter supplemented its quality program by publishing a guide to local historic sites. Sanpete

President's

Report

373

County Chapter immersed itself in the valley's annual Mormon pageant by providing supplementary tours and displays, and the chapter in Wasatch County cooperated in a successful summer playhouse featuring Brigham Young University students.

Dr. Glen Leonard continues to direct the Humanities program and is assisted in its implementation by Miriam B. Murphy, assistant project director, Helene Crane, secretary, and David Atkinson, research assistant.

Utah Historic Preservation: Gary D. Forbush, an architect, was named project director for the Utah Preservation Program. He has worked Milton C. Abrams, president of the board, addresses the annual meeting closely and effectively with Melin Provo. vin T. Smith, former preservation officer. They have been assisted by Helen Mathison, secretary, and hundreds of volunteers throughout the state of Utah.

In 1969 the Utah State Legislature committed the state to at least a two-year Historic Sites Survey program, appropriating during that time approximately $27,500 in state funds, which with matching federal monies have been used to finance a survey of state sites to date. During this time an inventory of hundreds of sites has been developed. Three registers have been established •— the National Register of Historic Places, the State Register of Historic Sites, and the Century Register for pioneer homes. Certificates have been given to proprietors of national and state sites, and a marker has been designed for each of the registers.

In addition, a Utah Historic Preservation Plan has been written and submitted to the National Park Service, which awarded the plan high commendation and a two-year period of acceptance. In fact, then, phase one of Utah's preservation planning — the Historic Sites Survey — has reached its zenith.

While some two hundred fifty sites have been registered, with nearly fifty sites nominated to the National Register, it is understood that hun-

374

Utah Historical

Quarterly

dreds more will be reviewed by the governor's Historic and Cultural Sites Review Committee as soon as proper research and documentation can be completed on them. In effect, the survey will never end. However, phase two is in its ascendency. Greater emphasis will now be placed on actual preservation projects. Two such projects are the restoration of the Historical Society Mansion and the Washington County Courthouse.

These National Register sites have qualified for matching federal monies.

They are only the beginning for the state. In addition, the state's Historic Preservation Plan will be revised and updated. Brochures on the various sites are planned as well as historic tours to visit and enjoy Utah's heritage.

Our history is meaningful only when our citizens become cognizant of it. Historic preservation provides the Society with a unique opportunity to collect, to preserve, and to publish Utah's history. Thousands of people are becoming involved in one way or another. In cooperation with the Utah Heritage Foundation, the Society supported the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) Survey this summer. Other programs have been advanced as well, including a survey of Indian petroglyphs and pictographs by Polly Schaafsma and the excellent survey work by the Junior Leagues of Ogden and Salt Lake City and other interested individuals.

Not only is the preservation program making Utah people conscious of their heritage, it is attracting tourists to the state, an economic factor of significance. History must have economic consequence if we are to ask our society to finance the preservation of the past. Arrow Press Square, Trolley Square, and Keith-Brown Mansion (Terracor) are excellent examples of businesses becoming involved profitably as preservationists.

Finally, preservation of the past is possible only when the public accepts its responsibility to care enough. Whether a lovely church, a historic home, or an Indian rock painting, it is the public conscience that counts.

Publications and Research: The pressures of the above programs have compounded the needs and opportunities for publication of Utah's history. Fortunately the Society has the Utah Historical Quarterly which continues to publish exciting new materials in the form of interpretive articles, essays, and diaries. Two special issues featured the Indians of the Utah area and reclamation efforts of importance to Utah irrigation and conservation history.

President's Report

375

The Society's 75th anniversary and the 125th anniversary of Mormon settlement offer two themes for possible treatment in the year ahead.

Circulation has now increased to 2,360 with 2,000 extra copies of the Indian edition being printed.

The Society's Newsletter and Preservation News have continued their excellent reporting of activities of the Society and the Historic Sites Survey. In addition, a new publication, Chapter News, has been initiated under the Humanities Project to provide a more detailed exchange of news among the affiliated chapters. This newsletter is also sent to all local museums in an effort to improve communications and share useful ideas.

Other publication achievements during 1971 included a biography of Governor William Spry by William L. Roper and Leonard J. Arrington, and a centennial history of the Salt Lake Tribune by O. N. Malmquist. Both have been well received and suggest a worthwhile publication future for the Society.

After many years of very able service to the Society, Margery W. Ward resigned in March 1971 to teach in the public schools. To meet this loss, Miriam B. Murphy was employed as associate editor. However, because of the need for expanded editorial and publication services due to the Utah Humanities Project and the Historic Preservation programs, with consequent increased administrative duties falling to the director, it was decided to reorganize the editorial staff. While the director remains as editor, Dr. Glen M. Leonard, coordinator of publications and research, will serve as managing editor, and Mrs. Murphy as assistant editor.

The involvement of the Society with school teachers through the Humanities Project has brought repeated requests for help in organizing junior history clubs in the schools. The Society is hopeful of providing some guidelines for interested teachers and has once again begun investigating the possibility of a junior history program. This new editorial potential projects toward the Society's future objectives.

Public Services: Probably the most notable of the public services provided by the Society was the seventy-fifth anniversary celebration of statehood during January. The program was conceived at the Society and suggested to Milton L. Weilenmann who in turn reported to Governor Calvin L. Rampton. The governor appointed a blue ribbon committee headed by Arch L. Madsen, president of Bonneville International Corporation, and John W. Gallivan, publisher of the Salt Lake Tribune. The

376

Utah Historical

Quarterly

week-long Diamond Jubilee celebration featured a different theme each day to focus on Utah's progress as a state. T h e Historical Society was depended upon to provide information from the past. This background research was presented in newspaper articles, radio and television features, and in brief historical talks during the observance of each day's theme. T h e week centered around Statehood Day sponsored by the Society on January 4. Programs on other days during the anniversary week examined Utah's cultural heritage, progress in education, transportation, communication, industry, recreation, government, ethnic groups, and local communities. I n addition, a special Diamond Jubilee display was prepared as part of a month-long open house at the Mansion.

T h e achievement of statehood in 1896 is of special interest to us, because the event precipitated the establishment during the following year of the U t a h Historical Society.

Library and Research: This has been a difficult year for the library.

Budget cuts and inflation have been costly. T h e Society was able to add 2,400 books, pamphlets, microfilms, and periodicals to its collections; however, this amount represents a yearly rate decrease in acquisitions of more than 650 items from 1969-1970. Total holdings have increased to a new high — 15,000 books, 13,700 pamphlets, 10,000 bound periodicals and 920 rolls of microfilms. T h e photograph collection has increased to more than 22,000. Margaret M'~M.m..

Lester has done an excellent job ~ ' M ^ and reports that the Society has recently received one of its most significant gifts, the John E. Bennett collection, from Ronald Inkley of Inkley's Photo Company of Salt Lake City. Other major contributions have been made for which the Society is grateful. T h e services of many volunteers have been appreciated.

M a r t h a Stewart now provides excellent service as research librarian. T h e part-time Melvin T. Smith, director, welcomes staff continues its good contriguests at the annual meeting of the bution also. John James, Jr., has Utah State Historical Society.

(

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-

•

••••'-•

•

.'

'•

y

President's Report

377

served the Society for many years with great dedication and distinction.

Unfortunately, this past year he has suffered from arthritis, periodically being unable to be at work. Yet he has continued to perform with excellence under conditions that have been extremely difficult for him.

Because of the increased demand for historical data by state and federal agencies and private individuals, the library is anxious to expand its research service. The Society has provided general advice on many matters and particular expertise to Utah State Parks and Recreation on its Pioneer Village Project, and to the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation in locating and documenting the Mormon Battalion Trail. (Dr. Charles S. Peterson, John Yurtinus, Kent Powell, and David Atkinson were involved in this research.) Another project researched the location of the Pony Express Trail and stations through Utah. Much of this research, conducted by Dr. Richard Jackson and Raleigh Crausby, Brigham Young University Department of Geography, has been used by Bureau of Land Management personnel. Other major historic trails, historic sites, and districts must eventually be carefully, thoroughly, and officially documented. The history community and other related disciplines will be asked to participate. Architects, geographers, artists, folklorists, and writers are already involved in preserving and reviewing Utah's heritage.

The Society's Nineteenth Annual Meeting, held in Provo on September 18, reflected this expanding focus.

Awards: To recognize outstanding contributions to Utah history, the Society each year at its annual meeting confers a select number of awards. Nine deserving men and women were honored this year. The Society's Honorary Life Membership was given to Dr. Dean R. Brimhall, a recognized authority on Indian rock art and member of the Board of State History since 1965.

The J. Grant Iverson Service Award was presented to F. Garn Hatch for his efforts in preserving the Wasatch Stake Tabernacle. O.N. Malmquist was honored for his service to history as author of The First 100 Years: A History of The Salt Lake Tribune, 1871 - 1971, and Mrs. LaVell Johnson was cited for extensive research on the history of Delta and west Millard County.

Mrs. Rebecca S. Payne received the Society's Teacher Award for her social studies curriculum guides developed for use in Granite School District. Classroom teachers honored for their success in making Utah history live for their students were Mrs. Louise Hetzel, second grade teacher at Helen McKnight Elementary School in Moab, and Mrs.

378

Utah Historical

Quarterly

Carmen Hepworth and Mrs. Florene Adams, fourth grade teachers who cooperated in an effective program at Cedar City Elementary.

Mrs. Fawn M. Brodie was awarded the Morris S. Rosenblatt Award for her article, "Sir Richard F. Burton: Exceptional Observer of the Mormon Scene." It was voted the outstanding article to appear in the Utah Historical Quarterly during the past year.

In May, the Society's annual Student Awards were presented to outstanding young historians at five local colleges and universities. Recipients were Perry Glen Datwyler (Utah State University), Christopher Merritt (Westminster College), Guy F. Potter (Brigham Young University), Kathleen Queal Stirling (University of U t a h ) , and Francis Wikstrom (Weber State College).

Administration: After two and one-half years as director, Dr. Charles S. Peterson resigned to accept a position at Utah State University. His services to the Society were many â&#x20AC;&#x201D; he emphasized moving the Society's services out into the state. The Preservation and Humanities projects are products of his leadership. Upon Dr. Peterson's leaving, Melvin T. Smith was appointed the new director. It is anticipated that continued emphasis will be given to maintaining an excellent professional Quarterly; to collecting, researching, and publishing Utah's history; and to preserving and restoring its heritage. Staff will be added as funds are available to do these jobs.

-mmm:.

All of this growth places additional burdens on the regular staff at the Society. Iris Scott, business manager, now handles an ever increasing budget, particularly with federal funding. Ann Flitton, receptionist, is asked to greet tourists as well as friends and patrons, since the Historical Society Mansion is now a National Historic Place.

The programs and new projects portend greater visibility for the Historical Society as we move toward our seventy-fifth anniversary. All of this is good, yet the Society suffers for want of budget. All of these new and needed services not only merit but must have membership and public and legislative support. Fortunately we have friends. We need more.

Dean R. Brimhall receives Honorary Life Membership in the Utah State Historical Society from Theron Luke, board member.

R EVI EWS AIM D PUBLICATIONS

Uncle Will Tells His Story. By JUANITA B R O O K S . (Salt Lake City: T a g g a r t a n d C o m p a n y , 1970. v + 249 p p . , $12.50) Ernest H e m i n g w a y once said, "All good books a r e alike in t h a t after you have finished reading one, you will feel that all t h a t h a p p e n e d to you and afterwards belongs to you, the good and t h e bad, t h e ecstasy, t h e remorse a n d sorrow, the people and the places and how t h e w e a t h e r was. If you can get so t h a t you c a n give that t o people then you are a writer." This is exactly w h a t Mrs. Brooks has accomplished. " I w a s b o r n April 2 3 , 1881 in St. George, U t a h , t h e fifth child a n d t h e second son of George a n d Emily Cornelia B r a n c h Brooks. " M y father was a stonecutter by t r a d e ; h e h a d been trained by his foster father, E d w a r d L. Parry, who was t h e master mason for both t h e Tabernacle and the Temple."

So begins a series of anecdotes a n d stories told by Will Brooks, husband of our well-known historian Juanita Brooks. H e lived most of the eighty-nine years of his life in a n d around St. George, U t a h .

H e r e is t h e story of a boy growing u p in a western frontier town, of his schooling a n d his religious training, of his becoming a m a n , a n d of t h e thirst for knowledge t h a t took h i m from o n e end of o u r state to t h e other. Will Brooks realized there a r e some things which cannot b e learned quickly a n d

time, which w e all have, must b e taxed heavily for acquiring them. T h e y a r e the simplest of things a n d because it takes a m a n ' s life t o know them, t h e little " n e w " t h a t each m a n gets from life is very costly; t h e only heritage h e has to leave.

Will Brooks h a s left t h a t heritage in his m a n y stories: heartwarming, tender, a n d sad. T h e y tell tales of m a n y famous a n d n o t so famous, people t h a t h e encountered during his career as school teacher, sheriff, a n d postmaster.

O n t h e subject of horses Will once related: " W e always h a d a t least one horse, a n d I learned to ride early, but it was n o t until Uncle F r a n k came to live with us t h a t I learned w h a t a horse might m e a n t o a m a n . Uncle Frank's deformed foot m a d e a horse a real necessity for him. M o u n t e d , Uncle Frank was handsome, with a sound, straight body a n d a fine h e a d ; a-foot, he was a cripple w h o walked with a n effort. 'A horse is a servant of man,' h e said, ' b u t h e will be a better servant if h e is well cared for. . . . Always talk t o your horse. . . .

D o n ' t try to sneak u p on h i m to catch him, o r h e just might whirl a n d kick your brains out. L e t h i m know you a r e there, t h a t you are coming for him a n d t h a t you expect h i m to wait for you.

T h e n as you ride, talk to h i m or to yourself. R e p e a t t h e T e n C o m m a n d ments o r a verse you know . . . it's n o t so m u c h w h a t you say, as that fact t h a t the horse is conscious of your v o i c e . ' ' Uncle Will Tells His Story is cut from a n unusual literary cloth. T h e

Utah Historical Quarterly

380 style is unfettered and free of cumbersome formality. I t is easy, enjoyable reading for young and old alike. I t is at once the tale of a young T o m Sawyer in a n early M o r m o n settlement, yet the saga of a strong-willed, courageous m a n who feared none but loved all.

A few words must be said of the beautiful design and production of this book. With the book design a n d cover

by Joel H . Izatt and the many examples of special photography done by D a n a H o w a r t h , this limited first edition is a collector's item. It was lithographed in two colors on Blue Ridge I n d i a n Ivory text. With its book jacket lithographed in four colors this book, filled with all the color of the frontier spirit, is one we highly recommend.

SAM W E L L E R

Salt Lake

City

The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West. Vol. I V . Ed. by L E ROY

R.

HAFEN.

(Glendale:

The

A r t h u r H . Clark Company, 1966. 397 p p . $14.50) [Editor's note: T h e following is the last of numerous reviews prepared for the Quarterly by Dale L. M o r g a n . Its publication was delayed initially because of enlarged special issues in 1969.

M r . M o r g a n — w h o h a d earlier reviewed volumes I - I I I •— then graciously agreed to write a consolidated review of volumes I V - V I . However, he was u n able to complete the three-volume review before his untimely death last March.]

This volume in the continuing Hafen series on the m o u n t a i n men (and traders a n d entrepreneurs) of the West is the mixture as before, possibly of higher average quality than the three t h a t preceded it. Thirty-three sketches by seventeen authors increase the total of biographies in the series as a whole to 125, or about one-third of the n u m b e r en-

visioned in the prospectus. For a U t a h audience we might note t h a t no sketch has yet been published for Elijah ("Barney") Ward, the only m o u n t a i n m a n of any note who ever became a M o r m o n convert.

A. P. Nasatir's sketches of James M a c kay and J e a n Baptiste T r u t e a u are concerned with top figures in the Missouri River trade of the 1970s, the closing era of Spanish Louisiana, a n d reflect his large knowledge of t h a t scene; very interesting is a footnote announcing the existence in C a n a d a of m o r e of T r u teau's diary of 1794-1796 t h a n we had known to be extant, t h o u g h this m a n u script was not available to Dr. Nasatir for the uses of his sketch. Theodore H u n t , as written up by E. Lee Dorsett, figures as one of t h e p a r t n e r s in the Missouri River trade two decades later; a n d T h o m a s James, with his important book on M a n u e l Lisa's enterprises of 1809-1810, and on a Santa F e trapping tour a decade later, is given searching scrutiny by the always well-informed Frederic E. Voelker.

T h e m o u n t a i n m e n of the Southwest are the principal preoccupation of the various authors. I have before remarked in this Quarterly on the outstanding performance of J a n e t L e c o m p t e in this area of history a n d in this series. T o her previous contributions she now adds detailed a n d searching accounts of Charles Autobees, Alexander K. Branch, J o h n Hawkins, Charles Kinney, and Archibald Charles Metcalf. Harvey L. Carter, another resident of Colorado Springs, returns with informative sketches of George a n d R o b e r t Bent, Robert Fisher, J o h n L. H a t c h e r , and T o m T o b i n ; it is to be noted, however, that Carter repeats t h e old gossip that Robert Bent was killed by Comanches near Bent's Fort in 1841, whereas Louise Barry has shown conclusively t h a t he died in St. Louis t h a t year. This brings m e to a salient observation: N o one now has any business writing about any

381

Reviews and Publications of the m o u n t a i n m e n w h o does not take account of Miss Barry's remarkable " R e vised Annals of Kansas, 1540-1854," published serially in the Kansas Historical Quarterly, 1961-1967. T h e young scholar D a v i d J. Weber, whose Southwestern researches have previously been hailed in this series, is back with sketches of Gervais N o l a n a n d J o h n Rowland.

A n n W . H a f e n provides a n account of J a m e s O h i o Pattie which is vitiated by h e r inattention to t h e now-established fact t h a t Pattie entered t h e West in 1825, n o t in 1824, as h e incorrectly rem e m b e r e d in his book. D r . Hafen himself has u p d a t e d slightly his previously published sketches of Alexander a n d Prewett Sinclair, a n d has also joined with Adrienne T . Christopher in writing u p t h e remarkable life of William F .

M a y ( w h o , as it happened, died in G r e a t Salt L a k e City in 1855). J o h n Dishon M c D e r m o t t shows signs of becoming the J a n e t Lecompte of the Platte fur t r a d e by a d d i n g a sketch of Joseph Bissonette to previous well-detailed biographies of salient personalities. R a y Mattison, w h o is m o r e concerned with t h e u p p e r Missouri area, gives us accounts of Alexander Harvey a n d J o s h u a Pilcher which, like his previous contributions, a r e informative b u t tantalizingly so; one wishes he could be given t h e opportunity to work for a few m o n t h s in t h e collections of the Missouri Historical Society. Harvey E. Tobie is always worth listening to on t h e subject of m o u n t a i n m e n who wound u p in Oregon, a n d this time h e has George Wood Ebbert in tow. Parallel is J e r o m e Peltier's account of "Black" Harris, a n d J o Tuthill's sketch of Elbridge Trask. J o h n E. W i c k h a m has some useful things to say about Peter A. Sarpy, principally remembered for his association with t h e Council Bluffs a r e a ; a n d Alfred Glen H u m p h r e y s a n d Doyce B. Nunis, Jr., write u p t h e more familiar Pegleg Smith a n d Milton G. Sublette.

T h e Iroquois m o u n t a i n m e n are not

forgotten, as Merle Wells adds a sketch of Pierre Tivanitagon ( " O l d Pierre") to t h e gallery of one-time British t r a p pers h e has been developing. T h e other three sketches in the volume are reductions of previously published books, George Drouillard by M . O . Skarsten, Antoine Leroux by Frobes Parkhill, a n d Antoine Robidoux by Williams S. W a l lace. T h e last of these should have undergone searching revision, in view of t h e constantly expanding record on the R o b i d o u x clan.

D A L E L.

MORGAN

The Montana Gold Rush Diary of Kate Dunlap.

Edited a n d Annotated by S. LYMAN TYLER.

(Denver, C o l o r a d o :

F r e d A. Rosenstock, O l d West Publishing Company, a n d Salt Lake City: University of U t a h Press, 1969. 76 p p . $15.00) W h a t first strikes the reader as h e picks u p this book is its h a n d s o m e form a t a n d unusual design. T h e diary is tied to a large scale m a p (U.S.G.S. base) which in twenty-two successive pieces runs from Keokuk, Iowa, to B a n n a c k City, M o n t a n a , a n d shows t h e route a n d t h e distance traveled each day. I n order to accompany the m a p , t h e diary also runs from east to west, begins a t the end of t h e book, a n d proceeds tow a r d t h e front. This a r r a n g e m e n t has a degree of logic b u t is u n o r t h o d o x a n d initially confusing.

T h e importance of t h e m a p hardly compensates for its cost, especially i n view of t h e fact t h a t m o r e t h a n fourfifths of the m a p is of the old OregonCalifornia T r a i l t h a t has been described a n d reproduced hundreds of times.

I t might have been m o r e justifiable to have retained detailed m a p p i n g for the point of b r a n c h i n g from the famous m a i n trail near South Pass to D u n l a p s ' destination a t Bannack City. This section, in p a r t along t h e L a n d e r Cutoff, is

Utah Historical Quarterly

382 so little known that a m o r e ample description of it would have been new a n d welcome.

T h e book comprises 75 large pages (9 by 13 inches) and is beautifully printed on handsome paper. T h e volume is a four-color printing job — the diary in black, the footnotes in red (one section in b l u e ) , and the m a p in b r o w n a n d blue. R e d lines tie each day's entry to the m a p section traversed that day. This unusual plan and layout results in costly production. I n fact, the complicated design dominates the book, a n d the identified designer takes the credit — a n d maybe the blame — for the unique volume.

T h e diary is by K a t e D u n l a p , an intelligent and observant w o m a n of twenty-six years. She a n d her husband of three months set out for the M o n t a n a mines from Keokuk, Iowa, M a y 2, 1864, a n d arrived at Bannack City on August 16. H e r observations enroute a r e interesting and perceptive. Since the journey was m a d e at the time of t h e " I n d i a n W a r of 1864," it is somewhat strange t h a t more I n d i a n trouble was not encountered.

Dr. Tyler has done good, professional editing. T h e main supplement to the diary he takes from J. I. Campbell, Idaho: Six Months in the New Gold Diggings. The Emigrant's Guide Overland (New York and Chicago, 1864).

This includes tables of distances, description of mining processes a n d supplementary contemporary information.

I n addition to the diary the editor has included biographical information on Mr. and Mrs. D u n l a p , a brief review of early M o n t a n a mining history, Mrs. Dunlap's letter of J a n u a r y 10, 1865, descriptive of M o n t a n a , and J o h n Mullan's report on M o n t a n a Territory in his Miners and Travelers Guide (New York, 1865). T h e text is illustrated with good photographs of Bannack City a n d some of its buildings and an appropriate selection of the exceptional drawings of

scenes along the Oregon Trail by the fine artist Frederick Piercy.

T h e diary is a good contribution to the history of M o n t a n a and of the West.

L E R O Y R.

HAFEN

Professor of History Brigham Young University A Classified Bibliography of the Periodical Literature of the Trans-Mississippi West, A Supplement (1957-67).

By

OSCAR

OSBURN

WINTHER

and

R I C H A R D A. V A N O R M A N . (Blooming-

t o n : I n d i a n a University Press, 1970. x x v + 3 4 0 p p . $5.00) T h e late Oscar O s b u r n Winther published in 1942 The Trans-Mississippi West: A Guide to Its Periodical Literature, covering the years 18111938. I n 1961 the work was extended to include literature published to 1957 u n d e r the title A Classified Bibliography of the Periodical Literature of the Trans-Mississippi West (1811-1957).

T h e latter work is here supplemented for the decade 1957-67. T h e 1961 work abstracted 9,244 titles from seventy periodicals, chiefly state a n d regional historical journals. This supplement, following the same policies a n d format, abstracts 4,559 titles. T h e table of contents is detailed, as it needs to be, for the index is only to names of authors of articles. T h e work badly needs a subject index. T h e range of subjects is far wider t h a n subject headings, which include each state, C a n a d a and Mexico, and such topics as agriculture, fur trade, immigrant groups, Indians, military, mining, Mormons, Oregon Trail, reclamation and conservation, transportation a n d communications, a n d the West.

This bibliography is of the utmost importance to any scholar interested in western American history.

This reviewer checked those titles of direct interest to U t a h and M o r m o n history and found in the 1961 work some 335 titles, of which 170 were from the Utah Historical Quarterly. T h e sup-

383

Reviews and Publications plement yielded 225 titles, of which 143 were from the UHQ. The greatest number of entries were found under "Mormons" and "Utah." The 1961 work yielded 143 entries on the Mormons, 40 of which were from UHQ; 107 entries were listed under Utah, 82 having come from UHQ. The supplement yielded 54 articles on the Mormons, 23 of which were found in UHQ; 111 articles were listed under Utah, of which 99 came from UHQ. This attests to the increased serious attention Utah and Mormon history has received in recent years, of the vitality and contribution of the Utah Historical Quarterly, and that the serious scholar cannot rely on one source alone for his information but must search a wide range of periodical literature (at least read the "Recent Articles" lists in UHQ and other historical journals, hoping he will not miss essential articles). By all means, search this work diligently, for you will find gems in unusual places.

S. GEORGE ELLSWORTH

Professor of History Utah State University Uranium Fever: or No Talk Under $1 Million. and

By RAYMOND W.

SAMUEL

W.

TAYLOR

TAYLOR.

York: The Macmillan 1970. xi +400 pp. $8.95)

(New

Company,

Raymond W. Taylor, with the collaboration of his playwright brother, Samuel W. Taylor, gives an eyewitness account of the frenetic days of the uranium boom of the 1950s. The best work written so far on the boom, Uranium Fever nevertheless has a number of glaring weaknesses. Most noticeable are the organizational defects. The reader is kept in constant transition from the fishing trip that lured Taylor into the boom country, to Provo, Utah, where Taylor was running for Utah County Sheriff; from waking up in a polygamist's bedroom, with grandfather John Taylor's

picture staring from the wall, to claimstaking in House Rock Valley; from producing a Warner Brother's documentary on the boom to revisiting Taylor's abandoned claims a decade later.

In attempting to include so many major themes Taylor clutters his narrative.

Long diatribes detailing the evils of the Atomic Energy Commission, an attempt to sketch the history of the uranium industry since its nineteenth century beginnings, and a final chapter designed to tell where leading boom personalities are now â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but instead dwelling mainly on introducing new characters â&#x20AC;&#x201D; add to the confusion.

As a historical work, the book has a number of other failings. Discussion of the pre-boom uranium industry is inadequate. Also, major aspects of the boom itself, such as the penny stock frenzy and the important role of a few large corporations, receive little attention beyond allusions to Taylor's own experience. There are numerous factual errors and misspellings of proper nouns; and a number of the biographical sketches provide more color than is justified. Some of Taylor's descriptions of personal experiences tax the credulity of persons who recall what conditions were really like during the boom. Most of those who survived the fever of that time agree that the boom was relatively free of violence and danger. Yet Taylor tells of spending a terrifying night surrounded on three sides by buzzing, coiled rattlesnakes, with his back to a precipice. He claims that, twice, conniving partners left him on the desert to die.

He insists that he stared down the barrel of a rifle meant to kill him, nearly died of thirst, narrowly missed being cast into prison, and only through an act of providence was kept from being seduced by two Fundamentalist maidens.

Nevertheless, it is a mistake to concentrate on the obvious weaknesses of the work, for by so doing the reader misses its actual significance. The book

Utah Historical

384 does h a v e some scholarly depth. Taylor after meticulously interviewing a n u m ber of key persons, describes a V e r n o n Pick, "discoverer" of t h e fabulous Delta Mine, in a m a n n e r radically different from other biographers. Even m o r e impressive, although poorly integrated into the book, is his biography of Stella Dysart, evangelist-turned promoter, w h o discovered the bonanza u r a n i u m deposits of Ambrosia Lake, N e w Mexico, while wildcatting for oil. F u r t h e r m o r e , this was not m e a n t to be a definitive history of t h e u r a n i u m industry or even a defense of Taylor's actions in abandoning his home, business, a n d political career for a fling at u r a n i u m prospecting. I t doesn't m a t t e r t h a t his search began after almost all of the outcroppings w o r t h claiming h a d been discovered or t h a t the Fundamentalists lured h i m into a n area where even deep drilling held little promise for success.

By presenting a n account of his own soaring expectations a n d crashing failures, Taylor captures the intensity of the u r a n i u m fever in a m a n n e r which n o other writer has done. If, in so doing, he produces a work replete with structural a n d factual weaknesses a n d if he is guilty of claiming the experiences of m a n y to b e his own, h e is only doing w h a t other important chroniclers of the American West have done from J a m e s O h i o Pattie on.

T h e lay reader should find in Uranium Fever the kind of excitement t h a t has kept t h e public engrossed in t h e "history" of the American West long after they have ceased to show interest in other areas of history. T h e book also should inspire serious scholars to a t t e m p t to m a t c h Taylor's superb writing style, while at the same time focusing their own methodological training on a n episode which, for a m o m e n t in our history, created a national hysteria.

G A R Y L. S H U M W A Y

California

State College Fuller ton

The Navajo

of the Painted

Quarterly Desert. By

W A L T E R L. B A T E M A N . (Boston: Bea-

con Press, 1970. 124 p p . , $5.95) The Navajo of the Painted Desert is attractively gotten u p with m a n y fine drawings a n d photos. T h e title raises a question, as I believe t h a t there are very few Navajos living in the Painted Desert, since most of the Navajo Reservation is n o r t h of it. T h e jacket also gives some misleading information, as it places the Navajo Reservation in the northwestern corner of Arizona, while it is really in t h e northeastern corner a n d spills over into U t a h a n d N e w Mexico. T h e story, however, is good a n d tells of the life of a Navajo family in the 1890s. M r . B a t e m a n uses t h e story as a springboard to give us descriptions of several ceremonies a n d the legends behind them.

T h e life of a Navajo family of today, living in the remote canyons a n d on the still more inaccessible mesas, is very similar. T h e children do go to the Bureau of I n d i a n Affairs boarding schools or in some cases m a k e their way to a school bus route a n d a t t e n d public school. T h e y leave h o m e a r o u n d six thirty or seven in t h e m o r n i n g a n d ret u r n a r o u n d five thirty in the evening.

T h e pickup has replaced the horse and wagon for the most part, b u t in many cases the roads, or r a t h e r trails, have remained about t h e same as they were in the 1890s. T h e traveler in Navajoland will find some of t h e m a i n highways blacktopped a n d some of t h e other roads maintained, b u t o n t h e byways a b o u t the only improvements are those m a d e by the Navajo so t h a t h e c a n get his pickup home.

T h e last chapter falls far short of telling of all t h e advances of t h e Navajo Nation. Most school boards have some, if n o t all, Navajo members. Teachers and teacher's aides, nurses a n d aides, medical a n d dental technicians, doctors a n d lawyers as well as businessmen have returned to the reservation to work with

385

Reviews and Publications their people. The Navajo Nation has brought industry to the reservation, and here all but the very top jobs are held by the Navajo. The nation operates the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority that supplies electricity to the reservation as well as gas, water, and sewage to the communities; it is ninety-five percent Navajo. The Navajo Forest Products Industry is a huge one with a mostly Navajo staff. The Navajo Nation staffs its own newspaper, the Navajo Times. New homes are springing up constructed by the Home Improvement Training Program. If the reader comes to the reservation he should come prepared for the old way of life, as depicted in the book, and also the modern way of living. He will find the highways patrolled by the Navajo police and fine new motels and restaurants and supermarkets to cater to his needs.

BROTHER JUNIPER

Hat Rock Valley Retreat Center, Monument Valley, Utah Silver and Politics in Nevada:

1892-

1902. By MARY ELLEN GLASS. (Reno:

University of Nevada Press, 1969. xi 4 242 pp. $5.50) Mrs. Glass's book might be considered a prospectus for future political and biographical studies of turn-of-the-century Nevada, as well as a competent and rewarding survey of the silver controversy within that Great Basin state.

A parade of antithetical personalities emerges from its pages to reveal much of the insouciant venality combined with hidden interests that ruled Nevada government. Many of these figures are worthy of further study, and this monograph attractively stimulates scholarly efforts in that direction. The work is a skillful addition to a small, slowly growing list of works explaining Nevada in terms other than mining productivity.

The central thesis examined by the author is the ultimate control of the

Silver party by the Central Pacific Railroad. The railroad had either ruled the state absolutely or shared its sovereignty with the Bonanza mining firms since the 1860s. The rise of a new political force, dedicated to the solution of problems that affected the Central Pacific's sheltered tax position, posed a direct challenge. After some initial backing and filling, the railroad saw fit to infiltrate this new organization, rather than openly oppose it. By 1898 these tactics were so successful that the party apparatus became the vehicle for continuing railroad state dominance. The unique position of a radical, at least to the public, party existing as a means of maintaining the status quo was attained.

The final half of the book is devoted to the problems of fusion of the silver interests and politicians into either of the two national parties, and particularly to the conflict between William Morris Stewart and Francis Griffith Newlands. Silver's power as a motivator of votes was seriously hampered by the split between the two men. Each had his own coterie of followers. Their personal vendetta, inside the state and out of it, contributed heavily to the declining power of the Silver party.

Newlands is shown in a favorable context, but he still comes off as a slightly begrimed Galahad.

An adequate index has been included and the price is happily below the $10.00 figure that seems to be attaining the status of the minimum wage. As a student of Nevada history, I wish the author had included an essay on the sources. Aside from the comment on the flyleaf that the Crime of '73 consisted of making illegal the production of all silver coins, other gremlins were unnoticed. Mrs. Glass professionally shows that Nevada's Gilded Age was largely gilt.

J O H N M. TOWNLEY

President Southern Nevada Historical Society Las Vegas

386 A Treasury of American Indian Herbs: Their Lore and Their Use for Food, Drugs, and Medicine. By VIRGINIA SCULLY. (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1970. xiv + 306 pp. $6.95) The introduction to this book recalls to the reader that the beauty of the West has two perspectives: one toward the majestic horizon and one toward the lichens, sage, and flowers at his feet. It stirs interest by touching on pioneer medicine. It gives an entertaining account of the author's efforts to collect material. This is a good beginning, but the book proves to be superficial and poorly organized. It cannot be used as a botanical or pharmaceutical guide and it has little historical value.

The subject matter is presented in alphabetical order as a series of brief statements about herbs, trees, diseases, symptoms, lesions, and parts of the anatomy. The arrangement is not strict.

Under the heading "Chilblains," for example, are discussed chilblains, stomach ache, skin irritation, colic, teething, cough, croup, improper growth, fever, worms, influenza, diarrhea, and mouth sores (p. 140). The lack of a strict system makes the book repetitious.

The exposition of the medical subjects is largely from the standpoint of defending and, indeed, vaunting, the merits of Indian remedies on the presumption that getting well means therapeutic cure, and widespread or continued use from generation to generation proves that a given remedy must have been effective. We are told, for example, that it "has been proved for centuries" that lying in a trench of warm ashes and drinking geranium tea will keep a recently delivered woman from becoming pregnant until the infant's first birthday (p. 121).

There is irrelevant material such as the following alphabetically listed item, quoted in its entirety: "Children. If the juice of sarsparilla is given a newborn

Utah Historical

Quarterly

child, it shall never be hurt by poison.

That was an English superstition enunciated by Culpeper. We can find no parallel in the Indian pharmacopoeia. They used only what for centuries had been tested and proved for their children" (p. 142).

Terms with dubious scientific meaning are used such as purifying the blood, blood cleanser, swelling of the gall bladder, stimulant to the brain, lowering the vital activity, panting heart, and "strengthening effect on the viscera" (pp. 127,154, 185,284,285).

The book is illustrated by line drawings from two antique books which are not indigenous to the West. Foxglove is shown, although it is not a native plant (p. 175). We are assured, however, that if it had been at hand, the Indians would have learned its value as a source of digitalis. The description of dogwood in the text depends largely on the "Legend of the Dogwood" found on every postcard stand in southeastern United States. The prototype is the eastern dogwood (cornus florida) which has no resemblance whatsover to the drawing presented (pp. 38-39).

This chatty and rambling book has many shortcomings, but the reader can find amusing items. The most intriguing medical procedures described are an enema of tobacco smoke for the seemingly drowned, a "drink of pine" to those struck by lightning, and an extract of wild cat fat mixed with ground rose petals for eczema (pp. 162, 201, 271).

HERBERT Z. L U N D ,

M.D.

Greensboro, North Carolina The Story of American Railroads and How They Helped Build a Nation.

By OLIVE W. BURT. (New York: The

John Day Company, 1969. 256 pp., $4.95) The golden era of American railroading has passed. Even if the future holds more spectacular and successful modes

Reviews and Publications of travel, o n e wonders if it will excite the imagination as t h e glorious old steam engine has. I n The Story of American Railroads, Olive W. Burt is reaching a generation of children w h o have probably h a d little or no acquaintance with t h e train as a method of travel.

T h e early triumphs a n d defeats of the dreamers who saw t h e U n i t e d States connected by rail a r e all recorded i n M r s . Burt's book. T h e m e n of vision, t h e first successful passenger train, t h e Civil War, t h e bitter battles a n d skulduggery to gain control, t h e bad guys, a n d t h e engineer hero a r e all here to e n c h a n t t h e reader.

Beautifully illustrated with well chosen pictures t h a t effectively enhance the story, Olive Burt's book h a s presented t h e young reader with a comprehensive a n d informative book t h a t will hold his attention.

T h e train robber of history holds a particular fascination for all of us. H e has been the inspiration for m a n y novels a n d moving pictures. T h e a u t h o r h a s told his story b u t has carefully avoided m a k i n g h i m a hero. She h a s also, perhaps too carefully, shunned m a k i n g a b a d guy of t h e railroad m a g n a t e by glossing over t h e questionable m a n e u vers of many early railroad tycoons.

T o m a n y of us w h o grew u p knowing t h e railroad a n d its shortcomings, Mrs. Burt's book will a t times seem hightly romanticized. Few of us saw t h e elegance she tells us about. We are m o r e likely to recall late trains, dirt, crowded dining cars, a n d poor a n d sometimes r u d e service.

Mrs. Burt has written numerous children's stories a n d seems t o b e a t h e r best when recounting historical facts for the young. She is a d e p t a t putting sometimes dull information into a historical text t h a t will hold t h e reader's interest.

This book contains excellent material for t h e junior high student w h o h a s

387 become enthralled with early American transportation.

R O S A L I E C. BARBOUR

Elementary Education Coordinator Idaho State Historical Society Great Basin Anthropology . . . A Bibliography. Compiled by C A T H E R I N E S. F O W L E R . E d i t e d by D O N D . F O W L E R a n d T H E L M A W I N N I E . University of

N e v a d a Social Sciences a n d H u m a n i ties Publication No. 5 ( R e n o a n d Las Vegas: Western Studies Center, Desert Research Institute, 1970. xx + 418 p p . $10.00) Catherine Fowler is responsible for this bibliography of 7,000 items devoted to aspects of Great Basin anthropology.

T h e bibliography is so extensive a n d well-organized t h a t it will have t h e effect of focusing even greater interest on t h a t area of N o r t h America used so often and well in the past by anthropologists.

After listing general references, m a t erial o n natural environment, a n d general works, the bibliography is divided into four m a i n sections: archaeology, ethno history, anthropology (ethnography a n d ethnology), a n d federal a n d state documents. M a n y items, especially reports a n d documents from state a n d federal officials, a r e a n n o t a t e d for general categories of content. T h e most valuable p a r t of t h e bibliography is t h e last major section where t h e disparate materials comprising t h e h u g e n u m b e r of primary government sources o n Great Basin I n d i a n groups are fully listed a n d evaluated. I n addition to t h e vast r u n of commissioners' a n d agents' reports listed by tribal grouping, there is a section o n early state a n d federal relations with groups in the Great Basin. T h e a p pendix, which is inadequately labeled in the table of contents, is a listing of u n published manuscripts o n t h e Great Basin housed in the Bureau of American Ethnology Collection, Smithsonian N a tional Anthropology Archives, Washing-

388 ton, D. C. Many of these are annotated and are of immense importance to the Great Basin scholar. Among these there is a noticeable strength on linguistic materials from the nineteenth century.

All of these various strengths highlight the ethnographic focus of the bibliography. The material on the aboriginal tribes in the Great Basin is undoubtedly exhaustive, and this resource will serve permanently as the primary reference for the area, especially if updated occasionally. Alternatively, the information on archaeology is not especially complete and there is little information on physical anthropology, while that on linguistics is not segmented into a separate category. None of these is an especially important flaw if the bibliography's primary focus is understood.

The bibliography is introduced by a series of very clear and extremely useful maps. In order, they are devoted to linguistic distributions, principal prehistoric cultures and sites, trails of California, historic tribal distributions, and modern Indian reservations. The maps serve, although inductively, to clarify what is not made clear in the introduction to the bibliography. That is, what criteria define the Great Basin? This bibliography could have done explicitly what Paul Kindoff did when he defined Mesoamerica. Catherine Fowler has not said in so many words what the Great Basin is; she has rather allowed the differing sets of data to do the job through the introductory set of maps. As a result, the borders of the Basin vary according to the criteria used. They vary also through time as is seen when the archaeological map is contrasted with the ethnographic map.

This is an especially valid technique in a bibliography, but also serves to point up the dynamism that any culture area will be subject to regarding the alteration of its boundaries through time.

The ethnohistorical section of this bibliography provides listings on con-

Utah Historical

Quarterly

tact ethnography and the less systematic observations made for the most part in the nineteenth century. But in addition, the section contains listings of interest to scholars concerned with the Mormon exploration and settlement.

It would have been impossible to include full bibliographic material on Mormon presence in the Great Basin in this volume, and, indeed, since a separate bibliography on Mormons is being produced, it would seem unnecessary to extend treatment in this bibliography to them.

At many points the bibliography is cross-referenced with itself, making it impossible for the user who may be unfamiliar with anthropological terminology or tribal names to get lost. There is also a very handy set of contentidentifying labels at the bottom of each page, making instant section selection possible. To finish a superb job of planning and lay-out, there is an index of authors' names.

MARK P. LEONE

Program in Anthropology Princeton University Selected Prose of John Wesley Powell.

Edited and introduced by GEORGE CROSSETTE. (Boston, Mass.: David R. Godine, 1970. 122 pp. $12.50.)

Of all the activities which were part of the Powell Centennial celebration during 1969, this book is one of the best.

It presents Powell as a person effectively. The speechmaking and river trips which were part of the celebration are gone and perhaps forgotten by some.

Various publications were issued which interpreted the career of Powell. Warren Danzenbaker of the Smithsonian Institution and Nellie Carico of the Geological Survey collected Powell survey material. All of this is significant, but in this small book George Crossette has brought together pieces of Powell's writing in which one can perceive the

389

Reviews and Publications essence of Powell's thinking. M r . Crossette is one w h o can well do this. H e is chief of geographic research of t h e N a tional Geographic Society, an organization Powell helped found.

T h e reader will encounter Powell face to face, a n d the only screen is M r .

Crossette's selectivity. T h e selections are not from t h e books of Powell, b u t from articles, introductions, a n d speeches.

time before M r . Crossette did it, a n d I t h a n k him.

I n this book, one sees Powell as a m a n of action w h o also happens to be able t o write effectively. M r . Crossette thinks Powell thought of himself as a philosopher. If Powell did, h e writes most like a reformer. O n e of t h e m a j o r themes t h a t runs through the selections in this book is application of science a n d humanities to improve the condition of m a n , especially in the western U n i t e d States.

T h e selections are organized in m o r e or less chronological order from 1875 to 1899. T h e first two selections are dated 1875 a n d are about the 1870 expedition to t h e West. F u r t h e r along h e writes of reform policies which govern land use in t h e West. T h e third section deals with Powell's scientific writing. H e accepts a n d writes about the basic theories of Charles D a r w i n a n d Lewis H e n r y M o r g a n , the anthropologist.

Powell's conclusions are best stated in t w o short quotes from articles in this section: " I t is thus that the whole universe of life is a struggle; all living beings are engaged in a warfare one with a n other." A n d , ". . . progress is m a d e by establishment of justice in t h e struggle for peace." Powell's later writing is m o r e theoretical, presenting less of the action and reform of the earlier works.

I t is certainly not difficult to accept the way in which Major Powell is presented to the public in this book. I t must have taken a great deal of time to dig out the various materials from which the excerpts were taken. T h e organization, format, a n d illustrations are fine. I t is a book which has been needed for some

PATRICK. (Lansing, M i c h i g a n : N a tional Heritage, 1970. 289 p p . $7.95)

ROBERT W.

OLSEN

Harpers Ferry, West Virginia

The King Strang Story: A Vindication of James J. Strang, the Beaver Island Mormon

King.

By D O Y L E C. F I T Z -

A study of the preface a n d introduction of Fitzpatrick's King Strang Story is the key to w h a t one c a n expect in the book; b u t the preface is totally different from the introduction. I n t h e preface, a u t h o r Fitzpatrick explains briefly a n d clearly t h a t the purpose of t h e book is to correct 120 years of mis-information a n d history about James Jesse Strang, whose n a m e , h e states, historically represents a mistrusted tyrant. The King Strang Story is devoted to a vindication of Strang by setting t h e record straight.

T h e introduction deals mostly with t h e digressions of t h e a u t h o r in commenting u p o n M o r m o n s other t h a n t h e Strangite group. These comments are also interspersed throughout t h e rest of the book, a n d nearly every one produces a historical inaccuracy.

The King Strang Story contains 289 pages, with t h e first 114 pages telling the story of his life a n d works. T h e rest of the book is divided into three other parts. T h e first of these is a n epilogue of 20 pages dealing with t h e family of James J. Strang. H e r e t h e a u t h o r portrays t h e upstanding character of Strang's wives a n d descendants a n d leaves t h e impression t h a t all of t h e m have been bitter against t h e c h u r c h in U t a h . This is not entirely so, as some of t h e m today a r e members of t h e C h u r c h Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; one of them is a friend a n d neighbor of t h e reviewer.

390

Utah Historical

T h e next part, called miscellany, covers 62 pages, a n d deals with w h a t Fitzpatrick calls a sampling of Strangite impostures ( J o h n C. Bennett a n d George Adams) a sampling of Strangite defenders (George Miller, Lorenzo D o w Hickey, a n d Wingfield Watson) , a portrait of Strang, a n d a list of Strang's Beaver Islanders, n a m i n g 367 of them.

T h e last part, 84 pages, is a review of t h e most i m p o r t a n t literature previously published about J a m e s J . Strang.

I n his critique of this literature, h e h a s d o n e a commendable j o b of evaluating each source.

A great weakness of t h e book is its lack of footnotes. Nevertheless, t h e author's seven years of research into Strang Americana equipped h i m well to present a m u c h m o r e correct p o r t r a i t of J a m e s J. Strang t h a n h a s been done previously. I t is unfortunate, however, t h a t h e chose to digress from his field of research, as h e would h a v e accomplished well his goal h a d h e only stayed with t h e King Strang Story, leaving o u t entirely the introduction a n d t h e digressions which are loaded with errors.

As far as t h e life a n d c h a r a c t e r of J a m e s J . Strang is concerned M r . Fitzpatrick has performed a service to truth, to t h e history of t h e state of Michigan, a n d also t o t h e worthy descendants of J a m e s J. Strang.

R U S S E L L R. R I C H

Professor of History and Religion Brigham Young University

Ghost Dance Messiah. By P A U L BAILEY. (Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1970) A History States.

of the Indians

History III.

of Utah,

City: A u t h o r 1971) The

Literature

Pope and U.S. Indian N.

ELLIS.

[228 So. 3 r d East],

of the American

West.

The Lure of the Land: A Social History of the Public Lands from the Articles of Confederation to the New Deal.

By E V E R E T T D I C K . ( L i n c o l n : U n i v e r -

sity of Nebraska Press, 1970) Navajo

Warfare.

By W I L L A R D W I L L I A M S

HILL. (New Haven: Human tions Area Files Press, 1970)

Rela-

Picture Maker of the Old West: William H. Jackson. By C L A R E N C E S. J A C K S O N . ( N e w Y o r k : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971) Politics and Grass: The Administration of Grazing on the Public Domain.

By P H I L L I P O . F o s s . (Seattle: U n i versity of Washington Press, 1960; reissued, N e w Y o r k : Greenwood Press, 1970) and Passion:

Sexuality

in Vic-

By M I L T O N R U G O F F .

G. P. P u t n a m ' s Sons,

GEOFFREY

W A N D E S F O R D E - S M I T H . (Seattle: U n i versity of Washington Press, 1970)

RICHARD

Volume (Salt L a k e

t o n : H o u g h t o n Mifflin, 1971)

(New York: c. 1971)

By

STOUT.

Edited by J . G O L D E N T A Y L O R . (Bos-

Congress

General

1930-1970.

By W A Y N E

torian America.

R I C H A R D A. C O O L E Y a n d

(Norman:

University of O k l a h o m a Press, 1970)

Prudery

By

of the United

By A N G I E D E B O .

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS and the Environment.

Quarterly

Policy.

(Albuquer-

q u e : University of N e w Mexico Press, 1970)

ARTICLES OF INTEREST Agricultural History â&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 44, October 1970: "Western Agriculture a n d t h e N e w D e a l , " by L E O N A R D J. A R R I N G -

T O N , 337-53; "Eisenhower a n d Ezra

391

Reviews and Publications Taft Benson: Farm Policy in the 1950s," by EDWARD L. and FREDERICK

Arizona Highways—'47, June 1971: "Living Spirits of Kachinam," by PAUL COZE [entire issue devoted to

H. SCHAPSMEIER, 369-78.

Hopi Kachinas], American History Illustrated — 6, June 1971. "The Race to Promontory," by THOMAS FLEMING, 10-25.

The American Journal of Legal History — 15, January 1971: "Judicial Review in the Rocky Mountain Territorial Courts," by GORDON MORRIS BAKKEN,

56-65.

The American West — 8, January 1971: "Incident at Tragedy Springs: An Unsolved Mystery of the California Trail," by FEROL EGAN, 36-39 [in-

volved men of the returning Mormon Battalion, 1848]; "A Home for the Spirit: A Brief History of the Wilderness Preservation Movement — The Story of an Idea Given the Strength of Law,"

by RODERICK N A S H ,

41-47

[mentions Dinosaur National Monument defense in the 1950s] — March 1971: "Horses and the American Frontier," by FRANCIS HAINES, 10-15; "A Western Phenomenon: The Origin and Development of Watershed Research, Manti, Utah, 1889, by ALBERT ANTREI, 42-47 — July 1971: "The [Dr. Dean R.] Brimhall Saga: Some Remarkable Discoveries in the Cliffs of Utah. Part One: The Man,"

by FAWN M. BRODIE, 4-9, 61 — September 1971: "The Brimhall Saga . . .

Part Two: The Discoveries," by FAWN M. BRODIE, 18-23, 63.

Annals of Iowa — 40, Winter 1970: "Markers for Remembrance: The Mormon Trail," by LIDA L. GREENE, 190-93.

Arizona and the West—11, Winter 1969: "Lost Manuscripts of Western Travel," by J O H N FRANCIS M C D E R -

MOTT, 315-26.

Art in America—58, May-June 1970: "Mormon Art and Architecture," by MAHONRI SHARP YOUNG, 66-69; "Mormon Society — A Photo Story,"

by KIMBALL YOUNG_, 70-71.

BYU Studies— 10, Spring 1970: "A Note on Mormon Americana at Yale," by JEFFREY R. HOLLAND, 38688 — Summer 1970: "Ideals of Mormons and Gentiles in Utah and other States," by VIRGIL B. SMITH, 425-28

— 11, Autumn 1970: "Utah Ranch: An Oil Painting," by FLOYD E. BREINHOLT, 33-36; "Educating the Saints —'A Brigham Young Mosaic," by H U G H NIBLEY, 61-87 — Winter 1971: "Mormon Bibliography: 1970," by CHAD J. FLAKE, 200-206.

Church History — 40, March 1971: "To Transform History: Early Mormon Culture and the Concept of Time and Space," by ROBERT FLANDERS, 108-17.

The Colorado Magazine — 48, Winter 1971: "Henry M. Teller and the Edmunds-Tucker

Act,"

by M.

PAUL

1-14; "The Nims and Czar Incidents in the Denver Press,"

by D W I G H T L. S M I T H , 49-58 [Colorado River survey].

HOLSINGER,

Courage — 1, March 1971: "The Challenge to Centralized Power: Zenus H. Gurley, Jr., and the Prophetic Office,"

by CLARE D. VLAHOS, 141-58.

Desert Magazine — 34, May 1971: Most of this issue is devoted to Utah vacation lands — June 1971: "Shakespeare in Utah's Color Country," by CAROL-ANN FULLER, 22-25, 37.

392 Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought —5, Autumn 1970: "The Coming of the Manifesto," by K E N NETH W. GODFREY, 11-25; "A Lesson from the Past," by WILLIAM L. K N E C H T , 75-80 [handcart migration of 1856]; "Sources of Mormon Americana in Utah," by DEANA L. ASTLE, 107-12 — Winter 1970: "The Principle of the Good Samaritan Considered in a Mormon Political Context," by DAVID S, KING, 11-22;

"The Last Days of the Coalville Tabernacle," by EDWARD GEARY, 4250; "The Coalville Tabernacle: A Point of View," Anonymous [Salt Lake City author], 50-58; "The Lessons of Coalville," by PAUL G. SALISBURY, 58-65; "Among the Mormons A Survey of Current Literature: Periodical Articles on Mormons and Mormonism," ed. by R A L P H W. H A N -

SEN, 116-20.

Utah Historical

"The King Follett Sermon," part 1,

by J O S E P H S M I T H , J R . , 13-17; "Mormon Settlements in Nevada," by CHRIS J E N S E N , 25-29; "The Branch that Wouldn't Die," by GILBERT W. SCHARFFS, 31-33 [Mormonism in Poland] — M a y 1971: "The King Follett Sermon," 13-17 [conclusion] •—-June 1971: "General Thomas L. Kane: The Soldier," by NORMAN R. BOWEN and ALBERT L. ZOBELL, JR.,

22-27.

Golden West — 6, January 1970: "Tony Ivins —• Son of Saintland," by JOE KOLLER, 24 [Anthony W. Ivins in St. George].

Idaho Yesterdays—14, Summer 1970: "Colonel E. A. Wall: Mines, Miners and Mormons," by G. W. BARRETT,

2-11—Fall 1970: "Mason Brayman and the Boise Ring," by T H O M A S G. ALEXANDER,

The Enchanted Wilderness Magazine: Journal of the Colorado Plateau and Its Borderlands — 1, January-February 1971: "Utah," by WARD J. ROYLANCE, 37-48; "History and Culture . . . Background for Pleasure,"

by C. GREGORY CRAMPTON, 54-55.

The Ensign of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints— 1, January 1971: "The Church and Its Magazines," by DOYLE L. GREEN, 1215; "The Human Qualities of Joseph Smith, the Prophet," by LEONARD J. ARRINGTON, 35-38; "April 6, 1830: The Day the Church Was Organized," by DOYLE L. GREEN, 39-56 •—-February 1971: "Heritage of a Prophet," by RICHARD LLOYD ANDER-

SON, 15-19 [family background of Joseph Smith] — M a r c h 1971: "A. William Lund (1886-1971)," by A L BERT L. ZOBELL, J R . , 75 [obituary of

assistant church historian]; "General Conference in England," by ALBERT L. ZOBELL, JR., 24-25 —April 1971:

Quarterly

21-27 — Winter

1970-

71: "Stopping a Run on a Bank: The First Security Bank of Idaho and the Great Depression," by LEONARD J.

ARRINGTON

and

GWYNN

BAR-

RETT, 2-11 — 15, Spring 1971: "Butch Cassidy and the Great Montpelier Bank Robbery," by WILLARD C. HAYDEN, 2-9; "Enos Andrew Wall: Mine Superintendent and Inventor,"

by G W Y N N BARRETT, 24-31. — Summer 1971: "The 1921 Depression: Its Impact on Idaho," by G W Y N N BARRETT and

LEONARD ARRINGTON,

10-

15.

Journal of American Folklore — 83, January-March 1970: "As the Saints Go Marching By: Modern Jokelore Concerning Mormons," by JAN HAROLD BRUNVAND, 53-60.

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society — 54, Spring 1971: "The Mormons in Illinois, 1838-1846: A Special Introduction," by STANLEY B. KIMBALL, 4-21; "Mormons in Han-

393

Reviews and Publications cock C o u n t y : A Reminiscence," by EUDOCIA

BALDWIN

MARSH,

ed.

by

Douglas L . Wilson a n d Rodney O .

Davis, 22-65; " T h e N a u v o o C h a r t e r : A

Reinterpretation,"

by J A M E S

L.

K I M B A L L , J R . , 66-78; "Joseph Smith a n d t h e M a s o n s , " by K E N N E T H W .

G O D F R E Y , 79-90.

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians — 30, M a r c h 1 9 7 1 : " T h e F o u r M o r m o n Temples i n U t a h , "

by DAVID S. A N D R E W a n d L A U R E L B.

B L A N K , 51-65.

Minnesota History — 42, W i n t e r 1970: "Last Days of t h e U p p e r Mississippi F u r T r a d e , " by R H O D A G I L M A N , 122-

40.

Missouri Historical Review — 65, O c t o ber 1970: "Senator George G r a h a m Vest a n d the 'Menace' of M o r m o n i s m —

1882-1887," by M . P A U L H A L S I N G -

ER, 23-36; — A p r i l 1 9 7 1 : "Jackson County i n Early M o r m o n Descriptions,"

by

RICHARD

L.

New Era—1,

Order

is L o v e , "

April 1 9 7 1 : " T h e

by C A R O L

LYNN

PEARSON, 19-33 [Excerpts from a n e w two-act musical based o n t h e U n i t e d O r d e r as lived in Orderville, U t a h , in t h e 1880s].

New Mexico Historical Review — 46, April 1971: "Navajo Foreign Affairs, 1795-1846," by F R A N K D . R E E V E , 101-

32 [Part I , 1795-1815].

Oregon Historical Quarterly — 72, M a r c h 1971: " A M a j o r M o n u m e n t : Oregon-California Boundary," by F R A N C I S S. L A N D R U M , 5-53

[Includes

d a t a o n boundaries of State of Deseret a n d U t a h Territory].

Pacific Historical Review — 39, November 1970: " T h e Ambitions of Lansford W . Hastings: A Study in Western M y t h - M a k i n g , " by T H O M A S F . A N D R E W S , 4 7 3 - 9 1 ; 40, M a y 1 9 7 1 :

"Tradition and Opportunity: T h e Japanese I m m i g r a n t i n America," by J O H N M O D E L , 163-82.

ANDERSON,

270-93.

The Pacific Northwesterner — 15, W i n ter 1 9 7 1 : " T h e O t h e r R i c h a r d Bur-

Montana: The Magazine of Western History — 2 1 , April 1971: " T h e Diam o n d R . Rolls O u t , " by BRIGHAM D . and

The

BETTY

M.

MADSEN,

ton,"

by

EDWIN

A.

POOLE,

[entire

issue] [his impressions of Salt L a k e City a n d Brigham Young].

2-17

[Freighting from U t a h to M o n t a n a ] .

The

Possible

Sack — 2, M a r c h 1 9 7 1 :

"Valley T a n , " by E R N E S T B U L O W , 7-

10; " T h e Basques of t h e American West: Preliminary Historical Perspec-

8. — M a y 1 9 7 1 : "Brother Brigham a n d the Virginian: A n Irreverent, I n accurate, a n d Superficial U s e of History t o Explain W h y t h e Polygamist R a t h e r t h a n the Cowboy is the Center of M o r m o n Frontier Fiction," by L E V I

tives," by W I L L I A M A. D O U G L A S S , 12-

S. P E T E R S O N .

Nevada Historical Society Quarterly-— 13, W i n t e r 1970: "Nevada's First T r a d i n g Post: A Study in Historiog r a p h y , " by R U S S E L L R . E L L I O T T , 3 -

2 5 ; " T h e Yager J o u r n a l s : Diary of a Journey Across t h e Plains," by J A M E S P R E S S L E Y YAGER [Part Four], 26-52 — 14, Spring 1 9 7 1 : " A Place of R e fuge,"

by J U A N I T A B R O O K S ,

13-24;

" T h e Yager J o u r n a l s " [Part Five], 2754.

Restoration Reporter—1, June 1971: " H i r a m Page's 'Peep' Stone," 7-8.

South Dakota History—1, Spring 1971: " A n Early M o r m o n Settlement in South D a k o t a , " by GERALD E .

Utah Historical

394 JONES, 119-31 — Summer 1971: "South Dakota's Other Borglum," 207 [Solon Hannibal Borglum, Utah-born sculptor, brother of Gutzon Borglum].

Utah Law Review — Spring 1971: "Local Government Modernization: A Utah Perspective," by ARVO V A N ALSTYNE, 78-87.

Western American Literature — 5, Winter 1971: "Washington Irving and The Empire of the West: An Unacknowledged Review," by WAYNE R. KIME, 277-85; "Annual Bibliography of Studies in Western American

Literature,"

ed.

by J O H N

S.

289-300; "Research in Western American Literature," ed. by BULLEN,

THOMAS J. LYON, 301-5.

72; "Little Sahara: A World of its Own," by STEVE PRICE, 73-74; "Bull-

frog Basin" by

FRAN BARNES,

75-77.

The Western Historical Quarterly — 2, January 1971: "The Sutler at Fort Bridger," by W. N. DAVIS, JR., 37-54; — "Sources and Literature for Western American History: A Selection of Basic Works," 55-60.

Western Humanities Review — 24, Spring 1970: "Western American Space and the Human Imagination,"

by STUART B. JAMES, 147-55.

Western Pennsylvania History — 51, January 1969: "Philander C. Knox and the Crusade Against Mormonism, 1904-1907," by M. PAUL HOLSINGER,

Western Gateways: Magazine of the Four Corner States—11, Summer 1971: "Tree Ring Dating and the Great Pueblo Civilization," by W I L LIAM K. PECK, 34-35; "Utah's Henry

Mountains," by BARBARA

Quarterly

ECKKER,

68-

47-56 [Unseating of Senator Reed Smoot].

The Western Political Quarterly — 24, June 1971: "The 1970 Election in Utah," by FRANK H. JONAS and DAN E. J O N E S , 339-49.

INDEX

Abajo Mountains, 147 Abbott, Wayne, aerialist, 326 Abrams, Milton C : photograph of, 3 7 3 ; " T h e President's Report for the Fiscal Year 1970-1971, 370-78 Absolutely Mortensen, nickname, 23, 26 Adams, Florene, received U t a h State Historical Society award, 377 Adams, George W., West Cache director, 230 Adams, S. H., helped slaves escape, 45 Agriculture: effects of drought on, 209, 26162, 2 9 9 ; in Weber Valley, 255-56; in West Cache, 224-37 A. Guthrie Company, constructed Echo D a m , 259 Alder, Douglas D., "German and Italian Prisoners of W a r in U t a h and I d a h o , " 55-72 Alexander, Thomas G.: " T o w a r d a Synthetic Interpretation of the Mountain West: Diversity, Isolation, and Cooperation," 202-6; " A n Investment in Progress: Utah's First Federal Reclamation Project, T h e Strawberry Valley Project," 286-304 Alfonsi, Mario Alfredo, prisoner of war, 6869 Allen, slave, 42 Allen, James B.: " T h e Gosiute Indians in Pioneer U t a h , " 162-77; Indian litigation used by, 94 Almquist, K a r l Gustaf, prisoner of war camp inspector, 60-62, 65 Alphabet Hansen, nickname, 23, 27 Alphabet Jensen, nickname, 28 Al Soup, nickname, 27 American Federation of Labor, 267 The American Heritage Book of Great Adventures of the Old West, reviewed, 79 Ames, Charles Edgar, Pioneering the Union Pacific, reviewed, 76-77 Anasazi C u l t u r e : at Mesa Verde, 9 1 ; replaced in Great Basin, 97 Anderson, Thomas C , " T h e 'First' Irrigation Reservoir in the United States: T h e Newton, U t a h , Project," 207-23 Andrew Ah Ha, nickname, 23-26 Ankatosh, U t e sub-chief, photograph of, 142 Annie Handy, nickname, 29 Annie Taller, nickname, 28 Appah, U t e delegate, photograph of, 129 Aripene, U t e trader, 187 Arizona, Mormon settlements in, 194 Arizona Woolgrowers' Association, 240 Arny, William Frederick Milton: life of, 11516; photographs of, 116, 126; reported to commissioner of Indian affairs in 1870, 119-27

Arrington, Leonard J . : co-author of Spry biography, 3 7 5 ; " T h e 'First' Irrigation Reservior in the United States: T h e Newton, U t a h , Project," 207-23 Arrive, U t e delegate, photograph of, 129 Arthur, Chester A.: adds land to Navajo Reservation, 1 6 1 ; signs E d m u n d s bill, 355 Arze, Mauricio, Spanish trader, 103 Asdzaa Ts'osi. See Wetherill, Louisa Wade Ashley, James M., Ohio congressman, 314 Ashley Valley, settled by Mormons, 137 Athapaskan, spoken by Navajos, 92 Atkinson, David T . : Humanities Project researcher, 3 7 3 ; researched Mormon Battalion Trail, 377 Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, sold land, 240 Attebery, Louie W., review of Greenway, ed., Folklore of the Great West: Selections from Eighty-three Years of the Journal of American Folklore, 1^-15 Aztec L a n d and Cattle Company, bought railroad lands, 240

B Babb, Cyrus Cates, hydrographer, 138 Bailey, Reed W., on terracing, 270-72 Balcomb 3 K. C , regional C C C administrator, 283-84 Baldridge, Kenneth W., "Reclamation Work of the Civilian Conservation Corps, 19331942," 265-85 Bancroft, H u b e r t Howe, cited on Black Hawk War, 131 [Bankhead], Alex, slave, 46 [Bankhead], D a n , slave, 46 Bankhead, George, in Mississippi company, 44 [Bankhead], George, slave, 46 [Bankhead], Ike, slave, 46 [Bankhead], J o h n slave, 46 Bankhead, J o h n H., slave owner, 43-46 [Bankhead], Lewis, slave, 46 [Bankhead], Nancy, slave, 46 Bankhead, Nathan, slave, 43-46 [Bankhead], Rose, slave, 46 [Bankhead], Sam, slave, 46 Bankhead, Sina, interviewed about slaves, 46 [Bankhead], Susan, slave, 46 Bannocks, Western Numic spoken by, 97 Barbour, Rosalie C , review of Burt, The Story of American Railroads and How They Helped Build a Nation, 387 Barnes, Will C , cattleman, 240 Bartch, G. M . : federal judge, 3 6 1 ; photograph of, 358 Bateman, Walter L., The Navajo of the Painted Desert, reviewed, 384-85

396 Battisti, Joe, Italian prisoner of war, 60 Battle Creek, U t e resistance at, 130 Bauram, Charles L., killed in C C C accident, 281 Bear Killer, nickname, 26 Bear River Bird Refuge, built by C C C , 285 Bear River Canal, 232 Bear River Project, planned, 222 Bear's Ears, in Navajo territory, 146-48 Beckwith, F r a n k : at Chief Walker's grave, 197-98; Indian Joe, In Person and In Background, 94, 113; knowledge of Indians, 197 n. 2 Beller, Jack, cited on slaves, 46 Benito, Navajo chief, 122 Bennett, Alfred, went to San Bernardino, 47 Bennett, C. W . : federal judge, 3 6 1 ; photograph of, 358 Bennett, F. T., Navajo agent, 122 Bennett, Risden T., North Carolina congressman, 321 Benson, B. Y., West Cache construction boss, 232-33 Benson, Ezra T., built Tooele mill, 164 Bergongoli, Maresciallo, directed studies for war prisoners, 63 Bertucci, Clarence V., shot prisoners of war, 67 Big Chris, nickname, 25, 28 Big Headed Olsen, nickname, 25 Big Hollow Reservior, built by C C C , 275 Big John, nickname, 25 Big J o h n Nickolai, nickname, 29 Bigodi, Sam, Navajo scout, 152 Big Range, water needed for, 224-37 Bilii Ligai: visited prospectors, 153; testified to murders, 155 Bingham, B. F., West Cache director, 23233, 235 Bingham, William, West Cache director, 230 Black Hawk, U t e chief, died, 131-32 Black Hawk War, 130 Black Hills Ordnance Depot, 64 Blaine, James G., U.S. secretary of state, 365 Blair, [S. M.], defended slave in shooting case, 48 [Bland], M a m m y Chloe, slave, 47 Bleak, James G., "Annals of the Southern U t a h Mission" cited, 183 Blue Mountains. See Abajo Mountains Blythe, J o h n L., built ferryboat, 8 Bollwinkel, J. V., CCC engineer, 275 Book of Mormon, plates of, 317 Bootlegger Jensen, nickname, 27 Bosque Redondo, Navajos returned from, 151 Bottle John, nickname, 26 Boulder Creek, photograph of, 243 Bowman, John H . : attempted to solve m u r d e r case, 156-60; Navajo agent, 155

Utah Historical Quarterly Box Elder County: C C C projects in, 269, 2 7 1 ; Ogden-Brigham Canal in, 281-82 Boyd Nickolai, nickname, 24 Boyd Tight, nickname, 24 Brimhall, Dean R.: awarded U t a h State Historical Society honorary life membership, 377; photograph of, 378 Brinkerhoff, David, at Lee's Ferry, 15-17 Brodie, Fawn M . : given U t a h State Historical Society's Rosenblatt award, 378; review of Carmer, The Farm Boy and the Angel, 73-74 Brook Farm, democracy at, 310 Brooks, Juanita, Uncle Will Tells His Story, reviewed, 379-80 Brother Juniper, review of Bateman, The Navajo of the Painted Desert, 384-85 Brown, C. A., watermaster, 234 Brown, Elizabeth Crosby, slave owner, 44 [Brown], Henry, died of pneumonia, 44 Brown, James, settled on the Weber, 255 Brown, James S., at Moenkopi, 11 Brown, J o h n : baptized slaves, 41-42; diary of, 43-45; deeded property to Mormon Church, 53 Brown, Joseph G.: Georgia senator, 3 1 7 ; opposed Edmunds Act extension, 319, 321 Brunvand, J a n Harold, The Study of American Folklore, reviewed, 80-81 Buchanan, James, sent army to U t a h , 311 Bull, Joseph, went to San Bernardino, 47 Bullock, Thomas, reported on Hopis, 180 Bunker, Edward, approved Lee's choice of ferry road, 12 Burt, Olive W . : Negroes in the Early West, reviewed, 75-76; The Story of American Railroads and How They Helped Build a Nation, reviewed, 387 Burton, Robert, interviewed on slaves, 48 Busco, Ralph A., "German and Italian Prisoners of War in U t a h and I d a h o , " 55-72 Bushnell General Hospital, war prisoners treated at, 60, 63, 66-67, 70 Butler, M. W., West Cache board president, 229-30

Cabeson, Weminuche warrior, 120 Cabeza Blanco Hijo, Weminuche warrior, 121 Cache County: farm income of, 2 3 7 ; geography of, 224-25; history and settlement of, 208-10, 225-26^irrigation in, 226-37; Newton reservoir built in, 207-23 Cache Valley Irrigation District: directors of 2 3 5 ; water rights of, 236 Cahuilla, Uto-Aztecan language, 96 Calhoun, James S., negotiated 1849 Ute treaty, 117, 138 Calhoun, John C , and states rights, 311

Index Caine, J o h n T . : U t a h delegate, identified as a Democrat, 319; lobbied for statehood, 320, 3 3 0 - 3 1 ; protested Edmunds Act, 3 1 8 ; sponsored home rule bill, 3 6 5 ; tried to block Tucker bill, 334-35 Campbell, Alexander, evangelist, 115 [Camp], Ben, slave, 48 [Camp], Caroline, slave, 48 [Camp], Charlotte, slave, 48 C a m p Clearfield, educational program of, 61 [Camp], D a n : kidnapped, 5 2 ; listed as slave, 4 8 ; sold,. 53-54 C a m p Deseret, concerts for war prisoners at, 61 C a m p , Ellen, took slaves on mission, 48 C a m p Hill Field, prisoners of war at, 63-65 [Camp], Ike, slave, 48 C a m p Ogden Army Service Forces D e p o t : facilities at 57-58; photographs of, 55, 59, 62, 6 9 ; war prisoners at, 6 1 , 65-67 C a m p Rupert, war prisoners at, 63, 68 C a m p Salina, war prisoners killed at, 67, 72 C a m p Tooele, war prisoners at, 58, 68 C a m p , William, acquitted of slave kidnapping, 52 C a m p , Williams Washington, slave owner, 4748, 53-54. See also Camp, William Cania, Capote warrior, 120 Cannon, A b r a h a m H., noted Mormon political feelings, 3 6 0 - 6 1 ; 363-64 Cannon, Frank J., Republican activities of, 31-33, 36-37, 367 Cannon, George Q . : and polygamy, 339; Republican activities of, 35-36, 3 6 3 ; sends W a r r e n Johnson to Lee's Ferry, 10; on statehood, 312, 359; went to San Bernardino, 47 Capote U t e s : A m y reports on, 119-20, 12324; refused to have miners in their territory, 120-21; territory of, 117; treaties with, 118 Carey Act of 1894, 257 Carey, Joseph M., delegate and senator from Wyoming, 287-88, 361 Carmer, Carl, The Farm Boy and the Angel, reviewed, 73-74 Carpenter Madsen, nickname, 27 Carreta No. 1, Capote warrior, 120 Carr eta No. 2, Capote warrior, 120 Carrington, -, attorney general in slave kidnap case, 52 Carson, Christopher ( K i t ) , led Utes against Navajos, 149-50 Carson, J. B., U t e agent, 122 Carter, Charles, Heber cattleman, 245 Garter, K a t e B., The Story of the Negro Pioneer, cited, 47 Carvalho, Solomon N., on Chief Walker, 89, 197 Case, Cephas, helped slaves escape, 45

397 Case-Wheeler Act, 208, 216 Catholic Church, in New Mexico, 318 Central U t a h Project, 294, 304 Chambers, Peter, interviewed about slaves, 46 Chambers, Samuel, interviewed about slaves, 46 C h a m p , George H , loan officer, 230-31 Chapoose, Conner, U t e leader, 194-95 Charley Slobberboos, nickname, 23, 26 Chaves, renegade Capote leader, 119-20 Chee Dodge, Navajo interpreter, 157 Chemehuevi, Southern Paiute sub-group, 97, 101-2 Cheney, Thomas E., review of Brunvand, The Study of American Folklore, 80-81 Chiviato, Weminuche warrior, 121 Chiviz, Capote warrior, 120 Chorpenning, , doctor, 166 Chris Biddy, nickname, 28 Chris Blacksmith, nickname, 27 Chris Cellar Jensen, nickname, 26 Chris Tallerass, nickname, 23, 25, 28 Chris Tinker Madsen, nickname, 27 Christensen, Christian Lingo, missionary to Hopis, 189-90, 193 Christensen, James Boyd: "Function and F u n in Utah-Danish Nicknames," 23-29; nicknamed Boyd Nickolai, 24, 29 Christensen, Parley Packer, presidential candidate, 223 n. 39 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints : background of Manifesto of, 328-49; and church-state conflict, 317-18; Indian policies of, 93, 103, 106-8; loyalty of, 315-16; missionaries of, 3 2 6 ; nineteenth century public image of, 308-10, 324-26; and partisan politics, 319-20, 364-65; political strategies of, 354-68; and slavery, 4950, 5 4 ; and states rights, 3 1 0 ; as a subculture, 326-27; and the Walker War, 89, 106. See also Mormons; Polygamy; Manifesto; and individual Mormon leaders Chyumo, Capote warrior, 120 Civilian Conservation Corps: dams built by, 274-75; photograph of camp of, 2 7 2 ; photographs of projects of, 265, 2 7 9 ; in U t a h , 265-85; U t a h enrollees in, 267-68; value of, 283-84; war prisoners housed by, 5 7 ; worked on Newton dam, 216-17, 220 Civil Rights Act of 1866, 314 Clark, Henry, went to San Bernardino, 47 Clarkston, in Cache Valley, 208-10 Clark, W. L., helped slaves escape, 45 A Classified Bibliography of the Periodical Literature of the Trans-Mississippi West, A Supplement (1957-67), by Winther and V a n O r m a n , reviewed, 382-83 Clearfield Naval Supply Depot, war prisoners at, 66

398 Cleveland, Grover: and Commission on Forestry, 239; defeated by Harrison, 360; does not sign Edmunds-Tucker bill, 344-45; elected president, 319; a n d Scott amendment, 336-37, 339, 3 4 3 ; signs U t a h statehood bill, 323 Clevenger, , at Lee's Ferry, 17 Clinton, Jeter, police justice, 48 Collin, H . F., U.S. marshal, 357 Colorado River, and the Hopis, 183, 187, 190-91 Colorado River Basin, waters of, diverted to Great Basin, 290 Colorow, White River U t e leader, 137 Comanches, Central Numic spoken by, 97 Compromise of 1850, gave U t a h local option on slavery, 40-41 Congregationalism, mysticism suppressed in, 309 Cooley, Everett L., " I n M e m o r i a m : Dale L. Morgan, 1914-1971," 85-88 Copperfield, David, U t e delegate, photograph of, 129 Cora, Uto-Aztecan language, 97 Corn Creek, Indian lands at, 109, 139 Cornea, Capote warrior, 120 Cornea Jr., Capote warrior, 120 Coronado, Francisco Vasques de, in the Southwest in 1540, 91 Correll, J. L e e : "Navajo Frontiers in U t a h and Troublous Times in M o n u m e n t Valley," 145-61; used archeological data, 94 Cosinas, now known as Havasupais, 102 Coulbourn, Tom, slave, 48 Council of Fifty, shadow government, 308, 355-56 Cragin, Aaron H., New Hampshire senator, 314 Crampton, C. Gregory, " I n d i a n Country," 90-94 Crane, Helene, Humanities Project secretary, 373 Crausby, Raleigh, researched Pony Express Trail, 377 Creamery Pete, nickname, 24, 27, 29 Crismon, Charles, at Council Bluffs, 43-44 Critchlow, J. J., U i n t a h Indian agent, 13235, 173 Crofton, R.E.A., Fort Wingate commander, 156-57 Crosby, Elizabeth, with Mississippi company, 44 [Crosby], Grief, slave, 43 Crosby, Oscar, slave, 40, 42-44 Crosby, Vilate, slave, 46 Crosby, William, slave owner, 42-44, 49 Crossette, George, Selected Prose of John Wesley Powell, reviewed, 388-89 Cross-eyed M a r t , nickname, 26 Cubero, Navajo squatter, 125

Utah Historical Quarterly Cullom, Shelby M., Illinois senator, 314 Cullom-Struble bill, 329 Culmer, H.L.A.: complains of sheep, 249; engraving of "Wasatch by Moonlight" by 201 Cuminpitche, Weminuche warrior, 121 Cummings, B. F., told about W. M. Johnson's genealogy, 16 Cupeno, Uto-Aztecan language, 96 Curtis, George Ticknor, lawyer for Mormon Church, 3 2 1 , 331, 335 Custer, George, at Little Big Horn, 134 Curivitche, Capote warrior, 120

D a g h a a Sik'aad, Navajo leader, 151 D a g h a a Yazhi, and m u r d e r of prospectors, 143-54, 156, 160 Danes: converts to Mormonism, 24; humor of, 24, 2 9 ; naming p a t t e r n of, 2 4 ; nicknames of, 23-29; in Sanpete County, 24 Danish Pete, nickname, 24 Danish Pete Yo, nickname, 23, 26 Darger, Stanford P., review of Karolevitz, This Was Pioneer Motoring: An Album of Nostalgic Automemorabilia, 79-80 Datwyler, Perry Glen, won U t a h State Historical Society's student award, 378 Davis and Weber Counties Canal Company, bought Echo water, 258 Davis, Benjamin, superintendent of Indian affairs for U t a h , 167 Davis, Charles, went to San Bernardino, 47 Davis County: C C C projects in, 269; early history of, 255 Davis, David Brion, cited, 309, 311 Davis, James, Welsh interpreter, 188 Dawes Severalty Act, 137 Dayton Globe and Iron Works, won Strawberry Valley contract, 291 Deep Creek: Gosiute lands at, 163; Indian farm at, 109, 111, 166-67 174, 176; land kept by Indians at, 113; painting of, 169; reservation at, 177; school at, 112 Deep Creek Reservation, reverted to public domain, 139 Deer Creek D a m , site cleared, 282-83 Delaney, Robert W . : edits I n d i a n history document, 9 4 ; " T h e Southern Utes a Century Ago," 114-28 Democratic p a r t y : controlled 1899 Utah legislature, 3 1 ; democracy of, 310; factions of, 33, 35, 37-38; failed to elect senator, 3 1 ; inexperience of, 3 8 ; a n d polygamy, 331-32; and statehood, 319 [Dennis], Jim, slave, 48 [Dennis], J i m Valentine, slave, 48 Dennis, Nancy ( M a m m y ) , slave, 48 Dennis, William Taylor, slave owner, 48

Index Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, 134, 282, 290-91 Denver, Norma, interviewed Gertrude Chapoose Willie, " I Am an American," 194-95 Deseret Alphabet, taught to Hopis, 188-89 Deseret Farmer, quoted, 206 Deseret, State of: 1849 Constitution of, 130; granted timber rights, 164 Desert Culture, 90-91, 93 Desert Lands Act, 226-27, 287 Dibe Ligai, testified in murder case, 148 Dine Ts'osi, Navajo witness to murder of prospectors, 153-56, 160 Disciples of Christ, founder of, 115 District Soccer League, war prisoners in, 60-61 Do'at'iini, brother of Hashkeneinii, 150 Dodds, Pardon, U i n t a h Indian agent, 132 Dodge, George W., Gosiute Indian agent, 173 Dominguez-Escalante Expedition, and Indians, 92, 98, 102 D o p p , William, West Cache construction boss, 232 Dougherty, J o h n V., Gosiutes work lands of, 172-73 Douglas, White River U t e chief, 133 Douglas, Stephen A., and popular sovereignty, 311-12 D r e d Scott Decision, 311 [Drummond], Cato, slave, 4 8 D r u m m o n d , W. W., slave owner, 48 Duke Indian Oral History Project, at University of U t a h , 94 Duncan, John, U t e delegate, photograph of, 129

East Canyon D a m , 264 Echo D a m : construction of, 258-62; photograph of, 254 Edmunds Act of 1882: House hearings on, 332-33, 354-55; polygamists prosecuted under, 329 Edmunds, George F., Vermont senator authored anti-polygamy legislation, 314, 320-21, 331-32 Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887: effects of, 212, 321, 329, 358; extension of, proposed, 3 1 9 ; passage of, 320-21, 331, 342-45 Egan Canyon, Gosiutes farmed at, 172 Egan, Howard, missionary to Indians, 107, 166 Ellsworth, Maria S., review of Tanner, A Mormon Mother, An Autobiography, 78-79 Ellsworth, S. George, review of Winther and V a n Orman, A Classified Bibliography of the Periodical Literature of the TransMississippi West, A Supplement (1957-67), 382-83

399 Emery, George B., territorial governor, 316 Emett, James S., at Lee's Ferry, 21 Emmy Hans, nickname, 27 Enabling Act, 323, 350-51 Ephraim, Danes in, 24-27, 29 Episcopal Church, in Dakota Territory, 318 Evans, Charles, witnessed sale of slaves, 53 Ewell, Mary Lee Bland, told about slaves, 47 Ewell, William, immigrated to U t a h , 47

Fact Finders Act, 299 Fairbanks, David, went to San Bernardino, 47 Fairmont Park, war prisoners work at, 64 The Farm Boy and the Angel, by Carl Carmer, reviewed, 73-74 Farnsworth, A. L., and Lot Smith, 17 Fechner, Robert, C C C director, 267, 278 Federal Land Bank, held West Cache stock, 236 Federal Reclamation Act of 1902, 257 Felt, N. H., interviewed on slavery, 49 Fiddler Christensen, nickname, 27 Finley, Arthur W., Strawberry Valley W a t e r Users' Association president, 304 First Reconstruction Act, 314 Fish, Joseph, at Lee's Ferry, 13, 22 Fitch, Thomas, Nevada representative, 315 Fitzpatrick, Doyle C , The King Strang Story: A Vindication of James J. Strang, the Beaver Island Mormon King, reviewed, 389-90 [Flake], Daniel, slave, 41 Flake, Green, pioneer slave of 1847, 40-42, 44, 46 [Flake], Isham, slave 41 Flake, James M., slave owner, 41-43 Flake, Mrs. James M., gave slaves to Mormon Church, 42 Flake, John M., inherited slaves, 41 Flake, Jordan, disposed of slaves in will, 41 [Flake], Lyse, slave, 41 Flake, M a r t h a Green (Liz), slave, 4 1 , 46 [Flake], Ned, slave, 41 Flake, Osmer D., family biographer, 41 Flake, William J., went to San Bernardino, 42 Flewellen, , barber, 45 Flewellen, Betsy Crosby Brown, slave, 43-44 Flitton, Ann, receptionist at U t a h State Historical Society, 378 Flying Hans, nickname, 26-27 Fort Bridger, 134 Fort Buenaventura, 255 Fort Defiance, Navajo agency at, 160 Fort Douglas: C C C enrollees at, 2 6 8 ; C C C inspectors from 2 8 3 ; war prisoners at, 62, 66-68; 72

400 Fort Duchesne: Indian agency at, 137, 1 4 1 ; photograph of, 139 Fort Hall I n d i a n Reservation, 109, 173, 176, 326 Fortier, Samuel, engineer, 213, 229 Fort Massachusetts, 118 Fort Monroe, C C C m e n set sent to U t a h from, 268 Fort Robidoux, 128 Fort Thornburgh, 134 Fort Union, 118 Folklore of the Great West: Selections from Eighty-three Years of the Journal of American Folklore, Greenway, ed., reviewed, 74-75 Forbush, Gary D., U t a h State Historical Society's director of preservation and planning, 373 Forest Reserve Committee, of Logan, 251 Forney, Jacob, U t a h I n d i a n superintendent, 165-67, 180-82 Foutz, Joseph L., and Lee's Ferry, 14 Fowler, Catherine S.: Great Basin Anthropology . . . A Bibliography, reviewed, 3878 8 ; "Notes on the History of the Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis," 95-113 Fowler, D o n D . : Great Basin Anthropology . . . A Bibliography, reviewed, 387-88; "Notes on the History of the Southern Paiutes and Western Shoshonis," 95-113 Fox, Jesse W., surveyor, 164 Fred Niels Peter, nickname, 28 Freedman's Bureau Act, 314 Freeman, D a n , first freeborn Negro in U t a h , 46 Fremont Culture, 97 French, James, Indian agent at Abiquiu, 116 Fuller, Frank, and U t a h statehood, 315 F u r trade, 92, 103, 106, 254-55

Gallivan, J o h n W., co-chairman of U t a h ' s D i a m o n d Jubilee, 375 G a n a d o M u c h o , Navajo chief, 155 Garcia, Lagos, Spanish trader, 103 Gardner, Henry, U t a h state senator, 289 Gaston, James K., helped slaves escape, 45 General Electric Company, won Strawberry Valley contract, 291 General Revision Act of 1890, set limit on land acquisition, 287 Ghirudato, Leone, director of studies for war prisoners, 63 Gibbons, Andrew S., a m o n g the Hopis 185 Gibbs, George F., saw Scott a m e n d m e n t danger, 349 Gilsonite, on U t e lands, 137 Giovanoni, • war prisoners, 65•, Monsignor, ministered to

Utah Historical

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Girous, — -, Catholic priest, ministered to war prisoners, 65 Glass, M a r y Ellen, Silver and Politics in Nevada: 1892-1902, reviewed, 385-86 Glendale Co-op, W. M. Johnson obtained interest in, 7 Gold rush, threatened Indians, 93, 106 Goodwin Brothers, Big R a n g e ranchers, 22728 Goodwin, C. C , in 1899 election, 34 Goodyear, Miles, a n d Fort Buenaventura, 255 Gooseberry Reservoir, 283 Gosiutes: at Deep Creek, 113, 177; and farming, 107, 165-67, 171-73, 175; Jedediah Smith saw, 106; a n d Mormon pioneers, 162-77; resisted relocation, 16869, 171-74; speech of, 9 1 , 96-97; territory of, 163, 174; a n d treaties of 1863, 168, 170 Graff am, George W., U i n t a h I n d i a n agent, 132 Granit, Gerhard, former war prisoner, questioned, 70 Grant, Heber J., 3-4, 357 Great Basin Anthropology ...A Bibliography,

by Fowler, comp., reviewed 387-88 The Great Plains, cited, 202-3 The Great Platte River Road: The Covered Wagon Mainline Via Fort Kearney to Fort Laramie, by Mattes, reviewed, 77-78 Greenman, J o h n W., U . S. commissioner, 358 Greenway, John, ed., Folklore of the Great West: Selections from Eighty-three Years of the Journal of American Folklore, reviewed, 74-75 Greer, Thomas, took slaves on mission, 48 Grin Billy, nickname, 26 Grinning Moses, nickname, 26 Grow, Stewart L., " U t a h ' s Senatorial Election of 1899: T h e Election T h a t Failed," 30-39 Gruenheit, H a n s J o h a n n , prisoner of war, 58-59 Guero, U t e sub-chief, p h o t o g r a p h of, 142 Guthrie, A., Company, constructed Echo D a m , 259

H Hafen, LeRoy R . : review of Tyler, The Montana Gold Rush Diary of Kate Dunlap, 381-82; The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, vol. I V , reviewed, 380-81 Haight, Hector C , Davis C o u n t y pioneer, 255 Haight, H o r t o n D., at Lee's Ferry, 12 Half Bushel Jensen, nickname, 25 Hallam, J o h n , helped slaves escape, 45 Hamblin, J a c o b : averts conflict with Indians, 107; a n d the Hopis, 181, 183-84, 187-92; and Lee's Ferry, 4, 8-9; looked for Moun-

Index tain Meadows survivors, 187-88; noted plight of Southern Paiutes, 110-11 Hamblin, Lyman, at Lee's Ferry, 9 Hamblin, William M., with Hopis, 185 H a n d y John, nickname, 28 Hans K., nickname, 27-28 Hanson, Edward, surveyor, 226-27, 229 Hardaway, Robert M., colonel in charge of Bushnell General Hospital, 60 Hardscrabble Olsen, nickname, 23, 26 Harms, Clemens, Lutheran pastor, ministers to war prisoners, 65-66, 69-70 Harris, Henry, J r . : " T h e Indians and the F u r M e n , " 128; interviewed, 94; " T h e Walker W a r , " 178 Harrison, Benjamin: appointed Thomas governor, 3 2 2 ; elected president, 3 6 0 ; granted amnesty to polygamists, 3 2 3 ; took Paiute Strip from Navajos, 161 Hashkeneinii: affirmed son's innocence, 155; arrested, 156-57; died, 160; evaded captors, 149-51 heard of murder of prospectors, 154; in jail, 160; life of, 149-50; threatened agent, 152 Hashkeneinii Biye': accused of murdering prospectors, 153-54; arrested, 156-57, 160; in hiding with Utes, 157-58; photograph of, 145; pleaded innocent, 155; son of Hashkeneinii, 150; succeeded father as Navajo chief, 161 Hash Knife, northern Arizona cattle company, 240 Haskell, Thales, with the Hopis, 181, 184, 186-87, 189 Hastiin Beyal, testified to Navajos in U t a h , 148 Hastiin John, trading post owner, 161 Hatch, Al, sheep owner, 285 Hatch, F. Garn, given U t a h State Historical Society's Iverson award, 377 Hatch, Ira, visited Hopis, 181, 189 Hatlis, Henry, baptized W. M. Johnson, 5 Havasupais, traded with Southern Paiutes, 102 Hazel Big Chris, nickname, 28 Heead, F. H., Indian superintendent, 131 Heber Valley, illegal grazing by residents of, 137 Hell Roarin Johnson, nickname, 23, 26 Henry Mountains, Navajos ranging in, 14748 Hepworth, Carmen, given U t a h State Historical Society's teacher award, 377 Hermano, Capote warrior, 120 Hetzel, Louise, given U t a h State Historical Society's teacher award, 377 Hijo Benow, Weminuche warrior, 121 Hinckley, Ira N., visited Little Colorado settlements, 13 Hinton, Richard J., studied irrigation, 287 Historic Sites Survey, 373-74

401 Hitchcock, Ethan A., secretary of the interior, 290 Hobble Creek, photograph of, 265 Holiday, J. H., surveyor, 229 Holladay, J o h n D., in Mississippi company, 44 Homestead Act, settlements in U t a h under, 137, 226 Hollister, O. J., testified on irrigation, 228 Hooper Irrigation Company, bought Echo water shares, 258 [Hooper], Shep, slave, 48 Hooper, William H . : slave owner, 48, 53-54; congressional delegate, 313, 327 Hopis: as descendants of Anasazi, 9 1 ; language of, 96, 189; life style of, 9 3 ; and Mormon missionaries, 179-94; photograph of, 1 9 1 ; and Prince Modoc myth, 188-89; traditions of, 182-85; visited Salt Lake City, 188, 190-91 Horspool, Francis L., painter, 169 Hortal, Louis, prisoner of war camp inspector, 61 Hoskaninni. See Hashkeneinii Hotevilla, H o p i village of, 182, 187 Hovenweep National Monument, 89 Hudson's Bay Company, Intermountain activities of, 97, 254-55 Huichol, Uto-Aztecan language, 97 Humphrey, T. H., engineering student, 213 Huntington, Al, at Lee's Ferry, 21 H u r t , Garland, Indian agent, 105 Hyde, Orson, explained M o r m o n stand on slavery, 50

Idaho, war prisoners in, 57 Ignacio: photograph of, 117; Southern U t e chief, 120-22 Indian Court of Claims, 143 Indian history, evidence used in writing of, 93-94 Indian Joe. See Pickavit, Joe Indian Removal Act of 1864, 170 Indian Reorganization Act, 112, 144 I n d i a n : associations, 105-8; history, 90-93; horse culture, 98-102; languages, 96-97, 99; myths, 100-1; schools, 112; slavery, 103-5; subsistence, 100-1; trade, 101-2 treaties, 117-18, 123. See also various tribal designations Indian Territory. See Oklahoma Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, 270-72 Intermountain Indian School, formerly Bushnell General Hospital, 60 International Association of Machinists, Fechner board member of, 267

402 Ingalls, George W., reported on Indians, 10811, 174-75 Ireland L a n d and Cattle Company, of Salina, 245 Irish, O. H., Indian superintendent, 130-31, 169-70 Ironton steel plant, economic effects of, 301 Irrigation: in Newton, 207-23; in U t a h County, 286-304; in Weber County, 2566 4 ; in West Cache, 224-37 Isidro, Capote warrior, 120 Italian, Capote warrior, 120 Ivory, Matthew, went to Council Bluffs, 44

Jackman, A. R., witnessed slave sale, 53 Jackson, Alden A. M., of St. George, 8 Jacksonian Democracy, difficulty of defining, 309-10 Jackson, James, at Lee's Ferry, 8-9, 11, 14, 19 Jackson, Richard, researched Pony Express Trail, 377 Jake Butcher, nickname, 29 James, Isaac E., surveyor, 6 James, John, Jr., U t a h State Historical Society librarian, 376-77 Jarvis, Robert, Gosiute Indian agent, 165-66 Jenkins, Washington, Ogden engineer, 230-31 Jensen, Jacob, nickname of, 29 Jensen in the Green House, nickname, 26 Jensen in the White House, nickname, 26 Jensen, James C , nickname of, 28 Jensen, James C. E., nickname of 27 Jensen, James S., nickname of, 28 Jenson, Andrew, L D S C h u r c h historian, 41 Jicarilla Apaches, A m y agent for, 116, 123, 127 J i m Dist Nielson, nickname, 26 Jimmy Big Chris, nickname, 28 J o h n Shiner, nickname, 23, 26 Johnson, Andrew, President, 116, 319 Johnson, Elizabeth (daughter of W a r r e n ) , 9 Johnson, Elnora, (daughter of W a r r e n ) , 20 Johnson, Frank Tilton (son of W a r r e n ) , 13, 18, 21 Johnson, Jeremiah (son of W a r r e n ) , 11, 17, 21 Johnson, J. H., slave owner, 48 Johnson, J o h n A., black wrangler, 17 Johnson, J o n a t h a n (son of W a r r e n ) , 19 Johnson, L a u r a Alice (daughter of W a r r e n ) , 19 Johnson, LaVell, given U t a h State Historical Society's service award, 377 Johnson, Mary Evelett (daughter of W a r r e n ) , 6 Johnson, Melinda (daughter of W a r r e n ) , 11, 19

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Quarterly

Johnson, Millie (daughter of W a r r e n ) , 19 Johnson, Permelia J a n e (wife of W a r r e n ) , 5-6,9,11,13,21 Johnson, S a m a n t h a (wife of W a r r e n ) , 7, 11, 13, 15, 18, 20-21 Johnson, Thomas, ancestor of W. M. Johnson, 4 Johnson, Tim, White River U t e , 140 Johnson, W a r r e n Marshall: character of 4, 10; children of, 6, 9, 11, 1 3 ; converted to Mormonism, 5 ; death of, 2 2 ; early years of, 4-5; at Glendale, K a n e County, 6-7; at Lee's Ferry, 9 - 2 1 ; married Permelia Jane, 6; married Samantha, 7; at M u d d y Mission, 5-6; in New England, 4, 16; occupations of, 6-7, 10, 14; photograph of, 3 ; in Wyoming, 21 Johnston, Albert Sidney, with U t a h Expedition, 325 Jose, Capote warrior, 120 Josepha, Weminuche warrior, 120 J u a b County, lack of irrigation water in, 293-94, 301 J u a n anche, Capote warrior, 120 Juaniquio, Capote warrior, 120 J u d a h , T. H., Cache Valley Irrigation District general manager, 235 J u d d , Zadok K n a p p , rented rooms to W. M. Johnson's wives, 11 Julian, George W., Radical Republican congressman, 316 Julien, Denis, trapper, 128

K K'aayelii, Navajo leader, 146-47, 151 Kaibab Indians, practiced horticulture, 101 Kaibab Reservation, 111-13 Kaneatche, Moache chief, 121 Kanetzke, H o w a r d , review of Burt, Negroes in the Early West, 75-76 Karolevitz, Robert, This Was Pioneer Motoring: An Album of Nostalgic Automemorabilia, reviewed, 79-80 Karren, Thomas, sheep owner, 285 Kawaiisii, Southern Numic speakers, 97 Kearns, T h o m a s V., Arizona rancher, 157-58 Kearns, Thomas, senator, 39 Kee Diniihi, Navajo leader, 147-48, 151 Kelly, Charles: "Charles Kelly Discovers Chief Walker's Grave," 197-98; " I n Memoriam," by Mortensen, 196-200; photograph of, 196 Kelsey, Frank C , civil engineer, 257 Kigalia. See K'aayelii Kimball, Heber C.: Green Flake worked for, 4 2 ; oratory of, 2 4 8 ; pioneer company of, 4 6 ; owned slaves, 43 Kingsbury, , cavalry officer, 157 Kingsley, J. L., propagandized war prisoners, 62-63

403

Index The King Strang Story: A Vindication of James J. Strang, the Beaver Island Mormon King, by Fitzpatrick, reviewed, 389-90 King, William H . : Democrats fail to elect, 37; in 1899 senate election, 32-33, 36; photograph of, 32 Korn, Bertram W., wrote introduction to Carvalho journal, 89 Knell, Benjamin, among the Hopis, 185 Knighton, Henry, nickname of, 28

Lake Bauram, named, 280-81 Lake Bonneville, 208 Lamar, Howard R., "Statehood for U t a h : A Different Path," 307-27 Lannan, Patrick H., Salt Lake Tribune business manager, 358 Larsen, Annie, nickname of, 29 Larsen, Jens, ancestor of J. B. Christensen, 24 Larsen, John, nickname of, 28 Larson, E. O., U . S. engineer, 280-81 Larson, T. A., cited, 316 Lancaster, W. B., injured on Strawberry Project, 295 LaSal Mountains, Navajos ranged there, 147-48 Law, Albert A.: accused McCune of bribery, 34, 37; photograph of, 35 Lay, Hark, slave with 1847 pioneers, 40, 4244, 46 [Lay], Henderson, slave, 43 [Lay], Knelt, slave, 43 Lay, William H., slave owner, 42-44 Lazy Dave, nickname, 26 Leadville D r u m Corps, at Pioneer Jubilee, 326 Leavitt, Thomas, 185 Lee, E m m a Batchhelder (Mrs. John D.) : photograph of, 15; ran ferry after husband's arrest, 9, 11-13; sold interest in Lonely Dell ferry to LDS Church, 14-15; settled at Lonely Dell, 7 Lee, Hector, cited, 25-26 Lee, John D . : arrest and imprisonment of, 8-9, 1 1 ; execution of, 13; found refuge with Hamblin, 8; and Hopis, 180, 188-89; at Lee's Ferry, 4, 8-9, 12; at Lonely Dell 7; photograph of cabin of, 184 Lee, Rachel (Mrs. John D . ) , settled at Jacob's Pools, 7 Lee's Ferry: fees charged at, 11-12; Hamblin's activities at, 4, 9; Johnson's activities at, 4, 9-21; Lee's activities at, 4, 8; rough road at, 11-14 Lee, William, farmer, 171, 173, 175 Leggroan, Esther, interviewed about slaves, 46 Leithead, James, Mormon bishop, 6, 14-15

Leonard, Glen M.: Humanities Project director, 373; Quarterly managing editor, 375 Leone, Mark P., review of Fowler, comp., Great Basin Anthropology . . . A Bibliography, 387-88 Lester, Margaret D., U t a h State Historical Society photograph librarian, 376 Lewis, John S., favored Strawberry reservoir, 289 Liberal party: boycotted 1887 Constitution, 320; dominated by non-Mormons, 3 8 ; skeptical about Manifesto, 322 Lincoln, Abraham: debated Douglas, 312; Indian policies of, 116, 130, 168 Little Big Horn, Indian troops at, 134 Little Chris, nickname, 25, 27 Little, Feramorz, visited by Brigham Young, 48 Little, Jesse, discussed slaves, 48 Little Jimmy Big Chris, nickname, 28 Little John, nickname, 25 Litzford, Miles, slave, 46 Litzford, Rose, mother of first freeborn Negro in Utah, 46 Livestock: photograph of, 247; on public lands, 245-51 Lockhart, John, with Mississippi company, 44 Logan, Utah, in July 1902, 241-42 Lost Creek Dam, 264 Luiseno, Uto-Aztecan language, 96 Lumbering, effects of, 243-44, 251 Lund, Anthon H., photograph of, 363 Lund, Herbert Z., review of Scully, A Treasury of American Indian Herbs: Their Lore and Their Use for Food, Drugs, and Medicine, 386-87 Lyman, Amasa M.: pioneer company of, 4 2 ; went to San Bernardino, 42, 49 Lyman, Amasa, Jr.: discussed freeing of slaves in California, 4 9 ; listed slaves and slave owners in Utah, 42-43 Lyman, Francis M . : and People's party, 357; photograph of, 363 Lytel, J. L., Strawberry project engineer, 297 Lythgoe, Dennis L., "Negro Slavery in U t a h , " 40-54

M McAllister, William James Frazier, carpenter, 17 McConnel, Jehiel, learned Hopi, 189-90 McCune, A. W.: accused of bribery, 34, 37; defeated by Kearns in 1901, 39; and 1899 senate election, 32-34; photograph of, 35 McDonald, A. F., and Lee's Ferry, 8 Mack, Charley, Ute delegate, photograph of, 129 McKinley, William, death of, 288

404 McKown, Francis, with Mississippi company, 44 McLaughlin, James, Indian inspector, 139-40 McNally, James, prospector, murdered in Monument Valley, 151-55, 159 McQuarrie, J o h n G., voted for E. H . Snow, 33 Madison, James, and divided sovereignty, 310 Madsen, Arch L., co-chairman of Utah's Diamond Jubilee, 375 Malmquist, O. N . : author of Tribune history, 375; won U t a h State Historical Society award, 377 Manifesto: background of, 328-49; as a conformist document, 322; and 1887 Constitution, 346-49 Manuel, U t e raider, 122 Manuel, Capote warrior, 120 Marshall, S. E., Navajo agent, 152 M a r t h a Dave, nickname, 27 Martineau, Harriet, English writer, 310 Martineau, Lyman R., Forest Reserve committeeman, 251 Martine, Capote warrior, 120 M a r t Stompey, nickname, 28-29 Mary Antone, nickname, 27 Mathison, Helen, U t a h State Historical Society secretary, 373 Mattes, Merrill J., The Great Platte River Road, reviewed, 77-78 Matthews, Robert, went to San Bernardino, 47, 49 [Matthews], Uncle Phil, slave, 43 Matthews, Williams, slave owner, 43 Maughan, Peter, led settlers to Cache Valley, 209 Maughan's Fort, in Cache County, 209 Maughan, W W . , attorney, 230 Maxwell, George H., of National Irrigation Association, 288 Mead, Elwood, commissioner of reclamation, 261 Meeker, Nathan, Indian agent, 134 Merrick, James, killed by Utes, 151 Merrill, Parley, West Cache director, 230 Merrill, Stephen A., "Reclamation and the Economic Development of Northern U t a h : T h e Weber River Project," 254-64 Merritt, Christopher, won U t a h State Historical Society student award, 378 Mesa Verde, 91 Mexican War, 93 Mexico: Indian slave trade in, 103-4; influenced Desert Culture, 90; and the Mexican War, 9 3 ; in the Southwest, 9 2 ; Uto-Aztecan language spoken in, 96-97 Miconi, Gene, prisoner of war, 67 Midview Dam, 280 Midwife Taylor, nickname, 27

Utah Historical Quarterly Miera, Bernardo de, m a p by, 92 Millard County, crickets in, 276 Millennial Star, slaves mentioned in, 48-49 Miller, David E., review of Mattes, The Great Platte River Road: The Covered Wagon Mainline Via Fort Kearny to Fort Laramie, 77-78 Miller Hermanson, nickname, 27 Miller Jensen, nickname, 27 Minidoka Project, in Idaho, 303 Mining: and Brunot Treaty, 121 n. 16, 124 n. 19, 127; in M o n u m e n t Valley, 151; Mormon attitudes toward, 322; in San J u a n Mountains, 119, 124-25; on Ute lands, 120-21, 137 Minniss, J. F., Indian agent at Ouray, 135-37 Mitchell, Ernest, killed by Utes, 151 Moaches, Southern U t e sub-group: Amy agent of, 116; territory of, 117; treaties affecting, 118 Moapas, practice horticulture, 101 Moapa Reservation, on Southern Paiute land.

112-13 Moenkopi (also Moencopi) : Hopi village of, 182; Mormons at, 194; photograph of, 193 Mohaves, traded with other tribes, 102 Moon Lake Project, 280 The Montana Gold Rush Diary of Kate Dunlap, ed. by Tyler, reviewed, 381-82 Monument Valley: Navajo and white conflicts in, 145-61; photograph of, 159 Moquich (also Moqui, M o q u i t c h ) . See Hopis Morgan, Dale L.: cited, 310; " I n Memoriam," by Cooley, 85-88; review of Hafen, ed., The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, vol. I V , 380-81 Mormons: developed irrigation, 207-8, 21013, 252; and the Hopis, 179-94; at Lee's Ferry, 4 ; in Mexico, 189, 192; at Muddy Mission, 5-6; in northern Arizona, 4, 189, 192; from Scandinavia, 2 4 ; settled in Cache Valley, 209-10, 225-26; settled on Gosiute lands, 163-64, 176; settled on Ute lands, 130; settled in Weber County, 2555 7 ; settlement pattern of, 209, 225. See also Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Polygamy; individual Mormon leaders A Mormon Mother, An Autobiography, by Tanner, reviewed, 78-79 Morrill, Austin, anti-Mormon congressman, 312 Morrow, H. A., C a m p Douglas general, 17475 Morgan, John, sent on Arizona political mission, 361 Mortensen, A. R., " I n Memoriam," for Charles Kelly, 199-200 Moss, Frank E., U t a h senator sponsored Newton repayment bill, 221 Mountain Meadows Massacre, search for survivors of, 180-82

405

Index The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, vol. IV., ed. by Hafen, reviewed, 380-81 Mountain West: economic development of, 204-6; physical environment of, 202-3; resources of, 203-4; settlement of, 204-6 Moyle, J. H., on 1899 senate ballot, 36 M u d d y Mission (Nevada), difficulties of, 5-6, 8, 181 M u d d y Valley, Indian reservation, 111 Murdock, Abe, U t a h congressman, 280 Murphy, Miriam B.: Humanities Project assistant director, 3 7 3 ; Utah Historical Quarterly assistant editor, 375 Murray, Eli, territorial governor, 317-18

N Nahuatl, Uto-Aztecan language, 97 Nash, Gerald D., review of Ames, Pioneering the Union Pacific: A Reappraisal of the Builders of the Railroad, 76-77 National Irrigation Association, 288 Nauvoo Legion, dissolved, 321 The Navajo of the Painted Desert, by Bateman, reviewed, 384-85 Navajos: adaptability of, 92-93; A m y agent for, 116, 123-27; fled federal troops, 192; at Fort Sumner, 149, 151; horse culture of, 102; located on Miera map, 9 2 ; Mexican expedition against, 146, 148-50; photograph of, 147; raided in Southern U t a h , 181-82; raided by Southern Utes, 121-22; reservation for, 123-27, 1 6 1 ; in San J u a n County, 146-49; as slave traders, 103-5; and Southern Paiutes, 107; trade of, 1 0 1 ; and Utes, 148-51, 158, 178 Nebeker, Aquila: adjourned U t a h legislature, 36; on 1899 senate election ballots, 32-33, 36; photograph of, 32 Negroes in the Early West, by Burt, reviewed, 75-76 Nelson, Lydia Ann (Mrs. David Brinkerhoff), sister-in-law of W. M. Johnson, 15 Nelson, Samantha. See Johnson, Samantha Newell, Frederick Haynes: commissioner in U.S. Geological Survey, 138; and the Strawberry Valley Project, 288-89, 297 Newland, Paul A., major at Fort Douglas, 6768 Newlands Act, passed, 289 Newlands, Francis G., Nevada senator, 288 New Mexico, Indian agencies in, 116 Newton, Cache Valley town, 208-10 Newton Irrigation Company, 212, 215-16 Newton Project, 217-23 Newton Reservoir: benefits of, 222-23; construction of, 217; federal funding of, 21317; history of, 207-23; photographs of, 207, 215; pioneer building of, 210-12 Newton Town Corporation, bought water stock, 217

Newton Water Users Association, 216-27, 221 Nicknames, Danish, 23-29 Nielsen, John, autobiography of, 285 Nielsen, Lars, naming of, 24 Nielson, Frihoff, G., signed bond for Lee's Ferry post office, 14 Niels Postmaster, Danish nickname, 26 Nord, A. L., Wasatch Forest supervisor, 268 Northern Paiutes, Western Numic spoken by, 97 North Ogden Irrigation Company, bought Echo water shares, 258 Norton, A. B., New Mexico Indian superintendent, 124 Nowlin, Bryant, Mormon elder went to Council Bluffs, 43-44 Numic, Uto-Aztecan language of, 96-97 Nuttall, L. J o h n : in K a n a b , 18; at Lee's Ferry, 14-15; on Little Colorado, 13

Ogden, 255-57 Ogden Air Technical Service Counsel, 63 Ogden Arsenal, soccer teams at, 61 Ogden Chamber of Commerce, requested reclamation survey, 263 Ogden, Peter Skene, trapper, 105, 254-55 Ogden River Project, 263, 281-82 Ojo Blanco, Weminuche warrior, 120 Oklahoma, recommended for Indian relocation, 173 Old Northwest, governing council of, 317 Olsen, Robert W., review of Crossette, ed., Selected Prose of John Wesley Powell, 388-89 Onate, J u a n de, Spanish colonizer, 91 O'Neil, Floyd A.: interviewed Henry Harris, Jr., " T h e Indians and the Fur M e n , " 128; " T h e Reluctant Suzerainty: T h e U i n t a h and Ouray Reservation," 129-44; used Indian oral history, 9 4 ; interviewed Harris, " T h e Walker War," 178 Oraibi: Mormon missionaries at, 181-82, 186; photograph of, 179; sacred stone of, 185; trade at, 186-87 Otto by Yingo, nickname, 23, 26 Ouray, Colorado I n d i a n agency, 134 Ouray, U t e chief: photograph of, 142; sought peace, 134 Overland Mail Company, and Gosiutes, 164, 167, 169 Owen, Robert Dale, democracy of, 310

Pa-bus-sat. See Cornea Padre, Capote warrior, 120 Paiute Indians: cultural conservatism of, 92; and Hopis, 183, 187; on Miera map, 9 2 ;

406 and Mormons, 180-81; Shoshoni spoken by, 91, 96-97; with Chief Walker, 178. See also Southern Paiutes Palon, Capote warrior, 120 Panamint, Central Numic spoken by, 97 Panic of 1907, harmed West Cache, 234 Panic of 1903, delayed West Cache canal, 232 Papago, Uto-Aztecan language, 97 Park City, road to U i n t a h reservation from, 134 Parker, A. F., Ogden engineer, 230 Parker, Eli S., commissioner of Indian affairs, 119 Parsons, E. H., U.S. marshal, 361 Pauwanie, Weminuche warrior, 121 Payson, economy of, 300-1 Payne, Rebecca S., given U t a h State Historical Society's teacher award, 377 Pedro Gallegos, Capote warrior, 120 Peep Hole Soren, nickname, 23, 27 Peggy Jensen, nickname, 25, 29 Peg Leg Nielsen, nickname, 25 Penrose, Charles W., endorsed anti-polygamy constitution, 341-42 Peoples Bank and Trust Company (Illinois), 234 People's party: called 1887 constitutional convention; dominated by Mormons, 38, 3 3 1 ; uncooperative members of, 357 Perkins, Andrew, members of emigrating company of, 46 [Perkins], Ben, slave, 43, 46 [Perkins], Esther, slave, 43 Perkins, Frances, secretary of labor, 267 [Perkins], Frank, slave, 43 Perkins, Jasper N., slave owner, 43, 46 Perkins, Mary, slave, 43, 46 Perkins, Monroe, slave owner, 43, 46 Perkins, Reuben, slave owner, 43, 46 Perpetual Emigrating Fund Company, dissolved, 321 Persechopa, Weminuche chief, 120 Persson, Sture, Y M C A inspector of prisoner of war camps, 6 1 , 68 Perty Pete, nickname, 23, 26 Pete, Navajo scout, testified to murder of prospectors, 152-55 Pete Golddigger, nickname, 26 Peterson, Charles S.: "Albert F. Potter's Wasatch Survey, 1902: A Beginning for Public Management of Natural Resources in U t a h , " 238-53; ed., "Charles Kelly Discovers Chief Walker's Grave," 197-98; " T h e Hopis and the Mormons, 1858-1873," 179-94; researched Mormon Battalion Trail, 377; resigned as director of U t a h State Historical Society, 378 Peterson, L. P., irrigation director, 235

Utah Historical Quarterly Pickavit, Joe (also Pickyavit) : at Chief Walker's grave, 197-98; described Sun Dance, 113; studied to be medicine man, 94 Pig Killer Thompsen, nickname, 27 Pima, Uto-Aztecan language, 96 Pimichi, Weminuche warrior, 120 Pinchy Chris, nickname, 23-24, 26 Pinchot, Gifford: conservation theory of, 252; 1896 western forest survey of, 239-41 Pine View D a m , 264, 280-81, 284 Pino, Navajo captain, 125 Pioneering the Union Pacific: A Reappraisal of the Builders of the Railroad, by Ames, reviewed, 76-77 Piquitagon, Capote warrior, 120 Plain City Irrigation Company, bought Echo water shares, 258 Pleasant Valley, meetings with Gosiutes held in, 166 Pleasant Valley War, between Arizona sheep and cattle owners, 249 Polacca, Tom, Hopi convert to Mormonism, 193-94 Poland Act of 1874, put U t a h courts and juries under federal control, 314-15, 317 Poll, Richard, cited, 314 Polygamy: cartoon of, 3 1 5 ; and constitution of 1887, 320, 346-49; in 1856 Republican platform, 3 1 1 ; J o h n Taylor refused to give up, 338; led to disfranchising of Mormons, 359-60; and the Manifesto, 322, 328-49; redefined in Tucker bill, 333. See also Edmunds-Tucker Act; Edmunds Act; Manifesto; Taylor, J o h n ; Woodruff, Wilford Pomeroy, Earl S., cited, 205 Pony Express, went through Gosiute territory, 164 Potter, Albert F . : arrived at Logan, 238, 2414 2 ; daily log of, 241-43; 1902 Wasatch survey of, 238-53; frontier experiences of, 240-41; noted attitudes toward reserves, 248-52; observed forest activities, 243-46, 248, 2 5 1 ; photographs of, 238, 253 Potter, Guy F., given U t a h State Historical Society student award, 378 Powell, David, slave owner, 43 Powell Irrigation Survey, appropriations for, 286 Powell, John, slave owner, 43-44 Powell, J o h n Wesley: environmental theory of, 239; irrigation study of, 286-87; reported on Gosiutes, 174-75; reported on U t a h and Nevada Indians, 108-11 Powell, Kent, researched Mormon Battalion Trail, 377 Powell, Moses, in Mississippi company, 44 Powers, O. W., on 1899 senate election ballots, 32-33, 36 Preston ( I d a h o ) : photograph of prisoners of war in, 6 4 ; prisoners of war camp in, 58, 66

Index Price, road to U i n t a h Reservation from, 134 Prince Modoc, mythical Welshman, 188-89 Prisoners of w a r : activities of, 60-63, 65-66; effects of propaganda on, 7 1 ; as farm workers, 59, 63-64; and Geneva conventions, 56-57, 66, 7 1 ; health of, 59-60; interviewed, 6 9 - 7 1 ; location of camps for, 57 n. 6; morale of, 6 6 ; photographs of, 55, 58, 59, 62, 64, 6 9 ; in U t a h and Idaho, 57-72 Provo Reservation Water Users Company, bought Echo water shares, 258 Provo River Project, 280, 282 Pueblo Culture, 91 Purin, Ruggerio, told of prisoner of war experiences, 64-65

Radical Republicans, 312, 314 Rampton, Calvin L., appointed committee for Utah's Diamond Jubilee, 375 Randall, Samuel J., Pennsylvania congressm a n opposed statehood, 320 Rawlins, Joseph L., elected U . S. senator in 1897, 3 1 , 38 Ray Tight, nickname, 23, 26 Reclamation Extension Act, 299 Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 268 Recreation, use of reservoirs for, 303-4 Red Brick: photograph of, 2 3 0 ; T r e n t o n school, 229 Red C a p : photograph of, 129; sought alliance with Sioux, 141 Redd, J o h n J., slave owner, 46-47 Reed, Amos, Gosiute sympathizer, 167 Reed, Chambeau, traded at Whiterocks, 128 Reilly, P. T., " W a r r e n Marshall Johnson, Forgotten Saint," 3-22 Report on the Lands of the Arid Region, published, 287 Republican party: denounced polygamy in 1856 platform, 3 1 1 ; in 1899 senatorial election, 33-34, 38. See also Smith, J o h n Henry Richards, C. C , failed as 1899 compromise senate candidate, 35 Richards, Franklin D. (apostle), rebuked J. H. Smith for partisan activities, 364-65 Richards, Franklin S. (attorney) : lobbied for statehood, 3 3 1 ; opposed Tucker bill, 334; photograph of, 3 3 3 ; promoted anti-polygamy constitution, 341-42 Richards, Willard, pioneer company of, 42 Rich, Benjamin, slave owner, 47 Rich, Charles C , slave owner, 42-43, 47, 49 [Rich], Dick, slave, 47 Rich Hans, nickname, 23, 26 Rich, Joseph, went to San Bernardino, 47 Rich, Russell R., review of Fitzpatrick, The King Strang Story: A Vindication of James

407 J. Strang, the Beaver Island Mormon King, 389-90 Riordan, Denis M., Navajo agent, 152-53, 155 Rigby, M . C.j irrigation director, 235 Rigby, William F., Mormon bishop, 210 Roberts, Brigham H , on statehood, 315-16, 324-25 Robidoux, Antoine, among Utes, 128 Rocky Mountain Fur Company, activities in northern U t a h , 208-9, 254-55 Roosevelt Dam, 303 Roosevelt, Franklin D . : approved Moon Lake Project, 280; approved Newton Project funding, 215; praised by former war prisoner, 7 1 ; and C C C , 266-68 Roosevelt, Theodore: favored reclamation, 288; gave Navajos additional lands, 1 6 1 ; interested in conservation, 239; opened U t e lands to white settlement, 140 Roper, William L., co-author of William Spry biography, 375 Rosa Big Chris, nickname, 28 Roundy, Lorenzo W., warned J. D. Lee of troops, 8 Ruby Valley, Gosiute farm in, 166 Rush Valley, Gosiutes in, 163 Sadler, Richard W., review of The American Heritage Book of Great Adventures of the Old West, 79 St. George Temple, completed, 13 Saint Joseph's Church ( O g d e n ) , and war prisoners, 65 Saint Mary's of the Wasatch (Salt Lake C i t y ) , and war prisoners, 65 Salazar, Francisco, led Mexicans against Navajos, 146 Sally's Andrew, nickname, 27 Salt Creek, flood control project on, 268 Salt Hans, nickname, 27 Salt Lake Temple, building stone for, 212 Salt Lake Basin Project, surveyed, 257-58 Salt Marsh, Gosiute farm, 174 San J u a n County, Navajos in, 146-49 San J u a n Indians, horticulture of, 101 San Pete, reverted to public domain, 139-40 Sanpete County: Danish nicknames in, 2329; growth of, 301 San Pete Valley, Indian farm, 109 Savage, Charles, photographed Hopi trade delegates, 191 Savillo, killed by Ignacio, 120-21 Scandinavians: converted to Mormonism, 24; naming pattern of, 2 4 ; nicknames of, 23-29 Schnyder, Paul, inspector of prisoner of war camps, 61 Scofield D a m , 283

408 Scott amendment: effects of, 346-49; endorsed by Cleveland, 3 4 3 ; promoted, 3424 4 ; to Tucker bill, 336-41 Scott, Iris, U t a h State Historical Society business manager, 378 Scott, William, Pennsylvania congressman, photographs of, 328, 332. See also Scott amendment Scrook Knighton, nicknamed by Danes, 2829 Scully, Virginia, A Treasury of American Indian Herbs: Their Lore and Their Use for Food, Drugs, and Medicine, reviewed, 38687 Seaman, John, sawmill owner, 15, 17 Second Reconstruction Act, disfranchised southerners, 314, 317 Seenie Flat, nickname, 26 Selected Prose of John Wesley Powell, ed.

by Crossette, reviewed, 388-89 Serrano, Uto-Aztecan language, 96 Shavanaux, Charlie, U t e delegate, photograph of, 129 Shavano, Ute sub-chief, photograph of, 142 Sheep: on forest ranges, 246-51; photograph of, 247; winter herding of, 285 Sheepherder Mortensen, nickname, 27 Shelton, Marion J., among the Hopis, 18687, 189 Shivwits, practiced horticulture, 101 Shivwits reserve, near Santa Clara, 111 Shoemaker Christiansen, nickname, 26 Shoshoni Indians: in Cache Valley, 208-9; with Chief Walker, 178; sub-groups of, 96-97. See also Western Shoshonis Shoshoni language: and Desert Culture, 9 3 ; spoken, 9 1 , 96-97. See also Numic Shumway, Gary L., review of Taylor and Taylor, Uranium Fever: or No Talk Under $1 Million, 383-84 Sibolleta, Navajo squatter, 125 Sie Hassan Ben Ali, performed at Pioneer Jubilee, 326 Silver and Politics in Nevada: 1892-1902, by Glass, reviewed, 385-86 Simmonds, A. J., " W a t e r for the Big Range," 224-37 Sioux Indians, and Utes, 141, 178 Skull Valley, Gosiutes in, 163, 171-72, 174-77 Slavery: and Chief Walker, 92, 103-5; as a religious issue, 4 9 - 5 1 ; Spanish influence on, 103; and territorial law, 51-52; among U t a h pioneers, 40-54 Smart, Tom, Logan sheep owner, 251 [Smith], Aunt " ", slave, 43 Smithfield, Cache Valley town, 209 Smith, George A.: confirmed J. D. Lee as ferryman, 8; and Hopi mission, 191-92 [Smith], H a n n a , slave, 43 Smith, John Henry: arrested for polygamy, 357; church activities of, 353-68; as 1895

Utah Historical Quarterly constitutional convention president, 350, 367-69; and 1892 election, 365-66; in Europe, 356; obituary of, 369; and People's party, 3 5 9 ; photographs of, 350, 3 6 3 ; Republican activities of, 363-68; and statehood, 354-55, 359, 365 Smith, Joseph, 5, 16; and slavery, 50-51 Smith, Joseph F . : and election of 1892, 36566; in hiding in Hawaii, 356; and John Henry Smith, 357, 365-66; political influence of, 369; pushed for statehood, 359 Smith, Josephine, second wife of John Henry Smith, 362 Smith, Jedediah S.: saw Indians on the UtahNevada border, 105-6; trapped on the Weber, 254-55 Smith, Jesse N , visited Little Colorado settlements, 13 Smith, Jonathan, Farmington doctor, 5 Smith, Lot, had difficulties with A. L. Farnsworth, 17 Smith, Marcus Aurelius, Arizona delegate, 286-87 Smith, Melvin T . : director of U t a h State Historical Society, 3 7 8 ; photograph of, 376; as preservation officer, 373 Smith, Permelia Jane. See Johnson, Permelia Jane Smith, Robert M., with Mississippi company, 44 Smith, William, slave owner, 43, 49 Smoot, R e e d : as an archetypical U t a h n , 2056; on 1899 ballot, 34; met with water users, 297; pled case of white settlers, 140; Senate hearings on seating of, 369 Snow, E. H., received complimentary vote, 33 Snow, Erastus, and Lee's Ferry, 13-16 Snow, Lorenzo, stopped partisan political talk, 364 Sobotar, Capote chief, 119-21 Soldier Canyon, road built in, 134 Sorensen, Soren, nickname of, 27 Sorrel Pete, nickname, 24-27 Sourdo, Capote warrior, 120 Southern Democrats, opposed Edmunds bill, 317 Southern Paiutes: culture of, 96-113; language of, 96-97; and Mormons, 106-8, 1101 1 ; photographs of, 94, 104; Powell and Ingalls report on, 108-11; raided by slavers, 103-5; reservation life of, 108-13; schools for, 112; territory of, 97-99, 117; as traders, 101-2; use of horses by, 98-100, 102, 104 Southern U t e s : Amy's recommendations for, 123-27; and federal officials, 115; and miners, 120-21; photographs of, 114, 126; raided Navajos, 121-22; resisted reservations, 118; sub-groups of, 117; territory of, 114-17; treaties of, 117-18; tribal organization of, 128 South Field Ditch, 226-27

Index Spain, cultural impact of, 91-92, 102-3 Spanish Fork, Indian lands in, 109, 139 Spanish Fork diversion dam, 295 Spanish Fork East Bench Irrigation and Manufacturing Company, 289 Spanish Fork Treaty of 1865, provided for U t e resettlement, 130 Spanish Trail, opened by 1830 traders, 92 Spencer, Howard O., gave advice on Lee's Ferry, 9, 14-15 Springer, William, Illinois congressman, favored statehood, 323 Sprouse, , Mr., slave owner, 43, 46 [Sprouse], Daniel, slave, 43, 46 Spry, William: biography of, 3 7 5 ; caught fish at Strawberry Reservoir, 303-4 Squeaky Bill Anderson, nickname, 26 Stansbury, Howard, and 1849 survey, 163-64 Stark, Wallace, Ute delegate, photograph of, 129 States Rights Southerners, democracy of, 310 Steele, John, described Hopi dances, 184-85 Stewart, A. J., surveyed Big Range, 225-26 Stewart, J. Z., Jr., attorney, 233 Stewart, M a r t h a , U t a h State Historical Society research librarian, 276 Stewart, William M., Nevada senator, 287-88 Stirling, Kathleen Queal, given U t a h State Historical Society student award, 378 The Story of American Railroads and How They Helped Build a Nation, by Burt, reviewed, 387 Stout, Hosea, diary cited on slavery, 48-49, 52 Stratton, James, went to Council Bluffs, 44 Strawberry Highline Canal Company Water Users' Association, 293 Strawberry Valley Project: benefits of, 300-4; completed, 295; facilities built for, 290-94; history of 286-304; photographs of, 286, 292, 297, 302; opponents of, 300; repayment of, 299; user cost of, 298; water rights for, 206-98 Strawberry Valley Water Users' Association, 297, 299, 304 The Study of American Folklore, An Introduction, by Brunvand, reviewed, 80-81 Suckive, U t e delegate, photograph of, 129 Sullivan, Patrick J., found slave bill of sale, 54 Sutherland, George: and 1899 senate election, 32-33, 36; favored opening Uintah Reservation, 138; photograph of, 32 Swapp, Alex, at Lee's Ferry, 21 Sweet William, nickname, 27 Swendsen, G. L., Logan professor, 251-52 Swenson, Albert, farmer, 302

Tabby, U t e chief, 131 Tabby-To-Kwana, Ute chief, 132

409 Tabequache Utes, 117-18. See also Uncompahgre Utes Tabor, E. F., engineer, 290 Taft, William Howard, created Gosiute Reservation, 177 Takermonk, nickname, 27, 29 Tanner, Annie Clark, A Mormon Mother, An Autobiography, reviewed, 78-79 Ta-peats, Paiute Indian, photograph of, 95 Taputche, Capote warrior, 120 Tarahumara, Uto-Aztecan language, 97 Ta-vah-puts, Uintah chief, photograph of, 133 Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, 278 Taylor, John, Negro interpreter, photograph of, 114 Taylor, J o h n : last public speech of, 3 4 8 ; and Lee's Ferry, 14, 18; received letters from J. H. Smith, 357; refused to give up polygamy, 338; and Scott amendment, 34244, 346; sent lobbyists to Washington, 354; on slavery, 4 9 ; son of, 348-49 Taylor, John W., and Scott amendment, 348-49 Taylor, Raymond W., Uranium Fever: or No Talk Under $1 Million, reviewed, 383-84 Taylor, Samuel W., Uranium Fever: or No Talk Under $1 Million, reviewed, 383-84 Teenie City Ditch, nickname, 26 Teller, Henry M., Colorado senator, 287-88, 362 Thain, W. H , irrigation director, 235 Thatcher Brothers Bank, loaned money for West Cache, 233 Thatcher, Moses: defeated by Rawlins in Senate election, 3 1 ; and 1892 election, 365; objected to J. H. Smith's politicking, 364; sent to lobby in Washington, 354 Third Reconstruction Act, disfranchised southerners, 314, 317 This Was Pioneer Motoring: An Album of Nostalgic Automemorabilia,

by Karolevitz, reviewed, 79-80 Thomas, A. L., in 1899 election, 33 Thomas, Arthur, suspicious of Mormons, 322-23 Thomas, Daniel M., slave owner, 43, 49 Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, owner of Carvalho portrait of Chief Walker, 89 Thompson, A. H , loan officer, 234 Thornburgh, T. T., major, killed by Indians, 134 Tiffanys, designed gold badges for 1847 pioneers, 326 Tillman, Benjamin F., South Carolina senator, 288 Toe Paddy Nielsen, nickname, 23, 26 Tooele: Gosiute Reservation near, 177; photograph of, 165; raids by Indians in, 164; surveyed, 164; Utes near, 178

410

Utah Historical Quarterly

Tooele Ordnance Depot, prisoners of war at, 58 Tooele Valley, Gosiute territory, 163 Totsohnii Hastiin, Navajo chief, 155 Tourtellotte, J. E., Indian superintendent, 171-73 Townley, J o h n M., review of Glass, Silver and Politics in Nevada, 1892-1902, 385-86 Townsite Act of 1906, 303 A Treasury of American Indian Herbs: Their Lore and Their Use for Food, Drugs, and Medicine, by Scully, reviewed, 386-87 T r e n t o n Canal, 226-27 Trenton Irrigation Company, 235-36 Truly, Ekles, with Mississippi company, 44 Tuba, Hopi Indian, receptive to Mormonism, 183-84, 193-94 Tiibatulabal, Uto-Aztecan language, 96 Tucker bill, found oppressive by Mormons, 331, 333-37 Tucker, J. R a n d o l p h : conducted House hearing on Edmunds bill, 332-33; photograph of, 332. See also Edmunds-Tucker Act Tumpeache, Capote warrior, 120 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 325-26 T u t e Nielsen, nickname, 26 Tyler, S. Lyman, ed., The Montana Gold Rush Diary of Kate Dunlap, reviewed, 381-82

u U i n t a h and Ouray Reservation: Gosiutes resisted relocation at, 168-69, 171-74, 176; history of, 129-44; m a p of, 136; roads built to, 134; Southern Paiutes fear Utes at, 109, 111; white settlers on, 133, 137-41 U i n t a h Basin, pest control in, 277-78 Uncle Will Tells His Story, by Brooks, reviewed, 379-80 Uncompahgre Reservation, gilsonite discovered on, 137 Unemployment, during the Depression 26667 Union Pacific Railroad: aided C C C corral building, 280; relocated Park City branch, 259 U . S. Bureau of Agricultural Engineering, and flood control, 268 U . S. Bureau of Reclamation: and C C C projects, 280-84; and Newton Project, 214-20; surveys by, 296; in U t a h Valley, 289 U . S. Constitution, 31 U. S. Department of Agriculture, and C C C projects, 265-67 U . S. Department of Interior, and C C C projects, 265, 267 U . S. Department of Labor, selected C C C workers, 267 U . S. Department of W a r : and C C C workers, 267; and war prisoners, 6 1 , 71

U . S. Division of Grazing, and C C C projects, 273-80 U . S. Forest Service, Potter's survey for, 23853 U . S. Soil Conservation Service, and CCC projects, 273-75 U p p e r Spanish Fork Power Plant, 303 Uranium Fever: or No Talk Under $1 Million, by Taylor and Taylor, reviewed, 383-84 U t a h : C C C camps, 268-69; Constitution of 1887, 320, 330-49; Constitution of 1882, 318, 356; Constitution of 1895, 323, 329, 350-51; constitutions, 3 1 3 ; economy, 2056, 252, 300-4; election of 1899, 30-39; forests, 238-53; slavery, 40-54; statehood, 307-27; war prisoner camps, 55-72 U t a h Coal Company, in Huntington Canyon, 248 U t a h Commission: and Council of Fifty, 356; created, 317; examined 1894 election ballots, 367; opposed statehood, 3 2 0 ; split on policy, 322; supervised elections 355 U t a h Construction Company, bid declined, 231-32 U t a h County, and Strawberry Valley Projeect, 289-90, 293, 296-98, 301 U t a h Depot Italian Service U n i t League Team, 60 U t a h General Depot, prisoner of war camp near, 57 Utah Historical Quarterly, statement of ownership, management, and circulation of, 39 U t a h Humanities Project, 370-72 U t a h - I d a h o Sugar Company, 263, 301 U t a h Mortgage and Loan Company, helped finance West Cache, 230, 233-34 U t a h State Agricultural College, 250-53 U t a h State Engineer, studied Newton reservoir, 214 U t a h State Historical Society: annual report of, 370-78; awards given by, 377-78; library of, 376-77; local chapters of 372-73; preservation work of, 3 7 3 ; publications of, 374; U t a h Humanities Project of, 370-72 U t a h State Road Commission: acquired watershed land, 2 7 1 ; aided C C C corral building, 280; relocated part of Lincoln Highway, 259 U t a h State University, 250-53 U t a h Territorial Legislature, passed slavery law, 51-52 U t a h War, affected Indian policy, 182 U t a h Water Storage Commission: and Moon Lake Project, 2 8 0 ; studied Newton reservoir, 214; surveyed Weber County needs, 257 U t e s : and Black Hawk War, 130; burial customs of, 198; chiefs of, 105; in conflict with other Indians, 135, 148-51, 158, 178; and horse culture, 92, 98-100, 102; language of, 9 1 , 96-97; on Miera m a p , 92;

411

Index self-esteem of, 194-95; as slave traders, 1034 ; and Spanish Fork Treaty, 130; territory of, 117; trade with, 1 0 1 ; treaties with, 118, 130; and Walker War, 89, 106, 130 Uto-Aztecan, dialects of, 96-97

V a n O r m a n , Richard A., A Classified Bibliography of the Periodical Literature of the Trans-Mississippi West, A Supplement (1957-67), reviewed, 382-83 Vicente, Capote warrior, 120 V o n Brechkh, H . V. A., drawing by, 162 V T Cattle Company, 17

w Wade, Benjamin F., Ohio senator, 314 Walcott, Samuel, murdered while prospecting in M o n u m e n t Valley, 151-55, 158-59 Walker (also Wakara, Wakar, Wakarum, and other spellings), U t e Chief: grave of, 1979 8 ; and Hopis, 180, 186-89; portrait of, 8 9 ; traded horses and slaves, 92, 103 Walker W a r : and Mormons, 89, 106, 130; in oral history, 178 Wanrodes, U t e , discussed opening Indian land to whites, 139-40 Wanship D a m , 264 Ward, Margery W., resigned position with U t a h State Historical Society, 375 Warets, U t e sub-chief, photograph of, 142 W a r m Springs, Gosiute farm, 174 Warner, T e d J.: " T h e Gosiute Indians of Pioneer U t a h , " 162-77; studied Indian litigation, 94 W a r r e n Irrigation Company, bought Echo water shares, 258 Wartensee, P. Schnyder de, Y M C A prisoner of war camp inspector, 59 Wasatch Mountains, Potter surveyed forests of, 238-53 Washington, Capote warrior, 120 Water Conservation and Utilization Act, 208, 216 Webb, Walter Prescott, cited, 202-3 Weber Basin Project, 263-64 Weber Basin Water Conservancy District, 263 Weber Canal Company, 257 Weber Canyon, photograph of, 260 Weber County, early history of, 254-57 Weber River, and Echo D a m , 254-64 Weber River Project, 264 Weber River Irrigation Project, 257 Weber River Water Users Association: a n d Echo D a m , 2 5 8 ; and flood control, 2 6 4 ; repaid construction costs, 260-61 Wee-che, U t e delegate, photograph of, 129 Weilenmann, Milton L., and U t a h ' s Diamond Jubilee, 375

Weller, Sam, review of Brooks, Uncle Will Tells His Story, 379-80 Wells, Daniel H . : governor's message of, 3 2 5 ; performed polygamous marriage, 7 Wells Fargo station, at Deep Creek, painting of, 169 Wells, Heber M., opened 1899 U t a h legislature, 31 Wellsville (Cache C o u n t y ) , 209 Weminuche (Weminutche, Wemenutche and other spellings) : A m y recommended Rio Los Pinos agency for, 123-24; A m y reported on, 119-21; territory of, 117; treaties affecting, 118 West Cache C a n a l : completed, 2 1 3 ; construction of, 231-37; photograph of construction camp of, 224 West Cache Irrigation C o m p a n y : financial difficulties of, 233-35; incorporated, 22930; reincorporated, 2 3 5 ; revived, 236-37 West, Caleb, territorial governor, 321-24 Western Irrigation Company, bought Echo water shares, 258 Western Monos, Western Numic spoken by, 97 Western Shoshonis: attached to N e v a d a superintendency, 172; cultural history of 96-113; and fur trappers, 105-6; language of, 96-97; location of, 97-99; and M o r mons, 106-8, 110-11; Powell and Ingalls report on, 108-11; on reservations, 108-13; schools for, 112; as slaves, 103-5; trading activities of, 101-2; used horses, 98, 100-4 Western Union, lines moved, 282 Western South Field Irrigating Company, 225 Wetherill, Louisa W a d e , established Navajo trading post, 160-61 Wheeler-Howard Act of 1934, 144 Whigs, democracy of, 310 Whitbeck, C. S., U . S . legal examiner, 297 White, Boco, U t e Delegate, photograph of, 129 White, J e a n Bickmore, " T h e Making of the Convention President: T h e Political Education of J o h n Henry Smith," 350-69 White River Agency, established for Colorado Utes, 134 White River U t e s : resisted white settlement, 140-41; territory of, 117 Whitney, Orson F., member of 1899 legislature, 37 Widtsoe, J o h n A., quoted on water use, 206 Wilkie, M a t t h e w T., went to San Bernardino, 47 Willard City Commission, donated watershed lands to U.S., 273 Willard D a m , 264 Williams, T. S., slave owner, 48, 52-54 Willie, Gertrude Chapoose: interviewed, 94; " I Am an American," 194-95 Will Jensen, nickname, 28

412 Wilson, â&#x20AC;&#x201D; -, district attorney, 48 Wilson Irrigation Company, bought Echo water shares, 258 Wilson, James, secretary of agriculture, 288 Wilson, Woodrow, enlarged Gosiute Reservation, 177 Wind River Reservation, in Wyoming, 109 Winther, Oscar Osburn, A Classified Bibliography of the Periodical Literature of the Trans-Mississippi West, A Supplement (1957-67), reviewed, 382-83 Wirtz, A. J., favored Newton D a m , 215 Wise, J o h n J., C C C project supervisor, 27172 Wolfinger, Henry J., "A Reeaxmination of the Woodruff Manifesto in the Light of U t a h Constitutional History," 328-49 Wood, Charles Gilbert: photograph of, 2 2 8 ; West Cache Canal promoter, 229-31, 235 Wood, Joseph, West Cache director, 230 Woodruff, Wilford: and Hopis, 191-93; political beliefs of, 363, 366; resisted arrest for polygamy, 17-18; and statehood, 359; and Warren Marshall Johnson, 18-19, 21. See also Manifesto Woolley, E. D., and W. M. Johnson, 20-21 Woolley, F. B., recorded slave sale, 53 Works Progress Administration, and Newton D a m , 216-20 World War Two, 218-19; prisoners of war in U t a h during, 55-72

Yaago, Hashkeneinii's mother, 150

Utah Historical Quarterly Yamparicas, U t e sub-group, 134 Young, Brigham: approved abandonment of M u d d y Mission, 6; approved confederation, 313, 3 1 9 ; and Cache Valley settlement, 209-10; and chief Walker, 8 9 ; confirmed J o h n D. Lee as ferryman, 8; and Hopis, 182, 190-91; Indian policy of, 93, 106-9, 130, 182; and Lee's Ferry, 12; personality of, 248, 312; sent scouting parties out, 255; and slavery, 42-43, 48, 50-51, 5 4 ; suppressed I n d i a n slave trade, 103, 106; wanted statehood, 327; and W. M. Johnson, 11 Young, J. J., watercolor by, 162 Young, J o h n W . : acted as agent for sale of E m m a Lee's property, 14; lobbied for Scott amendment, 336, 3 4 3 ; lobbied for statehood, 3 3 1 ; photograph of, 3 3 3 ; urged veto of Edmunds-Tucker bill, 342-45 Young, Joseph W., St. George stake president, 12 YMCA, helped war prisoners, 60-62 Young, Willard, civil engineer, 257 Y u m a n : language, 1 0 1 ; mourning practices, 102 Yurtinus, J o h n , researched M o r m o n Battalion Trail, 377

Zane, Charles S.: on 1899 ballot, 34; as a federal judge, 3 6 1 ; photograph of, 358 Z C M I , photograph of, 307 Zion National Park, C C C work in 268, 273 Zulick, Conrad M., Arizona politician, 362 Zuni, villages visited by Coronado, 91

SPECIAL MEMBERSHIPS AND H O N O R E E S O F THE UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

HONORARY LIFE MEMBERS Bernice Gibbs Anderson Dean R. Brimhall Kate B. Carter %f*V Everett L. Cooley /*/;

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Marguerite Sinclair Reusser Joel E. Ricks Horace A. Sorensen Russel B. Swensen FELLOWS Leonard J. Arrington Fawn M. Brodie Juanita Brooks Olive W. Burt C. Gregory-' Crampton Austin E. Fife LeRoy R. Hafen Jesse D. Jennings A. Kail Larson Gustive O. Larson v«V David E. Miller Wallace Stegner

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