Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 34, Number 1, 1966

ICAL QUARTERLY WINTER,

1966

• V O L U M E 34 • NUMBER 1

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UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

BOARD OF TRUSTEES j . GRANT IVERSON, Salt Lake City, 1967 President

MRS.

J U A N I T A BROOKS, St. George, 1969

MRS. A. c. J E N S E N , Sandy, 1967

JACK GOODMAN, Salt Lake City, 1969 Vice-President EVERETT L. COOLEY, Salt Lake City Secretary

CLYDE L. MILLER, Secretary of State

Ex officio HOWARD c PRICE, J R . , Price, 1967

MILTON c. ABRAMS, Smithfield, 1969 j . STERLING ANDERSON, Grantsville, 1967 DEAN R. BRIMHALL, Fruita, 1969

MRS. ELIZABETH SKANCHY, M i d v a l e , 1 9 6 9

L. GLEN SNARR, Salt Lake City, 1967

ADMINISTRATION EVERETT L. COOLEY, Director T. H . JACOBSEN, State Archivist, Archives

F. T. J O H N S O N , Records Manager, Archives

J O H N J A M E S , J R . , Librarian

MARGERY W. WARD, Associate Editor

IRIS SCOTT, Business M a n a g e r

T h e Utah State Historical Society is an organization devoted to the collection, preservation, and publication of U t a h and related history. It 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. T h e 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 U t a h State Historical Society live up to its responsibility of preserving the record of Utah's past.

T h e primary purpose of the 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 graphs, a n d 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 manuscripts unaccompanied by return postage. Manuscripts and material for publications should be sent to 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, paid a t Salt Lake City, U t a h . Copyright 1966, U t a h State Historical Society, 603 East South Temple Street, Salt Lake City, U t a h 84102.

WINTER,

1966

• VOLUME

34 • N U M B E R 1

HISTORICAL QUARTERLY eomrifecetnrtb CAMP IN THE SAGEBRUSH: CAMP FLOYD, UTAH, 1858-1861

BY T H O M A S G. A L E X A N D E R A N D LEONARD J . ARRINGTON

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LIFE "ON THE ROAD": REMINISCENCES OF A DRUMMER IN UTAH

22

BY D O R O T H Y J . B U C H A N A N

THE ELSINORE HOUSE: A DRUMMER'S HOME AWAY FROM HOME

30

BY W I L H E L M I N A J . G U N N

UTE INDIANS: BEFORE AND AFTER WHITE CONTACT

38

BY O M E R C. S T E W A R T

THE KINTNER LETTERS: AN ASTRONOMER'S ACCOUNT OF THE WHEELER SURVEY IN UTAH AND IDAHO I N T R O D U C T I O N BY R U S S E L L E . BIDLACK A N D EDITORIAL N O T A T I O N S BY E V E R E T T L . COOLEY

81

REVIEWS AND PUBLICATIONS

<tH

62

©©w®^

The rebuilt Stagecoach Inn at Fairfield, Utah. Given to the state in 1958, the old inn has been carefully rebuilt and refurnished to the period when it served as the principal stopping place for travelers along the old stage line. The photograph has been intentionally reversed.

U T A H STATE PARK A N D RECREATION C O M M I S S I O N

EDITOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR ART EDITOR

L. COOLEY Margery W. Ward

EVERETT

Roy J. Olsen

S T E G N E R , W A L L A C E , The Gathering The Story of the Mormon Trail,

of Zion:

BY EVERETT L. COOLEY

81

A N D R E W S , R A L P H W., Picture Gallery Pioneers, First Photographers of the West, 1850 tO 1875, BY MITCHELL A. WILDER

B A I L E Y , L. R., The Long Walk: A History of the Navajo Wars, 1846-68, BY H . B. LIEBLER

82

82

T Y L E R , D A N I E L , A Concise History of the Mormon Battalion in the Mexican War, 1846-1847,

BY VIRGIL V. PETERSON

83

T Y L E R , S. L Y M A N , Indian Affairs: A Study of the Changes in Policy of the United States

BOOKS REVIEWED

Toward

Indians,

BY ROBERT C. E U L E R

84

T Y L E R , S. L Y M A N , Indian Affairs: A Work Paper on Termination: With an Attempt to Show Its Antecedents,

BY ROBERT C. EULER

84

T Y L E R , S. L Y M A N , The Ute People: A Bibliographical Checklist,

BY ROBERT C. EULER

85

Y O U N G , S. D I L W O R T H , "Here is Brigham .. ."

Brigham Young . .. The Years to 1844,

BY JAMES B. ALLEN

McGREGOR, JOHN C , Archaeology,

85

Southwestern

BY J E S S E D. J E N N I N G S

86

C R A M P T O N , C. G R E G O R Y , Historical Sites in Cataract and Narrow Canyons, and in Glen Canyon to California Bar,

BY KENNETH SLEIGHT

87

R O L A N D , C H A R L E S P., Albert Sidney Johnston: Soldier of Three Republics,

BY M. HAMLIN CANNON

88

F A R Q U H A R , F R A N C I S P., A Journey to California, 1841: The first emigrant party to California by wagon train, The Journal of John Bidwell,

BY DAVID E. MILLER

Printed by ALPHABET PRINTING CO., Salt Lake City

89

in the CAMP FLOYD, UTAH,

By T h o m a s G. A l e x a n d e r a n d L e o n a r d J . Arrington

On June 26, 1858, approximately 2,500 United States troops and another 1,000 civilian employees marched and rode down Emigration Canyon and into the peaceful Salt Lake Valley. As they tramped through Salt Lake City, though they had spent the preceding fall and winter opposThomas Alexander is assistant professor of history at Brigham Young University. Leonard Arrington is professor of economics at U t a h State University. This article was written under a grant from the U t a h State University Research Council.

The main sources of information for this article are D o n Richard Mathis, " C a m p Floyd in Retrospect" (Master's thesis, University of U t a h , 1959) ; Norman Furniss, The Utah Conflict, 1850-1859 (New Haven, I960) ; Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, 1958), 1 6 1 - 9 9 ; " C a m p Floyd at Fairfield, U t a h : July 8, 1858-July 27, 1861," an address given on June 2 1 , 1959, by Harold P. Fabian, chairman of the U t a h State Park and Recreation Commission at the dedication of a plaque in commemoration of the founding of the Rocky Mountain Lodge No. 205, the first Masonic lodge in U t a h ; the diaries of John Wolcott Phelps in the New York Public Library (microcopy, Brigham Young University Library) ; J . Cecil Alter and Robert J. Dwyer, eds., Journal of Captain Albert Tracy, 1858-1860, Utah Historical Quarterly, X I I I ( 1 9 4 5 ) , 1-128; Richard W. Jones, "Travel Diary of Richard Wilds Jones, 1859," in the Depauw University Archives (microcopy, U t a h State Historical Society) ; Charles A. Scott, "Charles A. Scott's Diary of the U t a h Expedition, 18571861," U.H.Q., X X V I I I (April, October, 1960), 155-76, 3 8 9 - 4 0 2 ; and Richard Thomas Ackley, "Across the Plains in 1858," U.H.Q., I X (July, October, 1941), 190-228.

4

Utah Historical Quarterly

ing a band of determined guerillas, no surging crowds hailed them as defenders of Americanism. Instead, they were greeted by complete and stony silence â&#x20AC;&#x201D; from a town supposedly inhabited by 15,000 people. They marched on down North Temple Street, across the Jordan River, and after following the river south for several miles, established camp at what is now Twenty-first South and Redwood Road.

Marching under orders of General Winfield Scott issued in May 1857, the soldiers came from various western posts by way of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. They had originally served under General W. S. Harney, commanding officer of the Department of the West, but in August 1857, because General Harney wTas badly needed in "bleeding Kansas," Colonel (later General) Albert Sidney Johnston assumed command. When this formidable force had assembled, it included units from the 5th and 10th Infantry, the 2nd Dragoons, and the 4th Artillery.

Johnston's warriors moved west, not to fight renegade Indians, but to quell a reported insurrection among a group of white Americans. Reports from various federal officials and private citizens alleged that the Mormons had rebelled against the authority of the federal government, and President James Buchanan, after consulting with members of his cabinet, particularly Secretary of War John B. Floyd, had acted on the basis of these reports. Buchanan ordered the War Department to spare no expense in baring the long arm of federal authority against these obstreperous insurgents.1 On July 24, 1857, as Harney's advance guard under Colonel E. B. Alexander marched across Kansas, Governor Brigham Young and a large 1 Many gallons of ink have been consumed in controversy over the reasons for sending the U t a h Expedition. One of the most recent writers, working mostly from pro-Mormon secondary sources, writes that "the U t a h W a r was part of a well-calculated plan, not only to weaken the power of the federal military arm, but to stock the western territory with guns and ammunition preparatory for a Southern coupe d' etat [sic] in that area. Secretary of War Floyd had been actively engaged in that project for some time . . . . Again this writer would also submit that the U t a h Expedition was engineered not only to place Northern military supplies and personnel 'far from rail or water,' but that those troops were intended by Floyd and Johnston to be destroyed by the Mormon frontiersmen in order to deplete the ranks of the federal armies and in order to insure the alienation of the Saints to the North and their allegiance to the South â&#x20AC;&#x201D; an allegiance that was desperately needed by the South to further her attempts at conquest of the western territories."

Richard Vetterli, Mormonism, Americanism, and Politics (Salt Lake City, 1961), 391-92.

A more scholarly work, also of recent origin, working from primary sources, concludes that the war was much more complex. Relationships between the Mormons and federal officials had been strained, and there had been conflict over Indian policy. Mormons themselves were not entirely blameless for the problems. They had attempted to impede the work of federal surveyors, and some of the church officials had made statements in speeches which could be construed as treasonable. The war itself had, at first, overwhelming support from Americans in the eastern United States. They had received "wildly inaccurate" stories of harems, Danites, and Mormon conspiracy against the United States. This work also rejects the conspiratorial theory involving Floyd as merely "guilt by chronological association." No one had reason to suppose that the Civil War was imminent in 1857. T h e Democratic party suffered no sharp defeat until the congressional elections of 1858, and after 1858 the government arranged a peaceful solution to the war rather than sending out more troops. Furniss, Utah Conflict, 4 5 - 4 8 , 71-72, 75-78, 81-82, 84, 86.

Camp Floyd

5

number of Mormons had gathered to celebrate the tenth anniversary of their arrival in the Salt Lake Valley. Young had neither been informed of the charges against his people, nor allowed to give evidence in their behalf. Remembering the Illinois and Missouri persecutions, he determined that, at least this time, his people would not be slaughtered and driven against their will.

After declaring a state of martial law in Utah, Young, in conference with officials of the territorial militia, called the Nauvoo Legion, and the general authorities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, determined upon a plan of action. Using properties of the Brigham Young Express and Carrying Company, a church transportation agency, and requisitioning supplies from the hundred or more Mormon communities, the church outfitted 1,100 men with revolvers, rifles, horses, and other equipment and sent them out to harass Johnston's Army. Before sending out this well-equipped force, small groups of " M o r m o n raiders" under Major Lot Smith advanced to stop the supply trains by burning grass and wagons and running off livestock.

Because of these delaying tactics, Johnston's Army could not enter the Salt Lake Valley until the spring of 1858 after arbitration had taken place between Mormon officials and federal authorities. T h e Army agreed to march through the city without stopping and to make a permanent camp some distance away. In spite of a proclamation of amnesty by President James Buchanan, Salt Lake City Mormons prepared to burn their homes if any indignities were perpetrated. 2 Originally Johnston planned to take his troops to the Rush Military Reserve (Rush Valley) which Colonel E. J. Steptoe had set apart in 1855.

By July 1, though, he decided upon Cedar Valley, a small depression between the Lake Mountains and the Oquirrhs, almost directly west of Provo across U t a h Lake, and to the east of Rush Valley. This site appeared to offer an ample supply of water, wood, and pasture, and had "a commanding position" so that "the force, if called for, [could] be promptly applied either in the direction of Salt Lake City or Provo." 3 2 The conspiratorial viewpoint concerning the U t a h Expedition has been further weakened

by Mathis' study which shows that the federal government anticipated no resistance from the Mormons. Mathis, " C a m p Floyd," 11.

Though Mathis does not take this point of view, a writer interested in demonstrating the opposite of Vetterli's thesis â&#x20AC;&#x201D; i.e., that the North used the U t a h Expedition to strengthen itself to a point where it could overawe the South â&#x20AC;&#x201D; would find support in one of Mathis' quotations.

Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire complained in Congress that Brigham Young was being used as a "scarecrow" in an attempt not only to increase the Army, but to build a telegraph and increase the size of the Navy. Ibid., 21-22. This approach would also, of course, be open to the criticism of "guilt by chronological association."

3 Furniss, Utah Conflict, 206-7.

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Upon their arrival in Cedar Valley, the troops established temporary camp at Cedar Fort, or upper fort, about six miles north of Fairfield, a small town founded three years earlier by John Carson, his four brothers, and two other men — Mormon immigrants from Pennsylvania. (Two of the brothers were slain by Indians in 1857.) Since the water supply at the upper fort was found to be muddy and inadequate and the soil so pulverulent that the temporary camp was so enshrouded in dust that the men could not even drill, Johnston ordered the permanent post built at Fairfield. The reaction of one captain to locating in this "God forsaken spot" betrays his Yankee upbringing: T h e object in choosing this place as a military site must have been to accustom us to all kinds of unseasonableness in order to reconcile us to the greatest of all possible unseasonablenesses, viz., that of slavery. 4

Under General Johnston's orders, Lieutenant Colonel D. Ruggles laid out the new post. Beginning at the source of a creek which formed the boundary between Fairfield and the installation, the Camp ran east and south making an approximate rectangle about 3,000 by 1,600 feet. From west to east Ruggles planned positions for the department and Camp headquarters, the infantry units, the artillery units, and the dragoons. To the south behind the Camp he mapped out storehouses, stables, corrals, and workshops; and on the extreme west end outside the perimeter, he provided for a powder magazine. In the center front of the Camp near the bridge which connected Camp Floyd with Fairfield, he located the theatre.

To provide water for the Camp, an aqueduct was planned. At its largest, the base consisted of between 300 and 400 buildings.5 4 John W. Phelps, Diary (MSS, New York Public Library), April 23, 1859, as cited in Mathis, " C a m p Floyd," 30.

5 Ibid., 34-40. T h e layout of the post is based upon ibid., M a p # 3 .

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Officers' at Camp

quarters Floyd.

Albert Sidney Johnston (1803-1862), leader of the Utah Expedition and founder of Camp Floyd.

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After the completion of these plans, work on the warehouses, stables, and magazine began in July 1858. Most of the buildings were built of adobe, but some, including the barns, were of wood frame construction; and the magazine and several other buildings were made of stone quarried in the Oquirrh Mountains by Camp prisoners. Stone was also used to build a four-foot wall around the cemetery, which was 13 by 20 rods. The soldiers began to arrive at the site on September 4, and they, together with Mormons hired for the purpose, were immediately detailed to build their own quarters. These were cabin-like units of adobe, with dirt floors (except for some officers) and board roofs covered with four inches of adobe mud. The post quartermaster cleaned out and walled up a spring near the Camp, dammed the stream which flowed from it, and built a mill to grind corn. The lake formed by the dam was stocked with fish from Utah Lake, and the stream below was lined with bathhouses. On November 9, 1858, with a salvo from the artillery, the United States flag was raised and the post was officially opened.

A large part of the building materials, and part of the labor used in constructing the fort, were obtained from local sources. About 1.6 million adobes — made by pressing a mixture of clay, water, and straw into molds 8 by 4 inches and leaving them in the sun to dry — were baked by Mormon farmers and sold for one cent each. The lumber used in framing and roofing the buildings was purchased for about $70.00 per 1,000 board feet and came primarily from the church's Big Cottonwood Lumber Company and from Brigham Young's mill in Mill Creek Canyon. Horace Greeley,

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who visited C a m p Floyd in 1859, stated that the C a m p had cost $200,000, of which Brigham Young (i.e., the church "trustee-in-trust") received at least $50,000. Congress had previously made no appropriation for the work, and Johnston h a d been obliged to make the outlays of cash on his own responsibility. Carpenters, mechanics, and artisans who worked on the fort received from $3.00 to $7.00 per day plus board â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a windfall which was of considerable assistance in supporting the local economy. 6 I n addition to the revenue derived from the construction itself, the territorial economy was aided both during the march into the territory and the sojourn at C a m p Floyd by the purchase of goods and services by the Army and the soldiers. Because the cost of the original Expedition had been so great and many contracts were awarded without competitive bids, there were many charges of fraud and corruption. Nevertheless, William Russell, of Russell, Majors, and Waddell, whose firm had to increase its equipment to 3,500 wagons and teams, over 40,000 oxen, 1,000 mules, and more than 4,000 men, believed that the government's call to ship so much would bankrupt his company. Russell's firm transported 16 million pounds of freight for the troops and later sold many of its wagons at low rates when the Army began selling its surplus supplies.

As the Army trudged into Salt Lake Valley, and particularly after the soldiers camped at Twenty-first South and Redwood Road, local citizens began to barter and sell produce for goods which they needed. The Mormons, some of whom claimed never to have seen United States coin, sold potatoes for $2.00 per bushel, new potatoes for $3.00 per bushel, beer for $2.00 per gallon, butter for $.50 per pound, and fish for $ 1.00 each. In addition they bartered their produce for wagon covers and for seamless sacks from which they made everyday wearing apparel. Merchants who moved in with the Army immediately took advantage of the situation and began to sell such items as cotton yarn, boots, shoes, hats, and hardware.

Among the Mormons who went into business at this time were the Walker Brothers, who set up a general store at C a m p Floyd in 1859, and who later became the territory's most powerful merchants and bankers. 7 6 Furniss, Utah Conflict, 7 3 - 7 4 ; Mathis, " C a m p Floyd," 1 5 6 - 5 7 ; Fabian, "Camp Floyd"; Horace Greeley, An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859 (New York, 1860), 247; Alter and Dwyer, Journal of Albert Tracy, U.H.Q., X I I I , 35 and 5 3 ; Phelps Diary, October 25 and 27, 1858; Irma Watson Hance and Irene Warr, Johnston, Connor, and the Mormons: An Outline of Military History in Northern Utah (Salt Lake City, 1962), 20; William Preston Johnston, The Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston (New York 1878) 234Ackley, "Across the Plains," U.H.Q., IX, 224.

T Mathis, " C a m p Floyd," 1 4 4 - 4 5 ; Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 197-98; see also Joseph R. Walker and Brothers, Account Books (8 vols., MSS, Special Collections, Brigham Young University Library).

Camp Floyd

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Already settled and well-organized, the Mormons had a decided advantage over camp followers in supplying grain, fuel, hay, and produce.

Moreover, the church did not hesitate to use its superior position in an attempt to fix prices which would assure a "fair return" to its membership.

The base quartermaster advertised at various times for hay which sold for $37.00 per ton and flour which the Army purchased for $28.00 per hundred weight. One James Jackson of Toquerville, despite the taunts of his neighbors that his investment would be lost, planted a field of corn and sold the grain for gold, blankets, and other articles, much to the chagrin of his fearful brethren.8 Gentiles as well made enormous profits from the operations. Sutlers poured into Camp with trainloads of goods. Men like Alexander Toponce herded horses and mules for the Army. Some like Richard T. Ackley toured Mormon settlements in Utah Valley purchasing grain which they could deliver at the Camp at a cost of $4.00 to $4.50 per hundred pounds.

Ackley then sold it to the Army for approximately $30.00 per hundred.

He also purchased a large boardinghouse and made a great deal of money by putting up the quartermaster's men. Even the Indians visited the Camp to trade and beg. The post quartermaster carried on a sort of poor relief program. Early in 1859 he employed at least 70 teamsters "merely to prevent their starving" because they had neither money nor prospects of employment in Utah. 9 Supplying goods to the Army stimulated not only the Utah economy, but aided California traders at the same time. Because the route from Los Angeles opened earlier and closed later than the St. Louis road, southern California businessmen began advertising their merchandise as early as April 19, whereas midwestern entrepreneurs had to wait until June 10.

In early April of 1859, goods valued in excess of $180,000 had arrived at Camp Floyd from Los Angeles.10 In addition to the merchants and traders who came with the Army, others came who, while not always a wholesome influence on Utah's morals, did their part in keeping the Army's wealth in circulation. Overnight, Fairfield and Camp Floyd became the third largest city in the territory (after Salt Lake and Provo), with a population said to exceed 7,000.

Seventeen saloons, with their accouterment of gamblers, prostitutes, slickers, and thieves opened in "Frogtown" or "Dobieville" to accommodate 8

Mathis, " C a m p Floyd," 151-52; Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 197-98.

Phelps Diary, October 8 and 12, 1858, June 10, July 22, and August 1, 1859.

10 Mathis, " C a m p Floyd," 154â&#x20AC;&#x201D;55. T h e Phelps Diary indicates that trains wintering at Fort Laramie could not even reach Camp Floyd until June.

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the soldiers. One contemporary said that the main street "of Fairfield has the appearance of a California mining town of the palmy days of '50, the front street being lined with Drinking and Gambling Saloons." Shootings and murders were common occurrences in the town, and many soldiers must have experienced the same type of embarrassment as did one lieutenant who lost a month's pay and borrowed $20.00 from his commanding officer, which he promptly gambled away. 11 John Carson took advantage of his early location to build an inn, which replaced a stone fort enclosing log and adobe houses in which his family had lived. By refusing to cater to a rowdy clientele, Carson was able to fill the adobe and frame two-story structure with prominent visitors and actors and actresses en route to California. (It is said that Carson not only refused to serve liquor, but also proscribed "round dancing" in his place.)

After Captain J. H . Simpson, senior engineer at Camp Floyd, laid out a route to California, Carson's inn became the first major stop outside Salt Lake City for stagecoaches and the Pony Express. 12 Simpson's explorations h a d other results as well. In 1858 Simpson opened a wagon road from Fort Bridger to C a m p Floyd via Provo (then called Timpanogos) Canyon, and in 1859 he charted two wagon roads from the C a m p to Carson Valley. T h e latter roads cut 283 and 254 miles from the distance formerly traveled by way of the Humboldt River. The Provo Canyon road was a much easier way to travel than the old Emigration Canyon route and was regularly used by immigrant trains except when flooding of the Provo River made it impassable. 13 " F a b i a n , " C a m p Floyd"; Mathis, " C a m p Floyd," 58. Phelps Diary, November 5, 1858, June 17 and July 3, 1859; Alter and Dwyer, Journal of Albert Tracy, U.H.Q., X I I I , 5 6 - 5 7 ; Jones, "Travel Diary," July 1, 1859; Scott, "Diary of U t a h Expedition," U.H.Q., X X V I I I , July 4, 1859.

12 Fabian, " C a m p Floyd."

13 J. 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, 1859 (Washington, D . C , 1876), 7; Phelps Diary, June 14, 15, 19, 22, and 25, August 5 and 30, and September 10 and 11, 1859; Alter and Dwyer, Journal of Albert Tracy, U.H.Q., X I I I , 34 fn.

Distant view of the adobe structures at Camp Floyd, 1858â&#x20AC;&#x201D;1861.

Camp Floyd

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Probably to take advantage of the new overland route, a group of officers at Camp Floyd planned a town named "Brown City" to be located at the mouth of Provo Canyon. Shares in the venture, which was named for Postmaster General Aaron V. Brown, cost $50.00 each, and it was hoped that the new metropolis would become the Gentile capital of Utah.

As one observer pointed out, however, it presented an imposing appearance on paper, with its long wide streets intersecting each other at right angles, its City Hall, Court House and other Public Edifices, all marked in correct position, in black and white but alas, for those who have bought town-lots and desire to see the place prosper, for it at present [March 1859] contains only a Log house and a board Shanty. 1 4

Various activities helped to fill the spare time of the soldiers. For those men who were interested in cultural activities, a German singing club erected a Social Hall, and the base opened its own dramatic association with female leads imported from Salt Lake City or performed by laundresses from the post. A soldiers' circus company with acrobatic and equestrian acts gave a number of performances. Military personnel from Camp Floyd organized Utah's first Masonic lodge, and post officers erected a billiard hall, held dances and balls, and enjoyed horse racing. The Camp operated a school for enlisted men. And one officer, Captain John W. Phelps, busied himself with observing desert whirlwinds, electric phenomena, and cloud formations; in studying the Bible in English and German ; and in learning the Shoshonean language. Another officer sketched and painted various scenes of Camp and Army life, copied photographs of his family in oils, and speculated on perpetual motion. If enough decent women could not be found to dance at the balls, officers on occasion waltzed and polkaed together, making believe that one was the lady. Some, on occasion, found diversion in a trip to Salt Lake City. Some spent time during 1858 and 1859 prospecting for silver, lead, and gold. Evidence shows 14 Scott, "Diary of U t a h Expedition, November 17, 1858 and February 9, 1859.

U.H.Q., X X V I I I , March 22, 1859; Phelps Diary,

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that the first claims filed in Tooele County were not filed by Patrick Connor's California Volunteers, as is usually claimed, but by members of the U t a h Expedition. Still others planted a 40-acre tract of farming land to garden stuffs and crops and took turns irrigating and hoeing. 15 For a long period of time, there was no chaplain in Camp, a situation which at least one observer deplored. Captain Simpson held religious services for the troops at times when he was in Camp, but it was not until the summer of 1859 that a permanent chaplain was selected. T h e fact that the new m a n of God was a Catholic did not please some of the more devout Protestants. 16 I n spite of these diversions, life at this Great Basin outpost was anything but pleasant. Soldiers were far from families and loved ones, and mail required 22 days or more to come from the states. T h e diet of the soldiers was adequate and even somewhat varied, but diarrhea was common and some suffered discomforts brought on by a "vile sort of beer . . . vended by the Mormons . . . ." Pay was poor at $11.00 per month for privates and often overdue at that. Desertion among troops sent to the hills as herders or wood choppers was common, and some joined emigrant trains bound for California. 17 15 Fabian, " C a m p Floyd"; Furniss, Utah Conflict, 2 0 5 - 6 ; Mathis, "Camp Floyd," 57-58, 153; Phelps Diary, various entries; Alter and Dwyer, Journal of Albert Tracy, U.H.Q., X I I I , 7 8 - 7 9 ; Scott, "Diary of U t a h Expedition," U.H.Q., X X V I I I , 176; Richard F. Burton, The City of the Saints and Across the Rocky Mountains to California, introduction and notes by Fawn M. Brodie (New York, 1963), 371.

10 Phelps Diary, various entries between May and August 1859; Jones, "Travel Diary," July 2, 1859, p. 29; Scott, "Diary of U t a h Expedition," U.H.Q., X X V I I I .

17 Phelps Diary, October 20 and December 10, 1858, January 30, February 5, March 18, April 11, and June 15, 17, and 18, 1859; Richard H. Coolidge, Statistical Report on the Sickness and Mortality in the Army of the United States, Compiled from the Records of the Surgeon Gen-

Adobe barracks at Camp Floyd. Although now practically invisible.

a sizeable camp in its day, the remains are NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Camp Floyd

13

Physical conditions at the post contributed to the discomfort of the men. T h e chimneys in many of the cabins smoked as a result of improper construction. Water was scarce, and within C a m p limits all was "dust, dust, dust." At times cloudbursts flooded the Camp, but dust storms, which some of the men called "Johnsoons" in honor of the post commander, were the usual bill of fare. Prisoners had an even worse life, as they were required to carry balls and chains and often forced to exercise with large sacks of sand or logs of wood strapped to their backs. 18 In addition to the duties which kept them near Camp, soldiers also ranged away from the post for various reasons. Troops were detached to escort immigrant trains underway for California or to capture horse thieves. Patrols encountered problems with the Indians, and battles took place at various points including Box Elder Creek and Spanish Fork Canyon. 19 At the time C a m p Floyd formed the largest troop concentration of its kind in the United States. T h e troops operated 1,100 miles from their home base at Fort Leavenworth, and throughout 1858 and 1859 the number of soldiers on the post averaged more than 2,400, though the number rose at times to more than 3,000. In 1860 General Johnston was transferred back to the states, and Colonel Philip St. George Cooke assumed command of C a m p Floyd. (Cooke had been leader of the "Mormon Battalion" as it marched from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to San Diego, California, in 1846-47. A monument cut from granite quarried in Big Cottonwood Canyon and originally intended for use in constructing the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, was erected at C a m p Floyd in 1961.) Acting under orders from the W a r Department, Colonel Cooke cut the post complement down to 10 companies, or about 700 men. 20 As one might imagine, the personal relationships between Floyd's inhabitants and the Mormons, whom they had come to suppress, were not always friendly. One major area of friction centered on the herding of livestock. Because Cedar Valley offered too little forage, Johnston was forced to send stock not only into nearby Rush, Tintic, and Skull valleys, eral's Office; Embracing a Period of Five Years from January, 1855 to January, 1860 (Washington, D . C , 1860), 300; Stevens T. Norvell, "Colonel Stevens T. Norvell, U.S.A. Tells Old Army Stories: The U t a h Expedition of 1858" (mimeographed sheet, U t a h State Historical Society).

1S Phelps Diary, November 6, 1858, and June 2, 1859; Alter and Dwyer, Journal of Albert Tracy, U.H.Q., X I I I , September 28, 1858 and May 23, 1859, pp. 36 and 6 8 ; Ackley, "Across the Plains," U.H.Q., IX, 221 and 2 2 4 - 2 5 ; Jones, "Travel Diary," July 2 and 23, 1859, pp. 29 and 33.

19 Phelps Diary, October 8, 1858, March 14, June 12 and 15, and August 14, 15, and 16, 1859; Alter and Dwyer, Journal of Albert Tracy, U.H.Q., X I I I , October 7, 1858, p. 3 7 ; Scott, "Diary of U t a h Expedition," U.H.Q., X X V I I I , 295 a n d 391.

20 Fabian, " C a m p Floyd" ; Furniss, Utah Conflict, 205, 230; Greeley, Overland Journey, 247.

UTAH STATE TOURIST AND PUBLICITY COUNCIL

The old Stagecoach Inn at Fairfield as it appeared when it was donated State Park and Recreation Commission. It has since been rebuilt.

to the

Utah

but into Juab and Sanpete counties to Sevier Bridge and Chicken Creek.

Johnston declared the area around Cedar Valley a military reserve because, though much of it had been claimed by Mormons, their claims had no validity at law. This desire for rangeland precipitated conflicts, particularly in Rush Valley which the Mormons had used extensively.21 Governor Alfred Cumming, with whom Johnston's relations were also strained, tried to take the Mormon side in several of these conflicts.

He protested Johnston's use of Rush Valley in defiance of Mormon squatters, and Johnston, in an ill-tempered response, finally allowed that the Mormons might graze in the northern end of the valley. Cumming also 21 Kate B. Carter, ed., Heart Throbs of the West (12 vols., Salt Lake City, 1939-1951), III, 165; Furniss, Utah Conflict, 223.

Camp Floyd

15

remonstrated at the friction caused when Judge John Cradlebaugh persuaded Johnston to send troops to Provo during a particularly controversial session of court, an act which understandably frightened the local townspeople.22 Some of the sources of friction resulted from personal contacts between soldiers and Mormons. Some prisoners, including a former L.D.S. bishop, were brought back from Provo; and, though they were eventually released, their incarceration served as a source of dispute. One of the other inmates, for instance, tried to drop his ball on the head of one of the Mormons. The Rush Valley problem precipitated an encounter between Howard Spencer, son of Orson Spencer, and Sergeant Ralph Pike. Pike fractured Spencer's head with his rifle, and, in return, when Pike was taken to Salt Lake for trial on charges of assault with intent to kill, Spencer shot and killed him. This led to the burning of outbuildings and haystacks at Cedar Fort by members of Pike's company.23 If diary accounts are any indication, the opinion which the soldiers had of the Mormon people was extremely low, and several incidents which took place served to bolster these prejudices. On one occasion two youths came to Camp for protection after some people from a Mormon town had allegedly castrated them. A company of soldiers camped near Springville found that its members were followed every time any of them went into town. They determined to have some fun at their shadowers' expense, and men were sent in at 20-yard intervals, each one of whom was spied upon in turn by a local man. At a given signal, the soldiers from the rear began to dog trot forward until they bunched the followers together. At that point the Mormons saw what had happened, and began to scatter.

The soldiers, of course, had a good laugh.24 Other incidents of an even more serious nature took place. The troops saw the results of the Mountain Meadows massacre when skulls were brought in from the scene, a detachment was sent to the site to bury the remains of the victims, and children who had escaped the tragedy were taken by Dragoons from Utah to Fort Laramie and Fort Kearney. In addition a young Mormon named David McKenzie was found guilty of counterfeiting U.S. Quartermaster drafts, and he had, according to testimony, 22

Furniss, Utah Conflict, 207, 217, 223.

Alter and Dwyer, Journal of Albert Tracy, U.H.Q., X I I I , April 2 and 4, and August 12 and 17, 1859, pp. 64-65 and 7 2 - 7 3 ; Ackley, "Across the Plains," U.H.Q., IX, 2 2 4 - 2 5 ; Phelps Diary, March 23 and August 11, 1859; B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (6 vols., Salt Lake City, 1930), IV, 503.

24 Phelps Diary, March 28, 1859; Alter and Dwyer, Journal of Albert Tracy, U.H.Q., X I I I , October 19, 1858, pp. 4 7 - 4 8 .

23

16

Utah Historical Quarterly

secured the paper from the tithing office in Salt Lake City where some of the counterfeit certificates were actually found.25 On the other hand the troops and camp followers were responsible for the inauguration of problems which had adverse affects on the Mormon community. Some officers tried to induce women to go to Camp Floyd to engage in prostitution, and one officer actually sought to proposition the mistress of a household in which he was a guest. Camp followers and troops often made nuisances of themselves in Salt Lake City and other settlements, and some murders resulted from the activities of these men.

The influence of the church in the moral lives of its members was undermined as some members, under the new temptations offered by Gentiles, threw off the restraints of their religious upbringing. The church leadership was so concerned that Wilford Woodruff of the Council of Twelve Apostles exhorted the church membership to restrain themselves and not to mingle with the wicked.26 This is not to say that there were not some pleasant associations. Relations with some Army officers such as Colonel E. B. Alexander, Captain Randolph B. Marcy, and Colonel Philip St. George Cooke were quite agreeable. Associations with them were actually better than with most of the government officials. On at least one occasion, the chaplain from Fort Laramie, on the way to Camp Floyd, spoke to the Saints in the tabernacle.27 Despite the sources of friction between the Army and the local citizenry and government, the Utah Expedition was undoubtedly a boon to Utah's economy. Not only could the Utahns sell goods and services for specie or trade for items which they otherwise would have obtained only at great cost and difficulty, but they were able to purchase back the same goods and many more at give-away prices during the first war-surplus sale in Utah history.

Disposal of surplus items began in July of 1859 and continued at various times until the final abandonment of the installation. Originally the Army sold 2,000 or more mules for prices ranging from $60.00 to $140.00 each, a price considerably below the original cost. Though most of them were purchased by Mormons, Ben Holladay purchased about 800.

In November 1860 after the post had been cut back to 700 men, Colonel 25 Phelps Diary, J u n e 4 and 26, and July 9, 10, and 13, 1859; Tommy Cardon Gordon, "Tommy Gordon Diary" (MS, U t a h State Historical Society) ; Jones, "Travel Diary," July 13, 1859, p . 3 1 . Jones served as court reporter for the preliminary hearing in the McKenzie case.

Attempts were made to implicate Brigham Young in the case, but his connection was never established. Roberts, Comprehensive History, I V , 505.

26 Roberts, Comprehensive History, IV, 458, 4 6 0 - 6 1 , and 465-67.

27 Ibid., 454; Phelps Diary, J u n e 22, 1859.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY CHARLES KELLY COLLECTION

The commissary which stands across the street from the Stagecoach Inn, before and after restoration was carried out by the Utah State Park and Recreation Commission.

~?wipwiii!pw?B$|

UTAH STATE PARK AND RECREATION COMMISSION

Cooke began auctioning off firearms and other goods to local citizens. He sold 45,700 pounds of bacon, and 100,000 pounds of flour at ridiculously low rates. Bacon, which originally cost $5.00 per hundred weight, sold at $1.34; and flour, purchased at $28.00 per hundred, went at the same price. At this particular sale, the Army realized $4,424 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a price which could not have paid the cost of freighting the merchandise from the states.

At a later sale in the spring of 1861, wagons sold for $14.00 each, and mule and horseshoes were unloaded at one-quarter cent each.28 2S Mathis, "Camp Floyd," 151, 155, 158; Phelps Diary, J u n e 16 and July 14, 1859; Jones, "Travel Diary," July 14 and 28, 1859, pp. 32 and 35.

18

Utah Historical

Quarterly

These sales were not always conducted in the most upright manner.

T h e quartermaster detailed Alexander Toponce to match u p small mountain mules and scrubs into teams for one of the sales by placing numbers on their headstalls. H e did this, but he noticed that every "time a team of these little mules were [sic] sold to Ben Halliday [sic], some one would take the numbers off their headstalls and change them for the numbers on two of the big Missouri mules." Toponce then decided to buy some scrubs for himself, but no one changed the numbers. So after awhile, he "just went in and changed them " No one dared to object because he "knew too much." 29 If these early sales looked like good bargains, the mass disposals from May through July 1861, made them look like Yankee-peddling operations.

O n May 17, 1861, the W a r Department ordered Colonel Cooke to take the rest of his troops and leave Fort Crittenden (as the post had been renamed when its namesake, John B. Floyd, defected to the South). Before leaving Cooke was ordered to dispose of everything on the post to the best advantage of the government. At the sales which followed this order, about $4 million worth of supplies sold for $100,000. One of the principal buyers was Brigham Young who, through his agent and son-in-law H. B. Clawson, paid about $40,000 for the things which he obtained. In this sale flour went for 52 cents per hundred and sugar for 12.5 cents a pound. The effect of this windfall may be gauged from the fact that the value of goods sold amounted to approximately $400.00 per Utah family. This meant that the government sold about twice Utah's annual income per family at a cost of about five per cent of the annual income. 30 T h e Mormons might complain of their inequitable treatment in Rush Valley or the presence of troops in Provo, but the federal government was forced under the circumstances to make ample reparation.

Before the departure of the Expedition, Cooke disposed of everything which could not be sold. T h e Army took surplus munitions from the fort and blew them up, while they razed houses and buildings. When the last of the troops left Utah, on July 27, 1861, Colonel Cooke presented the camp flagpole to Brigham Young. By September 2, only 18 families remained at the once-roaring town of Fairfield. The adobe walls washed 29 Alexander Toponce, Reminiscences of Alexander Toponce, Pioneer, 1839-1923 (Salt Lake City, 1923), 4 0 - 4 1 .

30 Mathis, " C a m p Floyd," 159. T h e Mormon scorched earth policy cost "in excess of $52,000." Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 176. Still, the windfall was great in comparison.

Annual income estimated at $200.00 per family on the basis of two articles by Leonard J. Arrington, " T h e Mormon Tithing House: A Frontier Institution," The Business History Review, X X V I I I (March, 1954), 2 4 - 5 8 , and "Taxable Income in U t a h , 1862-72," U.H.Q., X X I V (January, 1956), 21-47.

Camp Floyd

19

into little mounds of earth, and even the stone walls were carried away for use in constructing foundations for houses in Fairfield and Lehi.31 NUMBER OF TROOPS AT CAMP FLOYD, U T A H , 1858â&#x20AC;&#x201D;1861 ( S O U R C E : Strength reports for units of the U t a h Expedition, 1857-1861, compiled from records of the War Department, National Archives, and given in Don Richard Mathis, " C a m p Floyd in Retrospect" [Master's thesis, University of U t a h , 1959], 170-75.)

Date

September 1858 October 1858 December 1858 September 1859 November 1859 February 1860 May 1860 August 1860 February 1861 June 1861

Officers

85 97 91 68 81 .... 79 19 18 26 17

Enlisted Men

Total

2411 2694 2390 2123 2394 2361 416 302 482 393

2496 2791 2481 2191 2475 2440 435 320 508 410

Since the abandonment of Camp Floyd, its residents have been the 84 officers and men who died at the post. The land itself remained on the War Department records until July 22, 1884, when the secretary of war turned it over to the Interior Department for disposal. The Army retained only the cemetery after December 1892, when the Interior Department opened the land for homesteading. The cemetery is now fenced by iron rather than stone.32 After the post was abandoned, John Carson stayed on to operate his inn. After his death, his widow and children continued to run the hostelry until it became unprofitable; it was closed in 1947. In January 1958 John Carson's son, Warren Carson, of Orem, Utah, turned the inn over to the Utah State Park and Recreation Commission for preservation as a museum. Beginning in June 1959 the Commission began a program of development of the Camp Floyd historic park. The old cemetery was planted with sod, 84 veterans who are buried there were identified and markers placed, the old Army commissary was restored, and the Stagecoach Inn was rebuilt and decorated to the period of its founding. The inn was 31 Mathis, "Camp Floyd," 160, 166. Mathis says that the weapons were destroyed to keep them from the Mormons. O n the other hand, Cooke had earlier sold such weapons to Utah's residents at public auction. Ibid., 158, 160.

"Ibid., 166-67.

20

Utah Historical

Quarterly

officially dedicated and opened to the public on M a y 16, 1964. Nineteen families now live in the quiet, peaceful village of Fairfield. 33 Of what significance could such a post have been to the people of Utah? It existed less than three years and, with the exception of the cemetery, its physical remains can scarcely be seen today amid the sagebrush of Cedar Valley. T h e importance of the installation, however, appears to lie in its contemporary impact in two areas of U t a h life.

T h e first, and most obvious consequence was the economic effect of the installation. Edward Tullidge credits it together with its successor Fort Douglas with saving U t a h "from the depths of her poverty," and other contemporaries such as Alexander Toponce saw a similar result from the post's existence. Though Tullidge's and Toponce's arguments are probably overdrawn, the installation served as both a market for goods and as a source of needed commodities at cut-rate prices, and the community undoubtedly prospered because of it.34 This positive stimulation to Utah's economy must, however, be balanced against the second result which was cultural and social. Certainly immigrants, gold-rushers, and government office holders had been in Utah before this time, but C a m p Floyd and Fairfield represented the first sizable community of resident Gentiles in the Mormon kingdom. T h e demise of this post was followed closely by the establishment of Fort Douglas, which, together with the later construction of the railroad and the subsequent UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 33 Fabian, " C a m p Floyd"; Salt Lake Tribune, January 30, 1958, July 23, 1961.

There was constructed at Camp Floyd in the 1940's a marker built of stones from the old barracks.

34 Edward W. Tullidge, The History of Salt Lake City and its Founders (Salt Lake City, 1886), 3 8 1 ; Toponce, Reminiscences, 38.

^OFFICERS SOLOIERS CIVILIAN EMPLOYEES Of THE.vl

,J UTAH

• • •

Prior to 1959 a single monument marked the graves of the 84 soldiers and men who were buried in the Camp Floyd Cemetery.

In 1960 research revealed the names of the men buried in the cemetery, and individual markers were placed.

Camp Floyd

21

creation of a number of other military posts in the territory continued to attract non-Mormons to Utah. It is significant that the only Gentile in the territorial legislature in 1859 was the sutler at Fort Bridger. The installation provided employment for hosts of teamsters and others whom even the Army officers found undesirable.35 Conflicts between the two ways of life were numerous, and defections from the faith occurred under the impact of these new temptations. If the diaries of the soldiers are any indication, the image which the Army took back of the people of Utah was extremely unfavorable and must have contributed to an already seething anti-Mormon sentiment in the country at large. It did not matter that the church leaders, themselves, were not responsible for the brutal events of the late 1850's because people outside the church tended to identify the actions of individuals with the policy of the church. The advent of Johnston's Army signaled the beginning of the end of isolation of the Mormon society from the rest of the United States.

35

Phelps Diary, October 8, 1858 and January 2, 1859.

VALLEY TAN.

W M t t ANDERSON. VOLUME 1.

THE

VALXEY

EIGHT DOLLARS I * ADVANCE.

GREAT SALT LAKE CITY, U. T., HMD AY, DECEMBER 2-1, 1858..

T A N . Mf. .bill the r.p,d,,y of traveling on — ; l * 1 " 1 h a s " t 0 " lh'"i »•>« S o f t e r than j n FtJiLiiHcD E V E * . miDAY »¥ * * • e v e r known before. Within the t r l D l f I N n r D K n K same time man has chained the very 1

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[ C W / r e - A , , . . ^ miur.i M a I „ «„ t h e A < a n t l c .

EDITORS ALTA :

A<a matter of pub-

laming of Heaven, and brought ,t he ioformtiion and general interest,

T£RMS; down and made il admirus'.er to the will you please announre in your paper Single copy for on* year, J8, invariably In [transmission of human thought, inso- 'hat hereafter I shall dispatch from this ;h that it may with truth be said that office on the 5th and 20th of each month, ideas are not only transmitted with a »»ai. via Tebuantepec to New Or-

M A N DuowNtp.—On th* afternoon of laslTuesday[26ih u l t . ] , u Lwut. Collins, who has been stationed on the Klamath Reservation, was moving down the coast with his command, he met with an accident in crossing the mouth of the big lagoon, above Trinidad. H e had twenty seven in his command, all of whom were some distance ahead of him, and crossed

NUMBER 8. ed, peaked and long razor-nosed, blue mouthed, nigger-lipped, white-eyed, softheaded, long-eared, crane-Decked, blobber-lipped, squeaky-voice, empty-head ed, snaggle-toothed, filthy-mouthed, boi ancled, pigeon-toed, reel-fooled, ignoble Black Republican, abolition to attend to his own affairs, or w pitch into him in earnest.

The Valley T a n (1858-1860), although published in Great Salt Lake City, was established by Kirk Anderson to give voice to the Army residing at Camp Floyd.

LIFE "ON T H E ROAD"

Reminiscences of a Drummei

By Dorothy J. Buchanan

We remember in Meredith Wilson's opening scene in The Music Man that a number of traveling men of a past era are riding on a train and discussing their business problems. After spirited comments on relative merits of cash and credit, the culminating statement is that a traveling man had to know his territory.

My father, Henry C. "Shall" Jacobs, was a traveling man from the year 1894 to 1902, with the exception of two years when he served as a missionary to Great Britain. H e knew his territory and loved every foot of it. He did not hesitate to say that it was choice above all others. During the past few years, he and I have often discussed the life he lived during what he always termed "those happy, carefree years" when he was "on the road."

After I had finished my college work, when I told him that I had signed a contract to teach school in Richfield, Sevier County, he was delighted. He told me that I would never regret it because I would be living among choice people, which I found later to be correct.

My father was born in Prattville, between Richfield and Glenwood, March 15, 1876. His birthplace was a small log cabin which stood near Mrs. Buchanan, who taught school in Richfield, Utah, has been the secretary of the Sevier Valley Chapter of the U t a h State Historical Society since its inception in May 1964. Henry C. Jacobs, who will be 90 years old in March, resides in Ogden.

n Utah

Henry C. Jacobs

the spot where the Ford Fisheries now stand. His father, H . C. Jacobs, in company with Helaman Pratt, was sent to settle Prattville. T h e family were members of the United Order and lived in Prattville for six rugged years. They returned to Salt Lake City where they lived until my father was 15 years of age when they moved to Ogden.

Grandfather Jacobs was a good friend of John Scowcroft, who had a wholesale grocery and merchandise business. One day Mr. Scowcroft asked my father to work for him, and he, naturally, asked his father's advice. Grandfather Jacobs went to his friend, John Scowcroft, and said, "John, I'll be glad to have Shall work for you, but I don't want him to go on the road to be a drummer." So it was with this understanding that my father began working for Scowcroft and Sons in the grocery department.

My father dictated the rest of the story to me in his own words, as follows.

It was about two years after I started to work for Scowcroft's, that Joe Scowcroft, one of the sons who was filled with zip, wit, and vigor, called me aside and said, "Shall, when you go home for dinner today, ask your mother if it will be all right for you to have supper with me tonight." So after work he took me to the nicest restaurant in Ogden and ordered a fine

24

Utah Historical

Quarterly

meal. We h a d a long talk in which he told me how much the company appreciated what I was doing, but that he and his father felt that my real future lay on the "road." I went home and told father, and he said that if I could keep myself free from evils associated with the word "drummer," he thought it would be all right.

I was 18 then and my territory was between Salt Lake and Richfield that first year. I traveled with Joe Decker, who was just one year older and sold dry goods for Scowcroft's. Because we were the youngest men on the road we were referred to as "Scowcroft's Babies."

I enjoyed my new life, and my days on the road were happy ones.

I covered my territory every two weeks and soon felt that I knew all the hotel people, merchants, clerks, and hack drivers on my route. I traveled with two bags â&#x20AC;&#x201D; one for my personal effects, and the other containing order books, price lists, and some special article which I was pushing on that particular trip, such as scrubbing brushes, brooms, graters, etc.

Many of the "trunk" men and certain influential drummers from the East drove out of Salt Lake in their own white top buggies, but I would travel on the train as far as I could go, then hire a team to visit towns which were not on the railroad. For instance, when I first visited Sevier, the train ran only to Salina, so I had to hire a rig to take me to Richfield. My first salary was $60.00 a month. Later, a three per cent commission on goods I sold was added.

My work was cut short, however, when I was called on a mission to Great Britain in 1896 DOROTHY J - B U C H A N A N from the Ogden Fifth Ward. There were only five wards in Ogden at that time. I received $53.00 in cash at my farewell testimonial. Then in addition, all the employees of Scowcroft's chipped in together and presented me with $65.00 more, which I thought was a handsome sum. I left for my mission on April 17, 1896.

Scowcroft's told me that they would hold my job open for me, so after fulfilling my mission, which was most beneficial to me, I returned home in June of 1898 and resumed my work with Scowcroft and Sons.

This time my route of travel varied. I started in Lehi, U t a h County, and went from Nephi to Hinckley, Oasis, Deseret, Abraham, Milford, Frisco, St. George, Parowan, Paragonah, Pan-

Reminiscences of a Drummer

25

guitch, then north to Mt. Pleasant and Fairview. I went by train to Milford, took the stage to Beaver, rented a team from Larsen and Anderson's Livery Stable in Elsinore, and arranged to have them send an outfit over to Beaver to meet me. After I'd completed my trip to St. George and other towns in the south part of the state, I'd return to Elsinore and take the new D & RG train and visit Richfield and towns up the line as far as Fairview.

The three gathering spots which most of us looked forward to visiting were Richfield, Elsinore, and Mt. Pleasant. Anyone who was stranded in Panguitch or other places knew that he could probably look forward to spending the evening alone, or perhaps with one or two others. But in Elsinore, Richfield, and Mt. Pleasant, we knew that many travelers would be gathered there and that we would have a lively evening.

And did we enjoy being together! I was young and carefree, and the hotels were all family hotels, just like home, with fried chicken, mashed potatoes, cream gravy, and garden-fresh vegetables, all set on the big dining room table. We were charged 50 cents per point, that is 50 cents for each meal and the same for a bed, adding up to $2.00 a day and night.

There was always a 25-cent hack fare if we had been driven up from the depot.

Elsinore Livery Stable, owned by Henry C. Larsen, provided rented to cover his southern territory.

the rigs that H. C. Jacobs

26

Utah Historical Quarterly

In Elsinore Bishop J. I. Jensen owned the hotel where I stayed. His wife was a top-notch cook, and his daughters were some of the most attractive and fine girls that I ever met. I liked to attend dances while there, and sometimes the Jensen girls would drop me a note and tell me when they were planning to have a special party or dance. They were a hospitable family, and after our evening meal we often sat in the parlor and sang songs or had a program.

Another family I liked to visit in Elsinore were the Ostlunds who lived on Main Street. They had a store in their home, which was a red rock structure that is still standing. I could always depend on Sister Ostlund's treating me to newly baked buns and fresh buttermilk when I put in an appearance.

Often on my run out of Elsinore I'd carry a Winchester 22 repeating rifle and shoot as I drove along the road. One time I well remember killing a coyote — just a chance shot at a great distance, but I got him right behind the ear.

I always stayed at the Brown Hotel in Mt. Pleasant. They had spacious lawns where they set up a croquet set in the summer and encouraged everyone to play. Often a group of us would be playing until 11 or 12 at night by the light of coal oil lamps which were placed around the lawns. It got real cold in the winter season, and many of the bedrooms were not heated, so I bought a large, heavy knit nightshirt, which came nearly to the floor and proved to be a great comfort. Incidentally, it never did wear out.

It was while in Mt. Pleasant that I met your mother, Alberta Larsen, on one of my regular trips. A friend had asked her to help demonstrate a new orange drink, put out by Hewlett Brothers, by giving free samples.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY A. L. INGLESBY COLLECTION 1 mmmm

H. C. Jacobs did business with country stores such as this store in Torrey, Utah.

Scowcroft canned goods can be seen on the shelf above the scales.

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*

Reminiscences of a Drummer

27

I walked up the sidewalk with another salesman and entered the building where they were. Her friend introduced me to her, and she kept refilling my glass with orangeade. She was really the only girl that I seriously courted.

In Richfield we had two of the finest cooks in my whole territory â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Tene and Soph Jensen. They ran the Jensen House in the home of their father, Taylor Jensen, the home now occupied by the V. V. Jensen family.

Their place was a general favorite among all travelers who had ever eaten there once; they would always find their way back after that. Soph was an artist at mashed potatoes. And they could both sing, if we'd coax them a little.

There was a lady in Ephraim who ran the hotel there, named Mrs. Peter Greaves. She made the tastiest hash I have ever eaten. She knew it was good, too, and would serve it to us often. As a rule, we had both cake and pie for dessert at most of the hotels. The Tucker House in Fairview was as neat and shining clean as could be, as was the Bench House in Manti.

Eating at "Beefsteak" Harrison's in Springville was a memorable experience. Springville was a junction on the railroad and a bustling place.

"Beefsteak" had a way with people and was a real cook. His specialty was steak and fresh bass from Utah Lake.

As I recall, at the time I was traveling, there was not a single home on the road between Beaver and Parowan. In Beaver I looked forward to visiting the main storekeeper there, a man named John F. Tolton, who was president of the stake and a member of the legislature. He had only one clerk, a Miss Beaumont, but she was a crackerjack of a worker.

I also liked to go to New Harmony where William Redd owned the store. Later he moved to Raymond, Canada, while I was living there, and we were close neighbors. I looked forward to driving over to Touquerville where Bishop Bringhurst ran the only store in town. People raised luscious grapes there and I'd buy a ten gallon pail full for 75 cents and eat them as I drove along. The soil was so sandy that it would come up to my buggy hubs.

I usually had food in my rig to munch on as I drove along. Often I'd buy a can of oysters or sardines, a wedge of cheese, and a box of soda crackers. I'd buy bananas when I could get them.

We all have memories of meals that we have eaten during the course of our lives that stand out as being extra special and delicious. I clearly remember one noon time when I was rolling along the Pine Valley Road

28

Utah Historical

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on a beautiful summer day, when I began getting hunger p a n g s a n d realized I was hungry and didn't have a bite of food with me. I knew there was no hotel there, but I came upon a very neat looking house nestled in a grove of pines. Something told me that this was the home of a good cook. So I drove up, stopped, and asked the lady who lived there if she would fix me a meal. She was most agreeable about it, and what a spread she set before m e ! I never remember enjoying a meal more. And all for the sum of 50 cents, which she rather reluctantly charged me, fearing it was too much.

At Cedar City there was an incorporated business called T h e Cedar City Sheep A s s o c i a t i o n , m a n a g e d by Myron Higbee. I had all of their grocery business. Joe DOROTHY J . BUCHANAN Decker and I often went there Progress Mercantile Company in Mt. Pleasant, together where we'd stay at Utah, was managed by H. C. Jacobs after his Andrew Corey's home, and employment as a drummer. This store is typical of the ones which Mr. Jacobs called on the family would treat us like while selling for Scowcroft and Sons. invited guests â&#x20AC;&#x201D; would often have a party while we were there.

I always dreaded making the trip over the Black Ridge, as it was considered to be the most dangerous place on the road. Freighters would sometimes break down there and everyone would pitch in and help get them out. T h e clearest, most sparkling stream of water that I recall in those parts was in Silver Reef where everyone liked to get a drink.

Reminiscences of a Drummer

29

We were always glad to get to St. George where we'd make straight for Ras Whitehead's big general store, quite a gathering place. I remember in the hot summer season how people would take their beds outside under the trees.

Leeds was noted for the excellent wine which was made there. Many visitors stocked up on the Leeds wine to take home with them.

I'd drive over to the Swiss colony at Santa Clara, where the people lived such a sedate life that they wouldn't say "damn" for any reason in the world. They were fine people all right, and knew how to make things grow.

In 1900 my territory was enlarged to include Carbon County, Emery, Castle Valley, Huntington, and also Moab and Monticello. The roads were so extremely rough in places that it wasn't uncommon to have a breakdown. I would take the train to Thompson where I'd board the stage which took me on to Monticello and Moab. It got pretty dusty in the summer months.

I have always felt that I made some choice and lasting friends during those traveling days. For the most part they were the finest people to be found anywhere. I felt that I knew every store manager, clerk, and hotel owner from A to Z.

Mr. Shall

Elsinore May Jacobs Ogden, Utah

31,1902

Dear Shall: We received your most welcome letter some time ago.

It was very kind of you to remember us and we appreciate it so very much.

Tonight we are lonely and alone, not a person here but Tom, of cource he is playing "High Lonesome." Ha! ha!

Tom isn't nearly as funny as he useto be; guess prospects are not as bright as they were.

We are all well and happy, but miss Emma and are continually sighing for "Shall" and a few other fellows.

Say you must try and come down this summer, you know how happy we will be to see you. We will do all in our power to make your visit pleasureable. Your successor hasn't called yet. We are quite anxious to see him, but are sure he can't take the place of "Shall" Emma is Mrs. Lund now, just think of it. She is liveing in Salt Lake City now.

Call and see her some day she will be so glad to see you.

Dear girl, it nearly broke our hearts to have her go.

But she is still our own dear "Em." Ma and Pa join us in sending love.

Now don't forget us but think of us as your sisters.

Minnie and

Tina

It is said that the most pleasant thing in the world is to have pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.

Reminiscing can be a lovely thing if one's own thoughts are directed to the finest memories of the past, and on the pleasant experiences which come to everyone's life.

O n e of my fondest recollections is of the years spent in the old hotel, known as T h e Elsinore House, which was owned and operated by my parents, Jens and Inger Jensen. Most likely these memoirs will interest no one except my family, but I am writing for my own pleasure and with the hope that my children will appreciate knowing about a very interesting period of my life.

This is the story of a pioneer hotel in Elsinore, Utah, owned by Bishop Jens Iver Jensen and his wife, Inger Sondergaard Jensen, members of the Danish group who settled Elsinore. In this hotel lived the Jensen children from 1897 until the time of their marriages. The children were Charles, Daniel P., E m m a (Mrs. Herbert Z. L u n d ) , Walter, Wilhelmina (Mrs. Frederick Horace G u n n ) , and Clementine (Mrs. J o h n W. H a g a n ) .

Wilhelmina (Minnie) wrote this engaging account for her children. In it she describes the turn-of-the-century experiences when she and two teen-age sisters were growing up and working in The Elsinore House. From it emerges the gentle humor and natural warmth of a bygone pioneer day.

T h e pictures of the Jensen family and T h e Elsinore House are courtesy Mrs. Edith Ann Lloyd, daughter of the author.

The Elsinore

31

House

T o begin, I must tell a little of Elsinore's history. Its first settlers came from Richfield in 1874. They were all Danish converts to the Mormon Church. Numbered among them were my parents.

Joseph A. Young, at that time president of the Sevier Stake, gave his consent for these people to make a new settlement. H e said, "I have passed through your town several times coming from Clear Creek Canyon. Every time I turn on the bend of the road I think of my visit to Denmark, and the little city of Elsinore" (pronounced "Helsinore" in Danish). Here was where Shakespeare's play Hamlet, h a d its setting. So this name, because of its Danish connection, was gladly accepted by the people. Father always told the story with great pride.

Like all Mormon communities, Elsinore was a peaceful little village — its inhabitants were almost like one large family, interested in t h e i r c h u r c h , their school, and making a living. But soon, amusements and recreation played an important role, for in a few years Elsinore developed a choir, a brass band, home dramatics, and a baseball team.

Dancing was always the favorite diversion.

There was a close association and also some rivalry between the towns in Sevier County. This was especially true of Richfield and Elsinore.

With the coming of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad in 1896, life in Elsinore took on a complete change. For several years the town became the terminus of the railroad. T h e mines nearby, T ^.

Wilhelmina

"Minnie"

Kimberly and Sevier, were in full

i

i

i c

•

(1883_1958)

daughter

operation. T r a v e l i n g m e n , railroad m e n , a n d miners Stopped at

sen. This picture was taken during the ' » " « her father owned The Elsinore House. 1 he coat and skirt were selected

1

r ii

x x t

Elsinore. Soon, a livery stable was

Jensen J of Jens

Iver

from a traveling man's samples.

Gunn

jen-

32

Utah Historical Quarterly

in operation, where these men could get teams and wagons or buggies, called "white tops," to take them to the mines and to southern Utah. Wool growers came from the south with their clips in the spring, and wool buyers came from Denver and Salt Lake City.

Uncle Chris Jensen operated a hotel which was always overcrowded.

It was then that an idea began taking form in my father's mind. It was this â&#x20AC;&#x201D; why not start a hotel. Father was a merchant, so received encouragement from several traveling men. Of course, it would necessitate enlarging our home, which presented a problem, but there was mother, a splendid cook, and three daughters, soon old enough to earn money of their own.

A bishop's house in those days was really an open house to travelers and immigrants who were coming to Utah, their Zion, in large numbers.

They almost always needed help. Many received food and lodging in our home until they were settled in homes of their own. The most important guests were church people, who came to town, either passing through or on official duties. Some were agents for the Deseret News and church magazines. Others were teachers from the Brigham Young Academy, who came to encourage our young people to attend that school.

Jens Iver Jensen (1846-1936) noprietor of The Elsinore House.

Inger Sondergaard (1845-1935)

Jensen

The Elsinore House

33

Often people came from southern and eastern Utah to trade at the Co-op Store. Father, being the manager, often felt it his duty to entertain the customers at our home. All this brought a great deal of work for mother, who at times became tired and discouraged. Often she remarked, "I might as well be running a hotel. Then we could at least have money to pay our expenses." Each time mother expressed that thought, the hotel idea grew stronger in father's mind. He hoped it would solve a number of financial problems.

But Father was trained in the "old school," as he called it, so he never made an important move without first consulting the church authorities â&#x20AC;&#x201D; for example, settling Elsinore, establishing the Co-op, building the roller mill, and regarding other enterprises. So in regard to building and operating a hotel, he went to his old friend, Apostle Anthon H. Lund, who later became my sister Emma's father-in-law. President Lund gave father his advice, "Well, Brother Jensen, in a financial way it seems a good proposition, but will you dare to entrust your daughters to that kind of environment?" Then he added, "If you do, never cease to watch over them." That almost squelched the whole idea, but after weeks of consultation with mother and earnest prayers, it was decided to go ahead with the hotel plans.

Daughters of Jens Iver Jensen (left to right) Clementine (Mrs. John W. Hagan), Emma (Mrs. Herbert Z. Lund), and Wilhelmina (Mrs. Frederick Horace Gunn).

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First, work began by tearing down part of the old home. Eight rooms were added, which when completed seemed so large and wonderful. We h a d a living room, kitchen, pantry, and seven bedrooms. At the time our hotel was built, there were no plumbers in Sevier County. So, the necessary bathroom had to wait until later years when a room we girls called our den was made into a big bathroom. Then we had the usual summer kitchen, store, and sample rooms.

Oh, how thrilling and exciting living in a hotel would be! We girls were at an age when life was indeed an adventure — everything seemed interesting and beautiful. T o think of having a new home, new furniture, and to think of the strangers who would live in our house — traveling salesmen, mining men, traveling dramatic companies, wool buyers, and stockmen, among others. T h r e e doctors from the East at different times practiced in Elsinore, each making the hotel their headquarters. My sister Tina married one of them, Dr. J. W. Hagan.

Now began preparations for furnishing the house. Mother made quilts, washed and carded wool, and also made quilt blocks with very little help from her daughters. But we did sew yards and yards of carpet rags, which were woven into homemade carpets.

T h e n came the day when the house was completed and we were ready to move in. Loads of furniture were arriving — "States" carpets, as imported carpeting was called, for the parlor; linoleum for the dining room and kitchen; Japanese matting for some of the bedrooms; and homemade carpet for others. Part of the living room furniture came from the parlor of the old home, also the bookcases, couch, and organ. There was a bay window always filled with house plants — fuchsias and M a r t h a Washington geraniums. Mother had a way of making them bloom the year around.

T h e dining room h a d a large new table, chairs, and a piece of furniture we all admired called a sideboard, or buffet. It was a new piece of furniture that we h a d never seen before. We thought it was lovely.

Lights in the living and dining rooms were to us dazzling and wonderful. They were called acetylene and were used extensively throughout southern U t a h until electric lights were installed. T h e bedrooms and kitchen were lighted by coal oil lamps. Beside the bed, each bedroom had a wash stand with its bowl and pitcher, and, of course, the necessary toilet bucket. There were also a stove, a chair, and a small table in the room.

There were barrels of new dishes to unpack, knives, forks, spoons, and cooking utensils, also table linens and towels. T h e bed linen, I am sure, was homemade, as I remember seeing yards of unbleached sheeting hanging on the clothesline to bleach.

The Elsinore House as it appeared

in 1911.

We are not sure of the exact date when we opened The Elsinore House, but we think it was the spring of 1897. Mother was the supervisor.

For a time a cook was employed, but after a few months mother felt that it was an unnecessary expense, so took over the job herself. We girls were to work as maids and waitresses.

Our first guests were members of the South American Expedition Company, a group of young and older men sent by the L.D.S. Church to that continent to explore ancient ruins of Book of Mormon history. That day was one of the outstanding times of my life. I shall never forget it.

Brother Benjamin duff was in charge of the party, I believe. I want to say in praise of the traveling men who stopped at our hotel, that with the exception of a few, no finer men ever lived. They were men of the highest character, always friendly and courteous. There was no indication of the treacherous "drummer" we had been warned against, who was supposed to be always ready to lead women astray. Among these traveling men were cultured singers who always joined in our evening of singing around the piano (the organ earlier) and often brought new songs down from Salt Lake City. When he was at home, my brother Walter often added to those pleasant evenings by singing with his cultured baritone voice.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

View of Main Street, Elsinore, Utah. Bishop Jensen's store is the structure on the left side of the street near the center of the picture. The hotel stood across the street from the store on the right side of the street.

Father was prejudiced against card playing, so he never allowed us girls to play, but we were permitted to go to dances and buggy rides with some of the favored men who stayed at our house. But father and mother always made the decision as to who was worthy. They always felt that we were secure with the Z C M I salesmen.

O u r prices at the hotel began at $ 1.00 a day â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 25 cents for each meal and 25 cents for a bed. Some of the traveling men often told mother that it was entirely too cheap. But not until several months had passed without any profit was mother converted to raising her prices to $2.00 per day.

T h a t price held throughout all the years that we were in the hotel business. H a d it not been for the fact that father raised much of our produce, the hotel could not have been operated at that price, even in those days.

Mother was a schemer. We all knew that she was the financier of the family, and as the saying goes she could always make "ends meet." We all worked hard, at times too hard, especially mother, but we didn't notice it too much because we were young and happy and thoroughly enjoying hotel life. It brought us into contact with many interesting people. Many were a source of education to us. Strange as it seems, none of us married traveling men, even though we h a d a romance with one or two of them.

We h a d a dinner bell made by my grandfather, who was a brazier and brass molder. H e made many kinds of bells, among them the church bell, which for many years rang the hours for the services in Elsinore.

When meals were ready in our hotel, our dinner bell was rung and heard for blocks around. There were no set hours for meals, but when the bell rang our guests knew that it was time to eat. There was never much variety in the meals, but they were wholesome and substantial and cooked as only

The Elsinore House

37

mother knew how to prepare them. It is said that "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach," and mother not only won the hearts of her patrons that way, but by kindness and consideration at all times. She was affectionately called "Mother Jensen" by most of our regular patrons.

I well remember how we enjoyed the opportunity to look at the samples that the salesmen put on display in our sample room. Never will I forget the coats, skirts, and shoes that my sisters ordered from these samples. Those were happy, interesting years for us Jensen girls, and for many of our friends who came to the hotel to share in many happy times.

I recall the old song we used to sing, "Where is now the merry party I remember long ago/Laughing around the hotel fire, brightened by its ruddy glow."

I loved the old hotel so much that when my parents sent me away to attend the Snow Academy one winter, I went reluctantly. And to spend another year away from home to teach school was indeed, a trial to me.

However, the old saying, "Nothing in this world can last" came true as applied to our lives in the hotel business. My sisters married and moved away; mother and father were getting along in years and were worn out from such intensive work. I eventually lost interest in the hotel, so father and mother decided to retire to a more quiet life. Accordingly, they built a new home just north of the hotel, where they continued watching the hotel with interest. That was in the year 1908, and for 15 or 16 more years the hotel continued to operate under different management. And then, a young Lochinvar, by the name of Horace Gunn, came out of the West (from Beaver), always on horseback, and his steed was really the best.

He became my husband. During our courtship he stopped at the old hotel.

Business began to dwindle, due to a number of reasons, mainly because the mines at Kimberly and Sevier were gradually shutting down, which naturally lessened patronage at the hotel. Billie Johnston built his modern hotel at Richfield, which was more desirable than our old-fashioned one, so we lost many patrons except for a few loyal ones.

Then came the time that the hotel went the way of many old homes and buildings to make room for a service station. Ours was sold to the Shell Gas Company. Although having the old home sold and torn down was heartbreaking for the whole family, it had served us well, and we decided that was the thing to do. So before the wrecking began, we held a family reunion in the old hotel. That was indeed a time for reminiscing, for many experiences of those happy days were recalled.

It was farewell to the "Old Hotel," but memories of our lives there will linger in our hearts forever.

UTE INDIANS: before and after white contact

by Omer C. Stewart

My personal experience with the Ute Indians started in 1931 with an opportunity to help erect the posts for the Ute Sun Dance near Whiterocks, on the Uintah-Ouray Reservation, and then to watch the dance for a couple of days and nights. Over 30 years of research by many anthropologists, including myself, has not produced answers to the questions posed regarding the relationship between the archaeological site I helped to excavate beside Whiterocks River and the Sun Dance I watched nearby.

Additional prehistoric occupation sites are being uncovered on the UintahOuray Reservation and the Sun Dance continues to be performed annually, yet archaeologists can not say with assurance whether or not the ancient village which was reported in ruins by Escalante in 1776, and which is now identified as the Fremont Culture of 1000 A.D., was peopled Dr. Stewart is professor of anthropology, University of Colorado, Boulder, and author of many publications dealing with Indians. Written in collaboration with other well-known authorities, his most recent publication, The Native Americans: Prehistory and Ethnology of the North American Indians, was released in 1965.

This paper was presented as the Second Annual Rufus Wood Leigh Lecture in New World Anthropology, University of U t a h , November 2, 1964. Financial support for years of research, which constitutes the general basis for the paper, was received from the University of California Institute of Social Science, 1937â&#x20AC;&#x201D;38; University of Colorado Committee on Research and Creative Work, 1949-64; U i n t a h U t e Tribe for preparation to serve as expert witness in their case before the U.S. Indian Claims Commission, 1950â&#x20AC;&#x201D;52; and Research Grant Number 3M-9556, National Institute of Mental Health for the Tri-Ethnic Project, 1959-64.

I I I,

U T A H STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Governor Herbert B. Maw, on a visit to the Ute Reservation, is shown a display of Indian tribal dress.

by ancestors of the modern Ute Indians or whether the Ute were fierce invaders who brought an end to that occupation. Anthropological opinions on such problems may remain speculative for many years to come; nevertheless, anthropologists find real satisfaction in working for even a partial solution. There are many "missing links" in anthropology.

Who were and who are the Ute Indians? What was their culture?

What happened to them?

The people called Ute Indians are so designated only because they speak the Ute language. Of course, people speaking that language have other traits in common as well, such as an emotion-charged belief that they are alike and united in opposition to other Indians and non-Indians. The Southern Paiute are linguistically close to the Ute, but the two peoples have been recognized as separate for over 150 years. I will attempt to

40

Utah Historical Quarterly

make a quick summary of the position of Ute among the languages of the New World.

The study of the Ute language and its relationship with other languages reveal its close kinship with other Great Basin speech such as Southern Paiute, Shoshone, and Northern Paiute. The basic similarity of the speech among these Great Basin tribes led the late famous University of California professor, Dr. Alfred L. Kroeber, to combine them into the Plateau Shoshonean sub-family and to record their relationship with such distant linguistic kin as the Coahuilla in the deserts of southern California, the Hopi of northern Arizona, the Pima and Papago of southern Arizona, and ultimately with the several Aztec-speaking groups of Mexico and even with tribes in Panama. 1 This linguistic stock (or superfamily), first named Uto-Aztecan, has been changed to Tanoan-Aztec to indicate the inclusion of additional more distantly related Pueblo tribes of the Rio Grande Valley, New Mexico.

The fact that Ute and Aztec are members of the same language super-family might raise the question whether the Ute migrated from the valley of Mexico or whether the Aztec once lived beside Utah Lake. This is comparable to trying to determine which was the original language and what were the directions of migration of Indo-European languages. Some modern linguists have developed a technique of statistical measurement of linguistic differences among related languages, which translates degree of distinctiveness between two languages into years of separation of the two.

Although still in the experimental stage, these techniques, called lexicostatistics or glottolchronology, have been applied to Uto-Aztecan and have produced the percentages which suggest the following lengths of time that other languages have been developing independently of Ute.2 Southern Paiute

618 years

N o r t h e r n Paiute

1,328 years

Shoshone ."..:...

1,481 years

Hopi

2,879 years

Aztec

4,267 years

On the basis of linguistic analysis alone, Hale and Lamb suggested that the Uto-Aztecan linguistic stock developed in Mexico and subdivided 1 A. L. Kroeber, "Shoshonean Dialects of California," University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, I V (No. 3, 1907), 1 0 5 - 1 1 ; U.S., Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin L X X V I I I , Alfred L. Kroeber, Handbook of Indians of California (Washington, D . C , 1925).

2 Kenneth Hale, "Internal Diversity in Uto-Aztecan: I , " International Journal of American Linguistics, XXIV (April, 1958), 106.

Ute Indians

41

along the border between Mexico and Arizona about 3000 B.C. Hale and Lamb believe that Shoshonean or Numic-speakers (Ute, Bannock, Shoshone, etc.) migrated via southern California, and reached central Utah, Wyoming, and Oregon about the time Columbus discovered America.3 Unfortunately, there is slight, if any support from other branches of science for these guesses by linguists. Dr. Walter Taylor, an archaeologist at the University of Southern Illinois, arrived at opposite conclusions, finding evidence of a long Great Basin occupation by people who entered from the north, although he took linguistic data into consideration.4 Basic theoretical questions are pertinent in trying to evaluate reconstructions of the type we are involved in here. One problem may be phrased as the conflict between evidence for permanent settlement versus that for migration.

Modern linguists like to trace migrations, and sometimes appear to me to invent them out of thin air. Archaeologists also favor migration as an explanation whenever markedly different traits of culture appear in an area or disappear from it. On the other hand ethnologists find strong support for the theory that populations prefer to remain living within a narrow region of familiarity and usually move from their homeland only under very great pressure or temptation. The ecologists support the stationary bias with the evidence that great stability and long occupation of any area is necessary for the aborigines to acquire the great personal knowledge of all the natural resources available within each particular zone. Folklore, musicology, and physical anthropology support the theory of little geographic movement for the Ute. An exhaustive analysis of Great Basin folklore, with a large number of Ute myths and legends as a base, served Anne Cooke Smith as a Ph.D. dissertation at Yale in 1940.5 She discovered remarkable uniformity between the Ute and all of the other Shoshonean-speaking tribes of the Great Basin. In style, theme, and characterization of animal heroes, the ancient stories recited on the Uintah-Ouray Reservation were similar in many details to the Northern Paiute tales recorded in Oregon and Shoshone tales recorded near Death Valley, California. No migration legends were found.

Instead each local band of Ute, Shoshone, or Paiute had tales of the creation of the world, or the beginning of humanity, or of the origin of fire as 3 Ibid.; Sidney M. Lamb, "Linguistic Prehistory in the Great Basin," I.J. of A.L., X X I V (April, 1958), 95-100; C. F. Voegelin, F. M. Voegelin and Kenneth Hale, Typological and Comparative Grammar of Uto-Aztecan: I (Phonology) (Bloomington, Indiana, 1962), 144.

4 Walter W. Taylor, "Archaeology and Language in Western North America," American Antiquity, X X V I I (July, 1961), 7 1 - 8 1 .

3 Anne Cooke Smith, "An Analysis of Basin Mythology" (2 vols., Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1940).

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taking place in its own vicinity. Ute folklore strongly implies that the Ute have always lived where they now live. In a like manner musicology has paralleled folklore in finding Great Basin music uniform and distinct from non-Shoshonean music.

T h e findings of physical anthropology, beginning with the anthropometric measurements of the late Dr. Ales Hrdlicka of the U.S. National Museum, 6 have confirmed visual impressions to the effect that the Ute are part of the Mongoloid racial group, and that they are of the short, stocky variety whose skeletons have been recovered from excavations. The Ute have the Mongoloid, shovel-shaped incisor teeth, such as the late Dr. Rufus Leigh discovered while examining the teeth in excavated skulls years ago.

Hrdlicka found measurable uniformities in a dozen characteristics like head shape, stature, nose width, etc., which unified Uto-Aztecan speaking peoples and distinguished them in a significant degree from speakers of Navajo, Sioux, Yuma, etc. Notwithstanding this, Dr. James Spuhler, using the same mass of anthropometric data and subjecting it to modern statistical analyses, discovered that the Southern Ute resemble Havasupai, a close Yuma-speaking neighbor, more than Papago, Uto-Aztecan speakers who live farther away. 7 This suggests the Ute and Havasupai have been neighbors for millenniums; consequently, that the Ute have been in their historic location for millenniums.

Archaeological excavations within the historic territory of the Ute indicate that the area has been occupied for at least 10,000 years. T h e first occupants could have spoken an ancestral, proto-Uto-Aztecan language, and the modern Ute could have descended directly from these earliest inhabitants of the area. This opinion is justified by the archaeological excavations, best exemplified by Danger Cave, near Wendover, Utah, which revealed a continuous sequence of occupations covering about 10,000 years. Furthermore, the most recent cultural manifestation at Danger Cave was similar to early historical accounts of non-equestrian Ute Indians and Gosiute Shoshone who still live near the cave. 8 It is impossible to specify that any series of archaeological traits were U t e and not Shoshone or Southern Paiute or Bannock. T h e early historic cultures of all the peoples in the whole region from the Rocky Mountains 6 U.S., Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin X X X I V , Ales Hrdlicka, Physiological and Medical Observations Among the Indians of Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico (Washington, D . C , 1908). ' James N. Spuhler, "Some Problems in the Physical Anthropology of the American Southwest," American Anthropologist, L V I (August, 1954), 6 0 4 - 2 5 .

8 Jesse D . Jennings, "Danger Cave," Society for American Archaeology Memoirs Number 14, supplement to American Antiquity, X X I I I (October, 1957), 328.

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44

Utah Historical

Quarterly

in Colorado to the Sierra Nevada Range in California, including the deserts of southern California, fit into a general pattern with only limited and local variability. T h e earliest historic Great Basin culture fits very well the archaeological patterns named "Desert Culture" by Dr. Jesse Jennings of the University of Utah. 9 With some limited exceptions, the intermountain desert region with its variable environments resulting from numerous mountain ranges, lakes, and streams supported peoples with a culture of a generally uniform type similar to that of the historic pre-horse Ute Culture. A description of Desert Culture has been made by combining archaeological material with some ethnological material judged ancient because of distribution and combination with other known prehistoric features.

T h e Desert Culture and the early Great Basin Ute Culture can be characterized as utilizing all of the natural resources available to a people of a purely hunting and gathering way of life. It was nomadic so that families moving on foot and carrying their possessions could exploit fully the food resources available at different seasons, and at variations in elevation. Presumably, for about 10,000 years occupants of historic U t e territory lived on the edge of starvation with the minimum of clothing and shelter. They sought rock overhangs and caves and built crude brush huts and windbreaks. Although large game such as deer, elk, and buffalo were hunted when available, it was the long-legged, black-eared jack rabbit which provided a more regular part of the diet. From jack rabbits also came the rabbit-skin blanket, crudely woven from long strips of rabbit hide cut spirally from a single skin.

O n September 30, 1776, on Sevier River, Escalante was visited by 20 Ute Indians "wrapped in blankets made of the skins of rabbits and hares." 10 Not only the woven rabbit-skin blankets, but also long milkweed fiber rabbit nets have been excavated from cave deposits in Utah and Nevada and have been reported by early historic and modern ethnographic Ute informants. 11 There are dozens of other items of culture which have been identified as belonging to the "generic substratum" or "basic culture" common to 9 Jesse D. Jennings and Edward Norbeck, "Great Basin Prehistory: A Review," American Antiquity, X X I (July, 1955), 1â&#x20AC;&#x201D;11; the section entitled, " T h e American Southwest: A Problem in Cultural Isolation," in Jesse D. Jennings, ed., Seminars in Archaeology 1955, Society for American Archaeology Memoirs Number 11, supplement to American Antiquity, X X I I I (October, 1956), 5 9 - 1 2 8 .

10 Herbert E. Bolton, ed., Pageant in the Wilderness, Utah Historical Quarterly, X V I I I ( 1 9 5 0 ) , 189.

11 Omer C Stewart, "Culture Element Distributions: X V I I I : Ute-Southern Paiute," Anthropological Records, V I (No. 4, 1942), 358.

Ute Indians

45

the prehistoric and historic cultures of the Great Basin.12 Items connected with food-gathering are basketry seed beaters, basketry trays, scapula grass cutters, digging sticks, etc. From early deposits are the atlatl or the dart thrower and, of course, the darts or short spears to throw for hunting.

Bows and arrows have been found in more recent deposits. From ancient deposits and modern informants come reports of wooden clubs for throwing, hardwood arrows, and perforated antler arrow wrenches. Also from historic and prehistoric times are such items as the simple fire drill and fire hearth, simple seed-milling devices of stone called manos or hand-stones, to push back and forth on a larger stone called the metate.

Without attempting to give an exhaustive list we might add deer dew-claw rattles as material objects of the Desert Culture connected with ceremonial life, and further propose that shamanistic religion and girls' puberty rites are probably very ancient. Whether fear of witchcraft and its counterpart in shamanistic ceremonies — the detection and punishment of witches, found universally among historic Great Basin tribes — should be projected back into Desert Culture times is very speculative, but I believe they should be. It is my personal belief that religion is as ancient as speech; consequently, I believe men of the Desert Culture undoubtedly experienced the fears, the frustrations, and the sorrows for which the ancient, though simple, shamanistic religions were invented and practiced.

Basin culture was not static or uniform, rather it showed variations in time and location, clearly reflecting variations in cultural adjustment to environmental conditions. The most curious and important cultural diversity was introduced into Utah about 500 A.D. when a form of the BasketMaker Culture appeared. It became Pueblo II Culture before disappearing about 1200 A.D. Clearly identifiable remains of this intrusive culture are found as far north as Willard, Utah. East of the Wasatch Mountains along the Utah-Colorado border north into Wyoming this agricultural intrusion has been named the Fremont Culture.

New semi-subterranean house types, improved pottery, clay figurines, and planting of maize — all important innovations very different from the Desert Culture — are characteristic of the Fremont and Pueblo Cultures in Utah. While often the result of migration, anthropologists know that marked and revolutionary changes in culture and civilizations are possible without changes in population through migration. The Basket-Maker and Fremont Cultures may have been due to a migration of people, or may 12 Robert F. Heizer and Alex D. Krieger, " T h e Archaeology of Humboldt Cave Churchill County, Nevada," University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, X L V I I (No. 1, 1956), 1-190; Paul Kirchhoff, "Gatherers and Farmers in the Greater Southwest: A Problem in Classification," American Anthropologist, L V I (August, 1954), 5 2 9 - 5 1 .

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have diffused through borrowing of ideas and products without introducing new people or new languages, or may have been accompanied by only a few individuals. Older inhabitants with their hunting and gathering culture may have remained in the region during the time that some of their number became more settled and did some farming as a result of visits with agricultural Basket-Makers.

Recently in an effort to learn more about the prehistory of the Ute, Professor Robert Lister of the University of Colorado, with graduate students directed by William Buckles, has studied an area near Montrose, Colorado, known to have been used extensively by the Ute during all of the recorded history of Colorado. Lister and Buckles13 have sought prehistoric sites to avoid post-Columbian cultural patterns borrowed from the Great Plains tribes. Surprisingly, this historic Ute area was found to lack any Puebloid occupation, although Basket-Makers had lived just over the mountain south, near Durango, Colorado. T h e Anasazi Pueblo occupied Mesa Verde and the Four Corners area only a short distance away, and the Fremont Culture of eastern U t a h and extreme western Colorado was adjoining. None of these cultures are represented by any typical traits in the sites dug near Montrose.

Unfortunately, no deep caves, such as Danger Cave of western Utah or Ventana Cave in southern Arizona, with a 10,000-year sequence in the same spot have been found. However, dozens of rock shelters and shallow open sites have been excavated which furnish material dated back at least 8,000 years. For example, 900 manos or hand-grinding stones have been collected and analyzed, few of which were of the peculiar style of Fremont grinding stones found in eastern U t a h .

Petroglyphs and pictographs are rather uniform in style and very distinctive from known Navajo, Fremont, and Plains rock art. Pottery is not obviously like any other. It is prehistoric but not ancient. Except for the change in size of stone points, which might coincide with change from atlatl to bow and arrow (carbon-14 dated at about 800 A.D. ), there are no sharp, major cultural changes which might be interpreted as a population shift. General patterns with considerable variability persist from the beginning of the archeological record to the introduction of the horse about 1700 A.D. At that time petroglyphs change, more end-scrapers appear, and also metal arrow points appear, although older stone-arrow pointstyles persist. T h e entire prehistoric Montrose cultural sequence fits very well into the Great Basin Desert Culture complex.

13

Personal communication with the author.

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T h e beginning and end of the pottery-making farmers of prehistoric Utah and their relationship with the historic Ute, who were found occupying the same area later, have attracted the attention of a number of anthropologists during the last 40 years, yet little consensus has been achieved during that time. My own opinion may be summarized as follows.

Ute-Aztecan speaking, hunting, and gathering peoples have occupied the Intermountain West for about 10,000 years. They carried on the Desert Culture as defined by Jennings, which was adjusted to the full utilization of the diverse natural resources of the Great Basin and adjacent territory. 14 When maize cultivation diffused from Mexico to the Southwest about 2000 B.C.15 Uto-Aztecan speakers, such as the ancestors of the Papago in southern Arizona and later the ancestors of the Hopi in northern Arizona, accepted the farming culture and developed ways of life called the BasketMaker Culture, which eventually arrived about 500 A.D. in central Utah.

Throughout Utah, Basket-Maker and later Pueblo farmers were few in number and were only partly dependent upon their fields. Also, we can assume that simple hunters and gatherers, like those at the eastern end of Ute territory near Montrose, were their regular and persistent neighbors.

It is reasonable to believe that non-farming Ute speakers may have remained close neighbors of the farmers throughout the range of BasketMaker-Pueblo Culture from 500 to 1200 A.D. My hypothesis proposes that the Pueblo and Fremont farming cultures could have been carried on by Ute who had learned some new food-producing and storing methods.

These new methods were abandoned about 1200 A.D. in favor of the older hunting and gathering Desert Culture which had always been maintained by some people in the area. A modern example of hunters and gatherers and farmers living side by side with the same language are the Southern Paiute of southern U t a h and northern Arizona.

If movements of people were involved, I suggest that the eastern and central U t a h people with Pueblo or Fremont Culture may have returned to join the larger centers of Pueblo Culture in Arizona and New Mexico. 16 They could have been absorbed into the ancestors of the Hopi with little difficulty, being linguistic and cultural kin. William Buckles suggests that 14 Chapter entitled " T h e Desert West," in Jesse D. Jennings and Edward Norbeck, eds., Prehistoric Man in the New World (Chicago, 1963), 149-74.

15 Joe Ben Wheat, "Southwestern Cultural Interrelationships and Questions of Area Cotradition," American Anthropologist, L V I (August, 1954), 576-86.

18 Robert C Euler, "Southern Paiute Archaeology." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archaeology, Boulder, Colorado (May, 1963).

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the Fremont people may have moved east of the Rockies to plant along the streams of the High Plains.

We come now to the historic period where we can trace Ute development through documents and interviews. Changes in the way of life of the Ute Indians as a result of contact with European culture started as soon as the Spanish settled in New Mexico in 1598. Coronado's exploration of 1540 missed known Ute territory, even when the conquistador went into the modern state of Kansas in search of the mythical city of Quivira.

The earliest sure reference to the Ute Indians is in the report of ZarateSalmaron in 1623; from then on Spanish reports regularly describe either friendly or hostile relations between the Ute and the Spanish colonists in New Mexico.17 In 1640 Spanish missionaries reported the southern boundary of the Ute as being along the San Juan River where it was shown in 1776 on the map of Don Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco, cartographer for the Escalante expedition;18 where in the 1850's it was also discovered by the U.S. officials; and where in 1938 it was reported to me by Ute informants.19 1T Fr. G. Zarate-Salmeron, "Relation," translated by Charles F. Lummis in articles entitled "Pioneers of the F a r West," The Land of Sunshine, X I (June, 1899), to X I I (May, 1900), 1623.

18 Bolton, Pageant in the Wilderness, U.H.Q., X V I I I .

19 Stewart, "Culture Element Distributions." Anthropological Records, V I , 358.

Dressed in their rabbit-skin robes or blankets, Paiutes are performing the "Tavokoli" or Circle Dance. The robes were made by the women sewing strips of rabbit skins together.

U.S. BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BECKWITH COLLECTION

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From 1598 Ute association with Spanish colonists was sufficiently complicated to suggest a distinctive culture was developing among the Ute Indians in Colorado. Ute children were placed in Spanish homes as slaves and sometimes returned to their own people as adults. Sometimes Ute adults were forced to work for the Spanish as weavers and tanners.

Some escaped to return to their homes just beyond the frontier.

The greatest change came to Ute culture as a result of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, when Spanish horses became available to the Indians in large numbers, and many Ute slaves and servants were freed. It is still a moot question whether Ute warriors actually participated in the revolt itself, but they were near at hand and quickly profited in the spoils. The Ute may have learned animal husbandry before the revolt, especially horse breeding, while living among the Spanish, but they quickly acquired horses in sufficient numbers to pass some on to the Shoshone to the north of them.

Before 1700 they also had horses in sufficient numbers to start hunting buffalo on the High Plains east of the Rocky Mountains.

Before the Ute became equestrian, they killed buffalo from time to time from the small herds in the Rocky Mountains, in the vicinity of Green River, and even in the Great Basin itself. Nowhere, however, was buffalo hunting an important source of food for the Ute until they could move out upon the Plains. Even then the Ute did not control the lands east of the mountains. They hunted with Jicarilla Apache who lived in eastern Colorado. From about 1700 to 1750, Ute and Comanche Shoshone were allies and were frequently reported together hunting and raiding on the High Plains as well as visiting and trading with Pueblo Indians and Spanish settlers along the Rio Grande.

About 1750 the Ute and Comanche had a falling-out, and the Ute joined forces with Spaniards and with Pueblo Indians against the wideranging Comanche raiders. As the Comanche moved farther south and less frequently returned to their Wyoming homeland, their place in eastern Colorado was taken by the Cheyenne and Arapaho from the northeast, with whom the Ute were ready to fight whenever they ventured onto the Plains to hunt buffalo. The competition for the High Plains buffalo was matched in part by Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Kiowa raids into the mountains, the traditional Ute territory. The Plains tribes were more often hunting for Ute horses than for game in the mountains, but did hunt buffalo herds in such places as South Park, the high prairie basin west of Pike's Peak where a large herd survived longer than the buffalo herds on the Plains.

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Horses in large numbers were the key to the transformation in Ute culture which took place in Colorado after 1680 and was already well advanced by 1776, when Father Escalante, Father Dominguez, Captain Miera, and seven companions departed Santa Fe to search for a route to Monterey, California, by going north and east of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado and then west. Traveling along the western slope of the Rocky Mountains until a trail toward the west led to the crossing of Green River near Jensen, Utah, the Franciscan fathers met 80 mounted Ute Indians as they approached a camp of 30 tents where the Spaniards purchased dried buffalo meat. The camp with 30 skin tents and supplies of dried buffalo meat was like a camp of the Plains tribes. A day later, however, near the present town of Montrose, Escalante wrote "throughout the valley there were huts or little houses which indicate that this is a resident of the Yutas." 20 In some ways the coexistence, side by side, of the skin tents of the wellmounted Ute buffalo-hunters and the small huts of the walking Ute is a parallel to the coexistence of poor Ute hunters and gatherers and their more affluent neighbors who planted maize and built their homes of stones and earth postulated for 700 years earlier.

Change did not come as quickly to the Ute Indians of Utah. In 1776 the Ute in central Utah had no horses and all of the inhabitants observed

by Escalante, from the vicinity of Provo south to the vicinity of Milford, were hunters and gatherers on foot. When not wrapped in rabbit-skin blankets, Escalante reported "most of them naked except for a piece of buckskin around their loins." 21 The central Utah Ute Indians all lived in "little huts of willow," according to Escalante.22 The Ute Indians of Utah Valley were first designated Lagunas by Escalante when he met some of them who had walked over to the vicinity of Montrose to try to get horses. Later when he arrived near Utah Lake, guided by one of the Lagunas, he learned that the people there called themselves "Timpanogotzis." 23 On September 25, 1776, the mountain to the north of the site of the city of Provo was named by Escalante "Sierra Blanca de los Timpanosis," 24 a name preserved as Mt. Timpanogos.

The Timpanogotzis knew of horses and were not afraid to try riding them, but Escalante's diary leaves no doubt that horses were not present 20

Bolton, Pageant in the Wilderness, Ibid., 188.

22 Ibid., 186.

23 Ibid., 187.

24 Ibid.

21

U.H.Q., X V I I I , 161.

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in central Utah in 1776. He reported hoof prints of horses in Uintah Basin on his way to Utah Lake and again reported the first hoof prints of horses observed on the south side of the Colorado River after leaving Ute and Southern Paiute territory.

The overall territory of the Ute Indians shown on the map is that which the Ute occupied as their homelands when they were first met and identified. The southern border was described by the Spanish starting in 1643, notwithstanding the fact that the Ute were frequently reported far south of the San Juan, but the occasions of such incidents were recognized as raids into foreign territory from which the Ute withdrew. In Colorado the Ute were always designated as the mountain Indians and were even characterized in the early American period as the Swiss of the New World.

The eastern border at the foot of the first range of the Rocky Mountains is shown on the accompanying map as it was described in a ratified treaty between the Ute and the United States in 1863, known as the Tabeguache Treaty. Numerous documents dated before and after the treaty confirm that the Ute dominated all of the mountains of Colorado until they peacefully settled on reservations. The boundaries separating the Ute from the Shoshone along the Yampa River in Colorado and along the crest of the Uinta Mountains in northeastern Utah have been confirmed by both the Ute and Shoshone many times since first described in 1849 by John Wilson, the first Indian agent at Fort Bridger. The western and especially the southern boundaries of the Ute in Utah are the most indefinite, although Escalante clearly reported the line separating the Ute from the Shoshone (whom he called Comanche) at the Point of the Mountain, where the Utah County-Salt Lake County line is today. Again, as he left Ute territory on the upper, southern end of Beaver Valley near the modern town of Milford, Escalante wrote, "The Long Bearded Yutas (Yutas Barbones) extend this far south, and here apparently their territory ends." 25 Modern Pahvant Ute and Southern Paiute informants have placed the border between them a little farther north.26 The Oquirrah Mountains and the ranges north and west of Lake Sevier were determined as boundary markers mainly by modern informants, as was the boundary in southeastern Utah. Extremely rugged, barren rocks make the southeastern quarter of Utah one of the least habitable in the United States, and boundary drawing is particularly difficult; consequently, the broad area of crosshatching on the map signifying doubt.

28 26

Bolton, Pageant in the Wilderness, U.H.Q., X V I I I , 197.

Stewart, "Culture Element Distributions," Anthropological

Records, V I , 358.

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This total area from the Oquirrah Mountains west of Utah Lake to the base of the Front Range of the Rockies in Colorado was occupied by people whose speech was so similar that no dialectical differences have been documented. For centuries they were friends and neighbors from east to west, with a similar culture. However, with white contact for more than 100 years from 1680 to 1800, the Colorado Ute became culturally distinct from their Utah kinfolk.

The beginning of the cultural and emotional division of the eastern and western Ute began with the horse. Cultural and emotional separation initiated by horse ownership was continued and intensified by the different treatment accorded the Indians in the two states after they came under U.S. government dominion following the Mexican War of 1846.

During the period of the mountain men and fur hunters, from about 1825 to 1846, most reports of the Indians of the Great Basin came from American travelers from the eastern United States who had encountered the wealthy, haughty, and well-mounted Plains Indians before meeting the Indians of the Great Basin who were still on foot. The tough mountain men respected strength in others, and they respected the mounted Colorado Utes as they did the mounted Plains tribes. They did not respect the helpless foot Indians such as the Great Basin Ute at that time. More than one lowly Great Basin gatherer lost his life because a trapper had a bullet in his rifle and had the urge to watch a running Indian fall when hit with a slug. It was at this period that the belittling name "Diggers" was applied indiscriminately to non-equestrian tribes throughout Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, and California. Tribal names were given to identify the powerful bands of Ute of Colorado and the mounted Shoshone of Wyoming. The Ute and Shoshone of Utah without horses were just "poor diggers."

By some chance the mountain men picked the name of the San Pete Ute â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Indians of the beautiful region of the modern towns of Mt. Pleasant, Manti, and Fountain Green â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to immortalize as being the poorest, least intelligent, and lowest possible form of humanity. It is not certain when and by whom the slander was started. It may have been W. A. Ferris, a trapper, who visited their country in 1834, and characterized them as "the most miserable human beings we have ever seen." 27 If Ferris was the source, his opinion was embellished and exaggerated; then re2 ' W. A. Ferris, Life in the Rocky Mountains: A Diary of Wanderings on the Sources of the Rivers Missouri, Columbia, and Colorado from Feb., 1830 to Nov., 1835, ed., Paul C Phillips (Denver, 1940), 269.

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peated and published widely by early travelers who were never within hundreds of miles of the vicinity of San Pete County, Utah. Although the French Catholic Priest Father Pierre deSmet, got no closer than Brown's Hole in extreme northwestern Colorado, he wrote in 1843, T h e Sampeetches are the next neighbours of the Snakes. T h e r e is not, perhaps in the whole world, a people in a deeper state of wretchedness and corruption; the French commonly designate them "the people deserving of pity,''' a n d this appellation is most appropriate . . . their habitations are holes in the rocks, or the natural crevices of the ground, . . . T w o , three, or at most four of them may be seen in company, roving over their sterile plains in quest of ants and grasshoppers, on which they feed. W h e n they find some insipid root, or a few nauseous seeds, they make, . . . a delicious repast. T h e y are so timid, that it is difficult to get near t h e m ; the appearance of a stranger alarms t h e m ; and conventional signs quickly spread the news amongst them. Every one, thereupon, hides himself in a hole; and in an instant this miserable people disappear and vanish like a shadow. Sometimes, however, they venture out of their hiding places, and offer their newly born infants to the whites in exchange for some trifling articles. 28

Dozens of travelers made similar disparaging remarks about the Great Basin hunting and gathering Indians who were living in the manner of the traditional Desert Culture. For example, in 1869 Madame Aubou28 Pierre Jean deSmet, "Letters and Sketches: With a Narrative of a Year's Residence Among the Indian Tribes of the Rocky Mountains," in Early Western Travels 1748-1846 (Cleveland, 1906), X V I I , 165-67.

Indian hunting blinds, with the man sitting in the center of a group of three blinds, two of which are visible in this photograph. Note the line of rocks extending to the left, which guided the game toward the blinds, from which the Indians shot their game.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY CHARLES KELLY COLLECTION

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ard, another French writer who did not visit the Ute, wrote that they lived by eating earth.29 Few, if any, found these people truly remarkable for their ability to survive under such poor natural conditions.

But changes were coming to the Utah Ute too, and by the time these descriptions were published, they were already out of date. San Pete Valley was one of the favorite pastures for the hundreds of horses being stolen by the infamous Ute, Chief Walkara or Walker. From about 1836 until Mormon settlement in southern Utah, Walker and the American renegade trappers, Pegleg Smith and Jim Beckwourth, led the San Pete Ute as far as southern California and Santa Fe, New Mexico, on horsestealing and slave-selling expeditions. Walker was called the "Hawk of the Mountains" 30 and "the Napoleon of the Desert" and was the leader of well-mounted San Pete Indian raiders at the very period deSmet and Madame Aubouard were publishing their deprecating accounts of the Sampatches. Walker's horse pasture extended from the lands of the peaceful Pahvant band of Ute on the lower Sevier River to the crossing of Green River along the Old Spanish Trail west of Grand Junction, Colorado.

Walker and his brothers â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Arrapeen (Arrapine), Sanpitch (San Pete), Ammon, and Tobiah (Tabby) â&#x20AC;&#x201D;were in the process of changing the Utah Ute into a mounted warrior tribe when Mormons brought independent Indian development to an end.

It is interesting to compare the quotation from Father deSmet with the report of the Indians from San Pete which appears five years later in the "Journal History" of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, under date of September 5, 1848.

Chief Walker, celebrated Utah chief, recently paid visit to Salt Lake City, accompanied by Sowiete, the head chief of the Utah nations, with some hundreds of men, women and children. They had several hundred horses for sale.31

Horsemanship, that which distinguished the honorable warrior from the miserable digger, had been attained by the Ute of Utah before the Mormon settlement began. It was possession of horses which signified that some Ute Indians were rich. Without horses the Ute were poor Ute or just digger Indians like the Nevada Shoshone or the Southern Paiute, who were often exploited for slaves by the mounted Ute. In spite of Brigham Young's friendship policy toward the Indians, in spite of his preaching that it was "cheaper to feed the Indians than to fight them," 29

Olympe Aubouard, A Travers L'Amerique: Le Far-West (Paris, 1869).

Paul Bailey, Walkara: Hawk of the Mountains (Los Angeles, 1954).

31 Ibid., 58.

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Chief Tobiah (Tabby), a war chief of the Uintah and White River Utes. He opposed General Connor's command in 1864 at Spanish Fork Canyon and other points in eastern Utah.

In his prime he was a remarkable physical speciman.

In 1892 he claimed to be 113 years old. Chief Tabby died in the Uintah Basin about 1896.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

and in spite of his recommendation that missionaries to the Indians might do well to intermarry with them, it was inevitable that difficulties between white settlers and the nomadic Ute would develop.

Indians lost their hunting and gathering lands and also their horse pastures as whites preempted the territory for farming, for cattle- and sheep-grazing, and for mining. The disruption to native life resulting from white settlement was about the same whether it occurred in Utah or in Colorado since both areas were settled about the same time. However, very different patterns developed in the two territories because of the historic accident which caused the federal government to administer Indian affairs differently in the two states. Nine treaties and agreements were negotiated with the Colorado Ute, and six were ratified by the U.S. Senate and signed by the President. By contrast only one treaty was negotiated between a United States treaty commission and the Utah Ute, and it was not ratified by Congress.

The federal government used its treaty and executive powers to arrange to pay Indian tribes for the lands they were losing to the whites.

In Colorado, as ranchers and miners pushed onto Indian land, new agreements were negotiated so that federal payment could be made to the Indians to help them adjust to a new way of life. In Colorado the pressure to restrict the Ute to smaller and smaller reservations was applied by the

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citizens of the state, but the cost of such readjustment was borne by the federal government.

Whether the payments for such readjustments were made directly to the Indians or to soldiers or officials to provide goods and services to Indians, federal funds were dispensed in Colorado in relatively much larger amounts than in Utah. The so-called Walker War, the Tintic War, and the Blackhawk War in Utah from 1850 to 1870, during which Indians raided Mormon ranches and stole cattle and horses, might have been avoided if the federal government had been more concerned with helping Indians in Utah. Congressional failure to ratify the Spanish Fork Treaty in 1865, by which the Ute would have been paid for their lands in central Utah and helped to move to Uintah Basin, appears to have been a calculated effort on the part of eastern politicians to avoid payments to Indians in Utah because to have done so might have given assistance in a roundabout way to the Mormons, a thing most easterners were loath to do.

Generally, settlers in Colorado were not friendly to Indians. Consider the infamous Sand Creek massacre on November 29, 1864, perpetrated by the Colorado Volunteers under Colonel John M. Chivington. Citizens of Colorado were, in fact, anxious to rid the state of all Indians and even high officials seemed dedicated to finding some excuse to force the Ute from Colorado into Utah. The Meeker massacre in 1879 was the excuse the citizens of Colorado needed to insist that the federal government remove the Ute into Utah and to open the Colorado Ute Reservation, then about one-fourth of the state, to white settlement.

Friends of the Indians, like Otto Mears the Russian-Jewish emigrant who had been a trader to the Ute for nearly 20 years, urged the Ute to leave Colorado for safety's sake. As a member of the United States commission to negotiate the agreement and arrange the removal, he took a chance with $2,800 of his own money by making a $2.00 cash gift to each Ute who signed to resettle peacefully on the Uintah-Ouray Reservation.

In 1880 the Ute Reservation in Colorado, with the exception of a narrow strip, 15 miles by 100 miles long bordering the Colorado-New Mexico State line reserved for the so-called Southern Ute, was opened for white occupation, with the understanding that the money from the sale would be paid to the Colorado Ute when they settled in Utah.

This is how it happened that on the Uintah Reservation the Colorado Ute, who in the Meeker massacre had killed their agent and his 11 male assistants and had raped the agent's wife and daughter, received regular per capita payments while the Uintah Ute, who had peacefully given up

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their most valuable lands in central Utah, received nothing. The commissioner of Indian affairs solved the problem by ruling that all Indians on the Uintah-Ouray Reservation would be paid the same amounts; that is, that they would share and share alike any tribal funds received from whatever source. It was a good ruling, because very soon the Uintah from Utah and the two groups from Colorado, the White River and Uncompahgre, were integrated by many intermarriages. The so-called Southern Ute who were allowed to remain in Colorado are still related by descent and marriage to the Ute in Utah. Since 1880, through regular family visits between the reservations and by mutual participation in the nativistic peyote ceremonies and Sun Dances, the Ute Tribe has become culturally uniform as it was before 1680.

The Ute Indians have a legal organization, the Confederated Bands of Ute Indians, for the purpose of joint legal action. Except for the required joint legal action, however, these Ute Indians are legally incorporated into three distinct corporate bodies called tribes. Two of these in Colorado of about equal size came about because of the successful effort in the 1890's of Chief Ignacio of the Weminuche band to preserve about half of the Southern Ute Reservation, equaling 550,000 acres of grazing land, in a single piece of communally-owned tribal land. This area remains under joint tribal ownership and under the management of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Council, legally organized in 1940 under the WheelerHoward Act of 1934. Since the land is part of the Aneth Oil Field, the Council has regular managerial duties, including the distribution or investment of $10 million for oil leases for the year of 1960. Council headquarters are at Towaoc, Colorado, about 20 miles southeast of Cortez and immediately south of Mesa Verde National Park, which was carved out of their reservation. Their resident population is about 600 individuals, roughly the same as it was in 1873 when their reservation was established.

The eastern half of the old 1873 Southern Ute Reservation has retained the old name and was incorporated as the Southern Ute Tribe of Ignacio, Colorado. In 1899 their reservation was opened to white settlement when the Indians were allotted individual farms of 160 acres each, and the surplus was available to anyone who wanted to buy, homestead, or lease from the government. In the 1930's under Commissioner John Collier, a law was passed in Congress to restore to all tribes, all of the lands of their former reservations which remained in the public domain. As a result of this recovery, the Southern Ute Tribe owns about 300,000 acres of poor grazing land in addition to the 5,000 acres of farm land which had

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been allotted, but some of which has been purchased by the tribe. T h e 500 members of the Southern Ute Tribe on the reservation have agricultural land for hay and grazing land for pasture so that a cattle industry could be a primary tribal activity if the members worked hard enough to carry it on. T h e Southern U t e Tribe also has coal lands, lumber, gas wells, and oil potential, as well as recreational possibilities on their reservation.

T h e Uintah-Ouray Reservation was originally established with almost 3 million acres reserved for the Indians. After allotments made about 1902, 77,000 acres of irrigated land and 19,000 acres of unirrigated land belonged to the Indians. About a third of their irrigated acres were subsequently sold by individual Ute Indians as titles to the allotments were given to them in fee simple. About 650,000 acres of unsold old reservation grazing land were restored to the Uintah-Ouray Reservation during the Collier administration, so that the reservation has about 24,000 acres of irrigated farm land to combine with the 650,000 acres of grazing and forest land, some of which has a valuable recreational potential. Oil has also been discovered on the Ute Reservation in Utah. T h e r e were about 2,000 Utes enrolled on the reservation, but about one-third were allowed to sell their interest in the reservation and become citizens, so that about 1,200 Utes remain in 1964 to manage their lands.

T h e number of irrigated acres and non-irrigated grazing lands for the three incorporated reservations are the capital assets for developing the Ute into farmers and ranchers. Working with care, skill, and great energy, the Ute could earn respectable ranch incomes from their lands.

Seventy-five years, three generations of education and direction, as well as considerable special financial aid have been expended to teach the Ute to be good farmers and stockmen so that they could manage their estates.

I n general this educational effort has been a failure. Most of the Indian farm land is leased to non-Indians because the Indians do not want to work hard enough to make the land pay. Were that the only information to report on the modern Ute nation, the prospects would be dull indeed.

T h e Ute lack of success as farmers has been more than overweighted by his success in the courtroom. Their greatest good fortune was the forming in 1896 of the Confederated Ute Bands of Colorado and Utah for the purpose of hiring attorneys to advise them in their treaty rights and to prosecute claims. O n a number of the Ute treaties signed in Colorado the federal government pledged to furnish the Indians many things for the first 20 years and then furnish money earned from investment made by the government for the tribes. T h e greatest complication resulted from the

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provisions of the 1880 agreement when the White River and Uncompahgre Ute moved to Utah. Only a little imagination is required to picture the fiscal confusion which could result from trying to keep an account of all the land sold in western Colorado so that the money could be paid to the Indians. Within a year or two it was obvious to agency officials friendly to the Indians that a lot of land was being sold, yet the Indians were receiving very little. After the several bands met and approved, the chiefs signed contracts with attorneys before federal judges.

In 1896 Mr. Kie Oldham and Mr. J. M. Vale signed to work for the Indians for the contingency fees set at 10 per cent by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and reviewed by the courts should a recovery be made. T h e first job of the attorneys was to get an act through Congress to permit the tribe to sue. As with most federal SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION cases, there were many delays ( j . K. HILLERS PHOTOGRAPH) and special acts of Congress b e f o r e t h e U . S . C o u r t of Claims on February 13, 1911, awarded the Confederated Ute Bands of Utah and Colorado $3 million back paym e n t s d u e . M o s t of t h e amount was to pay for the U.S. Forest Reserves set aside for the government without payment to the Indians.

T h e 1911 decision was just the first round. A new law to permit the Ute to have another accounting case was passed on June 28,1938. T h e attorney who finally came to handle the case for the Ute Indians was Mr. Ernest L. Wilkinson. Court delays and additional congressional ac-

Paiute Indians found living on the Kaibab Plateau at the time John Wesley Powell explored the area.

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tion put off the final judgment on that case until July 13, 1950, when the U.S. Court of Claims awarded the Confederated Bands of Ute Indians of Utah and Colorado almost $32 million. The U.S. Supreme Court reduced the attorney fee from 10 to 7 per cent.

The two Ute cases just referred to were heard before the U.S. Court of Claims as a result of special acts of Congress allowing each case. While the latter case was in court, Congress held hearings, and in 1946 passed a law to establish the U.S. Indian Claims Commission and authorized it to be the first court for claims which any identifiable group of Indians might file during the five years following the passage of the act. This was the first chance the Uintah Ute had to ask again for payment for the lands they agreed to give up in the unratified treaty of 1865.

It is a curious fact that one of the main defenses raised by the U.S. Department of Justice against payment for Ute lands in central Utah was the assertion that there were no Ute Indians in Utah. Government attorneys argued that the many treaties signed in Colorado and ratified by Congress had disposed of the land of all the Ute Indians. They argued that Ouray had been head chief of all the Ute Tribe, as the treaties and many government reports stated. A book written by Wilson Rockwell, an amateur historian of western Colorado, supported the view of the government attorneys with the amazing statement that the bands of Indians who signed the Spanish Fork treaty and later mostly moved to the Uintah Reservation "were not Utes." 2 According to Rockwell and the government attorneys, all Ute Indians lived in Colorado, consequently, no payment need be made for Utah lands. From the point of view of the Indians, it is fortunate we could establish the early historic separateness of the Colorado Ute and Utah Ute with the Green River and its Desolation Canyon in eastern Utah marking the eastern boundary of the Utah Ute territory.

It was the well-documented role of leadership of the chiefs of the two areas who had been recognized by government officials, settlers, and Indians as headmen in their respective areas, and never reported in the other areas, that appeared to be decisive. In Utah there were Sowiet, Walker, Tabby, Kanosh, and Arropeen. Colorado Ute leaders were Kaniatch, Ouray, Ignacio, Colorow, Douglas, and Buckskin Charlie. Only the Uintah Chief Anthro was important in both states, and in Colorado Anthro was always identified as a visitor from Utah.

Much of the aboriginal land of the Ute in Utah had become the Uintah Ute Reservation by executive order of President Abraham Lincoln 32

Wilson Rockwell, The Utes: A Forgotten People (Denver, 1956), 254.

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on October 3,1861. Other lands which had belonged to the Ute, including the homeland of the peaceful Ute Chief Kanosh, are outlined on the map.

After the Indian Claims Commission had ruled in 1957 that the government was liable for payment for the land, the Uintah Ute by negotiation agreed to accept $7.7 million for the area.

By contributing their $7 million to the joint account of the Indians of the Uintah-Ouray Reservation, the Uintah Ute made restitution to the White River and Uncompahgre Ute for sharing in the awards previously made for Colorado land. Fees for prospecting for oil on Indian lands have supplemented funds from the federal government accounting suits, so that the Ute Indians have had millions of dollars to spend during the decade 1954-64 to help them adjust to modern American life.

Much of the money has been spent on modernizing homes and buying automobiles. Much has been spent on roads and reservation recreational facilities. Attorneys, community planners, economists, teachers, and other experts have been hired with tribal funds to help the Ute wisely spend their money. Much money has been spent on whiskey and some Ute Indians have become alcoholics. After 10 years the Ute are still unsure of themselves as independent managers of their own affairs, and the federal government employees who have tried to help the Indian achieve economic and political independence are not sure that 10 years of wealth have prepared the Ute to be removed from special federal supervision.

My own appraisal is that the Ute are progressing, but their feeling of inferiority due to continuing social discrimination and their sense of dependency resulting from a century of careful federal supervision have not been removed by a decade of experience in making part of the decisions concerning the spending of a few million dollars. The Ute people must acquire generally a sense of their own dignity and importance and strong commitments to improving themselves so that they can increase their tribal estate. They must dedicate themselves to the management of their personal, family, and tribal affairs. All of their time, money, and talent must be used rationally for their own and their tribal welfare. The Ute still have much to do for themselves.

The Kintner Letters: fin Astronomer's Account of the Wheeler Survey in Utah and Idaho INTRODUCTION

BY R U S S E L L E . BIDLACK AND EDITORIAL N O T A T I O N S

BY E V E R E T T L. COOLEY

Charles Jacob Kintner

(1848-1921)

No historical study of the geography of the Western States can fail to take cognizance of the pioneer work done by the so-called Wheeler Survey. In 1869 the United States Army, with a view toward mapping the West for military purposes, sent First Lieutenant George M. Wheeler of the Corps of Engineers on a brief reconnaissance through southern and southeastern Nevada. Wheeler continued the work in the spring of 1871, and on June 10, 1872, Congress appropriated $75,000 to broaden the project. Thus was created the "Geographical Survey West of the One Hundredth Meridian" whose main purpose it was to map the territory now comprising the western portions of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas; the Rocky Mountain States; and the Pacific States. Although the Survey was to be primarily geographical, Wheeler was also directed to Dr. Bidlack is professor of library science, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Cooley is director of the U t a h State Historical Society.

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gather data on the geological features of the region, along with its botanical and zoological characteristics, and to report upon the various mining operations then in progress. Costing a total of $805,340, the work continued until 1879, the year in which the U.S. Geological Survey was established, although Wheeler did not publish his final report until 1889.

During the eight years that the "Geographical Survey West of the One Hundredth Meridian" was in progress, dozens of scientists, technicians, and laborers were employed â&#x20AC;&#x201D; some for a season, others for the life of the project. Although the names of these individuals have been largely forgotten, their work constituted an important step in the opening of the West.

One of the men employed by Lieutenant Wheeler was Charles J. Kintner, of Ann Arbor, Michigan. With the title of assistant astronomer, Kintner was associated with the Survey during the last two years of its operation. Shortly after his arrival in Ogden, Utah, in May 1877, Kintner wrote the first of a series of 10 letters explaining his work and describing the country and the inhabitants of the West. For his friends back home, Kintner's letters provided an informative glimpse of a remote and littleknown part of their growing nation; today his letters constitute an informative footnote to the history of the West.

With the expectation that they would be published, Kintner addressed his letters to the editor of a weekly newspaper called the Ann Arbor Register. Letters of local citizens journeying in faraway places frequently appeared in nineteenth-century newspapers, especially the weeklies published in small towns. In fact, editors who could seldom afford to send reporters beyond the borders of their own county, often relied upon friends at scenes of action to supply news that, otherwise, would simply have to be copied from other papers. Or, learning that an interesting letter had been received by someone in the community, the local editor often prevailed upon the recipient to share its contents with his neighbors.

This custom did not die with the coming of the telegraph nor is it unheard of even today. Thousands of letters from soldiers in the War with Mexico and the Civil War have been preserved in this way, along with first-hand accounts of such events as the Gold Rush of 1849 and the Kansas struggle for freedom in the 1850's. Detailed descriptions of European tours, trips to the nation's capital, and, in 1876, visits to the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, thus found their way into print. Where files of the newspapers have been preserved, these letters provide primary source material for some of the most dramatic developments in our nation's history. They

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also frequently provide the local historian with a glimpse into the private lives of some of the community's most prominent citizens of the past.

Charles Jacob Kintner was born on a farm in Harrison County, Indiana, on April 19, 1848. At an early age he decided against following his father's occupation, having discovered "that the glorious tints of the morning sun as seen upon the 'cloudlets' have no beauty to the boy who is forced to follow the drudgery of farm life . . . . I learned in early life to look with envious eyes upon the short hours of labor which fall to the lot of city people and resolved to obtain an education and follow professional life." 1 After completing a preparatory course at New Albany, Indiana, under the tutelage of Professor O. Tousley, Kintner matriculated at the University of Michigan in 1866. He majored in chemical engineering and immediately upon graduation in 1870 entered the university's observatory as assistant to Professor James C. Watson, one of America's leading astronomers of the nineteenth century. (It was in 1870 that Watson was awarded the Lalande Gold Medal by the French Academy of Science for his discovery of six asteroids in one year.) Watson was active in Michigan politics, and it was doubtless through his influence that, in 1876, Kintner became the successful candidate, on the Democratic ticket, for the office of recorder of the City of Ann Arbor. One year later, however, Kintner's political career was terminated by his failure to win election to the office of county superintendent of schools. There can also be little doubt but that Kintner received his appointment to the Wheeler Survey in 1877 through the aid of Professor Watson; certainly his chief qualification for the position was his six years of association with the professor. Likewise, Watson was probably responsible for Kintner's writing letters for publication in the Register, for Watson was one of the paper's proprietors.

According to frequent notices in Ann Arbor's weekly newspapers of the 1870's, Charles Kintner was recognized as one of the community's leading sportsmen. As a fisherman he was the town's champion. His letters written while on the Wheeler Survey attest to this interest in the out-ofdoors. In an autobiographical sketch written in 1903, Kintner credited his enthusiasm for "athletic sports," especially rowing and swimming, with having kept him "vigorous and healthy." 2 In 1895 he was "captain of the team which won the world's championship at water polo."

With the discontinuance of the Wheeler Survey in 1879, Kintner found employment in the United States Patent Office. In 1887 he entered 1 From an autobiographical sketch in the photograph album of the University of Michigan Class of 1870. A copy once belonging to Stuart Perry is now in the Michigan Historical Collections of the University of Michigan.

2 Charles S. Carter, ed., History of the Class of '70 (Ann Arbor, 1903), 134.

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upon the practice of patent law with offices at Philadelphia and New York and quickly established an enviable reputation as a patent expert in the field of electrical engineering. Upon retirement shortly before World War I, he returned to Ann Arbor where he died on July 7, 1921.

Kintner's first letter upon joining the Wheeler Survey was written on May 14, 1877; his last was written on December 26 of the same year. Why the series ended with the tenth letter is not known â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the editor of the Register gave no explanation. Perhaps Kintner himself grew tired of the chore or concluded that his readers' curiosity regarding his work and the West had been satisfied. Whatever the reason, these appear to be the only Kintner letters whose contents survive. He left no descendants.

Ogden, U t a h Ter., M a y 14, 1877.* Editors of the Register: After having spent five days on the cars one cannot be expected to write in the happiest strain imaginable. Nevertheless, as opportunity now offers, I will give you a short letter concerning this country and things in general referance [sic] thereto.

I arrived here last evening at six o'clock having h a d a most delightful trip and enjoyed as m u c h as the heart could ask the grandest scenery on the American continent; to attempt a description of which would at best, be but a beggardly affair. T h e glories of Echo Canon, Weber Canon, Devil's Slyde [Slide] and a hundred other of nature's wonderful works in these glorious old mountains, wrinkled by centuries of time are utterly beyond description by h u m a n devices, and all the paintings or descriptions of them utterly fail to produce the grand effect of their lasting presence. T h e blue Pyrenese may bring forth rapturous acclamations of wondor [sic], or the Alps of lonely Switzerland produce awe and wonder, but certainly none of them, no, nor do I believe all of t h e m can produce one single scene to compare with the Devil's Gate and one or two other points in Weber Canon.

This canon begins sixty-six miles east of here at an elevation of 7835 feet above the sea and the U . P . R . R . follows its grand descent of meanderings to this point, making a total descent of 3,500 feet, or 53 feet per mile.

T h e most of the country from here to Laramie is alkali and utterly useless except for grazing, 3 but is inferior in that respect to the grand plains east of t h a t point in Nebraska, which, let m e add in passing, abound in prairie chickens, ducks, geese, and all kinds of fowl which can be seen in easy shooting distance from the windows, a n d we saw thousands of them on the South Platte river along which the road runs from O m a h a through the entire length of Nebraska. * This letter was published in the Ann Arbor Register, May 30, 1877.

I n this Kintner was only partially correct. Farming had already been practiced by the Mormons in the vicinity of Fort Bridger and Fort Supply in the 1850's.

3

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After leaving L a r a m i e we saw antelope in droves skipping over the plains, and further on this way an occasional gray wolf, while the coyotes were thick as leaves in a u t u m n . W h e n I say leaves in a u t u m n , you must understand it as refering to Michigan, for that would be a sad simile here, not having seen a green tree, and, in fact scarce a tree of any kind after leaving O m a h a till we reached the famous T h o u s a n d Mile Tree one thousand miles west of O m a h a . 4 T h e living is extremely good as we found, and all the delicacies of the season can be found in the middle of this great desert. But the rather exorbitant price of one dollar is charged per m e a l ; and let us here advise persons coming westward never to bring lunch, as they will certainly find it disagreeable, and as all our party and myself did, will throw it away in disgust. Meals are cooked in the best of style, and brook trout, strawberries and innumerable delicacies will be found at most of the meal stations.

O g d e n is a city of seven thousand inhabitants, but is properly about as large as Dexter. I n order to understand how it contains so many inhabitants it is necessary to understand that Brigham and his apostles look after the incorporating of villages and cities, and they always incorporate all the surrounding country for ten or fifteen miles so as to bring as many as possible under city taxation and thus exact an additional tax upon them. 5 T h u s Salt Lake City is in reality about as large as Ann Arbor, but the corporal limits make the population 25,000. This is truly a beautiful valley and extends as far as the eye can reach, being bounded on every side by mountains capped with snow; and as I write I can see from my window a range of peaks at whose base this beautiful little city sleeps so peacefully, whose caps are covered with snow, and the sun makes them glisten with glorious dazzling light.

They look as if they were but a half mile away at least, but the agent says they are five miles and I must take his word for it, for yesterday they told me t h a t some peaks we were admiring were only 80 miles away in Colorado, whereupon I remarked, I should have to change the focus of my eyesight or else I should be near-sighted on returning to Michigan. 6 A good joke is told in this connection on an Englishman, who, with some parties here, started to walk to the mountains and back before breakfast.

After having walked an hour the Englishman, who was in advance, sat down by a small brook and commenced to take off his clothes. U p o n being asked what he was doing, he replied: "Hi am going to swim this blasted river and reach that m o u n t a i n if it takes all day." It is certainly very remarkable what a magnificent atmosphere abounds here, a n d snow capped mountains can readily be seen a hundred miles away.

T h e land here is black and with just enough sand to make it easy to manage and grows excellent wheat, fruits and vegetables. Potatoes are worth 60 cents per bushel and I never saw finer in Michigan. W h e a t 75 cents per bushel, vegetables, etc. in proportion. All the farming is done by irrigation, and the water is brought in ditches and 4 The tree became famous in the history of the construction of the transcontinental railroad.

It was at this spot that a celebration was held with the completion of 1,000 miles of track by the Union Pacific.

5 In reality the territorial legislature incorporated the cities by special legislation until the 1870's when general incorporation laws were enacted. fa This is a common observation of the western traveler. For example see Horace Greeley, An Overland Journey, From New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859 (New York, 1860) ; Richard F. Burton, The City of the Saints: And Across the Rocky Mountains to California, ed., Fawn M. Brodie (New York, 1963) ; Frederick Piercy, Route From Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley, . . . ed., James Linforth (Liverpool, England, 1855), passim.

Kintner Letters

"7

pipes from the mountains, one stream supplying several farms. Stock raising is the prominent feature both here and between here and O m a h a . Some of the herds number from ten to fifteen thousand. 7 I r a n down to Salt Lake to-day to see the place, and will give you the particulars of my visit in my next, and write u p M o r m o n d o m in general, about which I have learned a great deal that you in the east know nothing. Suffice it to say there is bitter hatred here between the Mormons and the gentiles, a n d all go well armed. T h e Nauvoo legions are dwelling all over the Territory, but no trouble is anticipated. 8 You may expect to hear from m e often; and in conclusion, let m e add, t h a t no Ann Arbor people must pass Ogden without calling on m e under penalty of death.

C.J.K.

Editor of the Register:

Ogden, U t a h Ter.,* M a y 28, 1877.

I n my last I promised you the next letter should be a general history of the Mormons a n d M o r m o n d o m ; but after consultation with some of the older inhabitants, have, at their suggestion, deferred the matter until I shall have had time to look more fully into the intricacies of the case; for they inform m e that the M o r m o n machine is fearfully a n d wonderfully m a d e , and that their system of government through the union of church and state, can only be learned by careful study.

But allow m e to say while upon this subject, that the great hue and cry which has been raised of late about a M o r m o n uprising is, in my humble opinion, simply ridiculous, and is b u t the outgrowth of a desire on the part of certain Gentiles to increase their business in furnishing supplies to the troops that might be sent on here. T h e Mormons have been exceedingly kind and courteous to us, and have used every effort to aid and protect us in our work, a n d only yesterday, during the conference here, Brigham enjoined his people not to molest our flags on the base line which runs through the principal street of the city; also, to give such aid and protection as we might need.

And now I will endeavor to give your readers some idea of w h a t we propose to do, and how we are located; in short, a general history of the summer's campaign. T h e expedition is under the immediate charge of 1st Lieut. Geo. M . Wheeler, of the corps of Engineers, U.S.A., and will be divided the coming season into three parties, as follows : First, the Colorado section, rendezvous at Fort Lyon, Colorado, on the Arkansas; second, the U t a h section, at O g d e n ; and T h i r d , the California section, at Carson City.

T h e r e will be six regularly organized parties, which will prosecute surveys in a systematized form extending over belts of country measured by triangulation. An additional special base-measuring party will be occupied here for about three months u n d e r the * This letter was published in the Ann Arbor Register, June 13, 1877.

In this statement Kintner was exaggerating, at least as it applied to U t a h , as no doubt he was with the number of coyotes which he saw on the Plains.

8 Unfortunately, Kintner never got around to giving his descriptions of the Mormons. His observation on the Nauvoo Legion is interesting. T h e U t a h territorial militia was organized under the name of the Nauvoo Legion, February 5, 1852 (Acts, Resolutions, and Memorials, Passed by . . . the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah, . . . [Great Salt Lake City, 1852], 1 4 3 - 6 0 ) .

It continued its existence until disbanded by the Edmunds Act of 1882. For a good treatment of the Legion, see Hamilton Gardner, "History of 222d Field Artillery" ( M S , U t a h State Historical Society).

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direction of Dr. Kampf, Prof. Rock and myself, after which we shall go to Old California a n d determine certain prominent astronomical points for future use.

T h e r e are about seventy-five persons on the survey, of which number about ten will stay here during most of the coming summer, and this point will be Lieut. Wheeler's headquarters.

And now as to the object of the survey and the mode of procedure. I n the first place, the m a i n object is to correctly m a p all of this great western country, meander its streams, measure its mountains, and in short, obtain all the valuable information t h a t so large a tract must necessarily possess. Secondly, there are vast mining interests here, about which comparatively little is known, and it is also the object of the survey to ascertain all the facts relative thereto. 9 I n a geodetic and geographic survey, the first thing necessary is to locate and measure w h a t is called a base line, and t h a t is w h a t we have been doing for the past week.

O u r base line lies along the foot of the mountains, a n d passes through Ogden city, extending two-and-a-quarter miles each way from the city, and is first measured twice over its entire length by a compensated steel tape line, adjustable for heat and cold. T h e n it will be measured twice more by a woodon [sic] rod with adjustable scales at each end, giving a reading to the nearest thousandth of an inch, and the temperature being read at each setting, so that the final determination of the length of the base should be within one-tenth of a n inch. Piers are then built at each end of the line, both of which are visible from the observatory, from which their geographical position is determined. T h e n comes the interesting feature, viz: mountain climbing on mule back, of which you shall learn more after I have h a d some experience. They told me it is a very interesting adventure, particularly with a "bucking" mule. After reaching the highest peaks in sight, the angles are determined relative to the piers, and with these and the already accurately measured base, the sides of triangles are ascertained and the geographical position of the mountain determined. Using one of the sides of a triangle thus obtained as a base, and other peaks as points, one can readily see how the triangulation is extended until triangles are determined whose sides are one hundred miles and even one hundred and fifty miles in length. T h e remarkable atmosphere is a great advantage in this triangulation, as with a good transit instrument it is no trouble when the atmosphere is quiet, to sight monuments on the mountain tops seventy-five and one h u n d r e d miles away. T h e topographers then take this extended base, as one of these sides is called, and with an odometer, a transit, a sextent, a barometer and chronometer, are ready to proceed. T h e odometer is a one-wheeled wagon on which is an instrument for recording distance, and is d r a w n by a mule. And in passing let me add that we are honored with the presence of Secretary Thompson's son 10 and the relatives of several other distinguished politicians, who expect to ride odometer mules the coming season.

9 For a good account of the Wheeler Survey (along with others), see Richard A. Bartlett, Great Surveys of the American West (Norman, Oklahoma, 1962). T h e Wheeler Survey was reported in a series of publications of the Engineer Department, United States Army, entitled Report Upon United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian (7 vols., Washington, D . C , 1875-1889).

10 "Secretary Thompson's son" was Gilbert, son of Secretary of Navy Richard W. Thompson, from Indiana. He served in the cabinet of President Rutherford B. Hayes from March 1877 to December 1880.

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These field parties are under the direction of officers of the regular army, and report to Lieut. Wheeler once a month, when the observations are sent in to be carefully worked u p and the data compiled for the winter's office work at Washington. T h e whole survey is admirably managed, and a thorough system of checks is instituted, whereby the most accurate results are obtained.

O u r corps here is located on the south side of Weber river, on a bend overlooking Ogden and with Great Salt Lake in the distance. O n the whole it is a beautiful situation, surrounded as we are by snow-capped peaks and magnificent canons in the distance. T o the south of us lies Salt Lake City forty miles away on the great plain in the beautiful valley, well named by the Mormons, as the "Promised L a n d . " T h e observatory, just back of the camp, was built in 1873, by the government and is a brick building about 45 feet long and 16 feet in breadth. It is well built and has a fine transit room with telegraphic connection east and west; also, an equatorial and a computing room.

T h e dome has not been completed for the equatorial, but I believe it is the intention to complete it the coming summer. Both the c a m p and the observatory are plainly visible from the depot, being only a half mile away, and as the trains stop an hour and a half here, I trust none of my friends who may chance to pass through, will fail to call on me. 1 1 I shall endeavor to keep you posted of our proceedings from time to time, but inasmuch as this is a very unstable kind of life, I cannot promise m u c h regularity in my letters; but circumstances permitting, I will endeavor to write something of interest as opportunity offers.

C TK

T o the Editor of the Register.

C a m p N u m b e r Eleven,* Bear Lake Valley, I d a h o , July 8, 1877. [June 28]

It was my intention to write you another letter before leaving Ogden, but extra work was required of me in order to finish the base measurement so that I might report to Lieut. T i l m a n , chief of party No. 1 at Franklin, I d a h o , J u n e the 25th.

I left Ogden Monday, J u n e the 25th for that point, via. the U t a h Northern R.R., a narrow gauge road running between those two points, the distance being by rail eighty miles, and about twenty miles in a direct line. It traverses some beautiful scenery and winds around the foot of the mountains like a great snake, gradually ascending until at H a m p t o n Station, 1 2 on the summit one finds he has reached a point from which all the Great Salt Lake and its adjacent valleys can be plainly seen. T h e scenery is truly beautiful and the great lake lies shimmering and glistening in the sunlight like a great sea of mercury, while the deep blue back-ground made up of the mountains over a hundred miles away adds very much to the effect, but best of all is the sight of the hundreds of comfortable homes that look like mere specks in the distance and the comforting thought * This letter was published in the Ann Arbor Register, July 18, 1877.

This would place the observatory at about Exchange Road and " B " Street in present Ogden, U t a h .

12 H a m p t o n Station is near present-day Collinston, so named in 1880. Hampton Station on the Bear River took its name for Benjamin Hampton who operated a ferry and later built a bridge there. See L. A. Fleming and A. R. Standing, " T h e Road to 'Fortune': T h e Salt Lake Cutoff," Utah Historical Quarterly, 33 (Summer, 1965), 2 6 3 - 6 4 ; U t a h Works Projects Administration, Utah: A Guide to the State (New York, 1945), 332.

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t h a t here is room for thousands of our fellow beings to earn a livelihood if they will but labor.

But the bell taps "all a b o a r d " and now we go over the "divide," as the summit is called, a n d down the m o u n t a i n , winding around sharp curves through deep cuts and u n d e r high precipices, until after a descent of two thousand feet we find ourselves in the great Cash [Cache] Valley, the land of "milk and honey" of all M o r m o n d o m . 1 3 It lies between two ranges of mountains and is as level as a table a n d has a total area of 700,000 acres. T h e r e are about 20,000 inhabitants who live almost excessively [exclusively] in villages. 14 This system was adopted during the earlier settlements in order to be more secure against the I n d i a n attacks, and I see no reason why it has not vast advantages over the solitary m o d e adopted by our eastern farmers, inasmuch as the children can be educated at less expense to say nothing of the advantages to be gained by society and closer communication. 1 5 T h e inhabitants of this valley are almost exclusively Mormons and are a hard working, thrifty people, who deserve a great deal of credit for their industry and for having braved the dangers of I n d i a n warfare in order to settle this then desolate waste.

All the farming is done by irrigation and the mountains furnish an inexhaustible supply of water for the whole valley.

T h e villages are nestled close u p u n d e r the mountains, and as one descends from H a m p t o n they present a beautiful contrast to the green fields covered with vast herds of stock. Nine of these villages can be counted at once from the cars a n d nearly all of t h e m are as large as Dexter.

But the one peculiar feature to be admired most of all in these villages is the fact t h a t on every street throughout the entire year can be found a running stream of clear, cool, m o u n t a i n water, so t h a t past every mans door moves a living admonisher to be temperate, and I need not add that these same Mormons are the most temperate people in the world. These streams are taken from the water sects [ducts?] a n d when any one desires to water his garden he simply opens his water gate a n d lets it flow in, closing it again after a sufficient quantity has been admitted. W e arrived at Franklin at 4 : 3 0 , having been seven hours going eighty miles, here we found good quarters a n d set down to a supper not surpassed by any of your eastern hotels for variety or quality.

Franklin is just over the borders of U t a h , and until within a few years was supposed to be in U t a h , but more recent surveys located it in I d a h o . It is a M o r m o n town of about 1,500 inhabitants a n d lies at the extreme north-western corner of Cash Valley. 16 13 T h e "divide" marks the northern extremity of the Wasatch Range on the west side of Cache Valley.

Kintner apparently at this stage is under the impression that the name of the valley stemmed from the prosperity of this fertile and beautiful mountain valley. T h e name is, of course, Cache Valley, and originated from the practice of early fur trappers who cached their furs in the vicinity of the present town of Hyrum.

14 Kintner greatly overestimates the population of Cache Valley at this time. T h e U.S. Census of 1880 shows the population to be 12,526.

For a good discussion of the geological and geographical features of Cache Valley, see Joel E. Ricks and Everett L. Cooley, eds., The History of a Valley: Cache Valley, Utah-Idaho (Logan, 1956), 1-20. la Kintner shows considerable modernity in his views on urban living. However, he is mistaken in his reasons for Mormon village development. See Lowry Nelson, The Mormon Village: A Pattern and Technique of Land Settlement (Salt Lake City, 1952).

16 For years the inhabitants of Franklin (Idaho's oldest white community) paid taxes to U t a h and voted in U t a h elections. See Ricks and Cooley, History of a Valley, 112; Merrill D. Beal and Merle W. Wells, History of Idaho (3 vols., New York, 1959), I, 441.

Kintner Letters

77

I found Lieut. T i l m a n with a packer and four mules awaiting me a n d now begins my first experience at mountain climbing.

We left Franklin for the camp situated near Bear Lake at 6 : 3 0 A.M. and followed the trail via. C u b b [Cub] river for fifteen miles, when we came to the base of the range, then came some climbing in earnest, u p , u p we go single file, the packer and mules in front, and so steep is it t h a t if a mule should make a misstep away he will go tumbling for a thousand feet.

We had several of them tumble and one rolled over two thousand feet with a pack, breaking a leg which necessitated his being shot. And strange to say, the transit instrument was thrown in its box from the pack twenty feet into the air and was recovered uninjured. Well we must go again for we will have to stop many times before we reach the top, and as we stop will read our aneroid and see how high we are. Down, down goes the mercury, indicating respectively attitudes [altitudes] of six, seven, and finally at the top eight thousand three h u n d r e d feet. H e r e we are on top and grand indeed is the sight, one h u n d r e d and fifty miles away can be seen the southern extremity of Great Salt Lake a n d under our feet almost are dozens of peaks t h a t look like mole hills. 17 T h e wind is blowing a gale and we must p u t on our overcoats for now commences the descent on the north side. But how shall we get down, for there is snow, snow "everywhere." After looking around we find that we must cross it or go down and a r o u n d ; but will it hold the mules? Yes, but we must walk. W e find, however, the pack mule breaks through, and we must unpack him. So your humble servant ties a rope to each of his two bundles, and sitting astride one and drawing the other behind, away he goes as in his school days, down, down like the lightning express for two h u n d r e d feet and the others follow after, sliding, however, "a la natural" and leaving the mules to follow after, which they will do every time. O n this mountain we found the red snow which you have doubtless read of as having been seen by arctic explorers. I t is not snow but is vegetable matter which is formed upon the mountain side and blows over the surface of the snow. I t looks very m u c h like oxide of iron upon the white snow, or perhaps I might say like copper filings. Lieut. T i l m a n informs m e that is the first he ever saw in this western country.

T h e snow in many places was from twenty to thirty feet deep, and it may be a source of wonder how we passed over safely; but it forms a crust on top like ice and rarely breaks through, although such accidents do occur. I t is amusing to watch the mules feel their way over the crust with cat-like steps, showing a sagacity that is remarkable, but I shall speak more of this in another letter, as I find my letter growing longer than your space will permit. After reaching the bottom a n d packing u p , away we go down the canon five miles away to camp, where we find anxious faces awaiting us for mails and late papers. Ignorant are the entire c a m p of the I n d i a n war and all news in general for four weeks, and as isolated from all civilization as though in the heart of Africa. W e get our mail once in two weeks but can send out oftener. Are at present camped near Bear Lake, which is the most beautiful lake I ever saw, 18 and abounds in 17 At this point the party was atop the Bear River Range which borders Cache Valley on the east. The highest peak in the range is Mount Naomi at 9,980 feet. Ricks and Cooley, History of a Valley, 1.

18 Kintner here expresses a view still held by many visitors who look down from mountain passes upon the clear, blue waters of Bear Lake. Fish are no longer plentiful in this mountain lake.

UTAH STATE TOURIST AND PUBLICITY COUNCIL

fish innumerable. As a sample we had a six p o u n d trout for dinner yesterday. We leave this c a m p to-morrow and will meander Bear Lake and survey the territory on the east side of the same.

T h e r e are nine of us in this party and I will give you in my next a general idea of the function of each and a description of the outfit and our future course and intentions. I am here to complete the triangulation developed from the base we measured at Ogden, but do not know how long it will take. M a y possibly get back to Ogden in a month, or it may take the whole season, depending entirely on the country and the facilities we may have in the shape of roads and transportation.

C TK

Editor of Register:

Logan Canon, U t a h Ter.,* C a m p No. 17, July 5, 1877.

I n my last letter written you from St. Charles, Idaho, 1 9 I promised you a description of party No. 1, which I had just joined. It consists of Samuel E. Tilman, 1st Lieut. * This letter was published in the Ann Arbor Register, July 25, 1877.

St. Charles is a small Mormon community on the west shore of Bear Lake. It was named after Charles C. Rich, Mormon leader of colonization in Bear Lake Valley.

19

Bear Lake, with an altitude of 5,924 feet, dominates the scenery east of Garden City.

This fresh water lake, 30 miles long and 7 miles wide, lies half in Utah and half in Idaho.

It has white sand beaches, and because of its great depth has a wide range of marine colors.

Garden City, an agricultural community on the west shore of Bear Lake, was one of the towns in Bear Lake Valley settled by the Mormon pioneers under the leadership of Charles Coulson Rich.

In the distance can be seen St. Charles and farther north Paris, Idaho, towns visited by the Wheeler Survey party.

UTAH STATE TOURIST AND PUBLICITY COUNCIL

U . S. Engineers, in charge; Gilbert Thompson, T o p o g r a p h e r ; Jno. A. Hasson, Meteorologist; W m . L o r a m , assistant Meteorologist, and myself as assistant T o p o g r a p h e r and field Astronomer. T h e r e are two packers, one cook and a m a n of all work, making nine persons in all. We have eleven pack mules, nine riding mules and a bell mare.

And now let us break c a m p , and suppose you accompany us on an immaginary [sic] trip from c a m p No. 11 to camp 17, our present location.

It is 5:30 a.m., and the melodius voice of our stalwert [sic] Irish cook bellows forth in stentorian notes, "Get ready for breakfast." With towel and soap in h a n d , we find our way to the babling [sic] brook which, with its merry music bids us good morning and gladly grants us a portion of its cooling waters wherewith to perform our morning ablutions. Breakfast is ready, and around the festive board are gathered eight individuals whose back-woods appearance bids you beware of t h e m ; but fear them not, for oftentimes the best of hearts are hidden beneath the breasts of those whose appearance is not the most inviting.

O u r table is spread upon the green grass with the blue canopy of heaven for a roof and the grand old mountains are our picture, while an appetite which dispeptics [sic] never know makes us relish the bacon and beans and bread without butter a n d coffee without milk. But this is an exceptional meal with us, for the streams abound

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Utah Historical Quarterly

with brook trout and not a day has passed since my connection with the party, that we have not had enough m o u n t a i n grouse or other game for all of the party. I have killed several grouse, and nearly all of them were as large as common chickens, and are very m u c h the same flavor when cooked.

But breakfast is over a n d we must be on the move. E a c h m a n must roll u p his own tent a n d bedding and prepare it for the pack m u l e ; also must catch, bridle and saddle his own mule.

Within half an hour after breakfast is over, the party have all left. First goes the Lieutenant, w h o chooses the route and selects the camping ground. T h e n follows the meteorologist, then the topographer and myself, who m e a n d e r the trails and roads, take the bearings of peaks, a n d take all the topography that can be seen from the trail or road. Last of all comes the pack train, and a comical sight it is to one who never saw one. T h e m a n of all work rides in front of the train and leads the bell mare, her sole duty being that of a general mother to the whole brood. I t is laughable to see how they will strive to get near to her, a n d to note how fond (?) she is in return by dealing them kicks, thus bidding them keep their distance.

T h u s we are all u n d e r way and away we go down the canon to St. Charles, a little M o r m o n village on the shores of Bear Lake. W e roamed the head of the lake all day long admiring its beautifully clear waters and expatiating u p o n the surroundings. Some of the older members of the party who have been several years in the field, say it is the most beautiful sheet of water they ever saw.

W e found by our m e a n d e r that it is about thirty miles long with an average width of ten miles. At last it is time to camp, and here we are in grassy plateau just on the lake shore. All of us are but too glad to rest after a long ride of twenty miles. T h e mules are turned loose to graze, the mother of the brood being hobbled to keep her from leading them off.

Supper over, we gather around the c a m p fire and as the sparks roll upwards and the bright blazing fire sends forth its genial w a r m t h , we little heed the time spent in telling c a m p stories and c a m p experience. A fire you say, in July? Yes, we have fire every night, a n d seldom during the day does the temperature exceed 70° Fahrenheit. Just think of it, while you, at A n n Arbor, are sweltering with the intolerable heat, we are having an average temperature of about 60° or 65°, and the latitude is south of you, too, bear in mind, while you are wondering how you can sleep when it is so hot, we are sleeping under four or five blankets and wake u p some mornings to find ice in our basins.

This difference in temperature is occasioned by the difference in altitude, our altitude here being on an average about six thousand feet above the sea level, while your altitude is scarcely as many h u n d r e d feet.

But a night so delightfully cool soon slips away and we must u p and be going.

T h e packer informs us four of our mules have strayed, and breakfast being over, all go out to search. At last they are found five miles up the lake, brought back, packed and away we go again.

To-day we reach the head of the lake, a n d from this point it presents its grandest effects. T h e waves are rolling in upon the beach in long blue lines as far as the eye can see, and looking northward a n d length-wise of the lake, it is truly grand. A deep blue bank of water seems to stand u p against the mountains, a n d the snow-capped peaks rise u p out of its bosom like great ice bergs.

Kintner

75

Letters

Here in this little valley at the foot of the mountains, near the head, is Lake Port, a little village most beautifully situated, and one day will become a city of no small dimensions; for with such land as here abounds it cannot fail to grow rapidly. 2 0 Passing around the head of the lake, we now go northward, our course so far having been toward the south. O n the east side we find the mountains coming close out to the lake a n d of sand stone formation, a n d their red sides bring vividly to our memory H u g h Miller's " O l d R e d Sand Stone."

We c a m p twice on the east side and visit one peak 7000 feet high, from which all the surrounding country on that side is taken.

Now we cross over the neck which separates Bear Lake from a small lake at the n o r t h end called Small Bear Lake, and again we are at St. Charles. Away we sped [speed] bearing south-west and destined for Logan canon. 2 1 U p , u p we go, through St. Charles canon, until the divide is reached, and here we would like to camp, for we are all very tired, having been traveling u p grade since ten a.m., and it is now five p.m., b u t we do not c a m p till wood, grass a n d water are reached; three very necessary articles 20 Lake Port is now named Laketown, and the population has remained small. Laketown is important in the history of the fur trade in U t a h . This is generally the site of the third (1827) and fourth (1828) rendezvous in the mountains of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. See Dale L. Morgan, Jedediah S. Smith and the Opening of the West (Indianapolis, 1953), 227-35 and 296-99.

Perhaps Kintner failed to realize that the cool temperatures he spoke so glowingly about had a profound effect upon the growing season and hence upon the growth of Laketown. Also, the water necessary for irrigation prevented large-scale agriculture. The area is best suited for grazing.

21 Logan Canyon is the passage t h r o u g h t h e B e a r R i v e r Mountains into Cache Valley from the east. It is one of Utah's most scenic canyons and abounds with game. Logan River and its tributaries have provided some of the best trout fishing in U t a h .

Logan Canyon, which derived its name from Logan River.

There is disagreement over the origin of the name Logan â&#x20AC;&#x201D; one explanation is thrt the river was named after Ephraim Logan, an early trapper who explored the region in the 1820's.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

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Utah Historical Quarterly

in c a m p life. So we go on down the canon for miles and at last the glad tidings are sent back the line that water is reached and wood and grass a b u n d a n t . U p goes a shout and soon all is quiet in the mountain c a m p , and not a sound is heard save the creak, creak of the great mountain pines swaying in the wind.

T h e next day, after getting under headway, we kill a bear, and luckily it is July 3d, and we can have a game dinner in earnest on the Fourth. O n we go down, down, until night again falls upon us and we find a camp close by the river. T h e glorious Fourth dawns upon us and we arise filled with t h a t patriotism known only to Americans. Each m a n fires a round from his revolver a n d toasts are drank [sic] in honor of the 101st year of our American independence, a n d to the American eagle •— proud bird of freedom, in whose m o u n t a i n fastness we greet him and do reverence to him as you of the East cannot do with all your array.

After breakfast we climb a peak near the c a m p and make a station. U p we go, winding back a n d forth along the sides of the mountain, until after three hours of climbing our faithful mules have brought us to the top, and then what a sight for the F o u r t h of July. Snow, snow, as far as the eye can see along the range. T h e wind blowing a gale and the thermometer registering 50° to 55°. T h i n k of that M r . Editor and then d r a w forth your b a n d a n n a , wipe your reeking brow and sigh for this land of pure delight.

W e plant the star spangled banner and give three cheers for liberty, our country and our flag. O u r duties concluded, down we go again to c a m p and to a dinner fit for the gods. T h u s passed the Fourth with us. We are now camped about twenty miles from Logan, and will cross the mountains in a few days to Bear Lake again.

I n the future I shall give you the details of our progress from my journal, thus keeping you posted from day to day as we go forward. O u r next mail station is Sodo [Soda] Springs, about fifty miles north of here. We shall reach it about the 12th inst, but I shall try and send another communication previous to our arrival there.

C.J.K.

C a m p No. 24, I d a h o * July 17, 1877.

T o the Editor of the Register: W e left c a m p 17 after a stop of two days and passed on down the Logan canon about fifteen miles. As we descended the canon the scenery became more grand and the river continued to enlarge through the addition of side streams so that we found the bridges in many places gone and the fording extremely hazardous to the pack train.

At one place a large addition is m a d e to the river by a spring that pours right out of the mountain a volume of clear cold water whose temperature is 38°. 2 2 It is the grandest spring I ever saw and pours forth as m u c h water as does the whole H u r o n river in the summer season. We discovered two caves near c a m p 18 and explored them * This letter was published in the Ann Arbor Register, August 1, 1877.

This is Ricks Spring, named for Thomas E. Ricks early Cache Valley pioneer. O n the Wheeler Survey M a p Number 41-B, it is called Great Spring. It still pours forth refreshing, cold water and is a welcome spot to the thirsty traveler even in an automobile traveling over smooth highways. Ricks and Cooley, History of a Valley, 17-18.

22

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Ricks Spring usually flows from April to November, when the spring goes dry. water probably comes from the under drainage of the west mountain.

The

both, neither of them being of any importance however. 2 3 O n the morning of the 6th two of us started to m e a n d e r the canon from c a m p 18 to Logan City, in Cash Valley.

W e left c a m p about 6:30, expecting the distance to be about ten miles, as shown by previous barometric readings and the fall of the river, but were very m u c h discouraged to find it was eighteen miles. However, the scenery in a large measure compensated for our disappointment, for Logan canon presents some of the finest canon scenery in the country. Great perpendicular walls on either side, two thousand feet high, here and there a great rock weighing hundreds of tons stands tottering on the very verge as though ready to crush us, and further on, the whole side of the mountain bristling with sharp jutting rocks standing one, two, and sometimes three hundred feet in the air, making the m o u n t a i n look like a great cathedral, brown with age. O n e can form a thousand fanciful ideas among those old rocks, and I sometimes think here is the place from whence was d r a w n the idea of air-castles, or where have crept away in silence all the fairies of our childhood to await that time when we shall be "sans eyes, sans teeth, sans everything."

As we passed down this canon we came to marks of civilization, where the natives from below were wielding the axe in felling timber, which is rolled into the river a n d floated to the mills below. T h e river from this point on goes rushing on with wild m a d ness, roaring, pouring, m u c h after the style at Lodore. 2 4 It is beautiful to behold as it flows wildly on, now dashing madly around a bend, against the hard lime-stone wall which turns it in its course a n d gives it new impetus to tumble over the great rocks in its path. T h e n there comes a series of flat rocks over which it pours in thin films, looking like great fountains at play, and so beautifully transparent is the water t h a t every pebble a n d every fish can be seen distinctly. N e a r the m o u t h of the canon, at the top of the righ[t] h a n d bluff is a castle, which we named "Castle Rock." I t is far superior to Castle Rock on the U.P.R.R., 2 5 as its formation is perfect. T h e r e are two immense 23

These caves are named Logan Cave and are located about 13 miles up Logan Canyon.

WPA, Utah Guide, 332.

24 Kintner's descriptions follow closely those of Robert Southey in his poem, " T h e Cataract of Lodore."

25 Kintner, undoubtedly, is here referring to Castle Rock in Echo Canyon, U t a h .

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Utah Historical Quarterly

arches on each side and one in front, besides a large skylight in the top. O n e can see through in all directions, and the arches are as perfect as though m a d e by the h a n d of man.

We reached Logan about 1 P.M., and after a brief rest returned to camp full weary with our long day's ride. T h e next day the whole party broke camp and all started over the mountains to Lake Port on Bear Lake, which I have before described.

Following all day an old I n d i a n trail which was so blind we lost it many times, but at last brought u p about 5 P.M. at Meadowville, 2 6 one mile from Bear Lake, where we camped for one day and two nights, then on again via Lake Port u p Erauston [Evanston] canon to the divide of t h e range on the south-east side of Bear Lake and down the slope on the other side to Bear river, which is a stream that takes its rise in Wyoming, and after an extremely tortuous existence looses itself in the bosom of [Great] Salt Lake at Conine [Corinne]. I t has an average width of about three h u n d r e d feet and a depth of about six feet, with a gentle current and may some day be available [navigable], as it is navigable for fair sized steamers. 27 C a m p s 20, 2 1 , 22 and 23 were all upon this river which we continued to follow down until within about ten miles of Montpelier, where we thought best to ford. T h e train was unpacked and the outfit ferried over, while the mules were forced to swim.

Safely over, all packed, and on we went, camping for night, a n d the next day's march bringing us to Montpelier, a little M o r m o n village of a few dozen inhabitants. Here we saw Indians for the first time. A band of about fifty Soshones [sic] and their squaws, papooses, ponies, etc., and a rough, filthy looking set they were. They were trading furs etc., with the dealers of the town. I asked one of them if he was an Uncle Sam I n d i a n ? H e said, "no, Sam no good."

W e see plenty of them now and they h a n g around camp to get something to eat or to beg anything. We are camped at present about four miles u p Montpelier canon, on a beautiful mountain brook which fairly bristles with trout, and within two hours after making c a m p two of the party had caught sixty of the speckled beauties. In the two days we have been here, these two men have caught two h u n d r e d and ten. I cannot imagine a more tempting sight to the eye of an epicure than to see as I saw last evening a h u n d r e d of those little speckled beauties kicking about on the grass beside the crystally clear brook. I have wished a h u n d r e d times that I could transport some of them as they are to Ann Arbor in order that you might enjoy them. But trout is not the only delicacy we have, as we dine on antelope steaks now, two having been killed on Bear river, where we saw plenty of them.

Yesterday we saw four deer and a bear, and the Lieutenant saw one elk. We leave here to-morrow and will reach Soda Springs, Saturday, and learn some news from home. Think of it, four weeks and not a word from the outside world. You of the far east may have declared war for aught we know. You may expect to hear from me again at Soda Springs.

C.J.K. 26 Meadowville on the south end of Bear Lake has almost passed out of existence â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but still remains on the official U t a h Highway M a p .

27 In this Kintner was mistaken. There was a brief period of attempted navigation of the Bear River at its mouth, but the project met with failure due to the heavy silting which occurred.

Dale L. Morgan, The Great Salt Lake (Indianapolis, 1947), 294, 299.

79

Kintner Letters Soda Springs, I d a h o , * July 20, 1877.

T o the Editor of the Register.

O n the 17th we left Montpelier canon having been encamped there three days, during which time a side party was formed who visited Bear peak, the tallest peak in the ranges about Bear lake, and, in fact the tallest peak yet visited this season, its altitude being ten thousand feet above sea level, and from its summit could be seen all the territory we shall go over during the season. 28 O u r course after coming out of Montpelier canon was due north, along the edge of Bear river valley, and we passed in our journey hither several little M o r m o n villages occupied almost exclusively by herdsmen. These villages, as do most of the M o r m o n settlements, present a decidedly crude appearance, being built of log cabins a n d covered in most instances with dirt, a guard I learn against the Indians until recently. T h e land down the Bear river valley is excellent and a great portion of it immediately adjoining the river can be cultivated without irrigation. T h e r e are millions of acres here of tillable land a n d the only obstacle is the labor required to irrigate.

As we approach this end of the valley extending from Bear lake to Soda Springs, the land becomes more rolling and the projecting rocks indicate intense heat, being of basaltic formation. Here in the vicinity of Soda Springs are hugh [sic] piles of this baslatic [sic] rock indicating an immense upheaval sometime in the remote past. And now a description of the famous Soda Springs will be of peculiar interest to you. T h e y are situated about the base of the mountains at the head of Bear lake valley. I do not know exactly how many there are, but our party have visited two of the larger springs within a short distance of our camp, situated on Soda creek. 29 Last evening I visited the larger one situated about half a mile from here. O n nearing the spring a gurgling, hiss* This letter was published in the Ann Arbor Register, August 8, 1877.

T h e name Bear Peak no longer appears on modern maps and is unknown to residents of the area today. Kintner must be describing Meade Peak, which is just east of Bloomington and has an elevation of 10,547 feet.

29 Kintner gives a good description as did almost every other traveling diarist who stopped at the springs. J o h n C. Fremont's description was more scientific dealing with a chemical analysis of the water. T°hn C Fremont, Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains . . .

(Washington, D . C , 1845), 135-37.

28

Soda Springs, Idaho, is situated Lake Valley. "Some of the springs away constantly.

Others are of curiosity, being about twenty feet ing caldron."

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY CHARLES KELLY COLLECTION

near the base of the mountains ct the head of Bear are nothing but a boiling mass of mud which bubbles a yellowish cast; but the main spring is the great in diameter, it boils and hisses away like a great boil-

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Utah Historical Quarterly

ing sound was heard. W h e n we came within fifty yards, and as I came nearer, I saw several little mountain geysers which spouted the water u p a foot or two.

For a radius of fifty feet around the main spring the sod is perforated with these little geysers which hiss, bubble and gurgle like a great pot of boiling water. T h e ground was covered with dead blackbirds, killed, as I afterwards ascertained, by the carbonic acid gas which is emitted continually from the springs. Some of the springs are nothing but a boiling mass of m u d which bubbles away constantly. Others are of a yellowish cast; but the main spring is the great curiosity, being about twenty feet in diameter, it boils and hisses away like a great boiling caldron. T h e water is perfectly clear, and as it boils u p , the escaping gas makes it sparkle in the sun like millions of diamonds. It flows out of the green sod and a stream runs from it large enough to t u r n a mill. T h e gurgling and hissing, as I stood in this network of springs, reminded m e of wash days at my old country home and brought to memory many a long forgotten incident of boyhood days.

T h e water has a sharp, sweet taste and is very agreeable to the taste, but must be taken directly from the spring to obtain the full effect. It is impregnated with iron and undoubtedly has many excellent medical qualities.

I t is very amusing to see a person attempt to drink from the spring if he doesn't understand the peculiarities of the case. If he attempts to d r a w his breath while drinking[,] his nostrils and throat are filled with a gass [sic] not unlike amonia [sic] in its effect, a n d it is by this gas I infer that so many birds have been killed in the immediate vicinity of the spring. So m u c h for the great Soda Springs, and I have no doubt but the day is not far distant when they will be a great health resort, as there is water in abundance to supply thousands of invalids. 30 We are now in the midst of the Indians, and as I write, one is taking breakfast. N o trouble has been anticipated so far, as they are regarded as friendly to the white m a n ; but on our arrival here we learned that the people were admonished by the authorities at Fort Hall to be on their guard and never to go out unarmed, as they are a treacherous set and not to be trusted. T h e r e are two or three h u n d r e d of them camped within about a mile of us, but we anticipate no trouble whatever. T h e difficulty with us is we are unable to keep posted in regard to the Indian war and do not know what movements are being m a d e by the warlike tribes. However, we are well armed, and will make a strong fight if they attack us. T h e great trouble is they have no love for surveyors at best, and would be sure to ferret us out should trouble once commence. 3 1 W e shall be here several days and replenish our diminished supplies before starting on again â&#x20AC;&#x201D; when a circuit will be m a d e embracing all the territory for fifty miles south-east of us and then bring u p again at this point, after which we will work toward Fort Hall, reaching there about September 10th, and then, after a short delay, start back toward Ogden, at which point all the parties will assemble and disband for the season about November 15, unless drawn in sooner by adverse weather.

C.J.K. [To Be Continued in Spring

Quarterly]

30 Attempts have been made to turn the springs into a health resort, but without great success. See Daughters of U t a h Pioneers, Camp Meads Camp, Tosoiba [History of Soda Springs] (Soda Springs, Idaho, 1958), 99-100, 221-28.

31 For the story of this Indian war see Brigham D. Madsen, The Bannock of Idaho (Caldwell, Idaho, 1958), 2 0 2 - 3 0 ; Beal and Wells, History of Idaho, I I , 4 6 7 - 6 8 .

REVIEWS and PUBLICATIONS Gathering

of Zion: The Story of the

rmon Trail. By WALLACE STEGNER.

( N e w Y o r k : M c G r a w - H i l l Book Company, 1964. 331 p p . $6.95) I n this excellently written account of the M o r m o n Trail, Wallace Stegner captures the meaning of the trail in his opening p a r a g r a p h : "Close to t h e heart of M o r m o n d o m , as close as t h e beehive symbol of labor a n d cohesiveness that decorates the great seal of U t a h , is the stylized memory of the trail. For every early Saint, crossing the plains to Zion in the Valleys of t h e Mountains was n o t merely a journey b u t a rite of passage, the final, devoted, enduring act that brought one into t h e Kingdom. Until the railroad m a d e the journey too easy, and until new generations born in t h e valley began to outnumber t h e immigrant Saints, the shared experience of the trail was a bond t h a t reinforced t h e bonds of the faith; a n d to successive generations who did n o t personally experience it, it has continued to have sanctity as legend a n d myth."

I n fact Stegner's Introduction is a fine concise s t a t e m e n t o n w h a t t h e t r a i l means to M o r m o n s â&#x20AC;&#x201D; e v e n though many of their beliefs about it are more legend than fact. I t is Stegner's earnest a t t e m p t to strip the M o r m o n Trail of its legend and myth a n d to tell the story of the trail as t h e heroic a n d tragic tale t h a t it is without the embellishments of the many superlatives which have become associated with the trailâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the first, the longest, the roughest, the most arduous, etc.

T h e book is arranged into 12 chapters plus a few notes on bibliography. Several

of the chapters are outstanding; others would be extremely valuable if footnotes were provided to give the source of the statements. And it is with this omission that the reviewer has his chief criticism of the book.

While Wallace Stegner writes prose beautifully a n d can tell a delightful story (witness his Chapter 10, " T h e M a n that Ate t h e Pack S a d d l e " ) , h e fails as a n historian when he presents controversial e v e n t s o r e p i s o d e s w i t h o u t c i t i n g his source. Stegner's descriptions of the last days in N a u v o o a n d flight from that city are some of the finest this reviewer has ever read. These observations are well substantiated in the diaries of J o h n D .

Lee a n d Hosea Stout, but unfortunately specific sources are n o t cited here.

Stegner is at his best when he is telling the h u m a n interest p a r t of the trail. H i s account of the trials of J a n e Richards, wife of Franklin D . Richards, is one of the most gripping ( p p . 85-89) of many throughout the book.

A few minor errors are found which m a r only slightly this otherwise excellent book. I t was James Brown with Henry Sherwood who played the major role in the purchase of Goodyear's holdings on the Weber River (p. 162). U t a h ' s delegate to Congress was D r . John M .

Bernhisel not G. M . Bernhisel (p. 2 9 4 ) .

T h e headquarters for t h e Reorganized C h u r c h of Jesus Christ of Latter D a y Saints is Independence not St. Joseph, Missouri (p. 3 1 0 ) . A n d the correct spelling of t h e n a m e is Lorin F a r r n o t Loren F a r r (p. 3 1 0 ) .

Those who would hope to understand the devotion, the veneration for U t a h ' s

Utah Historical Quarterly

82 pioneer heritage would do well to study Stegner's book. And if they approached their subject with a spirit of objectivity, they will conclude with Stegner that, " T h e story of the M o r m o n Trail is a story of people, no better and n o worse t h a n other people, probably, but certainly as sternly tested as any, and with a right to their pride in the way they have borne the testing" (p. 2 9 8 ) .

T h e Gathering of Zion is a must for every student of U t a h history.

E V E R E T T L.

COOLEY

Utah State Historical

Society

Picture Gallery Pioneers, First Photographers of the West, 1850 to 1875. By R A L P H W.

ANDREWS.

(Seattle:

Su-

perior Publishing Company, 1964. 192 p p . $12.50) This volume is the eleventh title to be coedited by R a l p h Andrews, all in the series dealing with some phase of early American society. In his latest, the author describes the work as "a photo-history about photo people." In this respect, it is not only high time that it should be m a d e available, but is extremely useful information.

T h e r e is a fascination in old photos which begets compassion (at least in their viewer's eyes), a n d critical faculties seem dulled. Like M r . Andrews, I feel admiration for the work of the pioneer photographers, and more so when he tells m e of their personal lives and their business problems. Muybridge's well-known difficulties with Leland Stanford over the horse-in-motion theory stand poles-apart from George Wakely's offer to the editor of the Denver Commonwealth to "whip you publicly on the streets," but both incidents reveal the active life the photographer has traditionally shared in every society. I n the pioneer West the m a n behind the camera h a d as m u c h excitem e n t and d r a m a as those in front.

Any assemblage of pictures such as this calls for an extensive credit column

and index. Both are here in proper and useful format, with an additional checklist of photographers whose work we may anticipate in a possible second volume on photography. I t would be even more helpful if the author would indicate photographic holdings which are known other than those he m a y have used in the preparation of his book. Such listings provide valued reference to the student searching for documentation of areas in which a known photographer may have worked.

A further thought on captions: we are too casual in writing these subscripts, especially in the case of relatively unknown subject matter. " R e a d i n g " a photograph should become the responsibility of e d i t o r a n d p u b l i s h e r alike.

Arthur W o o d w a r d of Patagonia, Arizona, gave the Western History Association an object lesson on the skills and applications of plain, everyday observation at the meeting in Santa Fe in 1961.

We would all be well advised to exercise our talents of interpretation of photographs with the same energy we put forth in searching out the pictures.

M I T C H E L L A. W I L D E R

Amon Carter Museum

of Western

Art

The Long Walk: A History of the Navajo Wars, 1846-68. By L. R. BAILEY. Great West and Indian Series, X X V I .

(Los Angeles: W e s t e r n l o r e Press, 1964. xiii + 2 5 2 p p . $7.95) T h e editor of The A. B. Gray Report and of The Navajo Reconnaissance has produced another priceless volume on a little-known period of Anglo-Indian relationships. T h e book will prove invaluable as a reference source for all serious students of Indians in general and particularly for those whose interest lies chiefly in the Southwest. Certainly every anthropologist, school teacher, and missionary having contacts with Navajos and every agent or other member of the

83

Reviews and Publications Bureau of I n d i a n Affairs should own and frequently consult this book. Mr. Bailey's wide research a n d the skill with which he has arranged his material arouse the reader's admiration.

Mr. Bailey has not shrunk from recognizing some of the seamier sides of Anglo-Navajo affairs, such as the economic reasons underlying the desire to terminate the Bosque Redondo concentration c a m p and the deplorable failure of our officials to make any attempt to understand w h a t sort of group they were dealing with. " T h e military — as well as many civilians — m a d e the mistake of viewing the Navajos as a tribal entity with which treaties could be signed, and as a body, held responsible for the actions of all its members. I n reality the tribe, at that time, was not consolidated politically.

Both the army and the civil authorities failed to see that the fundamental unity was the clan, or natural community of related members, which usually operated independently — and often to the detrim e n t — of others" (p. 14).

The Long Walk is not, however, the kind of book one would select to curl u p with on a rainy day. I t is not easy reading. In view of the importance of the data, it seems a pity that the style should be so lifeless, the diction and g r a m m a r so faulty t h a t unless the reader is enthusiastically interested in the subject he would hardly be impelled to go beyond the first few pages. I t is hard to believe that editors and the writer, proofreaders, and even the typesetter could pass such a sentence as, " T h e n , at the conclusion of the council was shot down — over a complaint lodged against the integrity of the Navajos by one of their sworn enemies — who was just as apt to rob the Dine's herds" (p. 20) ; or this, " I n speaking, they expressed their sentiments as only Navajo orators are capable" (p. 2 1 9 ) .

T h a t we may end on a happier note, be it said that the maps, both on the

endpapers and in the text, are extremely interesting and aptly selected (although, alas, so reduced in scale that even with a magnifying glass they are h a r d to read) ; the I n d e x and Bibliography have been carefully arranged and certainly seem to cover the sources adequately; the notes are more by far t h a n the classical "proof of homework done."

H . B . LlEBLER

St. Christopher's

Mission

A Concise History of the Mormon Battalion in the Mexican War, 1846-1847.

By SERGEANT D A N I E L T Y L E R . R e p r i n t .

(Chicago: T h e Rio G r a n d e Press, Inc., 1964. 376 pp. $8.00) More than 80 years after this coveted volume was first published, Rio G r a n d e Press, Inc., again has m a d e it available for general distribution.

Sergeant Daniel Tyler, one of the few men in the M o r m o n Battalion who kept a detailed journal of this famous march, assembled the d a t a 35 years after the events transpired. Relying not alone on his own eyewitness account, he solicited viewpoints and experiences of fellow Battalion members. H e makes no claim to literary proficiency, yet his homespun story is highly readable and loaded with historical facts.

T h e M o r m o n Battalion was recruited in the summer of 1846 from the migrating Saints in Iowa as they trekked their way from Nauvoo to Winter Quarters.

This weary band, plagued by years of persecution, could ill afford to give u p 500 of the best men in their contingent.

Yet, they responded to Brigham Young's call and enlisted in the campaign against Mexico. About 25 of these m e n took their wives and families with them.

These women, along with some widows, served as cooks and laundresses. A few youths went along as servants to officers.

As the men were sworn in, they became a part of General Stephen Watts Kearney's Army of the West. Their assign-

Utah Historical Quarterly

84 m e n t was to m a r c h to San Luis Rey on the Pacific Coast as t h e danger of w a r with Mexico was considered imminent.

Southern California was Mexican territory a n d t h e Battalion would serve to bolster t h e small military force engaged in expanding t h e borders of t h e United States.

Tyler details t h e suffering a n d hardship resulting from heat, malaria, a n d privations. Worse t h a n these inflictions, however, was t h e i n h u m a n treatment of Colonel Smith, commander, a n d the physician, D r . Sanderson, w h o m the author brands as a quack a n d whose only treatment was calomel a n d arsenic irrespective of the malady.

Relief a n d a short respite came for the troops at Santa Fe. As they pushed on another 1,100 miles, the route was tortuous a n d rough; b u t under the leadership of Colonel P. St. George Cooke, they opened the first wagon road through the Southwest. Colonel Cooke's praise of the M o r m o n Battalion was high as attested by his observation, "History may be searched in vain for a n equal march of infantry. . . ."

T h e blue of the Pacific was a welcome sight to this rag-tag army as they completed their m a r c h of 2,000 miles on J a n u a r y 27, 1847. I n April they were assigned to construct a fort o n an eminence overlooking the town of Los Angeles. This became known as Fort Moore.

At the conclusion of one year of service the m e n were solicited for re-enlistment, but most of them chose to return to their families in t h e Valley of t h e Great Salt Lake. E n route home some of t h e m e n gained employment for t h e winter at Sutter's Fort. While engaged in building a millrace about 40 miles east of the Fort on t h e American River, gold was discovered through their activities, setting off a tremendous wave of westward migration.

Sergeant Tyler m a d e a definite contribution to t h e record of t h e West in this historical gem. Robert B. McCoy, presi-

dent of Rio G r a n d e Press, Inc., has rendered a further service in its republication along with a companion volume, The Conquest of New Mexico and California in 1846-1848, by Philip St. George Cooke, a source frequently quoted by VIRGIL V. PETERSON

Salt Lake City,

Utah

Indian Affairs: A Study of the Changes in Policy of the United States Toward Indians.

By S. L Y M A N T Y L E R . ( P r o v o :

Brigham Young University Institute of American I n d i a n Studies, 1964. vi + 199 p p . $3.00) Indian Affairs: A Work Paper on Termination: With an Attempt to Show Its Antecedents.

By S. L Y M A N

TYLER.

(Provo: Brigham Young University Institute of American Indian Studies, 1964. iv + 7 3 p p . $1.50) Ordinarily, persons interested in the field of American Indian affairs must u n d e r t a k e a r d u o u s r e s e a r c h in often c o m p l e x g o v e r n m e n t sources such as congressional hearings and departmental a n n u a l reports. T h e two small volumes under consideration here have been designed to present lucid summaries of governmental policies toward Indians a n d the relatively recent suggestions that federal assistance to Indians be terminated.

I n t h e first study Tyler h a s chosen to begin with t h e period around 1929 a n d to detail, with extensive quotations from original sources, aspects of Indian policy such as health, welfare, education, a n d economics. O t h e r chapters are concerned with federal I n d i a n administration almost to 1964.

T h e study on termination originally was prepared in 1958 and relates to the preceding decade with n o attempt to bring the material up-to-date. Again, this book contains voluminous quotations primarily from government documents. T h e author discusses the historical setting, the

85

Reviews and Publications proposed legislation of the 1940's a n d 1950's, a n d then compares C a n a d i a n enfranchisement policies with those advocating termination for United States I n dians.

While both studies provide relatively clear and easy means to the understanding of the complicated arena of I n d i a n affairs, they suffer from a lack of adeq u a t e e d i t o r i a l i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of t h e quoted sources in terms of current analyses of intercultural relations. This, however, should not detract too greatly from the value these books can have for the reader with a more general interest in current Indian affairs a n d problems. I n a minor vein the offset printing of the reviewer's copies leaves something to be desired; the impressions on several pages are faint a n d unclear.

The

Ute People:

Checklist.

By

A S.

Bibliographical LYMAN

TYLER.

(Provo: Brigham Young University Institute of American I n d i a n Studies, 1964. iii-f- 120 p p . $3.00) Anthropologists, historians, and others interested in the U t e Indians a n d ling u i s t i c a l l y r e l a t e d t r i b e s , s u c h as t h e Southern Paiute, will find this checklist to be a valuable research and reference tool. While the compiler notes that it is not exhaustive a n d that it "tends to be more complete for t h e period prior to 1952," this reviewer, in a cursory check of his own files, could find only a dozen omissions. As it stands, the checklist contains 1,243 separate listings, conveniently organized into eight categories including manuscript material for the Spanish a n d Mexican periods, United States governm e n t and U t a h Territorial documents, contemporary newspapers a n d periodicals, and other published works. At least two important entries, however, should be subjected to m u c h more thorough analyses. These entries a r e : item 151 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; " D o c u m e n t s in filing cases, A - Z . . .

Church Historian's Office," estimated to

contain over 70,000 pieces; and, item 1193 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; "Wilkinson, Ernest L . . . . An extensive collection of materials referring to the U t e Indians used in the various ' U t e cases' filed in the Court of Claims."

Both of these entries undoubtedly contain many important, unpublished m a n uscripts that should be m a d e available to those engaged in ethnohistorical research among the U t e .

R O B E R T C. E U L E R

University "Here is Brigham

. . ." Brigham

of Utah Young

... The Years to 1844. By S. D I L W O R T H

Y O U N G . (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1964. 370 p p . $4.75) "Here is Brigham ..." traces the activities of Brigham Young down to the day he assumed leadership of the M o r m o n Church. Brigham Young's u n t i r i n g effort to "obey the will of God as spoken through the Prophet Joseph Smith, a n d to support that Prophet with all he possessed" provides the theme for the book.

I n this it comes off well, a n d the author's uncomplicated, forthright, a n d homespun style allows the reader to catch the message easily.

O n the other h a n d the book is not, nor did the author intend it to be, a piece of critical history. T h e author frankly states that "there will come others w h o will analyze a n d weigh a n d measure."

I n this spirit certain academic weaknesses should receive attention. First, there are several minor historical errors, such as a reference to the fall of Quebec as the "final battle" of the French a n d I n d i a n W a r , which m a y tend to frustrate some historians.

A more serious problem, however, is the lack of effort to place the story in its broad historical setting. T h e economic, political, a n d social movements around the M o r m o n C h u r c h certainly had something to do with its history, a n d therefore with the history of Brigham Young. T h e story of t h e failure of the

86

Utah Historical

Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Company in 1837, for example, can never be told adequately unless it is related to the general economic collapse in the United States that same year. Nor can the struggles of the Mormons in Missouri a n d their acceptance into Illinois be understood without some consideration of the economic a n d political crosscurrents in these two states, but these things are not even alluded to in the book. This, however, is not so m u c h a weakness of this book alone as a reflection of the fact that most M o r m o n historians have neglected this vital phase of their own history. T h e historian will also be disturbed with the lack of footnotes and other documentation, as well as the lack of an index.

I n spite of these weaknesses, the book makes some worthwhile contributions.

Frequent reference is m a d e to two unpublished diaries of Brigham Young, and some valuable quotations are given.

O t h e r contributions include the thoughtprovoking insight into the unity of the Young family; the discernment into the profound m u t u a l respect between Joseph Smith and Brigham Y o u n g ; the poignant story of the wife and family who were left behind each time Brigham went off on another mission; the fact that the subject of plural marriage is not ignored; and the worthwhile maps, which trace most of the major movements of Brigh a m Young in this early period. Finally, the author has inserted several of his own poetic efforts, aimed at creating a feeling for certain times and places, which this reviewer, for one, appreciated.

T h e believing M o r m o n , including the M o r m o n scholar, should appreciate the spirit of "Here is Brigham . . ." T h e historical scholar, however, will be disappointed in w h a t is lacking a n d will feel strongly the need for a sympathetic but more broadly based biography of this important M o r m o n leader.

J A M E S B. A L L E N

Brigham

Young

University

Quarterly

Southwestern Archaeology.

By J O H N C. M C G R E G O R . S e c o n d E d i t i o n . ( U r b a n a : University of Illinois Press, 1965. vii + 511 pp. $9.50) For this book there is no counterpart.

It is an effort to tell, in detail, what is known today about the prehistory of the American Southwest; in this the author shows courage. I n 1941 McGregor made an earlier attempt and produced a book which was soon out-of-print, and for this revision there is a real need. During 1963-64 McGregor traveled the Southwest, visiting students actively prosecuting research. T h u s , he got m u c h new data and became aware of many recent changes in thought and interpretation.

H e also consulted manuscripts and new publications in order to take advantage of recent findings. His interpretation utilizes the new material effectively, and the book is good.

After some sketchy introductory material about the Lithic and Desert Cultures of the West and a useful history of archaeological research in the Southwest, McGregor deals chronologically with the evolution, spread, and interinfluence of the three major variants of southwestern culture â&#x20AC;&#x201D; M o g o l l o n , H o h o k a m , and Pueblo (Anasazi) â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a n d the s e v e r a l peripheral versions. For the familiarn u m b e r e d stages he substitutes the Exploitation Period 200 B.C. to A.D. 1; Founder A.D. 1-500; Settlement A.D. 500700; Adjustment A.D. 700-900; Dissemination A.D. 900-1100; Classic A.D. 11001300; and Culminant A.D. 1300-1600, with the last 350 years quickly treated as Historic. T h u s , the traditional stageperiod classifications are preserved, and each cultural division gets a fair and uniform discussion period by period. These sequential chapters, of course, make up the bulk of the book and seem to me to be better by far than the first edition.

U t a h n s will be disappointed to note that the F r e m o n t and related Sevier-Fremont Cultures, which cover most of the state, receive only cursory treatment.

87

Reviews and Publications T h e writing style tends to grow general and somewhat discursive at times but who can blame all t h a t on the author?

His sources often suffer the same defects.

And artifact descriptions are slow going and wordy. T h e book would have profited from less about ceramics, even though study of this minor art has helped clarify events in southwestern prehistory.

As a whole, the present book cannot be easily adjudged. T h e r e are accurate insightful passages where very recent finds (including some reported only two years ago from the Navajo Project of the U p p e r Colorado River Basin Archeological Salvage Project) are correctly assessed (e.g., Early Mogollon influence in the Four Corners area by A.D. 200-400, Fig. 4 9 ) . I n contrast there are stereotyped explanations of 30 years ago which have been effectively challenged time after time (e.g., the drought theory of gullying a n d desiccation in northwestern New Mexico in the thirteenth c e n t u r y ) .

T h e n too, t h e book is terribly marred by the author's inconsistencies and contradictions, to say nothing of incorrect bibliographic citations and typographic and manufacturing errors. T h e most annoying contradictions are in such things as maps. O n page 11, Fig. 3, the m a p shows a distribution of Anasazi Culture in A.D. 1000 utterly different from Fig. 129, page 279, where the same d a t a is shown in different context. T h e r e are other examples. These b a d things about the book are doubly annoying because they bespeak haste a n d carelessness in preparation and detract from the reliability of a much-needed book. T h e flaws cited above could be used to justify a most destructive review, but the work does not merit destruction. While the flaws are annoying, of course, they are cited primarily as a warning to those who read it as a first introduction to the subject.

T h e contradictions and errors are present and must be reckoned with by any serious reader.

I n sum I found the book good, with m u c h new d a t a blended appropriately with the old. T h e good illustrations a d d m u c h to the volume. I suspect wide popularity and good sales to m a r k the success of McGregor's second edition.

J E S S E D. J E N N I N G S

University

of Utah

Historical Sites in Cataract and Narrow Canyons, and in Glen Canyon to California

Bar.

By

C.

GREGORY

CRAMP-

TON. With an A d d e n d u m of New D a t a in Areas Previously Reported. Glen Canyon Series N u m b e r 24, Anthropological Papers N u m b e r 72. (Salt Lake City: University of U t a h Press, 1964. x i i i 4 - 1 0 8 p p . $2.00) This is the fourth and reportedly last volume of the Glen Canyon Series devoted to the detailed study of the numerous historical sites found within and adjacent to the Lake Powell Reservoir area.

These sites have either been inundated or will be inundated in the years to come by the rising waters of Lake Powell.

This volume covers the historical sites found within C a t a r a c t Canyon, N a r r o w Canyon, and the upper region of Glen Canyon. An A d d e n d u m of new information not recorded in previous reports has also been included here.

T h e object of this study was to learn more of the history and to record t h a t which was found. This included extensive research. T h e search through old journals and writings was a prerequisite to the expeditions into the river canyons.

It included the use and study of maps and photographs and the interviewing of many persons who helped make history in this region.

O n c e this research h a d been accomplished, the task required actual visits to the areas and sites. I t also entailed traversing areas that might throw further light on some historical subject. T h e river banks, cliffs, rocks, and bars were scoured for this further information.

88 I t was found and recorded by Dr. C r a m p t o n t h a t the fur trapper, the river explorer, the cattleman, the government surveyor, and the professional guide had a h a n d in the recording of this history.

From this survey many inscriptions on the canyon walls and rocks were found.

O n e of the more interesting series of inscriptions h a d to do with a mysterious D . Julien, who inscribed his n a m e with the date 1836. This was prior to the famed Powell exploration trips. Just w h o this explorer was and his purpose in descending the Colorado River has not yet been definitely established. It was possible that he was one of the many fur trappers of that era.

Little could be written of the canyons without referring to the J o h n Wesley Powell river expeditions of 1869 and 1871. Journals of these trips have been repeatedly referred to. T h e y are basic documents.

Recognition has been given those river men and guides who have led parties down the Colorado River canyons.

M u c h has been learned from them concerning the canyon country. M a n y inscriptions attest to the excitement and catastrophes that have beset t h e m in the canyons. O n e such inscription reads, "Hell to pay, No. 1 is sunk a n d down."

T h e nomenclature of this statement is fully clear to all who are acquainted with river navigation.

This volume contains m a n y illustrations, photographs, and a table of historical sites and names. An atlas and maps have been included to show the location of each site.

O n e of the more valuable contributions of this volume is the Bibliography that has been compiled concerning research and reference works. Later scholars will find it most helpful.

Some errors have crept into this work.

However, they are relatively minor and are caused by insufficient knowledge of the area, the acceptance of incorrect statements from those interviewed, and

Utah Historical Quarterly the failure to visit the particular area.

Dr. C r a m p t o n , however, has done a m o n u m e n t a l job in relation to the time a n d resources t h a t were available to him.

This reviewer, having been a professional guide on the Colorado River for a n u m ber of years, appreciates the task that faced the author.

I t has been reported in this volume t h a t this will be the final study of the Glen Canyon Series. This is to be regretted. A great void in the study remains and m u c h yet should be accomplished. T h e search for knowledge should continue before all is lost through complete inundation. For instance all has not yet been recorded in Cataract Canyon and in the little-known scenic Escalante Canyon. I n my expeditions down these river canyons, I have found numerous inscriptions a n d items of historical interest that have not been referred to in any of the studies. Indeed, much of the Escalante Canyon has not even been partially surveyed. W h e n the lake level rises and covers these inscriptions then nothing further can be learned from that particular site. It will be gone forever.

T h e study should not cease. It should continue, and it should enlist the aid and support of additional researchers so that this work can be done more completely.

Researchers of the future will be unable to visit the exact site; they will only be able to turn to this secondary source.

My main regret is that it was necessary at all to build the Glen Canyon D a m .

I t will prove only a work of futility and destruction. We can only hope to salvage a small portion of that vast scenic and historical region.

K E N N E T H SLEIGHT

Escalante, Albert Sidney Johnston: Republics.

By

Utah

Soldier of Three

CHARLES

P.

ROLAND.

(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964. xi + 3 8 4 p p . $6.50)

89

Reviews and Publications An 1826 g r a d u a t e of the United States Military Academy, Albert Sidney Johnston served with distinction as a general officer in the armies of Texas, the United States, a n d t h e Confederate States of America. H e also was secretary of war for t h e Republic of Texas. His first assignment after leaving West Point was to the frontier where he fought in t h e Black H a w k War. This experience served him in good stead when h e joined t h e Texas Army in t h e fight for independence. Johnston got deeply involved in Texas politics a n d became estranged from Sam Houston, whose cautious policies were a torment to a m a n of action like Johnston.

Johnston served as a volunteer in t h e Mexican W a r , a n d although he saw action only in t h e Battle of Monterrey, his valor in that engagement w o n t h e respect of his comrades in arms. R e t u r n ing to civil life as a Texas planter, he was neither happy nor successful. W h e n an opportunity arose to rejoin the federal army, he gladly seized it. Johnston was commander of the D e p a r t m e n t of Texas when called to head the U t a h Expedition in 1857. H e was stationed in California at the outbreak of t h e Civil W a r a n d accepted a commission as a full general in the Confederate Army. H e was comm a n d i n g t h a t army against Grant's forces at t h e Battle of Shiloh when h e was killed in action in April 1862, a t the age of 59.

Albert Sidney Johnston was a soldier's soldier. A strict disciplinarian without being a martinet, h e held t h e love a n d esteem of his peers and junior officers â&#x20AC;&#x201D; no small achievement. H e h a d both the virtues a n d prejudices of his class a n d caste. Among his dislikes were Indians, Mexicans, M o r m o n s , a n d abolitionists.

Nowhere is there evidence t h a t h e ever attempted to understand a n y of them.

Yet h e was punctiliously correct in his relations with the Mormons, at least, and won their respect. Although he definitely considered t h e m in rebellion against the United States, h e himself in 1861 joined

the Confederacy. D r . R o l a n d explains this p a r a d o x by saying that Johnston "revered the U n i o n b u t he loved Texas."

Professor Roland, obviously a n a d mirer of Johnston's soldierly a n d manly qualities, does not hesitate to show t h e other side of the coin. Johnston was not always right or wise, b u t h e was always true to t h e high standards h e set for himself.

T h e book achieves a perfect balance in treating the various aspects of Johnston's military career, without neglecting his devoted family life. T h e high point of the volume as well as of t h e general's career is the Battle of Shiloh. T h e reader feels like an actual participant in the din, confusion, and carnage.

T h e research t h a t has gone into this biography is superb. Dr. Roland has used all available manuscripts and practically all secondary sources, a n d to good a d vantage. T h e book is evidence t h a t one can produce a readable, scholarly work without revealing t h e academic sweat t h a t went into it.

M. HAMLIN CANNON

United States Air Force

Academy

A Journey to California, 1841: The first emigrant party to California by wagon train, The Journal of John Bidwell.

I n t r o d u c t i o n by F R A N C I S P. F A R Q U H A R .

(Berkeley, California: T h e Friends of the Bancroft Library, 1964. 55 4-32 p p . N.P.) This most attractive volume belongs in t h e library of every person or institution with interests in the great westward migration of the mid-nineteenth century.

Readers of this review will recognize J o h n Bidwell as one of the leaders of the first wagon train to cross U t a h â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the first group of settlers to reach California via t h e overland trail. T h e author's description of t h e country a n d his experiences en route have long been acclaimed.

His description of California after his arrival is a valuable portion of the document.

Utah Historical Quarterly

90 Bidwell's original handwritten journal has never been found. However, a printed abridgment of it did a p p e a r during t h e mid-1840' s, only one copy of which (the "McKinstry" copy) is now known. T w o reprints from t h a t original have been m a d e , b u t both have subsequently become very rare a n d expensive. As a result this new edition will be very welcome to scholars of the American West.

T h e volume consists of four major parts: (1) A brief b u t adequate a n d carefully prepared Introduction which includes a very select bibliography; (2) T h e Bidwell journal transcribed faithfully from the McKinstry copy a n d set in new type; (3) A facsimile of the M c Kinstry copy; (4) Following t h e facsimile is a triple-fold m a p showing the Bartleson-Bidwell route a n d the major western trails. Readers interested in tracing the exact Bidwell route a n d relating incidents with specific geographic locations will find footnote annotations quite inadequate. However, close scholars can t u r n to works cited in the Introduction for this kind of detail.

T h e volume is beautifully printed on top-quality paper a n d most attractively bound. I t contains no index.

DAVID E. M I L L E R

University

of Utah

Bureau; his long drawn-out duel with Agent McGillycuddy, though it resulted in a temporary triumph, initiated the events that brought defeat to R e d Cloud and all he represented; a n d his active career was destined to end in the inglorious dust of a government file. Yet Red Cloud was speaking n o more than the truth when h e said of himself: " I am constantly on t h e side of right in this great trouble." Unyielding in war a n d in peace, he was a wily a n d obdurate negotiator, an eloquent spokesman for his people, a n d a dedicated defender of their interests.

Journal of a Trapper.

SELL.

By O S B O R N E R U S -

E d i t e d by A U B R E Y L. H A I N E S .

( N o r m a n : University Press, 1965)

of

Nebraska

Osborne Russell's journal covering the years 1834 to 1843 is, in the words of the editor, Aubrey L. Haines, "perhaps the best account of the fur trapper in the Rocky M o u n t a i n s when the trade there was at its peak. I t is a factual, unembellished narrative written by one who was not only a trapper b u t also a keen observer a n d a n able writer." Edited from the original manuscript a n d originally printed in a limited edition, this classic piece of Western Americana is now for the first time available to the general public.

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem.

J A M E S C. O L S O N .

By

( L i n c o l n : Univer-

sity of Nebraska Press, 1965) As a leading w a r chief until the Laramie Treaty of 1868, to which he was a principal signatory, a n d thereafter as a diplomat and politician, R e d Cloud fought with every means at his command to preserve the old way of life for his people. H e m a d e mistakes, as h e himself recognized. His tactics brought him into conflict with other Sioux chiefs as well as with the Army a n d the Indian

William

Clayton,

Missionary,

and Public Servant.

Pioneer,

By P A U L E. D A H L .

2nd Edition. (Provo: J. G r a n t Stevenson, 1964) W i l l i a m C l a y t o n , 1 8 1 4 - 1 8 7 9 , was surely one of the most interesting figures in the history of the L.D.S. Church. Because of his close association with Joseph Smith (as a private secretary to the prophet, Clayton wrote down the revelation on plural m a r r i a g e ) , a n d because of his several official positions in Nauvoo (clerk of the High Council, Nauvoo

91

Reviews and Publications T e m p l e recorder, clerk to the trusteein-trust, secretary of the Masonic Lodge, city treasurer of Nauvoo, a n d o t h e r s ) , Clayton was in a key position to know about everything that happened. A n d later in U t a h h e served as territorial auditor, recorder of Marks a n d Brands, secretary of the Legislative Council, secretary of Z C M I , treasurer of the Deseret Telegraph Company, a n d other positions of honor a n d trust. As an unusually gifted writer, he made an enduring reputation by composing t h e beloved hymn, "Come, Come, Ye Saints," in 1847 a n d by publishing The Latter-day Saints Emigrants' Guide in 1848. After his death his diary was published under the title William Clayton's Journal.

H e r e is a m a n w h o is deserving of a full biography.

Mr. Dahl's book, first written as a master's thesis at Brigham Young University in 1960, has been republished in a limited multilith edition, a n d it should serve to increase interest in the remarkable William Clayton.

The

Blazed

Trail

of Antoine

By F O R B E S P A R K H I L L .

Leroux.

( L O S Angeles:

Westernlore Press, 1965) Idaho:

A Students

History.

Guide

to

Localized

By M E R L E W. W E L L S . ( N e w

The Indians and the Nurse. By E L I N O R D. GREGG. ( N o r m a n : University of O k l a h o m a Press, 1965)

don

W.

Lillie.

of Major

By G L E N N

Gor-

SHIRLEY.

Reprint. (Lincoln: University of N e braska Press, 1965) Photographer MAURICE

on an Army FRINK

with

Mule. By CASEY

E.

B A R T H E L M E S S . ( N o r m a n : University of O k l a h o m a Press, 1965) The

West

Montana.

That

NELLIE

SNYDER

YOST.

Reprint.

( L i n c o l n : U n i v e r s i t y of N e b r a s k a Press, 1965) ARTICLES O F INTEREST American Antiquity—29, J a n u a r y 1964: "Pueblo I n d i a n Migrations: An Evaluation of t h e Possible Physical a n d Cultural Determinants," by S T E P H E N C. J E T T , 281-300; "Southern Paiute Archaeology," by R O B E R T C. E U L E R ,

379-81 American Heritage — X V I , A u g u s t 1965: " J o h n Held, Jr., a n d his world,"

by J A C K S H U T T L E W O R T H ,

29-32

The American West •—• I I , Fall 1965: " O n t h e Writing of History [Bernard D e V o t o ] , " by W A L L A C E S T E G N E R ,

6-

13 Arizona Highways —• X L I , September 1965: [entire issue on the Little Colorado River]; "Tales of the Little Colorado,"

by J o J E F F E R S ,

2ff.; " T h e

Lower Gorge of the Little Colorado,"

by J. H . BUTCHART, 3 4 - 4 2 ; " L y m a n D a m : M o n u m e n t to M o r m o n Pioneer Courage a n d Industry," by EVELYN BRACK M E A S E L E S , 4 3 - 4 7

York: Columbia University Bureau of Publications, 1965)

Pawnee Bill: A Biography

to

Was: From

Texas

to

By J O H N L E A K E Y . A S told

Arizona History — V I , Spring 1965: "Pipe Spring, Arizona, a n d T h e r e a b o u t s , " by R O B E R T W . O L S E N , J R . ,

11-20 Aviation Week & Space Technology — 83, September 27, 1 9 6 5 : " O g d e n Keeps M i n u t e m a n I C B M U n r e a d y Rate Below 0 . 3 % , " by M I C H A E L L. Y A F F E E , 60ff.

Journal of the West — I V , July 1965: "California, T h e Civil W a r , a n d t h e I n d i a n Problem: An Account of California's Participation in t h e Great Conflict [Patrick E. C o n n o r a n d t h e California Volunteers]," by L E O P. KIBBY, 377-410; "Los Angeles Hosts an International Irrigation Congress [Arthur L. T h o m a s ] , " by A. B O W E R SAGESER, 4 1 1 - 2 4

92

Utah Historical Quarterly

Missouri Historical Review—LX, October 1965: " T h e Attempted Assassination of Missouri's Ex-Governor Lilburn W. Boggs," by M O N T E B. M c L A W S , 50-62

National Geographic — 128, November 1965: "Golden Spike Pins a Nation Together," 664-65 National Parks Magazine — 39, September 1965: " U p h e a v a l D o m e : Airborne instruments have been helpful in probing a geological oddity within t h e newly created Canyonlands National P a r k , " by R O B E R T H . R O S E , 11-15

Nevada Historical Society Quarterly — V I I I , Summer 1965: "Early Cattle in

issue]"; "Seeing the Canyonlands by L a n d , Sea a n d Air," by K. C. D E N D O O V E N , 4ff.; M a p of Canyonlands

National Park, 8 ; " T h e New World of Flaming Gorge," 12ff.; M a p of Flaming Gorge Reservoir, 14; " T h e Golden Rule Store [first J. C. Penney Store, Kemmerer, Wyoming]," by K. C. D E N D O O V E N , 16ff.; "Traveling West with Archie [jaunt into Canyonlands]," by A R C H I E F I S H E R , 18ff.; "Valley of the Gods," by D O U G W I L L I A M S , 22ff.;

M a p of the Canyonlands Highway, 2 6 - 2 9 ; " W e N a m e d Angel Arch," by R. E . BADGER, 3 0 - 3 1 ; "Canyonlands Highway Association," by GERALD OVIATT, 3 2 ; "Lake Powell, Where Winter Fishing Is," 38ff.

Elko C o u n t y , " by M R S . J O H N PATTER-

SON, 5 - 1 3 ; "Sheep in N e v a d a , " by C L E L GEORGETTA, 1 7 - 3 8

Pacific Northwest Quarterly—56, October 1965: "Pacific Coast Competition for the Gold C a m p T r a d e of M o n t a n a , " by A L T O N B. OVIATT, 168-76

True West — 13, September-October 1965: "Blood for Blood [Patrick E. Connor, the California Volunteers, and the Battle of Bear River]," by H A R O L D S C H I N D L E R , 42ff.

Utah Law Review — 8, Winter 1 9 6 3 6 4 : " T h e Colorado River Decision — 1963," by EDWARD W. C L Y D E ,

299-

312; "A Ministry of Justice: T h e Pound-Cardozo Concept Embodied in a U t a h State Council," by A R T H U R L. BEELEY and J O H N

S. BOYDEN,

328-

37 WHA [Western History Association] Newsletter — Preliminary Issue, N o vember 1965: "Editor's Note," 1; " J o h n Francis Bannon, S.J., President," 3 - 4 ; " M a n a g e m e n t of The American West," 5ff.; "Committee on W e s t e r n H i s t o r y in S e c o n d a r y Schools," 8-9 Western Gateways — V, A u t u m n 1965: "Canyonlands Highway Issue [entire

Westways—57, September 1965: "Shaking the Great Salt [Great Salt Lake],"

by F R A N K A. T I N K E R , 2 4 - 2 5 ;

peregrinations

of Kokopelli

"The

[petro-

glyphs]," by J O H N V . Y O U N G ,

39-41

— October 1965: [entire issue on Colorado River country]; "Introduction to the Colorado," by the editors, 3 ; " 'We F o u n d a Mighty River' " by HAROLD O . W E I G H T , 4ff.; "Cradle of the Colorado,"

by F R A N K

A. T I N K E R ,

7-9;

" T h e Great Water Fight," by J A C K G O O D M A N , 1 0 - 1 3 ; "Canyonlands: Beauty Vast a n d Austere," by PATRICE M A N A H A N , 14ff.; " R a p i d Descent with N o r m a n Nevills," by RANDALL H E N D E R S O N , 1 7 - 1 9 ; " M a p p i n g the I n d i a n Country," by LARRY L. M E Y E R ,

2 0 - 2 1 ; "Last M a n on a Mule T r a i n , "

by A Y L S W O R T H K L E I H A U E R ,

22-24;

"Flying Down to Parker," by R u s s LEADABRAND, 2 5 - 2 8 ; " A Colorado River Portfolio [a photographic essay in color]," 2 9 - 3 6 ; " 'A Str. Cocopah Took 2 Cords Wood . . . , ' " by JERRY M A C M U L L E N , 3 7 - 3 9 ; "Fishing the Desert Lakes," by M E L W H I T E , 4 0 4 1 ; " W h e r e t h e Colorado Meets the Gulf," by LARRY D . W O L M A N , 4 2 - 4 4 ;

" T h e Fugitive's Ferry [John D . Lee],"

by W . L. R U S H O , 4 5 - 4 6

UTAH 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.

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