Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 80, Number 3, 2012

206 IN THIS ISSUE

208

“We Will Admit You as a State”: William H. Hooper, Utah and the Secession Crisis

By Chad M. Orton

226 The History of Saint Mary’s Academy in Salt Lake City 1875-1926

By Andrea Ventilla

242 Selling the Scenery: Chauncey and Gronway Parry and the Birth of Southern Utah’s Tourism and Movie Industries

By Janet B. Seegmiller

258

“The Bloodiest Drama Ever Perpetrated on American Soil”: Staging the Mountain Meadows Massacre for Entertainment

By Melvin L. Bashore

272 BOOK REVIEWS

Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint, eds. The Latest Word from 1540: People, Places, and Portrayals of the Coronado Expedition. Reviewed by H. Bert Jenson

Tom Mould. Still, the Small Voice: Narrative, Personal Revelation, and the Mormon Folk Tradition Reviewed by Polly Stewart Tim Sullivan. No Communication with the Sea: Searching for an Urban Future in the Great Basin Reviewed by Rebecca Andersen

Terryl L. Givens and Matthew J. Grow. Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism Reviewed by Thomas G. Alexander Deborah and Jon Lawrence. Violent Encounters: Interviews on Western Massacres Reviewed by Rod Miller

John S. McCormick and John R. Sillito. A History of Utah Radicalism: Startling, Socialistic, and Decidedly Revolutionary Reviewed by David R. Berman

Kenneth Lougee. Pie in the Sky: How Joe Hill’s Lawyers Lost His Case, Got Him Shot, and Were Disbarred Reviewed by Clayton A. Coppin

Thomas J. Harvey. Rainbow Bridge to Monument Valley: Making the Modern Old West Reviewed by James M. Aton

Don D. Fowler. The Glen Canyon Country: A Personal Memoir Reviewed by Gary Topping

Jay Youngdahl. Working on the Railroad, Walking in Beauty: Navajos, H0zh = , and Track Work Reviewed by Robert S. McPherson 287 BOOK NOTICES

One hundred fifty years ago the nation was already a year into a bitter civil war. The Union and the Confederacy contended on the battlefields of Fredericksburg, Shiloh, Antietam, and lesser known locations in a violent attempt to solve the longstanding issues of slavery, state rights, and secession. That civil war, and encounters before and since, remind us that opposing points of view, debate, a good measure of respect, and compromise are essential to the survival of a vibrant democracy, the preservation of individual rights, and the promotion of the welfare of all citizens. For many Americans, the 1860 election of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, assured the secession of a group of states whose citizens feared his election meant an all-out attack on the moral and social values they held dear and an economic and labor system that provided unsurpassed prosperity for a few and the prospects of financial advancement for the rest. With the secession of South Carolina in December 1860, three months before Lincoln took the oath of office as president, the nation’s other thirty-two states and seven territories would have to make the same choice—for the union or for state’s rights. For most states, there was little question as one after another became identified with either the North or the South. For a few states, most often identified as the border states—Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Maryland—the decision on secession was complicated and difficult. In the end, while these slave-holding states did not secede, slave owners still retained their human property until the Thirteenth Amendment, adopted in December 1865, ended slavery once and for all. As the war continued, Utah faced its own particular choices in its long-standing quest for statehood or secession. In that dilemma, as our first article explains, Utah’s Congressional delegate William H. Hooper played a critical role.

In 1875 two sisters of the Congregation of the Holy Cross arrived in Salt Lake City at the request of Father Lawrence Scanlan to establish a school for Catholic and other children in Utah and Nevada. That school, Saint Mary’s Academy, is the subject of our second article in this issue. Saint Mary’s remained an integral part of the Utah and Intermountain education community for nearly a century until the school closed in 1970.

COVER: An automobile negotiating through a wash in southern Utah. SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, SOUTHERN UTAH UNIVERSITY. In ThIs IssUE (ABOVE): A flyer announcing a performance of the Ellis and Dunbar’s Minstrels in the Farmington social hall on september 24, 1888. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

While Utah is known for many things, its tourism and the related movie industry must be included in any list. Two brothers, Gronway and Chauncey Parry, were instrumental in the promotion of both. Utilizing a combination of factors that included the designation of Mukuntuweap National Monument (later Zion National Park) in 1909, action by officials of the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad to increase passenger traffic to southern Utah’s scenic wonders from the depot at Lund, thirty miles west of Cedar City, advances in the automobile, and the emergence of a new entertainment media—the movie, the enterprising Parry brothers undertook initiatives that, nearly a century later, continue to be a vital part of the state’s economy.

Our final article for this issue brings together tragedy—the death of 120 men, women, and children at Mountain Meadows in 1857—and entertainment in an interesting account of how the southern Utah massacre became a popular attraction used by Buffalo Bill Cody in his wild west shows that toured much of the United States and Europe. With secession and statehood, education and religious commitment, tourism and economic development, murder and entertainment, our Summer issue paints a varied picture of Utah’s past.

(ABOVE) A World War I billboard urging United states citizens to purchase war bonds.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

(RIGhT) A Utah Celery Week Exhibit in 1935.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

BY CHAD M. ORTOn

During the 1860-61 Secession Crisis that ushered in the American Civil War, William H. Hooper, Utah’s Congressional delegate to the Thirty-sixth Congress, made an attempt to obtain statehood for his constituents. Largely overlooked in the accounts of Utah’s long struggle to become a state, this attempt was a response to unfolding events and was undertaken at a time when national concerns seemed to present a unique opportunity for success. 1 While Hooper hoped that Union supporters would reward Mormon loyalty to the United States of America, in the end the predominant Mormon view regarding the United States Constitution would not allow him to consider the territory’s only real opportunity to become a state at this time–in the emerging Confederate States of America.

If things had originally gone as planned, the forty-seven-year-old Hooper, a non-polygamous slaveholder and Southern sympathizer, would not have been

William H. Hooper.

Chad M.

1 Overviews of Utah's statehood efforts can be found in Edward Leo Lyman, Political Deliverance: The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986); Gustive O. Larson, The “Americanization” of Utah for Statehood (San Marino: The Huntington Library, 1970); and Howard R. Lamar, “Statehood for Utah: A Different Path,” Utah Historical Quarterly 39 (Fall 1971): 307-27.

Orton is an archivist and history specialist with the Church History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He holds a master’s degree in history from Brigham Young University.

“We Will Admit You as a State”: William H. Hooper, Utah and the Secession Crisis

Utah's chief proponent for statehood during America’s great national crisis. Initially, Brigham Young nominated Horace S. Eldredge as a candidate to replace John M. Bernhisel as Utah’s Congressional delegate. At the time of his appointment, however, Eldredge was out of the territory, having previously been called to oversee Latter-day Saint interests in St. Louis, Missouri. As the August 1859 election approached and Eldredge had not returned to Utah, Young nominated Hooper as candidate instead, and he was overwhelmingly elected, receiving all but twenty-three of the nearly six thousand certified votes.2

William Henry Hooper was born in Cambridge, Maryland, on Christmas Day 1813, the son of Henry and Mary Hooper and the grandson of William Hooper, a representative to the Second Continental Congress from North Carolina and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. When Utah’s future delegate was only three years old his father died, and the family subsequently struggled to make ends meet. At the age of fourteen William accepted full-time employment in a local store to help support his widowed mother and sisters. A natural merchant and financier, he had opened his own store by the time he was eighteen. In 1835 William sold his business and moved to the American frontier of Illinois, where he again engaged in mercantile pursuits. He later built and captained several steamboats on the Mississippi River until an 1849 dock fire at St. Louis destroyed twenty-three vessels, including the last steamer he owned, leaving him nearly penniless. Following this setback he signed on to become the Salt Lake City agent for the mercantile firm of Holladay & Warner.

Although initially viewing Utah as a temporary stop en route to California, things changed when he met and fell in love with Mary Ann Knowlton. They were married December 24, 1852, shortly after he was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He subsequently opened his own mercantile establishment and became active in Utah politics, serving in the territorial legislature and as Secretary Pro Tem of the territory prior to his election to Congress.

Like many others in his native Maryland, Hooper came from a slaveholding family and he owned at least two slaves in Utah. In April 1859, a slave he owned died as a result of injuries suffered during an altercation with a fellow slave.3 Later that year, and shortly before he left for Washington to begin his service as delegate, Hooper purchased another slave.4

2 While the fact that Eldredge was out of the territory and it was not known if he would accept the position played a role in Hooper’s nomination, Young may have also had second thoughts about Eldredge. When Young first proposed Eldredge as delegate, James Ferguson “objected to him on the ground that he was deficient in education and suggested A. Carrington and said that he had conversed with a great many people in relation to Eldridge and found him generally opposed by them.” Historian’s Office Journal, July 1, 1859, LDS Church History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City.

For more information on the 1859 election see Stanford O. Cazier, “The Life of William Henry Hooper, Merchant Statesman” (Master's thesis, University of Utah, 1956), 36-40.

3 Juanita Brooks, ed., On the Mormon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout 2 vols., reprint edition (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1982), 2:695, 700, 702.

A man of ability and action known for his practical wisdom, Hooper proved to be a good choice as delegate. Shortly after he had reached the nation’s capital for the First Session of the Thirty-sixth Congress, the Baltimore Republican wrote that the Utah Democrat was “a man of superior intelligence, and energy, and activity, fine manners and address, and who in his frank and open intercourse will do much–whatever may be the faults of his people–to remove those prejudices which–whether rational or not–have hitherto prevailed against the Mormon people.”5 During his first session in Washington, Hooper diplomatically and vigorously pursued the interests of his constituents to a satisfactory outcome on several pending issues, including obtaining funds which had been promised the territory. However, regarding the most important issue to the territory’s residents–statehood–he was not successful.

Soon after the Mormon pioneers began settling the Great Basin, statehood became a primary concern. At this time in American history, residents of states were allowed to elect their own leaders while the President of the United States chose the governor and other leading officers for territories, frequently appointing individuals from outside the territory as a political reward. Desirous of electing their own officials, in 1848 Mormon leaders under the direction of Brigham Young created a constitution for a proposed State of Deseret and the following year petitioned Congress to make them a state. The hoped-for statehood, however, fell victim to the Compromise of 1850 which Congress passed in an effort to help slow the growing sectional divide in the nation over slavery. As part of the Compromise, Congress created Utah Territory and opened the territory to slavery under the principle of “popular sovereignty.”6 President Millard Fillmore appointed a mixture of local residents and political appointees to lead the territory, with Brigham Young as governor. Clashes between the Mormons and non-Mormon appointees from outside the territory subsequently followed in part because of the Mormon practice of polygamy, once again prompting Utah residents to make another attempt at statehood.

In 1856 the Utah Legislature drafted a second constitution and memorial for a State of Deseret that Delegate Bernhisel was to present to Congress.

4 Records, 1852-59, Salt Lake City Recorders’ Office, MS A5290 typescript, Utah State Historical Society.

5 As printed in the Deseret News, February 18, 1860. A contemporary Mormon historian wrote of Hooper: “The great advantage which Hooper possessed, and which enabled him to master the situation, was in [his] thorough appreciation of the views and shapings of both sides. Therefore, while the delegate was prepared to stand by his people, in defense of all their constitutional rights, and to ward off any new difficulty, he was equally ready to ‘see eye to eye’ with members of Congress.” Edward W. Tullidge, Life of Brigham Young; or, Utah and Her Founders (New York: s.n., 1876), 384.

6 For an overview of slavery in Utah see Dennis L. Lythgoe, “Negro Slavery in Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 39 (Winter 1971): 40-54. See also, Christopher B. Rich, Jr., “The True Policy for Utah: Servitude, Slavery, and “An Act in Relation to Service,” Utah Historical Quarterly 80 (Winter 2012): 54-74.

In addition to slavery, polygamy was also legal in Utah Territory under the provisions of “popular sovereignty.” For discussions regarding the Mormon practice of plural marriage see Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1986) and B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press: 1992).

Before he was able to act, however, outside events again undermined the territory’s statehood attempt. At the same time that Utah leaders were drafting their constitution, the newly-formed Republican Party linked Mormon polygamy together with southern slavery in their 1856 platform and called upon Congress to overturn the principle of popular sovereignty and “prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism–polygamy and slavery.”7 This latest manifestation of growing sentiments against the Latter-day Saints caused Bernhisel to conclude that a statehood attempt during the Thirty-fourth Congress would be futile. He informed Young that the prevailing attitude was that Utah “was never to be admitted into the Union with her ‘peculiar institution’” of polygamy, which was widely viewed as “a holy horror.”8

While conflicts with territorial officials had inspired Mormon leaders to pursue statehood, these conflicts would further negate hopes for success during the Thirty-fifth Congress. In late spring 1857 President James Buchanan, acting upon reports of former territorial officials that the Mormons were in open rebellion against the government, ordered twentyfive hundred troops to Utah to serve as a posse comitatus for newly appointed governor Alfred Cumming. Young, having received no official word as to why troops had been sent, placed the Territory under martial law and mobilized the local militia during the so-called “Utah War.” After the army became bogged down near Fort Bridger in present-day Wyoming in the fall of 1857, peace commissioners negotiated a settlement.9 The Utah War added fuel to the oft-repeated claim that the Mormons maintained an adversarial relationship with the rest of the United States.

In spite of growing sentiments against polygamy and the cloud of suspicion that hung over the territory, Young still wanted Utah’s petition for statehood presented to Congress.10 Because Bernhisel had not done so, the responsibility fell to Hooper as Utah’s new delegate.

The First Session of the Thirty-sixth Congress had convened less than a month when Young wrote Hooper in early January 1860 reminding him “at the earliest favorable opportunity, to present our memorial, Constitution and other documents pertaining to our being admitted as a

7 Donald Bruce Johnson, comp., National Party Platforms, 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 1:27.

8 John M. Bernhisel to Brigham Young, March 17, 1857. All correspondence between Brigham Young and William H. Hooper and between Young and John M. Bernhisel is part of the Utah Delegate Files, Brigham Young Office Files, LDS Church History Library. Unless otherwise noted, other letters to and from Hooper are from the William H. Hooper Letterpress Copybooks, 1859-63, LDS Church History Library.

9 Studies of the Utah Expedition include Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960; and William P. MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, Part I: A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858, Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier, vol. 10 (Norman: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 2008).

10 After nearly two years of inaction on Utah’s statehood petition, a frustrated Young wrote to Bernhisel in 1858 imploring him to “do as we request you, if you have to leave Washington within half an hour afterwards.”Young to Bernhisel, May 6, 1858.

Brigham Young in 1855.

State.” 11 Later that month, Hooper was able to persuade Senator James W. Grimes, an Iowa Republican, to submit the statehood memorial drafted by the Utah legislature in 1856. Hooper was also able to discuss the issue before the Senate Committee on Territories. 12 Nevertheless, the mood of Congress towards Utah and the Mormons during the winter of 1859-60 did not present a “favorable opportunity” for success. Feelings in Washington against the Mormons were still running high and before the session was over, Hooper would write Young that there was not “a shadow of a chance” that Utah would be granted statehood.13

At the same time he was fruitlessly pursuing statehood, Hooper warned those back home: “Look out for squalls towards Utah from Congress.”14 Hooper’s warning proved correct as Congress during the session considered several ways to address what was being called “the Mormon problem.”

Just as he had done in the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Congresses, Vermont Republican Justin Morrill introduced a bill that would outlaw polygamy in the territories. Whereas the bill never made it out of committee in previous sessions, the House overwhelmingly passed the measure, although it was never brought before the Senate.15

11

Brigham Young to William H. Hooper, January 5, 1860.

12 This statehood effort is briefly discussed in Richard D. Poll, "The Mormon Question, 1850-1865: A Study in Politics and Public Opinion" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1958), 231-32.

13 Hooper to Young, March 20, 1860.

14 Hooper to George A Smith, March 27, 1860, George A. Smith Papers, LDS Church History Library.

15 Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 1st Session (1860): 1150-1151, 1409-1412, 1492-1501, 15121523, 1540-1544, 1557-1559; Appendix, 181-202; Richard D. Poll, "The Twin Relic: A Study of Mormon

As part of the debate on the Morrill Act, one member of the House proposed that Congress dissolve Utah Territory and create Nevada Territory out of the western portion and Jefferson Territory from the eastern section. 16 It was hoped that through this action the Mormons would be divided between the two new territories in such a way that the Latter-day Saints would become a permanent minority in each, thus allowing the majority of the territories’ residents, in keeping with the principles of popular sovereignty, to outlaw polygamy. The idea, however, never progressed beyond the talking stage.

During the closing days of the session a Republican-sponsored joint resolution was also introduced that called for commissioners to “negotiate with the Mormons for the purchase of their possessions” with the understanding that Mormons “shall remove within a reasonable time from without the limits and jurisdiction of the American Republic.” The passage of this resolution was urged because the government had a “duty to protect itself from internal as well as external foes.” 17 As with other measures directed towards Utah, nothing became of this resolution.

Following the end of the First Session, Hooper returned to his Utah home and a brief season among friends. After spending the summer of 1860 in Salt Lake City, he returned to Washington, D.C., in time for the opening of the Second Session of the Thirty-Sixth Congress in early December. To his surprise, upon reaching the nation’s capitol he found feelings regarding Utah and its inhabitants seemingly different than during the previous session. William Staines, a Mormon missionary en route to Europe accompanied Hooper on the opening day. When Hooper introduced Staines on the floor of the House, a “great many of the Members . . . chatted with him freely and socially regretted he had not a week to spare.”18 After a week in Washington, Hooper wrotethat “much courtesy is . . . extended to Utah's delegate this time.”19 So widespread was the goodwill that Hooper informed Young, “Utah’s delegate is much respected and politicians have generally come to the conclusion that the Mormons have been much lied about, and are not half as bad as they have been represented to be.”20

This goodwill, courtesy, and respect was shown by both Republicans and Democrats, northerners and southerners, supporters and opponents of the Mormons’ right to practice polygamy; indeed, there were few in Congress during the early days of the session who publicly had anything negative to

Polygamy and the Campaign by the Government of the United States for Its Abolition, 1852-1890" (Master's thesis, Texas Christian University, 1939), 97, 100-111.

16 Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 1st Session (1860), 1411-1412.

17 Ibid., 1858.

18 Hooper to Young, December 4, 1860.

19 Hooper to E. Smith and J. Ferguson, December 10, 1860.

20 Hooper to Young, December 11, 1860.

say about either the Mormons or polygamy. The reason for this favorable treatment was the threatened dissolution of the Union brought about by the November 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as president.

As Hooper observed, “All sides and parties agree that a dissolution is inevitable, the great question is now to what extent the Secession of States will extend, and what will be the consequences.”21 Indeed, the only constants in the near daily secession reports during December 1860 were that the six states of the deep South–Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana–would leave the Union. With so much seemingly still at stake, nothing was being left to chance. Union and Confederate supporters used their time in Washington trying to influence the remaining slave states, as well as territories open to slavery, toward an outcome that would be to their benefit: secessionists lobbying to create the largest possible Confederacy and Union supporters working to limit possible secession, thus ensuring the ultimate supremacy of the United States of America.

Hooper soon discovered that perceptions of Mormon disloyalty and differences with the national government concerning political appointments, coupled with the Republican’s “twin relics” platform that linked the Mormons’ interests with those of the Confederacy, had placed Utah Territory in the middle of the secession question. While far removed from the emerging Southern nation in both location and culture, the Mormons were being closely identified with the Southern cause. Early in the session Hooper noted: “Utah’s geographical position is much spoken of, and what will be Utah's course. The secessionists say of course Utah will go for secession. The Union party says that geographical position with the great political future that is in store for her will induce her to go for the Union.”22

Initially Hooper chose to defuse talk about Utah secession, hoping to alleviate fears and change the popular image of the Mormons. He initially responded to inquiries regarding what course the Mormons would take by stating that they had a “strong attachment to the Constitution,” which they “loved and respected” and considered “the work of God,” and that they had “Union sentiments.”23 Hooper also acknowledged that while the Mormons had difficulties with the national government, he “consider[ed] we can redress our grievances better in the Union than out of it.”24 This course, Hooper reported to Young, was highly commended by Unionists and

21 Hooper to Charles C. Rich, December 29, 1860.

22 Hooper to E. Smith and J. Ferguson, December 10, 1860.

23 Hooper to Young, December 4, 1860; Hooper to James H. Martineau, January 8, 1861.

Although Mormon rhetoric during this time was often antagonistic towards the actions of government leaders who they felt were undermining the Constitution, theologically the Mormons could not abandon a nation that they viewed as having been established by God nor a Constitution that Mormon scripture declared was written “by the hands of wise men” whom God had “raised up unto this very purpose.” The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, rev. ed., (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1982), 101:80.

24 Hooper to George Q. Cannon, December 16, 1860.

prompted one politician to proclaim that “it afforded him pleasure to find Utah for the Union as secession in the center of the country would be serious.”25

In addition to publicly proclaiming the Mormon position, Hooper believed that it was important to present some tangible evidence of Mormon loyalty. Consequently, he determined to present the 1856 constitution and memorial asking for the admission of Utah as the State of Deseret. “From this,” he wrote, “they can fully understand where we stand, when others are trying to get out, we are trying to get in. Am I right? Eh!”26 To ensure that Republicans fully appreciated the significance of this statehood request, Hooper determined to wait until after the first secession occurred before presenting Utah’s petition. In the meantime, he informed Young, he was expressing “our love, and our wish to adhere to the Constitution and the Union, and as evidence we now ask to be made one of the family.”27

As Hooper informed fellow Congressmen of his intentions, he began to believe that the political situation had made statehood an attainable end. In statements that reflected more rhetoric than reality, several Republicans told Hooper that they “would gladly ‘swap’ the Gulf States for Utah.” 28 During his second week in Washington, Hooper noted that “at least upon Utah's admission there is a strong feeling to let her in, even by men who hooted at the idea a year ago. My impression is that the House will vote for her admission.”29 The feeling that Utah’s delegate received was that threequarters of the Republicans would vote for admission.30

In a letter subsequently published in the Deseret News, Utah’s residents were told of both the possibility of statehood and the reason that politicians were more receptive to Utah’s petition in December 1860 than in years past:

I think that when the Delegate from Utah presents again the Constitution of Deseret and asks for admission into the Union, there will be nothing like the former shrugging of shoulders and violent speeches. . . . This is a particularly trying time for politicians, and not at all favorable for refusing a friendly offer of adhesion. To be brief;–the thought is evidently in the minds of the leading politicians, that if now refused, Utah will be likely to take her own course.31

While Hooper was responding to unfolding events in the nation’s capital by pushing statehood, two thousand miles away Young was advocating just such a course. He also instructed Hooper to advocate for the right of territorial home rule if statehood was not attainable: “[We] trust . . . that you will use all the influence at your control that our officers may be elected by

25

Hooper to Young, December 4, 1860.

26 Ibid. (Emphasis in original.)

27 Ibid., December 11, 1860.

28 Hooper to George Q. Cannon, December 16, 1860.

29 Hooper to E. Smith and J. Ferguson, December 10, 1860.

30 Hooper to George Q. Cannon, December 16, 1860.

31 “Interesting from the East,” Deseret News, December 26, 1860.

the people, as they of right should be, or . . . that they be appointed from among our citizens.”32

Before Young's letter reached Hooper, additional events were unfolding in Washington that pointed towards the promise of Utah statehood or the right of the territory’s residents to choose their own officials. In an effort to ward off secession, a special Committee of Thirty-three Representatives—one from each state but South Carolina, which refused to participate—was appointed to seek a solution. Although little resulted from the committee's work, it did draft a bill as a conciliatory gesture to the slave states that would admit New Mexico as a slave state. Two Republicans, fearful that this effort was only addressing part of the problem, set forth measures aimed at keeping the territories in the Union. Representative John Sherman of Ohio, the younger brother of William Tecumseh Sherman, proposed a bill which would allow all territories to be admitted as states regardless of population, provided they had a republican form of government. 33 Representative William Kellogg of Illinois was not disposed to offer statehood, but was willing to allow the territories to be self-governing by giving them the power to elect their own officials rather than having them appointed.34

In light of the Mormon’s past difficulties, it is not surprising that Hooper would write of Kellogg’s measure, “This to us would be almost sovereignty.”35 What is surprising is that Hooper would boldly claim that if either measure passed, “The credit . . . is due to Utah.”36

Even should Sherman’s or Kellogg’s bills fail to become law, the future still looked bright. Hooper had heard from a number of sources that

32 Young to Hooper, November 15, 1860.

33 Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 2nd Session (1861), 77-78.

34 Hooper to Young, December 18, 1860.

35 Hooper to W. H. Dame, December 16, 1860.

36 Hooper to Young, December 18, 1860.

Abraham Lincoln.

president-elect Lincoln intended to allow the territories to choose their own officials.37 The enthusiasm generated by these positive overtures caused Hooper to conclude, “Of better times coming . . . is but a little longer.”38

While the signs led Hooper to believe that statehood was attainable, he also learned that it would not necessarily be easy. As with previous attempts, opposition was being raised to Utah becoming a state. The opposition this time was from Southerners who wanted to prevent the Mormon-controlled territory from uniting with Union supporters.

Because Northerners controlled the House and had expressed wide-spread support for Utah statehood, the numbers seemed sufficient to overcome Southern opposition. The outcome in the Senate, however, where Radical Southerners wielded a powerful influence, was less certain. However, as Hooper saw it, once states began to secede from the Union and Southern politicians began returning home, it would only be a matter of time until the Senate was controlled by a majority who would vote for Utah statehood. Once he had put forth Utah’s petition, he only had to wait until Northerners controlled both chambers and would make the Mormon territory a state rather than risk secession in the west.39

All of this led the Mormon delegate to conclude privately, “The peculiar turn which matters have taken politically has, I think, changed their views on polygamy very considerable ”40 But in a more subdued moment, Hooper wrote what turned out to be the most accurate summation of the situation when, after reporting the impending possibility of statehood, he simply noted, “I may be mistaken.”41

On December 31, 1860, eleven days after South Carolina seceded from the Union, Hooper took advantage of a call for business from the territories and presented Utah's memorial and constitution. Although he was able to get both documents published and submitted to the Committee on Territories for study and recommendation, objection was made to the memorial being read before the House.42 As expected, the objection came from a “Southern quarter” of the House.43

Having presented Utah’s statehood petition, Hoper did not sit idly by. While he realized that Southern opposition could be overcome through continued secession, he worried that Northerners otherwise willing to act might object to the 1856 date on the memorial and constitution. He concluded that the date might not necessarily present a problem if Utah's current legislature endorsed the 1856 constitution. On the same day he

37 Ibid., November 23, 1860.

38 Hooper to W. H. Dame, December 16, 1860.

39 Hooper to E. Smith and J. Ferguson, December 10, 1860.

40 Hooper to Young, December 11, 1860. (Emphasis in original.)

41 Hooper to George Q. Cannon, December 16, 1860.

42 Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 2nd Session (1861), 219.

43 Hooper to Young, January 4, 1861.

initiated Utah's statehood attempt, Hooper penned a letter to George A. Smith, a prominent member of the Utah Legislature, expressing his concern and recommending immediate action to endorse the 1856 constitution.44

Hooper was also not above political gamesmanship and playing upon prevailing fears to help push the cause of statehood. There were times when he noted that “to refuse us with the crisis now pending–when dissolution is inevitable–may drive us to the alternative of setting up for ourselves and carving out our own destiny.” 45 Young would subsequently write his delegate encouraging him to adopt a similar policy: “The Republicans, if wide awake, will, I think, be smart enough to understand the policy of laboring for our admission, and act accordingly. Should any Member have any dubiety on this point, you can remark to him that, in these hurrying times, Utah, after patiently waiting so long, may not feel disposed to again trouble Congress with a petition for admission.”46

Both Young and Hooper knew that this posturing was hollow and that Hooper could not emphatically press the issue when challenged. Young never seriously entertained the possibility of leaving the Union and even worried that "plausible pretexts against us would tend more than aught else to heal the present breach and unite them in a crusade to Utah, like the Irishman and his wife, who both pitched into the man who parted them when fighting."47

Even had Young intended to carry out this threat, the political landscape changed in January 1861. As the possibility of civil war loomed larger, the same secessions from the Union that pushed Hooper to petition for statehood now persuaded Northerners to reevaluate their attitudes regarding the Mormons. As Southern delegations began leaving Washington, D.C., for home and their anticipated Southern nation, they seemed to have taken Union support for Utah statehood with them. Republicans, initially anxious about secession, were now becoming more resolute with each new defection. Consequently, Sherman's measure granting statehood did not make it out of committee. One week after presenting the Mormons' petition for statehood, Hooper conceded that he had "but a little hope" of Utah being admitted that session.48

44 William H. Hooper to George A. Smith, December 31, 1860. Brigham Young, also anticipated concerns regarding the date on the constitution and wrote his delegate four days before Hooper submitted Utah’s petition recommending that he “alter the dates” on it. Young to Hooper, December 27, 1860. A week later he again wrote Hooper explaining his thinking: “In relation to the papers in your hands touching the admission of Utah, I do not consider that their date effects the matter, for the date holds equally good as though made by the present assembly; and from that you are privileged to make the date to please yourself. . . . The Assembly may see proper to memorialize Congress upon the subject, not that it can materially aid your operations, if at all; and there is not much prospect of its reaching you in time.” Young to Hooper, January 3, 1861. (Emphasis in original.)

45 Hooper to Young, December 11, 1860.

46 Young to Hooper, January 3, 1861.

47 Ibid., April 11, 1861.

48 Hooper to James H. Martineau, January 8, 1861.

United States Capitol, under construction in 1860.

By the end of January, support for Utah becoming one of the states in the Union was nearly non-existent. On January 30, 1861, the Committee on Territories informed Hooper that it would recommend against Utah becoming a state. The reason given was a lack of population. “I told them,” Hooper reported, “when they did not want to do anything, it was always easy to find an excuse.”49 The real reason was evident. The impending national crisis had not really changed feelings concerning the Mormons and polygamy.

In spite of this setback, Hooper had not given up on statehood as either a means of showing Utah loyalty or as the ultimate end result. During the first part of February he continued to stump for Utah statehood. Rather than playing upon the nation’s suspicion of the Mormons leaving the Union, he returned to emphasizing his territory's loyalty to the Union, representing “her as being strong ‘Union’ in feeling, without being ultra,” and declaring the Mormons’ willingness “to become one of, and to share the fate of the States in this their darkest hour.”50 But given the Mormon practice of polygamy, none of the approaches Hooper used were going to work. As long as Republicans were willing to risk war with those who clung to the twin relic of slavery, they were unlikely to readily embrace those who practiced the other twin relic.51 On February 15, 1861, Hooper wrote Young reporting that Utah would not be granted statehood.52

While the possibility of Utah becoming a state in the Union was fading,

49 Hooper to Young, January 30, 1861.

50 Hooper to George Q. Cannon, February 1, 1861. (Emphasis in original.)

51 What Mormon historian Orson F. Whitney wrote of a later statehood attempt seemingly would also apply to the events of 1861: "Had the Mormons been willing to abandon polygamy . . . thus meeting the Republican Party halfway, it is not improbable that Utah, in view of her loyal attitude, might have been admitted into the Union." Orson F. Whitney, History of Utah, 4 vols. (Salt Lake City: George Q. Cannon and Sons, 1892-1904), 2:59.

52 Hooper to Young, February 15, 1861.

another statehood option presented itself. On at least two occasions during the secession crisis, Southern leaders, in an attempt to strengthen their position, invited Utah to become one of the Confederate states.

The first invitation grew out of a nationwide financial panic resulting from the secession crisis. Because members of Congress were unable to draw a salary, on December 24, 1860, Hooper wrote Orlando Davis, a member of the Mississippi legislature and a lawyer handling the settlement of an estate from which Hooper was to receive payment, to inquire about money owed him. Hooper closed his letter by informing the Mississippian: “Utah . . . will make an effort to come into the Union (if there is one left) under the Constitution made and submitted to her citizens in l856 to which until the present has been treated with disdain and a deaf ear has been given to her many supplications.”53

The importance of statehood to the Mormons was not lost upon Davis. On January 13, 1861, four days after the Mississippi Legislature passed the ordinance of secession which he had helped draft, Davis responded to Hooper's letter and addressed Utah's statehood desire:

If the Western states will come into a government that protects the institution of slavery, we desire a political connection with them. But it is only on condition that they let our negroes alone, and tolerate our rights with them in all respects. . . . Join our Southern Confederacy and we will admit you as a state. If we can stand your plurality wife system, you can tolerate our slavery.54

Davis did not indicate by what authority he made this invitation and could offer statehood. Whether he spoke for his fellow secessionists in the four states which had left the Union at the time, or whether he reflected only his belief in the Southern cause, Hooper did not dismiss the offer out of hand, likely because of another statehood overture which added validity to Davis's invitation.

Near the end of the Civil War, Mormon Apostle John Taylor told of a different invitation presented to Hooper during the secession crisis. According to Taylor, Hooper “was approached by two members of Congress from the South who said that [the Mormons] had grievances to redress, and that then was the time to have them redressed, stating what great support it would give the Southern cause if Utah was to rise in rebellion against the government.” Taylor reported that Hooper replied that “[the Mormons] had difficulties with the government, but [they] calculated they would be righted in the government or [they] would endure them.”55

Taking such a position did not come easily for Hooper. In early January

53 Hooper to Orlando Davis, December 24, 1860.

54 Orlando Davis to Hooper, January 13, 1861.

55 “Remarks, by Elder John Taylor,” Deseret News, March 29, 1865. Taylor, who succeeded Brigham Young as Mormon church president, notes that he had only learned about this invitation the day prior to giving his March 5, 1865, discourse.

Additional information about Hooper’s meeting with these Southern leaders is not known. While it is

1861 Hooper had written to an old boyhood friend, “You and myself occupy something alike in this trouble–both the natives of slave states, and to a certain extent sympathetic with them. . . . so far as the injuries the South have received from the North. But we can never side with her breaking up this our Fatherland, no Never–Never.”56

While Hooper would take a similar stand when he replied to Davis’s letter, he would not be so emphatic, largely because of the change in fortune regarding Utah statehood. When Hooper had written his childhood friend, statehood seemed feasible; when he responded to Davis, the possibility of becoming a state in the Union no longer existed.

On February 19, 1861, two days after the Confederate States of America was established, Hooper responded to Davis’s invitation. While Hooper’s answer to Davis is a poignant plea against a course which he saw leading towards war, it also illustrates Hooper’s conflicting loyalties. Even as he condemned the secession movement and asked Southerners to consider coming back into the Union, the Mormon delegate left open the possibility that Utah might leave it at some future time. It was as if Hooper had found himself caught between his religion, which would not allow him to promise Mormon support, and his Southern sentiment, which would not allow him to close the door on the possibility:

That the South has been wronged, I do not doubt, but that the States should separate is deplorable. . . .

Hold open the door for compromise, be reasonable in your demands, trust in your

likely that Hooper, who kept a “daily journal and endeavor[ed] to note down every item which I think would be useful as a matter of History,” wrote about what transpired in his journal, that record is currently not extant. Hooper to George A. Smith, December 31, 1860.

56 Hooper to “Vick,” January 7, 1861.

Construction work on the US Capitol Dome in 1860.

LIBRARY OF COnGRESS

God to soften the hearts of men that their eyes may be open to a sense of their duty and the Nation may be made joyful by again receiving you as Sisters. . . .

As you allude I have presented the Constitution of Utah and a memorial praying to be admitted [as a state]. This we have done for the last five years, as deaf ears have been turned to our entreaties and where we have asked for flesh, they have given us a stone, for fish, a serpent. Again, even in this hour of trouble of our mother country, we plead for our rights. . . .

Should Congress refuse to admit us . . . I suppose that we have but to await the will of the rulers, but it might be that the child will become restless in the nursing clothes and seek to free itself from encumbrances, and be allured forth, through enterprise, to carve out its own future.57

Even though no realistic possibility of statehood remained in either the Union or the Confederacy, by the time Hooper responded to Davis he was once again making plans to re-submit Utah's constitution. This was not done out of any delusions about achieving statehood, but rather in hopes that he could use it to help preserve the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land.

Although Hooper had initially welcomed and courted the widespread spirit of compromise in hopes of gaining statehood for Utah, by late January 1861 he had come to see the paradox of trying to save the Union by means of compromises which ultimately undermined the Constitution and weakened the nation. To compromise with border states and territories, he concluded, was “tantamount to agreeing to let the seceding states alone,” an arrangement which would not guarantee the permanency of the nation.58 If the Constitution was supreme, Union supporters could not weaken its principles by giving in to secessionist threats.

By the middle of February 1861, the enabling act drafted by the Committee of Thirty-three admitting New Mexico as a state was ready for debate in the House. In anticipation that Northerners might seriously consider passing this compromise bill, Hooper prepared an amendment that would admit Utah as a state. In doing this, he hoped that the negative feelings regarding Mormons and polygamy would cast a shadow over the bill and thus override any desire to pass this conciliatory gesture. “I have no hope for success,” he wrote Young, “but I can get the sense of the House, and I think kill the New Mexico bill.”59 In addition to killing the bill, Hooper, ever the optimist, noted another benefit. “We will get the first vote upon the admission of Utah.”60 But even in this Hooper was denied. At the time the New Mexico enabling act was presented in the House on February 18, Hooper informed his colleagues that he would introduce his amendment at the appropriate time. When that time arrived on March 1, a motion was put forth almost immediately to table the New Mexico bill.

57 Hooper to Orlando Davis, February 19, 1861.

58 Hooper to Young, January 30, 1861.

59 Ibid., February 15, 1861.

60 Ibid., February 28, 1861.

Shortly thereafter Hooper got the floor, but strong objection was raised to his presenting his amendment. It was all academic, however, as a few minutes later the House voted to table the New Mexico enabling act.61

While all hope for statehood had vanished, the possibility of home rule continued to burn bright. Although William Kelley’s bill never made it out of committee, a new opportunity presented itself. As in the previous session, bills were introduced which would create Nevada Territory from the western portion of Utah and a territory from the eastern section to be called Colorado Territory. Unlike the measure brought forward in the previous session, however, these new territories were to be created in addition to Utah Territory rather than replacing it. While these bills would dramatically decrease the size of Utah Territory, they both initially contained provisions which would allow territorial residents the opportunityof choosing their own officials. If these bills passed, Hooper learned, a similar privilege would be extended to territories already in existence.62

Hooper shared Young’s view that the right of a territory to be selfgoverning had been unjustly usurped by the president and Congress and that constitutional law needed to be restored.63 Along these lines Young had previously informed Hooper that he was willing to see the size of Utah reduced in exchange for the right of self rule.64 However, when Colorado Territory was created on February 28, 1861, and Nevada Territory two days later, Congress had not modified the method by which leaders of territories were chosen.65

With this exclusion, Hooper’s last hope for home rule that year was extinguished in the legislative branch but the possibility of home rule through the executive branch remained. Following the March 4, 1861, inauguration of Lincoln, Hooper turned his attention to the new president. Because Utah’s governor Alfred Cumming, a native of Georgia, had indicated that he would return to his native state in the event it seceded, Hooper began lobbying for Young to replace Cumming as governor, a suggestion “hooted at by some, cursed at by others, commended by many.”66 On March 11, Hooper went to meet with the new chief executive

61 Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 2nd Session (1861), 999, 1327.

62 Hooper to Young, January 30, 1861.

63 In early January 1861, Young wrote Hooper “that right [of self-rule] is inherent in the people in Territories, as well as in the States, so far as the Constitution or Constitutional laws are concerned; and they have been deprived of that right through the arbitrary exercise of an usage by England to the Colonies.” Young to Hooper, January 3, 1861.

64 Young had instructed Hooper prior to the First Session, “In no event suffer boundaries to interfere with our admission, unless they undertake to run said boundary line through Great Salt Lake City.” Young to Hooper, September 16, 1859.

65 Upon learning of the creation of Colorado and Nevada territories, Young wrote Hooper: “We are advised that Colorado Territory is organized, with 109 for its west boundary, which suits us well, and we are in hopes that Nevada is also organized with 115 or 116, we do not much care which, for its east boundary, for that organization would rid our ears of much clamor in our western borders.” Young to Hooper, March 21, 1861.

66 Hooper to Young, March 12, 1861.

regarding the appointment of territorial officials for Utah.

For three hours Hooper waited unsuccessfully to meet with the president, “such was the crowd.”67 While Hooper would eventually meet with Lincoln on the subject, the rebellious Southern states and the establishment of the first Republican administration took precedence for the new president over Utah.

Shortly after the firing on Fort Sumter, Young wrote Hooper stating that “if not too late” Utah’s delegate might again suggest that it would be in the government's best interest to appoint officials from within the territory, inasmuch as “territories as well as states are liable to become restive in these exciting times.”68 However, it was too late, except on terms the government had established, terms that Mormons would be unable to meet until Wilford Woodruff issued his famous manifesto nearly thirty years later publicly pronouncing the beginning of the end of the practice of polygamy.69

Although Young would write Hooper that “appoint as [the president] may, it would appear to be an ill chosen time to again endeavor to foist upon us broken down political hacks and the political hungry and poor from outside our borders,” that is exactly what happened.70 When Lincoln finally got around to replacing Cumming in the fall of 1861, he appointed John Dawson whose “political ‘qualifications’ for the job exceeded any other obvious personal qualifications,” and who would leave Utah under a cloud after serving less than a month as governor. 71 Lincoln would

67 Ibid.

68 Young to Hooper, April 25, 1861.

69 For overviews of the Manifesto see Henry J. Wolfinger, “A Reexamination of the Woodruff Manifesto in the Light of Utah Constitutional History,” Utah Historical Quarterly 39 (Fall 1971): 328-49; Jan Shipps, “The Principle Revoked: A Closer Look at the Demise of Plural Marriage,” Journal of Mormon History 11 (1984): 65-77; and Thomas G. Alexander, Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff, a Mormon Prophet (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1991): 261-73.

70 Young to Hooper, April 18, 1861.

71 Mark E. Neely, “President Lincoln, Polygamy, and the Civil War: The Case of Dawson and

Justin Morrill.

subsequently appoint two other governors and other presidents would continue to appoint territorial officials until statehood was finally obtained in 1896.

When Hooper left again for his mountain home following the end of the Second Session of the Thirty-Sixth Congress, concerns regarding Mormon loyalty to the Union had largely been allayed. 72 While the rhetoricaltie between polygamy and slavery still existed, an actual alliance had not been created—but only because Hooper and the Mormons would not seriously entertain the possibility of such a coalition. The Republicancontrolled Congress was still opposed to polygamy and in 1862 they overwhelmingly passed Justin Morrill’s anti-polygamy bill. Although Abraham Lincoln chose not to enforce the act during the Civil War, allowing the Mormons to ignore the law in exchange for not becoming directly involved in the conflict on the side of the Confederacy, it was the opening salvo in what would eventually be an extended anti-polygamy campaign.73

During the next thirty years, the other petitions the Utah legislature drafted regarding statehood would likewise fail to receive Congressional approval.74 Only when polygamy seemed to follow slavery along the path to extinction would statehood for Utah again seem as possible as it had for one small bright moment during America’s dark winter of 1860-61.

Deseret,”Lincoln Lore 1644 (February 1975): 2. For an overview of Utah-related events during the Civil War see E. B. Long, The Saints and the Union: Utah Territory during the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981).

72 When the telegraph was completed to Utah in October 1861, the first message Brigham Young sent noted that “Utah has not seceded but is firm for the Constitution.” Partly because of Hooper’s steadfastness to this position during the secession crisis, Young’s message failed to receive widespread notice. For a look at how Young’s message was reported see Gaylon L. Caldwell, “‘Utah Has Not Seceded’: A Footnote to Local History,” Utah Historical Quarterly 23 (April 1958): 171-75.

73 President Lincoln related to T. B. H. Stenhouse that when he was a boy and was clearing the land on his farm he came to a log that was "too hard to split, too wet to burn, and too heavy to move," so he plowed around it, and that was the position he planned to take regarding the Mormons and their practice of polygamy: "I will let them alone, if they will let alone.”

Preston Nibley, Brigham Young: The Man and His Work (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1937), 369; Young to George Q. Cannon, June 25, 1863, Letterpress copybooks, Brigham Young Office Files, Church History Library.

Details of the anti-polygamy campaign can be found in Poll, “The Twin Relic,” 93-296; Richard D. Poll, “The Legislative Anti-Polygamy Campaign,” BYU Studies 26 (Fall 1986): 109-121; Ray Jay Davis, “The Polygamous Prelude,” The American Journal of Legal History 6 (1962): 1-27; Edwin Brown Firmage and Richard Collin Mangrum, Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 129-209; and Howard R. Lamar, The Far Southwest, 1846-1912: A Territorial History (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1970), 352-411.

74 When John M. Bernhisel, who replaced Hooper as Utah’s delegate, presented a new constitution and memorial for statehood drafted by the Utah legislature in 1862, he noted after canvassing the members of Congress that the situation had returned to the pre-Secession Crisis days: “I do not know a single member either of the Senate or of the House who will vote for the admission of our Territory into the Union as a State.” Bernhisel to Young, February 28,1862.

The History of Saint Mary’s Academy in Salt Lake City

1875-1926

By AnDREA VEnTILLA

Women’s role in the nineteenth century both in America and in Europe was shaped clearly: to be a good housewife and mother, a “true woman,” who was pure, pious, obedient and domestic.1 Accordingly, the early female educators used the “true women” philosophy as their basis for establishing a dedicated curriculum for women at the beginning of the century.2 This paradigm continued to be the foundation for the education of young women in the increasingly more numerous academies and seminaries for the rest of the century. One of these was the Saint Mary’s Academy located in Salt Lake City and established by the Holy Cross Sisters, which succeeded in its goal to be a premiere, high quality source of women’s education for Utah and its neighboring territories.

The Holy Cross Sisters came to America in 1843. Although their original aim was to do missionary work with the Indians and to be housekeepers for the priests of the

Sister M. Rita (Louise Heffernan) a teacher at Saint Mary’s Academy.

Andrea Ventilla is a PhD candidate in the Department of History of Education at the University of Pecs, Hungary. She wishes to thank Sister Bernice Marie Hollenhorst in the Congregational Archives and Record of the Sisters of the Holy Cross in Notre Dame, Indiana; Gary Topping in the Archives of the Diocese of Salt Lake City; Annette Marston, Steven Pratt and Gabor Ventilla for their assistance.

1 Barbara Smith Solomon, In the Company of Educated Woman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 95.

2 For example Emma Willard, Katherine Beecher, Almira Phelps, Mary Lyon. Please see additional details about this subject in: Thomas Woody, A History of Women's Education in the United States (New York, Octagon Books, 1974).

Congregation, they soon realized the necessity for creating a novitiate to meet the needs of an educational establishment in the wilderness. 3 The Holy Cross Sisters opened Saint Mary’s Academy and Novitiate in order to train teachers for the Congregation in 1855. Saint Angela’s Academy, the first female institute to educate young women in the region opened up two years later in Illinois. From this time forth the number of such female academies, established and run by the Holy Cross Sisters, increased steadily.

Although various Catholic priests had ministered briefly in Utah, beginning with the 1776 journey of Franciscan Fathers Dominguez and Escalante, it was Father Edward Kelly who established the first permanent Catholic ministry in the territory in the fall of 1866.4 After purchasing a lot in Salt Lake City for the first Catholic Church in Utah, Father Kelly had to return to his home since the Archbishop of San Francisco proposed that this territory would be set up as part of a new vicariate. In 1868, Utah and Colorado were erected into a Vicariate Apostolic. In 1871, the first Catholic Church dedicated in the territory was named The Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Salt Lake City. Two years later, in 1873, Father Lawrence Scanlan came to Utah where he served as a priest until his death in 1915.5

By all accounts, Father Scanlan was inspired by a sincere desire to initiate a greatly needed program of Catholic education in Utah. In the spring of 1874 he wrote to Reverend Edward F. Sorin, supervisor of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, and requested Sisters to come and open a school.6 When the two Holy Cross Sisters, Mother M. Augusta and Sister M. Raymond arrived in Salt Lake City in 1875, there were approximately eight-hundred Catholics scattered in Utah and eastern Nevada. 7 The

3 Sister Maria Concepta, The Making of a Sister-Teacher (Notre Dame-London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965), 16.

4 Before 1866, Catholic visits to the area had been sporadic and transitory, consisting of traders, explorers, mountain men and soldiers and the occasional priests who came to minister to them. For a good summary about the history of the Catholic Church in Utah see, Bernice Maher Mooney, Salt of the Earth. The History of the Catholic Church in Utah 1776-1987 (Salt Lake City: Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, 1992).

Father Edward Kelly belonged to the Vicariate of Marysville, California. He had first travelled to Utah in May 1866 in response to a sick call he had received in Nevada. He remained to celebrate Mass at Fort Douglas and baptize a dozen children, and he was so impressed by the enthusiasm of the tiny Catholic community that he sought and was granted permission to purchase land in the city on which to build a church and a school. Garry Topping, “Mormon-Catholic Relations in Utah History: Early Years,” (unpublished paper, copy in the author’s possession).

5 Robert J. Dwyer, “Pioneer Bishop: Lawrence Scanlan, 1843-1915,” Utah Historical Quarterly 20 (April 1952): 135-58. For more details about Father Scanlan see, John Bernard McGloin, S.J., “Two Early Reports Concerning Roman Catholicism in Utah, 1876-1881,” Utah Historical Quarterly 29 (October 1961): 33346; Francis J. Weber, “Catholicism Among the Mormons, 1875-79,” Utah Historical Quarterly 44 (Spring 1976): 141-48.

6 Denis Kiely, “Brief History of the Church in Utah,” manuscript written in 1900, MSS A 2397, Utah State Historical Society.

7 Sister M. Georgia (Costin), Mother M. Augusta (Anderson), “Doing What Needs Doing,” in Worth Their Salt: ed. Colleen Whitley (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1996), 33. For a detailed summary about Catholic school see, Robert J. Dwyer, “Catholic Education in Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 43 (Fall 1975): 362-79.

Sisters’ original goal was to establish a female academy, but they soon realized the region needed a hospital as well.8

Saint Mary’s Academy, located on 100 West between 100 and 200 South in Salt Lake City.

In the 1870s, the mining industry in its infancy continued to develop and construction of the Union Pacific crossed through the Utah region. As a result, an increasing number of Gentiles came to Utah, some bringing their families. The Sisters recognized the opportunity and visited all the mine camps and smelters in the Salt Lake Valley with vicar general, Father Denis Kiely.9 In the summer of 1875, the Sisters began to make arrangements for the construction of the Academy.

The Saint Mary’s Academy commenced on September 6, 1875, when Mother M. Augusta called her first class to order in a little adobe cottage on 100 West between 100 and 200 South even as construction of the Academy was not yet completed. Classes in session disregarded the plasterers and carpenters that worked in other parts of the building. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that, the Academy was “beautifully and healthfully located, with spacious play grounds, it was thoroughly ventilated and furnished with all the modern appliances conducive to the health comfort of its inmates.”10

In April 1876, the building of the Academy was barely completed when an explosion of forty to fifty tons of explosives in downtown Salt Lake City

8 For a more detailed description about the Holy Cross Hospital, see Marilyn C. Barker, The Early Holy Cross Hospital & Salt Lake Valley (Salt Lake City: Holy Cross Hospital, 1975).

9 The purpose of this visit was to raise funds for the school and recruit. Centenary Chronicles of the Sisters of the Holy Cross 1841-1941 Superior Generals Vol. II (Paterson, NJ: Saint Anthony Guild Press, 1940): 79.

10 “Saint Mary’s Academy,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 1, 1875.

seriously damaged the building. 11 This accident broke nearly all the windows of the Academy and damaged the frames, doors and walls. The following year a violent storm caused additional damage to the building tearing off the tin part of the roof.12 However, persistent work and many donations brought the school back to its original condition.

In 1878, Mother M. Charles became Superior of the Academy. As her funds allowed, she purchased an adjacent property and by 1887 the entire square belonged to the Sisters. At this time a steam house was erected, along with a new kitchen and a music hall. Saint Mary’s Academy moved into the steam house and the original adobe school became a dormitory and infirmary for the boys of St. Joseph’s School.13 By the end of the nineteenth century, the third story of the steam house was completed and furnished, bathrooms and electric lights were installed, classrooms and dormitories were extended and an infirmary was also provided within the house.14

Although Salt Lake City had only eight to ten Catholic families in total, by the end of the first school year in 1876, there were a hundred day pupils and twenty-five boarders.15 Later in the decade, from 1876 through 1879, the school averaged closer to one-hundred and fifty students, then increased to two hundred in the 1880s.16 Enrollment declined somewhat in the 1890s, returning to about one-hundred and fifty students per year after the turn of the twentieth century. The decline was probably due to the introduction of free public schools in Utah, which provided the opportunity for elementary-aged students to obtain their education without cost. The nation-wide Panic of 1893, when the mining industry experienced the closure of many mines, added to the decline of enrollment.17 As a result many people lost their jobs. The Sisters claimed to Father Scanlan that “they have scholars yet they are unable to support themselves owing to the fact that the parents of the children are not earning.”18

11

“Terrible Disaster,” Deseret News, April 6, 1877.

12 Ibid.

13 St. Joseph’s School was established two months after the opening of Saint Mary’s Academy. It was an elementary school for boys operated by the Holy Cross Sisters in the same building as Saint Mary’s Academy until the Academy moved to the new steam house. St. Joseph’s School was discontinued in 1903. Centenary Chronicles of the Sisters of the Holy Cross 1841-1941. Vol.V: 4.

14 Centenary Chronicles of the Sisters of the Holy Cross 1841-1941. Pioneers and Builders. Vol. III (Notre Dame, IN: St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception, 1941): 82.

15 Sister M Georgia (Costin), “Doing What Needs Doing,” 39.

16 All of the statistical data published in this article are based on the student records of Saint Mary’s Academy in Salt Lake City between 1888 and 1910. See Congregational Archives and Records of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana, and The Accounts of Saint Mary’s Academy between 1916 and 1926, the Archives of Diocese of Salt Lake City.

17 The Holy Cross Sisters faced financial difficulties when the Society for the Propagation of the Faith did not provide funds for either the diocese or the academy. See “Annual Reports of the Progress and State of Catholicity in the Territory of Utah, United States of America to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith 1873-1894.” Reports, Propagation of the Faith, 1873-1894, Archives of Diocese of Salt Lake City.

18 Letter from Father Scanlan to Alexander Guasco, February 24, 1894, Reports. Propagation of the Faith 1873-1894, Archives of Diocese of Salt Lake City

After the turn of the century, the number of students increased with about three hundred pupils by the 1910s.19 In 1920, for the first time in the history of the school, several students were rejected because of the lack of space in the schoolhouse and dormitory.20 Sisters kept busy with their regular day pupils and teaching instrumental and private vocal music lessons.

At the beginning of the first school year in 1876, the institution had only two teachers, but with the increase in enrollment, the number grew to twelve. In a short time, the school averaged fourteen regular teachers and two or three music teachers. These instructors normally taught multiple subjects and assisted in such practical training as washing, cooking and ironing. Together with the ancillary sisters there was an average of twentyfive sisters volunteering their services.21 Many of the sisters were not from the United States, which made their experiences in Utah and the Far West even more unusual.

Sister M. Eugenie from France only planned on teaching French at the Academy in Salt Lake City for one year. Shortly after her arrival in Salt Lake City, the young Sister walked to a butcher shop in the downtown area. A few Indians on the street, attracted by the Sisters’ beads and cords, followed her and a companion. Sister M. Eugenie fled in terror and hid herself behind the

19 Accounts of Saint Mary’s Academy Salt Lake City, 1916-1926. Archives of Diocese of Salt Lake City.

20 The Catholic Monthly (Salt Lake City), December 1920.

21 Ancillary sisters were not teachers in the school, but helped run the school by fulfilling several responsibilities, including cooking, ironing, doing the laundry, secretary work and bookkeeping.

The Chapel at Saint Mary’s Academy.

COnGREGATIOnAL ARCHIVES AnD RECORDS, THE SISTERS OF THE HOLY CROSS, nOTRE DAME

butcher’s block. A year later, she was overjoyed when she returned to the mother house in Notre Dame.22

Students came to the Academy from Salt Lake City as well as other Utah towns including Bingham, Park City, Castle Gate, Stockton, and Eureka. Students from all over the Intermountain West including Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Nevada, found their way to Saint Mary’s. They came from mining towns such as Silver City, Idaho, Anaconda, Montana, Pioche, Nevada, and Rock Springs, Wyoming, and railroad communities that includedBlackfoot, Idaho, Ely, Nevada, and Evanston, Wyoming. Students also came from military posts at Rawlins, Wyoming, and Fort Duchesne, Utah. A few came from Washington and California.

According to the available student records, 68 percent of pupils were Catholic; some were first or second generation Irish-Catholics. In one remembered incident involving an Irish immigrant employed as a janitor at the Academy and whose devotion to the nuns was part of his Christian heritage, Mother Sienna recalled, the “Pat” was forever complaining in his delightful Irish brogue, “Mither, the pipes air lakin.” Finally convinced that some repair work was necessary, Mother Sienna sent for a plumber and when he arrived and asked what the matter was the directress said: “Sir, the pipes air lakin.”23

It is very difficult to determine the religious background of the remaining 32 percent of the non-Catholic students. Some were most likely Mormons even though the Holy Cross Sisters reported, “On the Sunday prior to the opening of school, the leading Mormon Bishop proclaimed from the pulpit that no Mormon would be permitted to send their children to the Sisters’ School under penalty of being cut off from the church.”24

22

Centenary Chronicles of the Sisters of the Holy Cross 1841-1941. Vol. III: 164.

23 Ibid., 90.

24 Archives Narrative of Saint Mary's Academy, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1875 – 1908, 2. Congregational Archives and Records of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana. The handwritten account of this event in “The Big Book of Accounts” says the leading Mormon bishop; however, the transcribed manuscript leaves out the phrase “leading” and only says “a Mormon Bishop.”

Students outside the Saint Mary’s Academy building.

Despite of the opposition expressed by the LDS bishop, there was little or no conflict between the Mormon community and the Catholic school. In fact, by the turn of the century the LDS church showed great respect toward the school and reported a complement of the fine education the Academy offered in the Deseret News:

1875 to 1900, just twenty-five years! and during that period has not this institution a right to be proud of the name she has so successfully acquired? The ideal women who have gone forth from her hearts, year after year, speak the success the united efforts of her teachers have achieved. … There are excellent courses in French, German and Latin, while drawing and painting, music on harp, violin, piano and the smaller stringed instruments, each having its course thorough and complete are among the elective studies; the aim being to impart to young ladies a solid, useful, cultured and Christian education.25

Among Mormons who attended the Academy were Florence Pike, the daughter of Walter Pike, a popular Mormon physician in Provo, and granddaughter of Lorenzo Snow, the fifth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some students suchas Emily Brooksbank Snelgrove, a young convert to Mormonism who attended Saint Mary’s in the 1880s, was excused from the Catholic devotional and did not participate in the Catholic rites. Instead, she was assigned to the study hall which gave her additional time to devote to her studies.26

The school was able accommodate non-resident students in its dormitory. On average, 35 percent of the students were boarders. The dormitory reached its full capacity of ninety-four boarders in 1900, and to accommodate other non-residents, students were allowed to live with relatives and acquaintances and in the Hotel Templeton, located in the downtown area not far from the school.27 This number became an average enrollment for the dormitory in the twentieth century.

Father Sorin, the founder of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, and Mother M. Angela, the superior and directress of Saint Mary’s Academy in Notre Dame, drew from the French ideal of Catholic Academies to create their American counterparts. Their “Programme of Studies for Academies and Select Schools” became the pattern for all Catholic academies, including the one in Salt Lake City.28 The ten-year long program consisted of three primary classes, three preparatory classes and four academic classes.

25

“St. Mary’s Academy,” Deseret News, June 16, 1900.

26 Emily Elizabeth Snelgrove Davey and Irene Mecedese Snelgrove, comps., Higgins Charles Richard Snelgrove and Emily Brooksbank Snelgrove, Their Ancestry, Life, and Descendants (Bountiful: Family History Publisher, 1990), 59.

27 Data were retrieved from analysis of student lists of the Saint Mary’s Academy in Salt Lake City. See Congregational Archives and Records of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana.

28 Sister Maria Concepta, The Making of a Sister-Teacher, 64.

Table 1. Subjects taught in Holy Cross Academies according to the “Programme of Studies for Academies and Select Schools”29

PrimaryPreparatoryAcademic CatechismCatechismPhilosophy

SpellingSpelling Bible/Church History

ReadingReading Algebra/trigonometry

WritingDictation Ancient/ Modern History

ArithmeticArithmeticRhetoric

GeographyGeographyGeometry

GrammarGrammar Etymology

Bible HistoryChemistry US HistoryLogic Map drawing/Botany use of Globes

PhysiologyBookkeeping

LanguagesLanguages Christian Religion Astronomy Literature History of France/England Geology

Criticism of Standard Authors

Every academy differed from this model to a certain extent, but each was able to adjust the program according to the number of students enrolled, which resulted in combined aged classes fairly regularly. According to the first bulletin of SaintMary’s Academy in Salt Lake City, the school offered instrumental, vocal and drawing lessons in the academic department apart from the regular “English branches.”30 The school accepted every qualifying applicant regardless of age or religion. Enrollment continued throughout the year, and the students tested into their classes according to the results of their admission scores. In the first few years of the Academy, the enrollment was not large enough to fill all the classes in the ten-year program. Although the school generally combined classes within the primary department, the four academy level classes were kept separate when possible. By 1881, the Academy had four academic classes with fifty students, two preparatory classes with eighty pupils and one large primary class with fifty “minims.”31 At the beginning of the twentieth century, different kinds of divisions existed in the academic department. Beside the

29 Ibid. This represented a no-frills curriculum emphasizing the arts, languages and humanities, very similar to Catholic schools’ curricula even today.

30 The name English branches meant upper, academic classes. First Bulletin of the Academy of St. Mary’s of Utah. 1875. Congregational Archives and Records of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana.

31 “St. Mary’s Academy,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 23, 1881. The word “minim” is referring to elementaryaged children.

English and music and arts division appeared the scientific department, where the pupils were thoroughly familiar with chemistry, botany, physics, and mathematics. In chemistry classes the students conducted scientific experiments which were considered both somewhat dangerous and exciting: “The study of chemistry seems to be a favorite. The students’ success in making hydrogen sulphide needed no verbal report to the other departments of the house.” 32 In the botany class, students collected different kinds of plants and “every flower from wayside or garden that entered the gates being secured as a subject for botanical analysis.”33

The curriculum improvement is also reflected in the number of available subjects as well. In the third school year, private classes opened not only in music and drawing, but also in modern languages such as French, German and Italian.34 In the first school year, the Sisters taught only piano lessons as part of their musical education but by the 1890s students could also learn zither, organ, guitar, banjo, harp, mandolin, flute and violin. This was the case with the visual arts as well. At the beginning of the 1880s, the Academy offered the following subjects in the art department: drawing, painting in oil and water colors, plain sewing and ornamental needlework.35 A decade later

32 Intermountain Catholic (Salt Lake City), November 18, 1911.

33 Ibid., May 4, 1912.

34 Those students who would have liked to have additional education in certain areas (such as music, drawing, foreign languages) were able to do so by paying an extra fee for the added lessons, “St. Mary’s Academy,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 4, 1877.

35 Eighth Annual Commencement of St. Mary’s Academy, June 27, 1883. Congregational Archives and Records of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana.

Clergy and students raising the flag at Saint Mary’s.

these subjects extended to china and mirror painting, portrait drawing in crayon, sketching scenes in pastel, and Honiton lace-making.36

With the arrival of Mother Charles in 1878, the school’s academic program began to includecourses in history and astronomy. During her leadership, Mother Charles sought to apply the “programme” developed by Mother Angela and Father Sorin as much as possible. The variety of classes increased with time: students who enrolled after 1880 could learn about philosophy, chemistry, elocution and bookkeeping. Through the influence of Mother Charles, the school started to emphasize physical education. Calisthenics were taught for the girls in every department. The Academy had an outdoor tennis court and croquet plot, “with mallets and rackets neatly laid out, and a young soft-voiced sister to instruct and supervise.”37 As long as the weather permitted, the Sisters conducted physical culture classes outdoors.

The school placed great emphasis on educating its students about cleanliness. The Sisters taught it in every department. When an epidemic broke out in Salt Lake City in the winter of 1899, the Board of Health closed down every educational institution except for Saint Mary's.38

In 1890, the school began to offer bookkeeping classes. At the beginning of the twentieth century, in order to respond to the modern world’s challenges, the school also announced a commercial training program. 39 Bookkeeping, shorthand, letter writing, typewriting and stenography were among the subjects of the commercial course. The students of the commercialcourse also learned music and literature, proving that the “spirit of commercialism and the literary arts may be fostered simultaneously.”40

In January 1916, professor Mosiah Hall, inspector of Utah State High Schools, spent a day at the Academy and observed the work of the various classes, especially the academic courses. He sent the following letter to Joseph T. Kingsbury, president of the University of Utah:

In compliance with your request I visited the St. Mary’s academy yesterday and looked carefully into the nature of the work being done by that institution. I am pleased to report that I found the school up to the standard in practically every particular. The accurate and fluent use of English by the students while reciting was superior to anything I have heard in any other secondary school. Sixteen units are required for graduation; the courses offered are well balanced; the laboratory equipment is abundant, and the text books and reference books used are modern. I recommend that St. Mary’s academy be fully accredited by the university.41

36 Honiton lace is one of the most delicate of the English bobbin laces. The lace is made using pairs of slender pointed bobbins unique to Honiton lace. The lace maker would prick out a design on parchment which was then pinned onto their lace pillow. A small round firm pillow was stuffed with oat straw or sawdust. Using the pins to support the design they then plaited and wove the threads from the bobbins to make motifs.

37 Ann Bassett Willis, “Queen Ann of Brown’s Park,” Colorado Magazine 29 (April and July 1952): 286.

38 Centenary Chronicles of the Sisters of the Holy Cross 1841-1941. Pioneers and Builders.Vol. III: 83.

39 Intermountain Catholic (Salt Lake City), January 9, 1904.

40 Ibid., April 17, 1909.

41 Copy of the letter in Congregational Archives and Records of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana.

Later that year President Kingsbury visited the school to finalize the accreditation that insured that every student who fulfilled an academic course and graduated from Saint Mary’s could transfer to the University of Utah as a sophomore.42

The Sisters sought to provide the highest quality education possible with the resources at hand and that they could secure. Mother Angela wrote and edited books for the Sisters of the Holy Cross, as they were unable to use the textbooks from France, except for teaching the subject of French for which Sister M. Eugenie had texbooks shipped all the way from France to her students. 43 Copies of French newspapers were provided to students throughout the school year and during vacations as well. Sister Eugenie also wrote French letters to her students during semester breaks.44

The faculty’s dedication was also reflected in the extra time they spent outside of class time teaching and developing personal relationships with their students. Sister M. Eleanore, who became a philosophy teacher at the Academy in 1886, was typical. The student body loved her for her justice, strictness and her willingness to help with the subject matter at any time “Even when her teaching days were over, she held court on a bench on campus, where the pupils sought after her company as well as her knowledge about nature, but even more after her knowledge of God and his Justice.”45

After graduation students sought assistance and advice from the Sisters. Mother M. Sienna, an excellent musician who played the harp, piano, and violin, loved to help her former students who turned to her for help quite often.46 They acknowledged important events for students such as when Emily Brooksbank married one year after her graduation and the Sisters sent her a friendship book with warm wishes. 47 The Sisters also kept parents well informed of their child’s progress through quarterly reports that detailed both academic and social accomplishments.48

Basic tuition for one session of five months was $125, which included board, bedding, and washing. Music instrumental lessons were an additional thirty dollars and languages ten dollars. Students who wanted to take

42 The Catholic Monthly(Salt Lake City), December, 1920. Because of the growth of the student body of the University of Utah, school officials raised entrance requirements in 1907. Applicants for admission to the freshman class were required to present evidence of having successfully completed a full high school study of four years. The university introduced additional requirements and restrictions in 1922. Every freshman had to have had three years of high school English beside the regular four years of high school training. They also had to pass a mental test.The university’s acknowledgment was reflected in this agreement, in that the graduate students of the Academy were able to begin their sophomore class immediately upon admission to the University of Utah. Ralph V. Chamberlain, The University of Utah. A History of Its First Hundred Years 1850 to 1950 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1960).

43 Sister Maria Concepta, The Making of a Sister-Teacher,70.

44 Centenary Chronicles of the Sisters of the Holy Cross 1841-1941. Vol. III: 166.

45 Ibid., 180.

46 Ibid., 91.

47 Davey and Snelgrove, Higgins Charles Richard Snelgrove and Emily Brooksbank Snelgrove, 64.

48 Ibid., 60.

private vocal or drawing lessons paid an additional twenty dollars.49 Tuition was high by comparison with Brigham Young Academy (BYA), which opened just a year after Saint Mary’s, where students paid eight dollars for a semester, one dollar additional for language classes and five dollars more for musical instruction.50 However, Saint Mary’s Academy also provided financial assistance for its students. Principal Mother Charles arranged for partial and full tuition waivers. She believed that every Catholic child had a right to be educated in a Catholic school. She made concessions to the daughters of the worthy poor, and arranged with students to repay the tuition after graduation when they had an earning capacity of their own.51

By the 1910s, as the school’s financial situation became more stable, 30 percent of the students received free tuition.52 Groups, like the Knights of Columbus, supported the school “by the foundation of a reward to be bestowed on the student of Saint Mary’s who distinguished herself by her effort for intellectual advancement and ladylike deportment.”53

49 First Bulletin of the Academy of St. Mary’s of Utah. 1875. Congregational Archives and Records of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana.

50 Circular of the Brigham Young Academy . 1877, L. Tom Perry Special Collection, Brigham Young University. BYA offered foreign language classes in German and French. Music classes were only available in piano and organ for several years.

51 Centenary Chronicles of the Sisters of the Holy Cross 1841-1941. Vol. III: 52.

52 Accounts of Saint Mary’s Academy Salt Lake City. 1916-1926. Archives, Diocese of Salt Lake City.

53 Intermountain Catholic (Salt Lake City), October, 24, 1908. Reverend Michael McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus as a Catholic men’s fraternal organization in Connecticut in 1883. In 1901, thirtyseven charter members organized Council 602 of the Knights of Columbus in Salt Lake City, representing the first unit west of the Rocky Mountains to join the national organization. They have four degrees of membership, upholding the ideals of charity, unity, fraternity and patriotism. Their aim was to serve the men and women of the Diocese of Salt Lake City and the civic community. For a good summary about the Knights of Columbus in Utah see, Frank J. Becker, Knight in Utah 1901-1986. A Record of the Knights of

The 1919 graduating class of Saint Mary’s Academy at the Cathedral of the Madeleine.

At the end of every school year the institution held Exhibition Days or Commencement programs for visitors, during which the students demonstrated their newly developed skills and knowledge. Programs included musical numbers from operas and other musical works. As part of the performance, some of the students showcased their skills in calisthenics. The students also demonstrated their level of literacy in the matters of literature and philosophy by reading literary works (such as poems, drama excerpts, and even their own essays), which they also presented, at times, in foreign languages. Gold medals were awarded to the best students in Christian doctrine, penmanship, studies, drawing, painting, vocal and instrumental music, plain sewing and ornamental needlework. In addition to presentations, the event included exhibitions of needle work, paintings, maps and class work of papers in mathematics, history, grammar, languages and book-keeping. Commencement activities might include picnic trips such as to Lake Point in 1876.54

In 1898, Mother Lucretia introduced another annual event—the May Procession. On the last day of May, school children carried banners and sang hymns as they passed in procession through the Academy grounds to an outdoor shrine, where the Sodality president crowned the Lady “Queen of the May.”55

As the women’s club movements intensified throughout America in the nineteenth century, the students of female academies also formed cultural, literary, military and athletic associations. At Saint Mary’s, students organized Saint Angela’s Literary Society in 1900. Members studied the standard authors and other literary works and composed papers about how to interpret them. Students from the Literary Society presented several interesting programs during the years. Senior students observed “Longfellow Day” by reading from their newly edited Saint Mary’s Journal 56 The participants of the program interspersed the readings with vocal and instrumental musical selections. The students published their literary papers not only in the Academy’s manuscript journal, but also in the area’s

Columbus in Utah, (Utah State Council, Knights of Columbus,[1987?]. The Knights of Columbus had a good relationship with the Academy. They not only awarded some of the students with scholarships, but occasionally sponsored lectures at the Academy. One of the recurrent lecturers was the Grand Knight, William H. Leary, who was also the dean of the law school at the University of Utah. The Knights of Columbus participated in some of the school’s activities as well, for example the commencement programs or holidays, especially the celebration of Columbus Day: “The next public function was the presentation, by the Knights of Columbus, of the Flagstaff and the blessing of the flag each October 12 - Columbus’ Day. The Bishop, vested in Episcopal robes, blessed the flag and addressed the representative Knights, the faculty and students.” Saint Mary of the Wasatch Archive Academic Class Narratives 1908-1921, Congregational Archives and Records, The Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana.

54 “St. Mary’s Academy,” Salt Lake Tribune, July 2, 1876.

55 Ibid. Both the Sodality president and the “Queen of the May” were students.

56 Archives Narrative for Saint Mary's Academy in Salt Lake City 1903-1904, Congregational Archives and Records, The Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana. The name of the journal was changed to Blue and Gold in 1920. The society named the day after the poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882), who was one of the five Fireside Poets. Intermountain Catholic (Salt Lake City), March 5, 1904

Catholic newspaper, the Intermountain Catholic. 57 By 1921, the Academy had two different literary societies, one for the elementaryaged children, The Little Flower Literary Circle and Dante Literary Circle for the advanced students.58

The Academy regularly held lectures on interpreting music and literature inviting teachers from different universities to speak. One of the most popular lecturers was Maude May Babcock who was a regular guest at the Academy. She taught elocution and gave reading programs a few times during the school years.59

Sisters of the Holy Cross on the Saint Mary’s Academy tennis court. From Left to Right: Sister Bennidetta, Sister Nunseo, Sister Corola, Sister Wilma, and Sister Josepha.

With the invention from local movie theater, the educational tools broadened for the Academy. In 1921, the school received its first motion picture machine. In the movie theater, “not only comedies but also educational themes were presented, such as the invention, development and practical demonstration of the X-ray, the history of navigation, and many others, thus combining pleasure and profit.”60

The leadership of the Academy established Saint Mary’s Athletic Association in 1913. It sponsored a basketball and baseball team, tennis players, and a classical dance group. Later students participated in archery, fencing, and military marching.61

The institution provided excellent education, offered practical training, and emphasized good manners and religious activity. One former student remembered her time at the Academy:

For me that school was the ever-changing dress rehearsal of an amusing drama, becoming more exciting with every change. Be it Benediction, Mass, or class, it was all absorbing entertainment, thoroughly enjoyed and eagerly looked forward to. I went floating around in maze of fun, regularly pranced off to a quiet dining hall, where we were

57 Intermountain Catholic (Salt Lake City), February 24, 1900.

58 Saint Mary’s Annual Book, 1921, Congregational Archives and Records, The Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana.

59 Intermountain Catholic (Salt Lake City), May 4, 1912.

60 The Catholic Monthly (Salt Lake City), February, 1921.

61 Intermountain Catholic (Salt Lake City), September 26, 1914.

COnGRESSIOnAL ARCHIVES AnD RECORDS, THE SISTERS OF THE HOLY CROSS, nOTRE DAME

Students at Saint Mary’s Academy.

served with mountains of wholesome food, to be eaten leisurely while listening to strains of soft music. That music was like the stirring of bird wings in the air about us. True there were some lines to be gone over, and classroom exercises, all of which I took in my stride, and swallowed as a routine part of this neverending show.62

Campus life for the students of Saint Mary’s Academy was not just about studying subjects but it became a determining factor for the character and lifestyle of its students.

Seeing the example of commitment shown by the Sisters, some of the students later joined the Holy Cross Congregation. Among the first graduates was a young woman, Louise Heffernan, daughter of Fort Douglas Commander Brigadier General JamesHeffernan. She became the first postulant to enter the novitiate from the West. She received her holy habit in 1878 and made her profession in 1881.63 Louise Heffernan, later known as Sister M. Rita, completed her graduate studies at Harvard University and became the head of the English department at the Saint Mary’s Academy in Notre Dame, Indiana. The year 1894 was another successful year as three of the graduate students united the Sisters of the Holy Cross: the Bruneau siblings, Alice, later known as Sister M. Dorothea; Eugenia, later known as Sister M. Bernice; and Helen MacFadden, later known as Sister M. Denyse. Sister M. Bernice served in the Sacred Heart Academy in Ogden as a music and biology teacher. Sister M. Denyse served as a book-keeper and accoun-

62 Willis, “Queen Ann of Brown’s Park,” 286.

63 Centenary Chronicles of the Sisters of the Holy Cross 1841-1941. Vol. III: 170.

COnGRESSIOnAL ARCHIVES AnD RECORDS, THE SISTERSOF THE HOLY CROSS, nOTRE DAME

tant at Saint Mary’s Academy in Notre Dame, Indiana. Adeline DuChene, a student in the class of 1900, became Sister M. Clotile and taught music and French at the mother house, Saint Mary’s Academy in Notre Dame.64 In the twentieth century, an additional ten students entered the Congregation. 65 All of them became educators, most of them music teachers. Some returned to their alma mater to teach.

Saint Mary’s Academy in Salt Lake City was the first female academy in the Intermountain West operated by the Holy Cross Sisters. 66 The institution was most attractive to those students that aspired to a liberal education of the highest quality, one that would “best qualify them for active participation in the affairs of every-day life … to embellish their characters with the refinement of art, and above all … make them noble, God-fearing women.”67

The success story of the Academy continued in the twentieth century making necessary a move to a new building. The search for a new location began in 1921, and in 1923 with a three-hundred thousand dollars loan from The Travelers Insurance Company, the Sisters bought four hundred acres of land at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains on Thirteenth South and Thirtieth East in Salt Lake City.68 The new and larger facility made possible the addition of a college department.69 The College of Saint Mary of the Wasatch opened in 1926, with a full liberal arts college program and a pre-nursing program taught in cooperation with Holy Cross Hospital.

The enrollment of the students began to decline in the late 1940s.Both Saint Mary’s Academy and the College of Saint Mary of the Wasatch were unique institutions, having educated girls and young women to liberal arts programs, sciences and female professions for almost a hundred years. Saint Mary of the Wasatch closed down in 1970. Neither the Sisters nor the diocese had the resources to provide the major renovations the facilities required and in 1972 the building was sold. A powerful Catholic school and symbol sadly disappeared from Salt Lake City.70

64 Centenary Chronicles of the Sisters of the Holy Cross 1841-1941. Vol.V: 17.

65 These students were: Ellen Shea (Sister Eusebia), Ethel Frisbee (Sister Claremina), Philomena Griffin (Sister Geraldine), Julia McCue (Sister Majella), Marian Bruneau (Sister Marie de Lourdes), Mary Conroy (Sister Ineen), Geraldine Gibbons (Sister Francis Joseph), Emily Bond (Sister Anne Catherine), Agnes Ryan (Sister Teresa Joseph), Marie Carrig (Sister Basilla).

66 In 1878, a secondHoly Cross institution, Sacred Heart Academy was established in Ogden. There existed a friendly rivalry between the two Utah academies. The next Holy Cross Academy, St. Theresa’s Academy, started in Boise, Idaho, in 1889.

67 St. Mary’s Academy. Twenty-first Annual Commencement, June 18 and 19, 1896. Congregational Archives and Records of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana.

68 Letter from The Travelers Insurance Company to the Sisters of the Holy Cross, June 1, 1931. Archives, Diocese of Salt Lake City. The land was purchased from the Salt Lake Country Club.

69 Saint Mary’s Academy, Salt Lake City, Utah. Resident and Day School for Girls. Conducted by the Sisters of the Holy Cross. Pamphlet, 1926, Congregational Archives and Records of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana.

70 Bernice Maher Mooney, Salt of the Earth, 150.

Selling the Scenery: Chauncey and Gronway Parry and the

Birth of Southern Utah’s Tourism and Movie Industries

By JAnET B. SEEGMILLER

This story begins at the turn of the twentieth century with two Parry brothers growing up on 700 East near 2100 South in Salt Lake City. The elder, Gronway, was born in 1889 and named for his father, Gronway Parry Sr., the son of Welsh pioneer immigrants. The younger brother was named Chauncey, but called “Chance” by family and friends. He was born in 1896. Their father was a builder and brick mason. Their mother, Laura, was the daughter of Washington County pioneers, Robert and Mary Ann Gardner of Pine Valley. So the Parry boys had a foot in Utah’s pioneer heritage, but lives that faced the age of automobiles and airplanes.

During the next thirty years, as these boys became men, they would change the economy and ultimately the history of rural, southern Utah. They initiated the “Golden Circle” auto and bus tours of Utah’s almost unknown national parks in 1917, and later promoted southern Utah’s scenic vistas to Hollywood movie makers, who were beginning in the 1920s to move from movie sets to

Janet B. Seegmiller is Special Collections Librarian at the Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University. She is also co-director of the Utah Parks Company History Project, a partnership with her library, the Iron County Historical Society and Frontier Homestead State Park Museum. She would like to thank Ryan Paul, project co-director, Carol Ann Parry Nyman, Dale Parry, and Louise Parry Thomas, children of Gronway and Chauncey for their help in writing this history.

President Warren G. Harding and group on tour of Zion National Park in 1923.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

filming outdoors. Movie companies brought millions of dollars into southern Utah communities over the next five decades. As with most success stories, the Parry brothers’ contribution to Utah history is characterized by some luck, some dreaming, some genius, and plenty of hard work.

Gronway described himself as a young man who loved horses more than people because he knew more about horses. When as a boy he rode his pinto horse into the fields of South Salt Lake, he ended up being bucked off. The pinto returned home without him which caused no small amount of consternation [his word] in the neighborhood.

Gronway also tended to be mischievous. He was once expelled from school for throwing his voice and making pigeon sounds, “kit-a-cut-coo.” His punishment, however, was like sending Brer Rabbit to the briar patch, for his parents sent him to Pine Valley in southern Utah to be straightened out by his pioneer grandparents. It was here that Gronway fell in love with the southern mountains.1

Both brothers were ambitious and persistent. Chance discovered that he was too small for team sports that were just coming into vogue at the city schools, so he “exacted his measure of respect by thrashing the larger boys in fights.” Like his older brother, he loved horses and began working at age ten, delivering newspapers from the back of a pony. Breaking and training horses was in their nature. It would play a momentous role in their future as well.

Both young men excelled at academics. Each graduated from high school and went to the University of Utah, Gronway in 1908 and

1

Inez Cooper, “The Development of Zion Canyon as a Tourist Attraction,” 2-3, unpublished manuscript in the Inez Cooper Collection, Special Collections, Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

Gronway and Chauncey Parry.

SPECIAL COLLECTIOnS, SOUTHERn UTAH UnIVERSITY

Chauncey in 1914. Gronway paid his own way by buying and selling old race horses, but confessed that his penury still required him to walk three miles to and from school because he could not afford the three cent bus fare. At the university, the brothers may have been strongly influenced by classes from Utah geologist Frederick Pack, who took his students to study the geology of southern Utah. Gronway found work during the summer of 1913 on a road survey crew in southern Utah, which gave him additional opportunity to view scenic areas in Kane, Garfield and Iron counties.

In 1914, Gronway transferred to the Utah State Agricultural College (USAC) in Logan, to earn his degree in animal husbandry and obtain veterinary training. The USAC had recently assumed administration of the Branch Normal School in Cedar City, which added agricultural courses to its offerings and became known as the Branch Agricultural College (BAC). After graduation from USAC, Gronway accepted the position of Iron County agricultural agent that included teaching animal husbandry at the BAC. This brought the twenty-seven-year-old Gronway Parry to Cedar City in July 1915. Timing was the important factor to all he and Chauncey would do thereafter.

From the time of John Wesley Powell’s expeditions beginning in 1869, explorers, photographers, and scientists had described the majestic beauty and geologicwonders of southern Utah and northern Arizona as worth seeing. A few elite visitors came during the 1890s to hunt and explore led by John W.Young, Edwin D. (Dee) Woolley, and Daniel Seegmiller who had

Chauncey Parry waiting for President Harding.

visions of the region becoming a national vacation land.2 Later, Randall Jones and Dr. George Middleton of Cedar City took up the cause. During the national conservation program inaugurated by President Theodore Roosevelt and U. S. Forest official Gifford Pinchot, many areas were set aside—or actually withdrawn from entry—in order to preserve the land for “scenic, scientific or historic purposes” and prevent it from passing into private ownership. These areas were titled national monuments. The area known to locals as Zion Canyon was named a national monument in 1909, and given a Native American name, Mukuntuweap National Monument. Jones and Middleton campaigned to open the area to tourists which would require roads and hotels in the communities. Dr. Middleton brought Frederick Pack, government officials, and railroad executives from Salt Lake City to see the monument. He helped organize horse and pack animals for expeditions into the nearby mountains. Randall Jones, a young architect, began plans for a modern hotel to be built in Cedar City.3

Even with the demands of teaching and extension work, the ambitious Gronway still found time to pursue his interest in the variety of motorized vehicles which were just then being introduced and other related businesses. By the end of his first year in Cedar City, he had sold twenty-five cars through a Buick/National automobile dealership. He had also opened the

2 Angus M. Woodbury, “A History of Southern Utah and Its National Parks,” Utah Historical Quarterly 12 (July-October 1944): 190-91.

3 Ibid., 187 and 202.

Gronway Parry and the Harding caravan in Cedar City preparing to depart for Zion National Park.

first steam laundry business in Cedar City and become manager of the Cedars Hotel on Main Street. Gronway used his business interests to entice Chauncey away from the University of Utah to help him manage the hotel and to operate a motorized stage line to carry passengers to and from St. George to the railroad station at Lund.

In the fall of 1916, government road crew surveying a new road into Mukuntuweap National Monument stayed at the hotel. Gronway offered Chauncey’s services as a guide. He spent several months with them in what the locals still called “Little Zion.” The Parry brothers seeing the enthusiasm of the surveying party for the scenic attractions became convinced that countless additional visitors would come, if transportation and accommodations were available. They soon offered to contract with the Department of the Interior for both. Gronway summarizedtheir qualifications in a two and a half page letter sent January 18, 1917, which included this statement: We will state at the start that we have ample capital and financial backing to make the concession good. As to the ability and experience in serving the public, will say that handling the public is our business. We are in the hotel and transportation business at Cedar City, Utah. We own and operate a stage line of Buick and National cars from Lund to Cedar City and St. George. . . In conjunction with this passenger line we operate a truck-freight line between Lund and Cedar City. We have just completed a first class modern steam laundry at Cedar City, which will enable us to be of further service to the public.4

At about this time, the Los Angeles & Salt Lake railroad line contacted William W. Wylie, former operator of the Wylie Camps in Yellowstone National Park, and offered to advance him thirteen thousand dollars to establish a camp in Zion Canyon. Upon discovering that the Parry brothers were interested in providing services at the monument, the railroad officials arranged for Gronway to pick up Wylie at the Lund depot in February 1917. They met with railroad agents and Salt Lake businessmen interested in establishing transportation lines from the railroad station at Lund (thirty miles northwest of Cedar City) to tourist facilities in the canyon. The group drove to Virgin by auto, and then traveled the next day by wagon into Zion Canyon, still officially called Mukuntuweap National Monument. Back in Rockville, they met with dubious local citizens who heard the men predict that soon automobiles by the hundreds would pass through their town each day to visit the National Monument.

In the aftermath of the trip and meeting, Wylie and the Parry brothers agreed to cooperate by incorporating the National Park Transportation and Camping Company, with William Wylie as president, Gronway as vice-president, Chauncey as treasurer, and Clinton Wylie as Secretary. Gronway invested twenty-five hundred dollars and Chauncey twenty-four hundred dollars, giving the Parry brothers 49 percent of the stock. The

4 Gronway Parry to the Department of Interior, January 18, 1917. Copy from Louise Parry Thomas in Special Collections, Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

brothers sold their other businesses in order to develop the transportation side of the franchise.

The Department of the Interior awarded the company a five-year lease on concessions and Wylie developed a suitable camp in a grove of trees south of the present Zion Lodge. The wood and canvas accommodations were primitive, but were undoubtedly more comfortable than the transportation. The Parrys had just two vehicles, a second-hand seven passenger Hudson and a Model T Ford. The roads were still terrible and the trip from Lund to Zion took all day. Gronway described crossing the Black Ridge on Utah highway 91 as “bouncing from rock to rock,” and then they had to cross the Virgin River twenty-one times before reaching the camp.5

After Congress created the National Park Service (NPS) in August 1916, Steven Mather, a wealthy Chicago businessman who had been an assistant for the parks in the Interior Department, was named director. Twenty-five year old Horace M. Albright was Mather’s assistant before and after creation of the park service, and much of the Wylie/Parry correspondence went through him. Surprisingly, Albright had never been out West to see Mukuntuweap National Monument until Douglas White prevailed on him to make a visit in the summer of 1917. White was passenger traffic manager for the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad and one of the foremost promoters of southern Utah’s scenery. Albright met White in Los Angeles

5 Cooper, “Development of Zion Canyon,” 6-7.

William W. Wylie registering a guest at his Zion Canyon camp, May 1920.

and they traveled by railroad and car to Cedar City arriving on September 5, 1917, where Gronway and Chauncey transported them to the monument. Years later Albright recalled his first impressions of Zion Canyon:

Now beholding Mukuntuweap and the so-called Zion Canyon for the first time, I was surprised, excited and thrilled. More than that, I was just plain stunned. I had no concept of the staggering beauty I beheld. Local Utah people said that Yosemite was a Zion without color. But this didn’t faintly prepare me for the reality of the towering rock walls, splashed with brilliant hues of tans and reds interspersed with whites. The great towers, temples, spires, and peaks appeared unearthly as they encircled the narrow lush gorge. . . .

Whatever created this marvel of natural splendor, it was love at first sight for me. Ever after, I claimed this national park . . . as mine. From day one it was a personal crusade to mold it from a little national monument into a great national park.6

Albright promised the people of Southern Utah that once he returned to Washington, he would go “full steam ahead” to enlarge this monument, change the name to one preferred by the locals, and have it made a national park. He had already convinced Mather more visitors must be attracted and accommodated if the parks were to flourish. True to his promise, Albright drew up a proclamation for President Woodrow Wilson’s signature, one that enlarged the monument to 76,800 acres and renamed it Zion National Monument. Wilson signed the proclamation on March 18, 1918. National

6 Horace Albright, Creating the National Park Service: The Missing Years (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 243.

William W. Wylie greeting a visitor to his camp in Zion Canyon in May 1920.

park status came eighteen months later on November 19, 1919.7

The war in Europe overshadowed both the 1917 and 1918 seasons, as the United States entered the war in April 1917. Still bachelors, Gronway and Chauncey registered for the draft on June 5 and 6 in Cedar City, but apparently did not leave until sometime after Albright’s September visit. Unsuspecting of Wylie, the brothers gave him their proxy votes in order to keep the business running, as both Gronway and Chauncey volunteered for the United States Army Air Service. By January 1918, Chauncey was in pilot’s training at Berkeley Field, California. He sent a photo of his squadron as a postcard to his mother with the message that although many men had washed out of the program, he badly wanted to stay. The Parry brothers had long been fascinated with flying.

Unfortunately, Gronway was not there. He had been given a vaccination that almost killed him and left his eyes ulcerated. Doctors recommended a hot, dry climate and soon Gronway found himself in Mexico managing a large hog operation for Cudahy Company. It seemed like a perfect fit for a veterinarian and soldier. Later, he went to Elko, Nevada, to manage the large Kearns Ranch.

The war ended in November 1918, and by January 1920, Chauncey was back in Salt Lake City living with family and teaching high school.8 In 7 Ibid. 8 U. S. Census, 1920, District 85, Sheet 71,Salt Lake City, Utah.

A Utah Parks Company touring car at Zion National Park.

May, he returned to the transportation company and discovered that Wylie had put them out of the company. Wylie, it seems, had hired another driver during the war and wanted Chauncey to work for him rather than as a partner. As had been their custom, the Parrys did not run away from fights and this became one of Chauncey’s better battles. In 1921, Chauncey applied for his own franchise to provide transportation. Following a Public Utilities Commission hearing, Wylie was told to “set arrangements straight” with the Parrys. Under this order, the National Park Transportation and Camping Company was reorganized as the Utah-Grand Canyon Transportation Company. Chauncey was once again in the driver’s seat providing transportation for Wylie’s customers. However, Wylie was still in debt to the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, and he asked the railroad to foreclose on his loan and just hire him for two thousand dollars a summer.

Tourism to the southern Utah parks increased during 1921 and Chauncey wrote to Gronway, who was still in Nevada, urging him to come back for the prospects were better than ever. Gronway returned to Cedar City and rejoined Chauncey in the summer of 1922. That fall, on Thanksgiving Day, Gronway married his college sweetheart, Afton Parrish, in Salt Lake City.

Bigger changes came in 1923 when Union Pacific began executing its plan to develop tourist facilities at Zion Canyon and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, like other railroads had on the South Rim and at Yellowstone. Salt Lake City and Cedar City businessmen had been promoting these changes.

The Union Pacific took over the rail line, catapulting Los Angeles and

A Wylie Way touring car.

SPECIAL COLLECTIOnS, SOUTHERn UTAH UnIVERSITY

Salt Lake’s Carl Gray into the presidency of the Union Pacific. Gray was keenly interested in increasing ticket sales to tourists to the national parks and in hauling iron by rail from mines opening near Cedar City. Stephen Mather had proposedthat, like Yellowstone, a railroad should become developer of the tourist facilities in the Utah and Arizona parks.

Union Pacific was ready and willing, but factions in Washington, D.C. disliked Mather putting monopolies in control of the national parks and insisted that the Union Pacific create a subsidiary to operate concessions in the parks. In March 1923, the Utah Parks Company (UPC) was incorporated in Salt Lake City, with 98 percent of its capital stock subscribed by the Railroad Securities Company, a Union Pacific subsidiary. Typical of such legal agreements, the UPC reserved for itself the right to build or contract “for every conceivable lawful service” for tourists thereby ensuring quality service to its customers.

Although the Utah-Grand Canyon Transportation Company did not fit into the Utah Parks Company plan, it was not possible to transfer the entire operation immediately, so during the year 1923 Gronway and Chauncey continued to drive tourists from Cedar City to Zion National Park and on to the North Rim where the Wylie family had camps as they had done in 1922. The Parrys also coordinated the horses and wranglers for special tours and that put them in charge of arrangements for the most famous visitor to Zion, President Warren G. Harding in June 1923.

The Union Pacific managed to get the railroad spur built to Cedar City just in time for President Harding’s arrival as part of a western tour encouragedby Utah Senator Reed Smoot and Mrs. Harding. President and Mrs. Harding and an entourage of cabinet members, senators, church and state officials arrived on the first train to reach the new depot. From here, they traveled sixty dusty miles to Zion Canyon in the best automobiles Cedar City citizens had to offer. The entire population of each town along

Gronway Parry.

the way lined the road as the presidential party traveled through the community. Toquerville residents reportedly spent the previous night carrying buckets of water to sprinkle on their three-quarters of a mile road to keep the dust from stirring when the President’s car reached their town.

At the Wylie camp, the President shook hands with a few hundred people – including nine-year-old J.L. Crawford who remembered that J. Cecil Alter of the Utah State Historical Society was there photographing the event. Mr. Crawford wrote, “President Harding probably spent a miserable day visiting Zion. . . [He] didn’t want to come to Zion, but was pressured to do so by his wife and Senator Reed Smoot. He was known to be suffering from hemorrhoids and other physical problems.”9 These ailments were undoubtedlycompounded by the long, bumpy drive. After lunch the Parry brothers led a horseback ride up the canyon. A close look at the photo of the group shows the Parry brothers mixed in with LDS church President Heber J. Grant, Governor Charles R. Mabey, Senator Reed Smoot, Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work, Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, and others.

President Harding had some promising words that night for local residents. “To you men and women who came with your families in covered wagons into this country when the water still flowed through its natural gorges, the nation owes a debt of gratitude. I am the first President of the United States to come and express that gratitude, but I feel sure when I tell of this trip to my successors, all future presidents will come to visit this country of wonders.”10 Unfortunately, he went on to Yellowstone, then Alaska, and came back to San Francisco a sick man and died on August 2nd, only a few weeks after his visit to southern Utah.

The Parry brothers continued operating in 1924, 1925 and 1926 as the Utah-Grand Canyon Transportation Company, but were pressured continuously by the railroad to either sell out or be run out of business. While construction of the lodges in the parks was underway, the UPC also purchased some additional automobiles for its guests. These Buick

9

J.L. Crawford to author, 2005.

10 “Southern Utah Gives Glad Welcome to Nation’s Chief Executive,” Iron County Record, June 29, 1923.

Chauncey Parry.

passenger touring cars were brought to Cedar City for the summer of 1924. Negotiations proceeded during the next year and eventually Utah Parks bought out Gronway and Chauncey, and then hired them as their transportation superintendents for the next seventeen years. Gronway’s son Dale Parry recalled that “the negotiations to buy the Parry brothers out began in ’24 and went on for two years. By ’26 it was complete.”11 This was the time when the lodges were built at Bryce Canyon, Zion and Cedar Breaks, as well as the Bright Angel Lodge at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, which opened in 1928.

Thus, the influence of Gronway and Chauncey continued over the next two decades. They are recognized as the first Utah Parks’ “gearjammers,” and for establishing standards, schedules, training, and traditions that continueduntil the Union Pacific stopped the Utah Parks bus tours in 1972.

By the mid-1920s, Chauncey had explored on horseback, and by small airplane, almost all the rivers, canyons and mountain wilderness of southern Utah, and photographed the magnificent vistas and scenery. Some of his photos were tinted to show the colors of cliffs and hoodoos (rock formations of fantastic shape). Moving pictures, once filmed in front of cardboard mountains on the back lots of Hollywood, were now being made outdoors and Chauncey imagined the grandeur of southern Utah exposed to audiences through films. The Parry brothers began writing to the studios

The Parry Lodge in Kanab.

11 Dale Parry, interview by Janet Seegmiller, July 4, 2004, p. 8, UPC #59 Special Collections, Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

offering transportation and other services to those who chose to film at Zion or Bryce Canyon or on Cedar Mountain. They hit the jackpot with Tom Mix in the summer of 1924. It was front page news in the local paper: “TOM MIX AND COMPANY TO ARRIVE IN CEDAR CITY SUNDAY; COMPANY TO SPEND TEN DAYS AT ZION NATIONAL PARK BEFORE RODEO.”12 Based on the novel, The Orphan, the movie was released as The Deadwood Coach, and filmed in both Zion and Bryce between mid-August and the end of September.13

Filming for two movies followed in 1926 at Zion Park and Cedar Breaks, The Shepherd of the Hills and Ramona. Of course, these were silent movies and the black and white film did not do justice to the locations.

Chauncey finally decided it was time to get serious about selling southern Utah’s scenery to the Hollywood establishment. He and Gronway spent months taking photographs of every likely motion picture location spot in the area. Then, in the winter of 1928, Chauncey and his bride of six months, Helen Daynes, set off for Hollywood with his portfolio of photographs. It was later said that “With his good humor and vibrant leadership, Chauncey charmed MGM, 20th Century Fox and Paramount studios into serious consideration of Southern Utah as a movie location.”14

After a trip or two to Hollywood, Chauncey recognized that companies

12 Iron County Record, August 15, 1924.

13 James D’Arc, When Hollywood Came to Town: A History of Moviemaking in Utah (Layton: Gibbs-Smith, 2010), 34-38.

14 John W. Thomas, “Chauncey Gardner Parry – Modern Pioneer.” Typescript biography, Special Collections, Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

Wylie Way auto tours gathered outside of Cedars Hotel, Main Street, Cedar City.

needed more than scenery; they had to have transportation, housing and meals for stars and crew, and preferably, all should be conveniently located. Chauncey bought a fouracre lot in the center of Kanab, remodeled the frame house that sat on the site, built a restaurant and additional motel units. He spent more than ninety thousand dollars on the enterprise and when he had finished, he raised a large sign proclaiming it to be “The Parry Lodge.”

Everyone in Kanab thought he had lost his mind, but Chauncey could now offer movie companies train transportation into Cedar City, accommodations at the newly completed El Escalante Hotel across from the depot, UPC busses and limos to transport the cast and crew to and from the locations, and if more convenient, his new lodge and restaurant in Kanab. Food on location came from the lodge’s kitchens. The community pushed for better roads and for electric power as well. Filming The Dude Ranger in the early 1930s had first advantage of power to the location. Soon, both Cedar City and Kanab were very involved in making movies. In interviews, Chauncey’s son-in-law, John Thomas, and daughter, Louise Parry Thomas, remembered how it affected the local communities: Then everybody in Kanab at one time or another was probably in more movies than most of the stars. They were Indians; they would decorate them all up, put them on a horse, and then in groups they would run down across in front of the camera, and do all these chasings and whatever else they had to do. But all of those horses came from the local people, except for their stars which they brought with them which they had specially trained to do that. Everything else came right out of Kanab area, and Fay Hamblin was their wrangler.15

Louise recalled that “There are hundreds if not thousands of people from all of southern Utah that maybe went to college with the money that they earned in the movies or were able to buy a home or a ranch or whatever. I

15 John [Jack] Thomas, interview by Janet Seegmiller, July 18, 2003, p. 4 UPC #15b, Special Collections, Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

Gronway Parry with two actors at the railroad depot in Cedar City.

mean, it was a huge economic support for southern Utah.16

With his attention on providing animals and props for the movies, Gronway began noticing old horse-drawn vehicles sitting idly in fields or on ranches deteriorating from neglect. His interest was aroused, and he thought they would have some historical value and ought to be saved for posterity. He began rebuilding them into working order and providing them to the movie companies. For the movie, Can’t Help Singing, which was filmed at Navajo Lake and other sites near Cedar Breaks, many Conestoga wagons were needed. Gronway set up a big lot on the east side of Main Street in downtown Cedar City and hired a crew of carpentersand laborers to help him get the wagons ready using “running gear” he had acquired during his travels.17

With so much to do, Chauncey hired a younger brother, Whitney Parry, to run the Parry Lodge and to provide meals for the stars and crew. He drove what was known as the “pie wagon,” and cast and crew knew it was dinner time when he arrived at a movie set. His cooking made both him and the lodge famous.

During trips to Hollywood, Chauncey and Gronway discovered polo and were soon playing and training horses for the sport. They made friends with Will Rogers and were guests at his Santa Monica ranch. The Parrys

16 Louise Parry Thomas, interview by Janet Seegmiller, July 18, 2003, p. 4, UPC #15b, Special Collections, Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

17 Dale Parry, interview, 30.

A set for the movie “Can’t Help Singing.”

mingled with the most affluent names in Hollywood. Genuine friendships resulted from these trips and from offering good service when they came to southern Utah. The Parry children have fond memories of the moviemaking years and the conduct of their fathers and uncles that, while endearing them to the movie stars, also benefitted the southern Utah economy during the depressed 1930s. Chauncey’s daughter Louise rememberswhen Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable came to southern Utah to go hunting with her father. “That was just a man-thing ritual that every fall those three would go out cougar hunting. My dad didn’t hunt; he didn’t like to kill things. So, he used his camera. He hunted with a camera, and these two hunted with their guns . . .” She thought her father made friends easily and the movie stars appreciated his sincerity and his genuineness. “He knew how to treat them, and how to talk to them, and they just had a great time.”18

Gronway also endeared himself to the local businessmen who provided services to the movie makers. Dale Parry remembered going with his father when “After a movie, we would leave the Parry Lodge and start on one side of Kanab and he’d take his checkbook and they’d just go down one side and go into all of the businesses he dealt with on the motion picture. . . He'd walk in, find out what his bill was, [and] write out a check.”19 Thus, the Parrys maintained community support for future productions.

Chauncey Parry’s life was cut short in March 1943, when his car was broadsided at an intersection in Cedar City and he died from his injuries a few days later in the local hospital. He was only forty-seven. Gronway, Whitney and Fay Hamblin continued providing for the movie and television companies into the 1960s. Whit ran the Parry Lodge until his death in 1967. In his seventies, Gronway continued to restore western wagons, which are now the Gronway Parry Collection of Horse-drawn Vehicles and Agricultural Implements at the Frontier Homestead State Park Museum in Cedar City. Gronway was also involved in many more activities including land development, home building, and as Cedar City mayor. He died at age eighty in Cedar City in 1969. The Parry brothers invested their lives in rural Utah during difficult economic years and attracted both tourism and the movie industry to the area. There is little doubt that Gronway and Chauncey Parry were southern Utah’s greatest salesmen.

18 Louise Parry Thomas interview, 6. 19 Dale Parry interview, 33.

“The Bloodiest Drama Ever Perpetrated on American Soil”: Staging the Mountain Meadows Massacre for Entertainment

By MELVIn L. BASHORE

In 2002, the oldest extant billboard in the country was discovered behind a brick façade of a downtown building in Jamestown, New York. The five-panel billboard advertised a March 14, 1878, performance of Buffalo Bill Cody’s frontier melodrama, May Cody, or Lost and Won . Early research revealed that not only was this an important artifact from Cody’s early theatrical career, it was an important artifact in the history of American theater and outdoor advertising. Five years after its discovery, the restored billboard was placed on permanent display in what had been Jamestown’s Allen Opera House now its civic center.1 The historical event which forms the basis of and main feature in this drama is the Mountain Meadows Massacre. On September 11, 1857,

1

A poster for the Wild West and Great Forepaugh Shows announcing the performance of “The Atrocious Mountain Meadow Massacre.”

Melvin L. Bashore is a curator in the Historic Sites Division of the Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

Tom Buckham, “Out of the Dust, the Wild West,” Buffalo (NY) News, February 11, 2006; and Jana Bommersbach, “Buffalo Bill’s Billboard,” True West 55(May 2008): 18-19.

Mormons with the aid of Paiute Indians slaughtered over 120 men, women, and children in a California-bound wagon train in an isolated part of southern Utah Territory. Mormons tried to deflect attention from their involvement in this horrible atrocity by blaming the Indians. Complex factors postponed investigation into the matter for years until several participants were arrested. Although the public suspected Mormon complicity in the horrific crime, certain proof did not surface for almost twenty years. Only after John D. Lee was brought to trial in the mid-1870s did the public learn how the Mormons used a false promise of safety to lure the emigrants from their fortified encampment and kill all but seventeen young children. Lee’s trial and subsequent execution focused much attention in the press on the massacre and Mormonism.

Plays about frontier history were already very popular in America in the 1870s. Bill Cody was quick to capitalize on the public’s interest in Mormonism and the tragic massacre. The Mormon element in the drama was emphasized in all its newspaper advertisements. Standard advertisements which appeared in many newspapers whereever the melodrama was performed prominently noted the massacre and mentioned Mormon church president Brigham Young and Danites.2

The general public’s interest in all things Mormon was sparked in the mid-1870s by the trials and execution of John D. Lee. The publicity generated by Lee’s trials brought audiences to view a production of the massacre performed by the Foresters dramatic troupe in Denver and other Colorado towns in 1876. The Golden Weekly Globe reported its troupe of actors were “first class in every particular.”3 But it was Lee’s execution on March 23, 1877, that excited the public the most as newspapers throughout America reported the event, printed his confessions, and revisited the story of the massacre in lurid detail.4 While the publicity about the execution revitalized interest in Bill Cody’s theater shows, it had an entirely opposite effect on Mormon proselytizing work.

Interestingly, the details about the massacre that were splashed across the nation’s newspapers so inflamed the public that missionary work was severely undermined in many parts of the nation.5 Brigham Young wrote to Joseph F. Smith that the public “turned a deaf ear” to Mormon missionaries through-

2 Anti-Mormon books and newspaper articles attributed every isolated instance of purported Mormon violence to Danites or Destroying Angels. Lynn M. Hilton and Hope A. Hilton, “Danites,” in Utah History Encyclopedia, Allan Kent Powell, ed. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994), 126; and Alexander L. Baugh, “Danites,” in Arnold K. Garr, Donald Q. Cannon, and Richard O. Cowan, eds., Encyclopedia of Latterday Saint History (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2000), 275.

3 Golden (CO) Weekly Globe, December 9, 1876.

4 The Deseret News reported this new crusade in the nation’s newspapers in several articles. See “Going Crazy Concerning Mormonism,” Deseret News, April 4, 1877; and “All Are Talking of Utah,” Deseret News, April 11, 1877.

5 Brian Reeves examined the impact of adverse publicity about the massacre following Lee’s execution in “John D. Lee’s Execution and the Near Death of Missionary Work,” at the Mormon History Association Conference, St. George, Utah, May 26, 2011.

out the country.6 Many were released to return home when every avenue for preaching was denied them. Missionary Philip Hurst felt the effects of the adverse newspaper publicity following Lee’s execution while proselyting in Pike County, Illinois, “The whole country is full of the most sensational stories in regard to Lee’s Confession, and no matter how improbable the story, it is greedily swallowed.”7 With no investigators to teach or listen to his message, he returned to Utah. Orson Hyde Eggleston, on a mission in Michigan, also found doors being closed to his message. “I continued my labors alone holding meetings every opportunity,” he wrote in early May 1877, “till all the school houses were closed against me and I had to preach in private houses and every avenue seemed to close up.”8 On May 29, 1877, he received “a letter from President Young’s office that the elders in Michigan were at liberty to return home whenever they wished to do so.”9 The impact of this public uproar about the Mormons and the Mountain Meadows Massacre on missionary work was wide-ranging and long-lasting in 1877. “In the States, at present,” wrote Brigham Young in early August 1877, “there are but few Elders left. . . . The furor created throughout this country, soon after the execution of Jno. D. Lee, was so great that most of the brethern returned home, feeling satisfied that until that feeling should wear itself out, their labors would be measureably without profit.”10

While publicity about the massacre caused the Mormon church’s stock in the public eye to decline at this time, Bill Cody’s popularity ascended with the May Cody melodrama. It came at a most opportune time for him as interest in his theater shows had been on an ever-spiraling decline. He had even given thought to giving up his career in show business unless business at the box-office picked up.

Cody began the entertainment career that took him to international reknown in 1872. In that year, he gathered a group of traveling actors who he led from city to city and town to town, performing one to two plays, before moving to the next town. Before 1870, theaters supported resident companies, but it became more profitable and affordable to schedule traveling companies that brought variety to the entertainment scene. These traveling companies were popularly called “combinations,” because they performed a combination of one to two plays in their repertoire, thus extending their ability to multiply their income in each locale.

In summer 1877, Cody saw the potential for box-office profit in producing a border drama that focused on Mormons, John D. Lee, and the

6 Brigham Young to Joseph F. Smith, July 27, 1877, Salt Lake City, in “Foreign Correspondence,” Latterday Saints’ Millennial Star 39(September 3, 1877):570.

7 Philip Hurst, Diary, vol. 1, undated/unpaginated, Church History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, hereafter cited as LDS Church History Library.

8 Orson Hyde Eggleston, Reminiscences and diary, May 9, 1877, LDS Church History Library.

9 Ibid., May 29, 1877.

10 Brigham Young to W. E. Pack, August 6, 1877, letterbooks, Brigham Young, Office files, LDS Church History Library.

Mountain Meadows Massacre. He hired Andrew Sheridan Burt, a decorated major in the U.S. Infantry, to write a block-buster drama. In the drama, Burt mingled truth and fiction so artfully that audiences couldn’t tell “that his stories were less obviously fictional.” 11 As in all popular melodramas, the plot revolves around a heroine (Buffalo Bill’s real-life sister, May Cody), who eventually is liberatedfrom “savage captivity.”12 May Cody, a private secretary to a well-to-do New York socialite, joins the fated wagon train en route to the West. A reenactment of the Mountain Meadows Massacre occurs in the second act. John D. Lee and his band of nefarious Mormons, disguised as Indians, attack the wagon train. Lee abducts May Cody. The massacre takes place in Echo Canyon, thirty miles east of Salt Lake City, rather than the actual locale which was hundreds of miles away in distant southern Utah. This geographic inaccuracy is necessary to bring Buffalo Bill into the story as May’s rescuer. He providentially enters the scene because he was out west with Johnston’s Army, sequestered for the winter near Echo Canyon—a false fact which he later incorporated into his life history, despite the fact that he was in school in Missouri during the Utah War. When Buffalo Bill enters the drama, his sister has been taken to Salt Lake City where she is in the clutches of Brigham Young, on the brink of being forced to become one of his plural wives. Bill, disguised as the Indian White Wolf, comes to her rescue. In the final act, Bill is captured by the soldiers at Fort Bridger, charged with being a spy, and condemned to death. Happily, he proves his innocence and all ends well.13 Some of the recognizable historical figures in the drama include General William S. Harney (not because he was associated with the Utah War, but probably because he was well-known), and two of Brigham Young’s plural wives, Ann Eliza Young and Amelia Folsom Young.

11 Louis S. Warren, Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody

2005), 144.

12 Ibid., 157.

13 A description of the plot is found in Warren, Buffalo Bill’s America, 103. An 1879 performance in Texas positioned the Mountain Meadows Massacre scene happening later in the play than the second act. “Tremont Opera-House,” Galveston (TX) Daily News, December 20, 1879.

and the Wild West Show (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

William “Buffalo Bill” Cody.

LIBRARY OF COnGRESS

The play opened in New York City in the first week of September 1877 and stayed for a two-week run. Cody took his production on the road for the next twenty-nine months, criss-crossing the country, playing opera houses and theaters in thirty-three states and the District of Columbia. May Cody was staged in seven Illinois cities during January and February 1878. Springfield got to see Buffalo Bill rescue his “sister” from the rascal Mormons in its opera house on January 31, 1878. The Springfield newspaper characterized May Cody as a “refined sensational drama.” 14 To attract a crowd, they quoted a commendatory review from the Keokuk Constitution: “There was red and green fire, slow curtain, oodles of gunpowder, heaps of heavy villains and Indians . . . . Virtue suffered, was scalped, and resurrected, and triumphed in the end, amid the wildest enthusiasm among the boys. Bill did some magnificent shooting—snuffing the light out of a candle held in a man’s hand, put out a cigar he was smoking, shot a potato off his head.”15 Cody’s show packed the theaters with uncritical reviews, positive testimonials, and advertising.

As an actor, Cody had little going for him other than charisma. During his May Cody years, his acting ability was uniformly derided as dreadful. A Chicago reviewer called Cody “the poorest of all poor actors” in shows at Haverly’s Theater in December 1878. He contended that “the only actor of any merit in the whole combination is a trained donkey.”16 With these critical acting reviews, it was wise that Cody gave prominent billing in newspaper ads to the trained donkey, named “Jack Cass.” According to one review, the donkey “performed as if it had been educated for the stage. It knew when and where to make its entrance and exits” without prompting. The talented donkey “had all the bad habits of a man. It smoked, chewed, drank whisky, and would have lied, if it could talk. It went in on its merits and came out with honor, a star performer.”17 A New York reviewer thought Buffalo Bill’s debut there was a “failure.” “He moved about the stage like a bull in a china shop,” wrote the reviewer.18

Some reviewers expressed a desire for more shooting in Cody’s performances. At one May Cody performance in Baltimore in September 1878, Cody’s shooting had dire consequences. He fired his gun at his Indian pursuers while charging up an imitation mountain on his pony. By mistake, one barrel of his pistol “happened to be loaded with a ball” which hit a boy sitting in the upper gallery in the chest.19 Fortunately the accident was not fatal and Cody was solicitous in paying all the boy’s medical bills and invit-

14 “Buffalo Bill,” (Springfield) Daily Illinois State Register, January 29, 1878.

15 Ibid., January 31, 1878. Cody entertained audiences with his shooting talents, but stopped doing that by January 1879. Sandra K. Sagala, Buffalo Bill on Stage (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2008), 120.

16 “Haverly’s,” Chicago Inter Ocean, December 18, 1878.

17 Quoted from the Keokuk Constitution in “Buffalo Bill,” (Springfield) Daily Illinois State Register, January 31, 1878.

18 “Dramatic and Musical,” Brooklyn (NY) Eagle, April 16, 1878.

19 “Buffalo Bill Makes a Bad Shot,” Galveston (TX) Daily News, September 11, 1878.

ing him out to his North Platte ranch when he recovered.20

In spring 1879, Bill took his troupe across the country to California. He grossed more than nine thousand dollars the first week at the California Theatre in San Francisco. Some reviewers were thrilled by the performance while others, like the Daily Alta reviewer, knew enough about Mormonism to be critical of script technicalities. “For John D. Lee to address Brigham Young as ‘Holy Father,’ is simply ridiculous. The scene in the Endowment House has not the least semblance to the truth,” he wrote. “But to go into any real criticism on May Cody is like breaking a butterfly on the wheel, and we desist.”21

After a successful twoweek run in San Francisco, Cody headed back east, stopping to perform in Sacramento, Carson City, Virginia City, and a two-day stop in Salt Lake City in early May 1879. In the very center of the Mormon kingdom, Cody decided that it might not be wise to perform May Cody. In both performances he opted to play the other melodrama in his repertoire, Knight of the Plains, which had no Mormon content. Had he performed May Cody, his play would have been ridiculed for its inaccuraciesand caused consternation for its sensational portrayal of the Mormon faith and its leaders. Attendance at three shows in two days steadily declined and the Salt Lake Herald ripped the performance, “To say it was poor hardly expresses it.”22

20 Sagala, Buffalo Bill on Stage, 115.

21 Ibid., 124.

22

“The Theatre,” Salt Lake Daily Herald, May 4, 1879.

An ad announcing the reenactment of the Mountain Meadows Massacre of emigrants by Indians appearing in the July 9, 1903 edition of The [Earlington, Kentucky] Bee.

One attempt to perform a massacrethemed play in Salt Lake City in mid-July 1880 met with a chilly reception. Journalist and humorist William L. Visscher brought California through Death Valley , an antiMormon play about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, to the Liberal Institute. First performed in 1878, the play had been received well in towns throughout California. Later known as Fonda , the play was first performed under the title of On the Trail, then later as The Plains, or the Trials in Death Valley. The authors were Sam Smith, an erstwhile poet and playwright from San Francisco, and John Wallace Crawford, an Irish-born poet and frontier scout known widely as Captain Jack Crawford. When Mormons and Gentiles who were dependent on Mormon business both boycotted the play, Visscher’s acting troupe was stranded in Salt Lake City for ten days. Not until newly-appointed territorial governor Eli H. Murray and other sympathizers sponsored a benefit performance, did the troupe amass enough funds to leave town.23

After their poor reception in Salt Lake City, Buffalo Bill’s troupe moved on to Denver where they could safely perform the more popular May Cody without being subject to the critical and more knowledgeable Mormons. After seeing the first of four May Cody shows, the Rocky Mountain News remarked, “This is one of the usual border dramas that can never fail to draw the masses.” It noted that Buffalo Bill “was not much of an actor, but the fact that he has ‘been there,’ and in worse places, lends a sort of charm to the play.” 24 “The spectacle of Buffalo Bill Cody playing himself,” Cody biographer Louis Warren noted, “attracted audiences.” 25 The fictional autobiographical legend and false claims invented by Cody helped promote his shows and fill theaters.

In June 1880, an article in a Georgetown, Colorado, newspaper reprinted an article from the Omaha Herald about a play performed on a Denver stage. It purported to be “one of Buffalo Bill’s” plays, in other words, May Cody 26

23 This incident is recounted fully in Lewis O. Saum, “’Astonishing the Natives’: Bringing the Wild West to Los Angeles,” Montana:The Magazine of Western History 38 (Summer 1988): 2-13.

24

“The Border Drama,” Denver Rocky Mountain News, July 23, 1879.

25 Warren, Buffalo Bill’s America, 155.

26 “Not in the Bills,” Georgetown (CO) Courier, June 3, 1880. It should be noted that there is a puzzling gap of eleven months between the publication of this reprinted article in June 1880, and the performance of Buffalo Bill’s May Cody melodrama in Denver in July 1879. The original article must have been printed not long after the performance as it mentioned it was staged “not a great while ago.” Although Cody had the only performing troupe known to this author that was dramatizing the Mountain Meadows Massacre at that time, it is possible that another lesser-known troupe might have performed this hilarious massacre scene.

Andrew S. Burt.

During this Denver performance, the Mountain Meadows Massacre scene was presented as a tableaux “illuminated and intensified,” as the report described, “by all the glory and glare of blue and red fire.” But this special performance became more lively than usual as the newspaper reported: some one surreptitiously mingled a quantity of red pepper with the material for producing tinted flame, and the result was somewhat surprising, and created great consternation among the temporary corpses. The admixture, instead of burning with serene halo, went on a tear, hissed, crackled, and flew in fiery, blistering showers over the hands and faces of the boys who held the pans, and over those of the dead, whose vitality was restored in a miraculously natural manner. A murdered woman who lay prone upon her back, with her head horribly gashed and a yawning, bleeding slit across her throat—dead as a doornail—was splashed, and revived with startling suddenness. She howled, groaned and flopped over, exclaiming, “O! O! My God! My eyes are burning out; I’ll die!” Other corpses writhed, rolled, flopped, howled and groaned. An immoderate amount of profanity bubbled from resurrected lips, and resurrected lungs poured out vast volumes of hard, hoarse coughs as the curtain cut the sight from the auditorium. Several of the stage people suffered many small blisters, but none were very seriously injured.27

Cody continued to perform May Cody in the Midwest, East, and throughout the South and Southwest through February 1880. He didn’t begin his Wild West shows until 1883, but even then, he continued performing frontier melodramas in theaters until 1886. During the melodrama’s two and a half year run, it grossed well over one hundred thousand dollars.

In 1881, there were 138 traveling combinations in the United States and by 1886 that number had grown to almost three hundred.28 Cody’s success with the Mountain Meadows Massacre-themed drama did not go unnoticed by other acting troupes. The Comique Company gave a benefit performance of a Mountain Meadows drama at the Kansas City Opera House in 1878. Proceeds from the drama were donated to those in Richmond, Missouri, who were left homeless by a cyclone. The Kansas City Journal reported that the drama “was rendered as it has never been rendered in this city before.”29 Miss Agnes Cody (no relation to Buffalo Bill), who newspapers billed as “America’s most talented and versatile young actress,” toured the east and midwest with her company in the late 1880s.30 Among the plays she had in her repertoire was Joaquin Murietta’s The Danites, which was based on “facts connected with the ‘Mountain Meadow’ massacre.”31 One Pennsylvania reviewer commended her for showing “a great deal of uncommon force and deftness” in playing the role of Billy Piper.32 But her Danite-themed drama was not popular with audiences and lasted little more than a few months in 1889 and 1890. Buffalo Bill had many imitators, but none ever reached his level of popularity or financial success.

27

“Not in the Bills,” Georgetown (CO) Courier, June 3, 1880.

28 Sagala, Buffalo Bill on Stage, 10, 157.

29 “The Richmond Sufferers,” Kansas City Journal, June 9, 1878.

30 “Opening of Library Hall,” Indiana (PA) Progress, September 25, 1889.

31 “Miss Agnes Cody,” Indiana (PA) Democrat, May 16, 1889.

32 Pittsburg (PA) Dispatch, March 10, 1889.

The next form of popular entertainment to use the Mountain Meadows Massacre was the Wild West shows. Adam Forepaugh was the first Wild West showman to incorporate the massacre into his performance. Forepaugh rose from poor beginnings in Philadelphia, becoming wealthy selling horses to the government during the Civil War. He got into the circus business in 1864. With his hard-nosed business acumen, Forepaugh became a rival of P. T. Barnum, the two having the largest circuses in the nation. He was the first to incorporate a Wild West show into his circus. The Mountain Meadows Massacre was a popular part of Forepaugh’s Wild West show from 1888 until the showman’s death in 1890. Newspaper advertisements referred to the company’s portrayal of the “atrocious” Mountain Meadows Massacre as a “most instructive Historical Object Lesson” showing the “Dangers of Early Emigration Across the Plains.”33 The cast included “200 Mounted Combatants, Genuine Savages, Scouts and Soldiers.”34 Although Custer’s Last Stand in 1876 at the Little Bighorn was also re-enacted in Forepaugh’s show, the Mountain Meadows Massacre portrayal received top billing in advertisements. After seeing the show, a reporter for the Fitchburg Daily Sentinel wrote that the scene of the massacre “stirred the pulses” of the audience, as it was portrayed “with a realism that no one could witness unmoved.” 35 After Forepaugh’s death, James E. Cooper, an old-time circus partner of Barnum and Bailey, purchased and managed the combined circus and Wild West show with James A. Bailey as his silent partner.36 The massacre scene continued to be part of the performance until Cooper’s demise in January 1892.37 Gordon W. Lillie, who was popularly known as Pawnee Bill, was the next to use the massacre in his Wild West show. He started a Wild West show with his trick-shooting/horseback-riding wife, Mae Lillie, in 1888, calling it “Pawnee Bill’s Historic Wild West.” When he began portraying the massacre, as early as 1891, his show went by the ponderous title “Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Indian Museum and Mexican Hippodrome.”38 Traveling throughout the United States and Canada, the massacre was a part of his show through at least 1906. 39 In 1897, his show had a six-week run at a commercial exposition in Pittsburgh. During twice daily performances, the portrayal of the Mountain Meadows Massacre included the unlikely killing of Kit Carson, who lived over ten years after the massacre. 40 Articles placed in 33

“4-Paw and the Wild West (advertisement),” Potsdam (NY) Courier Freeman, August 15, 1888. 34 Ibid.

35

“Forepaugh Arrives in Town,” Fitchburg (MA) Daily Sentinel, July 26, 1890. 36

“The Programme,” Pittsburg (PA) Dispatch, April 27, 1890.

37 Ibid., May 18, 1890, “Cooper’s Jubilee Year,” Stanford (KY) Semi-Weekly Interior, September 30, 1890, and “Obituary,” New York Sun, January 2, 1892.

38

“Pawnee Bill,” Richmond (VA) Times, July 12, 1891 and “Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show,” Statesville (NC) Landmark, October 5, 1893.

39

“Season’s Attractions at Coney Island,” Salt Lake Herald, June 24, 1906; and “Pawnee Bill’s Circus Delights Large Crowds,” Washington, (D.C.) Times, August 26, 1906.

40 “The Big Exposition,” Cumberland (MD) Evening Times, September 15, 1897.

newspapers by publicity advancement often quoted a complimentary article about the show from the Rochester Herald . The Mountain Meadows scene was mentioned with a few acts in the show as being “well worth double the price of admission.”41 The mail coach which was used in the massacre scene had a colorful history of its own. It had been built in the 1840s and used on mail runs in Kansas and the Indian Territory. Newspapers reported that “no less than nine persons have met their death” while riding in it as passengers. 42 Pawnee Bill was able to compete (or not compete) with Buffalo Bill by touring in Europe when Cody was performing in the states.43 In 1909, Lillie and Cody merged their two Wild West shows with great financial success, but the massacre was not a part of their combined program.44

This ad from the Daily Kennebec Journal, November. 14, 1877, gives billing to performances about the Danites, Brigham Young, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Kennedy Brothers Wild West show incorporated the massacre into their program from about 1903 through 1908. Favoring long titles, it was called “Kennedy’s Wild West Show, Indian Congress and Roman Hippodrome.” The massacre was the third act in a nine-part show. This differed from other entertainment portrayals of the massacre in that there was no mention of Mormon involvement. While other massacre-themed entertainments sensationalized Mormon participation, Kennedy’s show portrayed it solely as an Indian attack. In Kennedy’s show, Indians attack a wagon outfit bound for the California gold fields. A pitched battle ensues. Believing most of the emigrants have been killed, two Indians “return to scalp the supposed dead.” But some of the emigrants are still alive and shoot at the advancing Indians. The newspaper advertisement adds that

41

“The Pawnee Bill Show,” Richmond (VA) Dispatch, May 10, 1902.

42 “Pawnee Bill’s Wild West,” Fitchburg (MA) Daily Sentinel, June 14, 1892.

43 Roger A. Hall, Performing the American Frontier, 1870-1906 (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 151.

44 “Buffalo Bill’s Show,” New York Tribune, April 25, 1909; and “Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill Form a Strong Combination,” Washington, (D.C.) Herald, May 23, 1909.

“this act is very amusing as well as exciting.”45 Later Kennedy decided to open the show with the massacre scene and headlined it as the first act.46

The massacre was the grand finale of the Oklahoma Ranch Wild West Show performed in San Francisco in 1913. Like the Kennedy show, there was no hint of Mormon participation. It was strictly an Indian massacre from which no one survived. The San Francisco Call reported that “Indian bareback riders swooped down on a party of emigrants camped beside their prairie schooner. Firing with deadly effect from behind the shelter of their horses, the Indians slaughtered the entire party and rode off victorious,with the audience almost believing that it was a real occurrence they beheld.”47 In both the Kennedy and the Oklahoma Ranch shows, the role of the Mormons in the massacre had been completely erased. Although popular Wild West shows had retained the fact of Mormon participation for more than thirty years, their part in the story was eventually expunged. It was sacrificed to satisfy the public’s delight in sensational entertainment. In the end, truth didn’t matter and the Indians received all the blame.

With the massacre and John D. Lee’s execution in the distant past, the public mind could easily accept an all-Indian massacre. The stereotype of bloodthirsty Indians—that they were “incurably savage” and could not be civilized—was firmly rooted in the public mind. 48 The crass, one-sided portrayal of Indians in Wild West shows must shoulder much of the blame for framing the public’s misperception. Those who attended these early twentieth-century portrayals of the massacre did not even question the absence of the Mormons in the story.

Interest in Wild West shows declined with the advent of motion pictures. Even so, the Mountain Meadows Massacre endured as a popular part of these shows at least as late as 1914. In that year, Wyoming Bill’s Wild West Show included a “true to life representation of the famous Mountain Meadow Massacre.”49 This Wild West show, which was only in business from 1913 to 1914, was billed as being “strictly refined in every particular” and “highly constructive.”50 Wyoming Bill wanted his Wild West show to stand out from all others in terms of authenticity and instructive qualities.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre even proved to be a popular event for re-enactment in non-commercial community entertainments. In two western communities in the 1890s, the re-enactment of the massacre seems to have been done purely for the sake of entertainment. The town of Marysville, California, re-enacted the massacre scene as a part of their 1891

45 “List of Features of Kennedy’s Wild West Show, Indian Congress and Roman Hippodrome!” Earlington (KY) Bee, July 9, 1903.

46 “Kennedy’s Wild West Show,” Hartford (KY) Republican, September 4, 1908.

47 “Large Crowd Applauds Massacre by Indians,” San Francisco Call, August 24, 1913.

48 Alden T. Vaughan, “From White Man to Redskin: Changing Anglo-American Perceptions of the American Indian,” American Historical Review 87(October 1982): 953.

49 “Wild West Show Coming,” Bedford (PA) Gazette, May 15, 1914.

50 “Wild West Show Coming,” Northfield (MN)News, August 21, 1914.

celebration of California’s admission as a state.51 Marysville’s admission day celebration also featured an 1849 pack-train scene which linked the gold rush to California’s history, but that state’s link to the massacre is thin, unless it was as the eventual place of destination for the Arkansas emigrant train. In 1893, Butte, Montana, held a three-day Independence Day celebration. They killed fifty beeves to feed twelve hundred Indians who were “engaged to give a representation of the Mountain Meadow massacre.”52 As in the later wild west shows, the massacre portrayal was an all-Indian affair, strictly for the entertainment of the Montana cowboys.

For several years after about 1903, the massacre was a featured topic in the illustrated lectures of Professor B. F. Beardsley of Hartford, Connecticut. He displayed sixteen cycloramic scenes to help illustrate his lecture. A 1904 Ohio newspaper remarked that the pictures were “realistic” and helped in “vividly portraying this historical event.”53 He would sometimes combine his lecture on the massacre with a “fascinating” illustrated lecture on the human ear, filled with “fun and facts” and considered to be his “best illustrated lecture.” 54 Others who gave illustrated lectures in which the massacre received notice included Mrs. Clarence R. Gale, a woman who had taught school in Salt Lake City for three years under the sponsorship of the New West Education Commission.55

Motion picture film makers early grasped the inherent drama in the massacre and, most importantly, its drawing power at the box-office. In 1911, the Pathé Frères film company produced a motion picture about the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Incensed at what they viewed as a misrepresentation of fact and a “libel on Utah,” the Salt Lake Commercial Club and Utah Development League demanded the immediate withdrawal of the film. They threatened the company that if they didn’t suppress the film, they would register a complaint with the national film censorship bureau. Those who had viewed the film in Southern California thought the portrayal of the massacre was “grossly exaggerated and an insult to Utah.”56 The Nevada National Feature Film Company was purposely formed in 1913 because they were convinced that the movie public was growing tired of concocted plots. They thought there was “more drawing power in fact than in fiction.” To that end they proposed making some historical feature films on such topics relating to Nevada history as the Pony Express, Donner Party disaster, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre.57

The massacre continued to be featured in various forms of popular media well into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It appeared in newspaper

51

“Pacific Coast Items,” San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, August 17, 1891.

52

“Nebraska and Nebraskans,” Omaha (NE) Daily Bee, June 15, 1893.

53 “Mormon Massacre,” Sandusky (OH) Evening Star, March 10, 1904.

54

“Beardsley Tonight (advertisement),” Coshocton (OH) Daily Age, March 14, 1907.

55 “The C. C. Course,” Fitchburg (MA) Sentinel, December 6, 1890.

56 “Business Men See Libel on Utah,” Ogden Evening Standard, January 11, 1912.

57

“Nevada Motion Picture Plans,” (Reno) Nevada State Journal, July 20, 1913.

cartoons, radio dramas, and film. J. Carroll Mansfield depicted it in a comic strip called “High Lights of History” in 1927. It was printed in Sunday morning funny papers along with such other comic strips as “Cicero Sap” and “Little Mary Mixup.” 58 Ten years later, newspapers carried syndicated cartoonist Robert Wathen’s serialized comic strip entitled “The Tragic Case of the Mountain Meadows Massacre!” 59 It appeared in six installments in newspapers throughout the country. The attack on the Arkansas wagon train was depicted as strictly an atrocity performed by a “bad looking lot” of white men—not Mormons and not Indians. When smoke signals appeared on the horizon, the rough-looking bunch of cowboys proposed that they join forces to fight what looked like an impending Indian attack. The attack never materialized and the cowboys set up their camp next to the wagon corral. As night fell, the ever-cautious captain of the wagon train shared his suspicions that they may have been duped by these strangers. He was especially wary about their leader, Sam Wilkes (John D. Lee), “I don’t like him. . . . He looks fishy.” During the night the emigrants were slaughtered inside the corral.60 The final episode featured the trial with the defense attorney claiming there “was not one scintilla of evidence” upon which to convict “the only one ever tried for the crime.”61

On March 10, 1944, the massacre was the focus of episode number 1,738 of the Lone Ranger radio show featuring the masked Texas Ranger, his loyal Indian friend Tonto, and the magnificent white stallion Silver. In 1995, local Mormon audiences objected to a massacre scene that appeared in a historical musical drama extravaganza at the Tuacahn outdoor theater in St. George.62

In 2007, a Canadian film entitled September Dawn directed by Christopher Cain featured a fictional love story woven into a controversial portrayal of the massacre. The film received mostly negative reviews and only remained in American theaters for two weeks. Popular movie critic Roger Ebert writing for the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “What a strange, confused, unpleasant movie this is.”63 It was a box-office failure and lost almost ten million dollars.

58 Davenport (IA) Democrat and Leader, September 18, 1927.

59 Kokomo (IN) Tribune, June 7-12, 1937.

60

“The Tragic Case of the Mountain Meadows Massacre! In 6 Episodes, No. 4,” Kokomo (IN) Tribune, June 10, 1937.

61 Kokomo (IN) Tribune, June 12, 1937.

62 David Pace, “Tuacahn’s Tale,” Salt Lake City 6 (September-October 1995): 30.

63 Roger Ebert, “September Dawn,” Chicago Sun-Times, August 24, 2007.

Pawnee Bill, William Lillie.

The portrayal of the Mountain Meadows Massacre proved to be an enduring entertainment attraction for audiences for more than half a century. A correspondent of the San Francisco Bulletin , writing from Callville, Arizona, in June 1866, unknowingly recognized the dramatic potential inherent in this awful event. He deemed the Mountain Meadows Massacre “the bloodiest drama ever perpetrated on American soil.”64 He had spoken with Indians in the vicinity who admitted their participation in the massacre. They also told him that Mormons were the “instigators and chief actors in the tragedy.”65 Although suspected, the truth of this accusation would not be proven in court until the trial of John D. Lee eleven years later. His trial and execution incited a firestorm of negative press against the Mormons. Buffalo Bill utilized this negative publicity to attract audiences to see May Cody , the show that really launched his show business career. For decades afterwards, the Mountain Meadows Massacre was served up to audiences hungry for this singular event of Mormon violence. It became standard fodder for melodramas, plays, illustrated lectures, dramatic tableau performances, community celebrations, Wild West shows, and later was featured in motion pictures and radio dramas.

Since the days of the early republic, the representation of violence has maintained an enduring and ever-increasing foothold in the world of drama and entertainment. Since those early times, artistic manifestations have mirrored the fabric of American society. American history is rife with moments when violence changed the course of history. This was no more evident than on the American frontier, whose boundaries were pushed further and further west, displacing the American Indians by right of might. Violence was commonplace in the West. The Mountain Meadows Massacre, although horrific in the extreme, was not peculiar to its time or place. Recent studies of American drama history contend that while violence began first as a mere prop, it has increasingly escalated to become the main focus in modern dramatic entertainment.66 The portrayal of the massacre and its enduring attraction for audiences has certainly not been unusual.

No one has conclusively found the person who can be credited with first saying “never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”67 The phrase has been traced to at least 1940, but it is evident that the idea was operational in almost all of these massacre entertainments dating back to its first successful portrayal in a Buffalo Bill melodrama in the late 1870s. The genesis of the phrase predated Hollywood. Tragedy generally makes for good drama, but the quality of these massacre-themed productions was invariably poor.

64 “Mountain Meadow Massacre,” Daily Union Vedette, July 27, 1866.

65 Ibid.

66 See Alfonso Ceballos Muñoz, Ramón Espejo Romero, and Bernardo Muñoz Martinez, eds., Violence in American Drama: Essays on Its Stagings, Meanings and Effects (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2011).

67 The history of the saying is traced and discussed on “The Big Apple” website. Source: http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/never_let_the_facts_get_in_the_way_of_a_good_story/, (accessed November 17, 2011).

BOOK REVIEWS

The Latest Word from 1540: People, Places, and Portrayals of the Coronado Expedition. Edited by Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2011. xi + 505 pp. Cloth, $55.00.)

THIS BOOK IS AN ABSOLUTE must-read for anyone who enjoys studying the rich history of the American Southwest for pleasure or as a professional. Richard and Shirley Cushing Flint are renowned researchers and writers on the American Southwest and the Coronado expedition in particular. They have pulled together into one seminal work an illuminating collection of essays written by fifteen of the most knowledgeable researchers on the Coronado expedition, ever. At first glance, the writing in this book might appear to be a bit technical for the average reader, but such is not the case. It does require commitment to read through the scholarly findings bringing that story out of legend and into a more finite reality, but the story is there. What is produced here is a canon-of-writ revealing the latest and most significant research on the Coronado expedition and its impact on American Indian cultures of the American Southwest. Individual studies are presented in such a way that a reader-friendly, time-progressive telling of events unfolds in the reader’s mind.

Anxious to get into the story of Coronado’s march into North America, one might be surprised to find that the first two chapters are biographical sketches introducing the main players in Coronado’s retinue. Brilliantly placed, by the time these pages are read, the reader has been taken through the busy, dusty streets of Mexico City, small hamlets for miles around, and even Mother Spain, meeting prominent nobles, soldiers, artisans, and common folk. As the story begins to unfold starting in Chapter 3, even the legendary Cabeza de Vaca is there to greet us. As the expedition comes together, one is brought up to speed on the socio-political milieu that was Nueva España in early 1500s Mexico, and one is allured into a feeling of connectedness, of a sense of belonging. As one study and another are presented in subsequent chapters, that sense of being there, of having a feel for those who went on this march, and the complexities it brought upon native peoples, is compelling. Furthermore, along with all the archaeological findings presented, definitively fixating events to locations on the ground, equipment used, and hardships faced, it is easy to conjure up a more salient idea of the size and sheer magnitude of this meandering swarm. More than three thousand strong, herding cattle and sheep and hogs as they lumbered along, expedition members went filled with dreams of settlement and riches but returned disillusioned and heavily in debt, those that returned at all. In their wake they left disorder and destruction among the Native Americans of the region, setting the stage for further hostilities when the Spaniards returned four decades later.

The studies presented take the reader along with Coronado all the way to Quivira in what is today central Kansas, and back. They reveal the quintessential paradigm of history as dynamic: cultures wax and wane, cities rise and then crumble into oblivion, streams change course, and place names upon the land are commuted or lost in the ebb of generations. What is handed down in the resultant folklore is not always what really happened. From within the folklore of the American Southwest and a multitude of recent findings that present new understandings while in some cases stimulating even more ideas, the Flints have pulled together the words of many modern scholars, all attempting to piece together the story of European and American Indian history that is the Coronado expedition. It is a history that is not yet fully deciphered, but loved all the more.

H. BERT JENSON Utah State University, Uintah Basin

Still, the Small Voice: Narrative, Personal Revelation, and the Mormon Folk Tradition. By Tom Mould (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2011. xi + 448 pp. Cloth, $39.95.)

MOST PUBLISHING BY FOLKLORISTS (Mormon and nonMormon) about Mormon folklore has addressed performed genres. Though it would be difficult to speak analytically about folklore without taxonomies, these can keep a folklorist from noticing genres not already named: like the grooves of a wagon track, studies of Mormon folklore proffer paths to legends of the Three Nephites, anecdotes about J. Golden Kimball, dialect stories of Brother Petersen, faith-promoting stories—a small child rescued from an irrigation ditch, a genealogy researcher finding a long-sought, elusive and crucial name from a stranger—and other genres, all marked “visible” because they are out of the ordinary. But now folklorist Tom Mould’s Still, the Small Voice: Narrative, Personal Revelation, and the Mormon Folk Tradition treats a previously invisible narrative genre that has existed abundantly all along at the very center of Mormon religious culture, hiding in plain sight.

The author, a non-Mormon folklorist working with members of the two LDS wards in the North Carolina town where he lives, began collecting one of the “visible” genres—Mormon “Apocalore,” narratives about the end of the world. Following standard research practice as a participant-observer who has read extensively in advance, he respectfully built trust with his Mormon consultants and attempted through sensitive observation to develop an insider’s view of what he was studying. It was his outsider status, though, that made it possible for him to identify a genre not visible to

insiders, radically changing the direction of his fieldwork and leading to a groundbreaking study of the everyday center of Mormon spirituality. Lest his North Carolina findings not be representative, Mould augmented his fieldwork with archival research in the great repositories of Mormon folklore at Brigham Young University and Utah State University, and he moreover accessed relevant narratives in all possible LDS church publications, including the Ensign and other periodicals along with faith-promoting story books from the nineteenth century. The genre he theorizes did not have a name among the people he interviewed, so he has named it personal revelation narrative

As Mould explains for the benefit of outsiders, Mormons are taught that God speaks to humankind in the present day, and that Mormons who practice their faith gain access to personal communication from God through the Holy Ghost. Mormons learn from childhood to be open to such revelations (called promptings, intuitions, feelings, or “the still small voice”), to make sense of these messages doctrinally, and to narrate their experiences of them in church as part of their religious duty. This transition from experience to narrative can be arduous, for promptings are not always easy to interpret, and once interpreted through scripture study and prayer they must be shaped into appropriate form and delivered in a verbal style that respects certain inherent social and hierarchical strictures placed upon the narrator. The skill required of the person telling the story bespeaks an artistry of performance that is real and analyzable.

In Still, the Small Voice, scholars of Mormonism will find a thorough compilation of archival and print LDS personal revelation narratives (441 in all), many of which are printed here, along with verbatim transcriptions of numerous narratives by his LDS consultants in North Carolina. In addition to text sources and statistical analyses, this book provides an outsider’s sensitive, far-reaching, accurate, and respectful description of LDS history, scripture, and religious practice, and a convincing account of the convergence of these elements in individual Mormons’ experience of personal revelation.

Folklorists, for their part, will find chapter by chapter a multidimensional performance-based exploration of a newly named genre and of the process by which intensely private spiritual experience is transformed into public performance. An exemplar of good fieldwork and good theorizing, Still, the Small Voice promises to play a large role in future performance-based study of folklore.

POLLY STEWART Salisbury University, Salisbury, Maryland

No Communication with the Sea: Searching for an Urban Future in the Great

Basin

By

Tim Sullivan (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2010. xvii + 217 pp. Paper, $19.95.)

IN NO COMMUNICATION WITH THE SEA:Searching for an Urban Future in the Great Basin, urban planner and former Salt Lake Tribune writer, Tim Sullivan confronts the challenges currently facing Reno and Salt Lake City, two of the Basin’s most populous areas. Since the 1990s, both cities have experienced significant growth and strive to balance urban realities with open space preservation. Sullivan seeks to understand the binding relationship between community, environment, and place. “One of the best chances we have for preserving these landscapes is to build better cities that use resources efficiently and make urban living comfortable and enticing enough to reduce the urge of so many to flee to the unbuilt edge,” Sullivan writes (xv).

Sullivan first describes the region’s unique landscapes. Located on opposite ends of the Great Basin, Reno and Salt Lake City are what Sullivan terms urban paradoxes: “no one in the region lives outside a city, yet few seem to want to live in one” (16). Residential housing crawls up mountainsides, making the transition between city and wilderness relatively nonexistent. Mountains dominate the skyline as spring runoff trickles into playas and saline seas. Because of geographic constraints, Sullivan observes, population centers are especially dense.

Sullivan next discusses features unique to Reno and Salt Lake City. Reno’s nearby Woodland Village attracts Sullivan’s attention because its drainage system captures floodwaters and diverts them back into the system, working within Great Basin hydrologic patterns. Woodland’s culinary water is supplemented by wells from California’s Long Valley. Drawn only once, well- water is used, treated, and then left to restore the local aquifer. Despite water purification, Sullivan worries about the potential for long-term pollution, noting “The image of the big wide open is at odds with its reality of the closed hydrology and possibility of a slow pollution boomerang lurking underneath” (64).

Sullivan’s chapters on the Wasatch Front are especially strong and will find broad appeal among Utah readers. Here Sullivan focuses on Syracuse and Tooele, reiterating earlier points made about geography and urban-rural tensions. Located in Davis County, Syracuse is marked by population growth and new transportation networks, all of which threaten Great Salt Lake wetlands. While Davis County works to maintain the lake’s shorelines, Tooele fights to preserve its open spaces. Tooele planners call five-acre lots large-scale sprawl, favoring clustered development instead. It all depends on how one defines open space, Sullivan remarks.

In recommending remedies, Sullivan reiterates core tenets of New Urbanism: mixed-use housing and neighborhoods, employment opportunities closer to home. Sullivan explores Kennecott’s Daybreak community and applauds the efforts of Envision Utah and Reno’s counterpart, the Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Agency.

As Sullivan notes in his preface, logistics prevented him from fully covering the Great Basin’s nuanced urbanism. For Utah readers, his emphasis on the Wasatch Front is a definite strength as his synthesis identifies avenues for further investigation: the role of Ivory Homes in defining Wasatch Front subdivisions, other planned communities, and transportation networks.

Carl Abbot noted in his Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern West, that concentrated population nodes exist throughout the western United States where post World War II suburban sprawl blossomed like Isaiah’s desert rose. Understanding the history behind these transformations is crucial and implies that we should look carefully at the interrelationship between communities and their local environments. Sullivan’s well-written contemporary perspective on Great Basin urban life raises important questions historians and others interested in the region’s unique dynamics would do well to consider.

ANDERSEN

Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism. By Terryl L. Givens and Matthew J. Grow (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. ix + 499 pp. Cloth, $34.95.)

THE SUBTITLE FOR THIS EXCELLENT and praiseworthy biography of Mormon apostle and publicist Parley P. Pratt emphasizes his preeminent position in the Latter-day Saint tradition as a missionary and author. Pratt preached in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Chile. He published numerous influential tracts and books. He suffered in a hellish Missouri prison. He led an exploring party to locate sites for settlement in Utah. He died at the hands of an assassin who enjoyed local acclaim for this nefarious deed.

Born in Burlington, New York, in 1807, Pratt grew up in a family of transplanted New England dissenters. After sampling a number of churches as a seeker, Pratt joined Sidney Rigdon’s Reformed Baptist congregation. Rigdon was part of the primitivist movement championed by Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Barton Stone, and Walter Scott.

Reading the Book of Mormon led to Pratt’s conversion to Mormonism. In the book he found support for his long-standing belief in the divine destiny of the American Indians. He soon actualized his belief by accepting

REBECCA

Arizona State University Tempe, Arizona

a call to travel westward to preach the gospel to them. This mission generally failed to convert Indians, but resulted in the conversion of Rigdon and 127 of his community, including a number of future LDS leaders.

By vocation a farmer, Pratt assisted in founding the Mormon colony in Missouri. This venture, as most of his economic activities, took second place to his preaching and writing, and he frequently found himself deeply in debt. Pratt suffered in and wrote about the persecution of the Mormons in northern Missouri. Imprisoned like other Mormon leaders, he eventually escaped and fled to Illinois.

He achieved fame for his writings. The authors rightly point out that, with the possible exception of his brother Orson, Parley was the most prolific and influential Mormon publicist. His earliest works like Voice of Warning . . . . (1837) and History of the Late Persecution inflicted by the State of Missouri . . . (1839) were reprinted multiple times. He wrote an apocalyptic letter to Britain’s Queen Victoria (1841). His last major work: Key to the Science of Theology (1855) has been frequently republished in edited form and is still in print. He edited the Millennial Star. His posthumously published The Angel of the Prairies is a creative novel which outlines Pratt’s vision of the Millennium.

He arrived in Utah in 1847, settled his polygamous families, and continued church service. He embarked on explorations during the severe winter of 1849-50 to find the locations for new settlements and resources. Eventually, he married twelve wives and fathered thirty children. His final marriage to Eleanor McComb McLean Pratt led to his cold-blooded murder by Hector McLean in 1857 on a lonely road northeast of Van Buren, Arkansas.

A number of authors have asserted that Pratt’s murder played a major role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. By contrast, the authors rightly conclude: “Pratt’s murder probably contributed to the mentality of persecution that helped spur the perpetrators at Mountain Meadows. But it ranks low in the scheme of causation of that crime, a conclusion Juanita Brooks reached in her classic history sixty years ago” (390).

Although we might quibble over the subtitle that calls Pratt "The Apostle Paul of Mormonism," there is no question that he was one of the most important figures in all of Mormonism. His work as a publicist, missionary, and defender of the faith certainly places him in the first rank as a faithful and independent thinker in the Latter-day Saint tradition.

THOMAS G. ALEXANDER Brigham Young University

Violent Encounters: Interviews on Western Massacres By Deborah and Jon Lawrence

(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. xiii + 258 pp. Cloth, $34.95.)

THROUGH A SERIES of interviews with prominent scholars, the reader learns about bloody episodes in Western history—from Sand Creek to Mountain Meadows to Camp Grant to the Oatman and McComas massacres—as well as larger events including the Sioux and Cheyenne wars, clashes in California and the Great Basin, and hostile encounters along the overland trails. Interviewed for their expertise are Marc Simmons, Margot Mifflin, Will Bagley, Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Michael Tate, Albert Hurtado, Robert Utley, Jerome A. Green, and Ned Blackhawk. According to the Preface, the book “differs from most modern scholarship on the West by including a broad range of interviewees: academic historians, National Park Service historians, nonacademic professional historians, an anthropologist, and a journalist” (xi).

While the accounts of the “violent encounters” are informative, more interesting is what the interviews reveal about the historians— the problems they encounter in research, the difficulties of writing history, and their attempts to maintain objectivity.

Will Bagley’s opinion on historical analysis is straightforward: “[W]hen historians try to come up with an interpretation of history, it should be the one that is simplest and answers the questions most consistently” (41). But, according to Marc Simmons, “It’s what it means, the interpretation, that gets you in trouble because nowadays academics say that there’s no way anybody can be objective” (16).

Understanding, let alone interpreting, violence can be difficult. Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh says, “We can study them and try to dig into their psychology, but can we truly understand people who perpetrate those kinds of acts? I’m not sure that it’s entirely possible”(59). Jerome A. Green offers a more accepting approach to understanding: “Rather than looking back today and saying that it shouldn’t have happened, we should understand that the people who were facing these events at the time had a very different perspective on the situation than we have now. And perhaps the way it turned out was the only way it could have happened”(148).

Ned Blackhawk talks of the difficulty of including Indian viewpoints, both because of the lack of primary sources and the questionable value of tribal traditions. “I think the best strategy…is to try to triangulate or situate historical materials within broader fields of information. And while it is true that there can be no history of the American frontier without incorporation of Native American voices, we must treat these Indian testimonies as historically produced texts and documents, just as we treat all historically produced testimonies”(176). Robert Utley is more direct on this point “Forget it!

They have no tribal memory. They have what Momma and Grandma have passed down over the years, and while everybody believes that the oral tradition is preserved exactly as it was passed down, it isn’t….I regard modern Indian testimony as worthless. It’s a waste of time”(132-33).

Historians face other obstacles, as well. “[E]ven though we would deny it, few of us are really free agents when we write history,” Albert Hurtado says, “There is a real world that is impinging on us in a variety of ways….Certain terms, words, attitudes, points of view, and issues are inherently controversial”(116).

Despite the difficulties of writing history, the authors of Violent Encounters have created an interesting, informative, and useful book dealing with some of Western history’s darkest days. Readers should come away from the encounter with better understanding of the subject and an appreciation of the making of history.

ROD MILLER Sandy

A History of Utah Radicalism: Startling, Socialistic, and Decidedly Revolutionary.

By John S. McCormick and John R. Sillito (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2011. x +

477 pp. Cloth, $37.95.)

THIS DEFINITIVE ACCOUNT of the history of radicalism in Utah culminates years of research by two well-established and highly productive scholars in the field. It is well written, well researched and well argued.

The authors view radical movements as those seeking fundamental change in the organization, structure and operation of society so as to increase the sphere of freedom and opportunity. Utah, they demonstrate, has a long tradition of such movements lasting to the present day. Early Mormon settlers, the Knights of Labor, the Populists, and a variety of other third political parties established the tradition. The book offers insights into the lives and thoughts of several important figures who led the radical charge during its various phases.

The bulk of the book, however, focuses on the Socialist movement in Utah which, as represented by the success of the Socialist Party, reached its peak in the early twentieth century. Attention is given to the backgrounds and thinking of its most prominent members, and, with considerable emphasis, to the opposition of the Mormon church to the party and Socialism in general.

The authors examined the backgrounds of nearly two thousand Socialist Party members and found that most were male, married, and native born (not a bunch of foreigners) engaged in a variety of occupations. Around 40

percent of them were Mormons—sizeable, but much less than the percent of Mormons in the state population which stood at around 75 percent.

Examining the writings of Utah Socialists, they found the core of their message to be capitalism undermined morality, making it impossible to lead an ethical life. Socialist party writers and speakers found allies among the Christian Socialists who “saw the teachings of Christ and the dictates of the market economy as incompatible” and that “true Christianity could be achieved only through Socialism”(152). Christian Socialism was strong in Utah and the authors present an illuminating treatment of the principal figures, including national leaders such as Franklin Spencer Spalding.

Though the nature of voter support for the party is not extensively examined in this volume, it is clear that it drew a considerable amount of its support from workers in the labor movement. The party did particularly well in local elections. From 1900-25 Socialists won at least 115 elections in two dozen cities and towns of all sizes. Why did the party fail to generate long term support? One reason suggested by the authors is that the Socialist office holders failed to distinguish themselves from other “good government” reformers and, thus, to give the voters any particular reason why they should vote for them. Still, one wonders how much voter support the Socialists could have built up either initially or long term by going all out as revolutionaries.

As the authors themselves suggest, a much more substantial problem for the Socialists was the opposition of the Mormon church. Under tremendous pressure from the federal government and public opinion at large, church leaders moved to assimilate Mormons into American society. They abandoned their radical tradition, embraced capitalism, accepted the two-party system, and proceeded to conduct a wide ranging campaign against Socialism. The opposition of the church, the most powerful force in Utah, made it difficult if not impossible for the Socialist Party to succeed.

The Socialist story in Utah is not just about campaigns and elections but about people who shared a world view and who were engaged in a wide variety of social and cultural activities designed to build solidarity. The party in several ways was like a church itself. The members, though, also reached out and made an important input into the intellectual, political, and cultural life of the state.

Overall the book is valuable in not only uncovering the past of what is commonly thought of as one of the nation’s most conservative states but as an important thought-provoking addition to the literature on radicalism.

DAVID R. BERMAN Arizona State University

Pie in the Sky: How Joe Hill’s Lawyers Lost His Case, Got Him Shot, and Were Disbarred. By Kenneth Lougee (Bloomington, IN: Universe, Inc., 2011. xxii + 183 pp. Paper, $14.95.)

JOE HILL WAS A LABOR ORGANIZER, poet and songwriter who was convicted and executed for the murder of John Morrison and his son Arling in their grocery store on the night of January 10, 1914. Hill is an icon, remembered today in stories and song as a martyr for workers and the downtrodden. In popular culture, the martyr Joe Hill was murdered by the State of Utah at the behest of the Copper Kings, or maybe the Mormon church, or a cabal of the powerful interests that controlled the state of Utah at the time.

Given the prominence of the case, there has been surprisingly little serious historical evaluation of the Joe Hill trial and the events surrounding his execution. Since 1967, Gibbs Smith’s book, Joe Hill, has been considered the most objective and comprehensive work. It is fitting then, as the one hundredth anniversary of his trial and execution approaches, that these events once again become the subject of serious historical study.

Kenneth Lougee is a practicing trial lawyer with more than thirty years' experience, and he brings both his expertise and deep interest in Utah history to the examination of Joe Hill’s trial, his appeals, and the disbarment of Hill’s attorney, Judge Orin Hilton. Lougee does not voice an opinion on Hill's guilt or innocence, saying that a definitive answer is impossible.

The book’s intent is to maintain a narrow focus on the events that actually took place and on what the author believes can be definitively established by an examination of the available records in an assessment of whether or not Hill received a fair trial and justice was fairly served by the State of Utah's execution of Joe Hill.

In his examination of the trial records the author is not dismayed by the unfairness of the trial, but by the blunders and mistakes committed by the inexperienced and incompetent lawyers that represented Joe Hill. Neither of Hill’s lawyers, Ernest MacDougall or Frank B. Scott, had ever tried or participated in a serious trial, let alone a death penalty case. Both claimed to be Socialists, and were perhaps more interested in arguing for Socialism than they were in defending their client.

Lougee acknowledges that much has changed since the early twentieth century regarding the rights of defendants, but he argues that many standards, such as the rules of evidence, have not changed. More important, the skills needed to be a successful trial lawyer remain the same. Hill’s lawyers failed to understand the community in which the trial took place, and as a result failed to select jury members who might think favorably or at least neutrally of their controversial client.

Representative of this failure was in allowing Joseph Smith Kimball, who would become the jury foreman, to sit on the jury. Joseph Kimball had not been in the jury pool for the Hill trial but was brought in by the judge from a previous jury. MacDougall and Scott apparently did not know that Kimball was an important member of the Mormon church, and had served in the legislature and in the Utah Constitutional Convention. Hill’s lawyers should have exercised their preemptory challenge to reject Kimball because he would have very unfavorable influence over the jury.

What follows in the trial is a litany of errors by MacDougall and Scott. Joe Hill was a difficult client, but he could see his lawyers' incompetence, and at one point, he fired them in front of the jury and asked to defend himself. The Judge insisted that the lawyers remain to assist Hill, who eventually allowed them to represent him even though they failed to manage the jury selection, to properly cross-examine and impeach witnesses, and to bring evidence beneficial to Hill before the jury. Most important, they failed to establish a creditable counter-narrative to the prosecution's story of Joe Hill as the robber and murderer. Without a counter story, Lougee argues not one jury member was able to find reasonable doubt and vote for acquittal. There was nothing irregular about the trial and Judge Morris Ritchie’s legal rulings were in accordance with the law and authority of the presiding judge.

After the trial Orin Hilton, a highly successful labor lawyer, represented Joe Hill in his appeals. While Hilton was a fine trial lawyer, he had no experience in appeals. He botched the process by appealing to have the guilty decision overturned rather than sticking strictly to questions of law. That approach made it easy for the Utah Supreme Court to uphold the conviction of Hill.

Lougee finds no error by the Utah Supreme Court in upholding the conviction when Joe Hill failed to provide new evidence to explain his gunshot wound. He criticizes historians for not understanding that appeal courts rule on questions of law; only in the rarest of circumstances will they set aside a verdict based on the findings of a jury. Lougee's criticism makes an excellent point, and historians with no legal background would be wise to consult a legal expert when writing about legal matters.

The author is critical of Hilton's public statements, claiming that Hill received an unfair trial and that the Mormon church was responsible. Hilton expanded his complaints about the judicial system in Utah and the influence of the Mormon church, particularly in his speeches after Hill’s execution. Hilton’s accusation led to his justifiable disbarment.

Lougee goes a little too far here, making the Mormon church appear to be a victim of the propaganda espoused by Hilton and the socialists he represented. While the Mormon church probably had nothing to do with

Hill's conviction, it did help to create a hostile environment with its decades-long campaign against Socialism and labor unions.

Once Mr. Lougee leaves the legal realm of the Joe Hill case, he is often on shaky ground. Inconsistencies appear in the narrative, and several fallacies of historical reasoning, common to an inexperienced historian, mar his findings such as the odd comment that the strength of an argument is more important than footnotes. Still, Pie in the Sky is a welcome addition to the literature on Joe Hill.

CLAYTON A. COPPIN Salt Lake City

THOMAS HARVEY RIGHTLY CLAIMS that both Rainbow Bridge and Monument Valley “have meant something in American culture”(4). He also correctly asserts that the latter place “became the iconic image of the American West”(5). In his well-researched and thoughtful book, Harvey sets out to show the reader how those places came to mean something and exactly what it is they mean. Largely his book is one of cultural interpretation of physical space.

In each chapter the author examines how succeeding cultures and/or individuals helped shape the way we think about Rainbow Bridge and Monument Valley: Navajo Indians, Rainbow Bridge “discoverers” Cummings and Douglass, novelist Zane Grey, filmmaker John Ford, environmental groups like the Sierra Club, and tourist guides such as John and Louisa Wetherill.

Navajo ideas about these places, Harvey says, evolved out of their culture and their experience with the environment. On the other hand, AngloAmerican perceptions about these spaces derived from their dissatisfaction with modern life and from their desire to connect with something they considered untainted.

With each chapter Harvey carefully researches the background of each encounter with these spaces; then he interprets the meaning of that encounter. For example, with filmmaker John Ford (his best chapter), he first reveals that westerns had been filmed in Monument Valley before Ford shot his classic Stagecoach in 1939. We then read about how Ford’s Irish immigrant story is woven into that film’s themes, we see how the Depression affected Ford’s work, and we learn details of Stagecoach’s filming process. Harvey also discusses other films Ford shot there: My Darling Clementine (1946), Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The

Rainbow Bridge to Monument Valley: Making the Modern Old West. By Thomas J. Harvey (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. xii + 237 pp. Cloth, $34.95.)

Searchers (1956), Sergeant Rutledge (1960), and Cheyenne Autumn (1964). Through these films Ford succeeded in turning Monument Valley into a national mythic space, while addressing such contemporaneous issues as the Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and civil rights. Harvey’s analysis of each film in terms of these issues is perceptive and enlightening.

This is the case most of the time but not always.

Harvey’s interpretations sometimes ignore other possibilities. For example, he claims the Wetherills adorned their house with Indian relics because they and their visitors believed this décor was somehow more authentic. That may well be true, but Harvey offers no proof of such. Possibly the Wetherills had nothing else with which to decorate. Or the couple may have just thought it beautiful, period.

Likewise, while it is likely that most modern tourists see Monument Valley through the eyes of John Ford, other western films, or even television and magazine ads, they may end up finding other meanings as well. Some will become interested in Navajo culture, buy a book like John Holiday and Robert McPherson’s A Navajo Legacy, and learn about the Diné in that place. Or they might wonder how the buttes and spires formed, pick up a geology book, and begin to visualize the area’s spectacular geological history. People can imagine beyond what they have been taught to think.

In sum, though, Harvey’s research is impressive and his interpretations are provocative. His study opens up new ways to think about these two iconic landscapes. The book will appeal to those familiar with these two spectacular spaces and with their interpreters.

JAMES M. ATON Southern Utah University

The Glen Canyon Country: A Personal Memoir

The University of Utah Press, 2011. xix + 424 pp. Cloth, $75.00; paper, $39.95.

DON D. FOWLER, presently a distinguished anthropologist emeritus at the University of Nevada, got his first field experience as an archaeologist working on the Glen Canyon Project in the late 1950s while an undergraduate at the University of Utah. Only about the last third of this book delivers on the subtitle’s promise of “a personal memoir” of that project, but it is the best part. Preceding that is a sprawling history of the region from its earliest inhabitants to the inception of the Glen Canyon Project. Although organized around various themes, it is a historical hodgepodge with no discernible principle of selection, in which the monumental and the trivial—the Clarence Duttons and the Georgie Whites—float through its pages side by side. But there is reason beneath this chaos—in fact, at least a

By Don D. Fowler (Salt Lake City:

couple of good reasons. One is that there is no longer a comprehensive history of Glen Canyon in print, but Fowler needs a context to frame his memoir, and he refers back to that context repeatedly in the memoir chapters. The other reason (unstated but implicit) is that he wants to show the astonishing variety of people who have lived in, worked in, and passed through the canyon. In that, he succeeds so spectacularly that he almost makes life on a Manhattan street corner look monotonous by contrast. So instead of pondering what “Sheena, the Queen of the Jungle” might have in common with Grove Karl Gilbert, we should just buckle our life jackets and head down the rapids; at the takeout point below, it will have been worth it.

Not that there are no omissions, the most regrettable to this reviewer being an extended discussion of Indian traders and trading posts, for over a century the primary point of economic and cultural contact between Indians and whites, and an institution heretofore studied least thoroughly in that far-flung northern part of Indian Country. Even the Wetherills, who have attracted some historical study, are more often treated as explorers and guides than as traders, whereas they were great pioneers in opening up that part of the West to commerce and establishing the symbiotic relationship with their Indian neighbors that characterized the best of the traders. Fowler understandably may not be trying to break new historical ground, but simply summarizing the literature on the subject, which over recent decades has included some remarkable works by such scholars as Martha Blue and Willow Roberts Powers, would have been welcome.

But whatever one thinks of the historical section, the “personal memoir” is well worth the wait. In addition to explaining the techniques employed for surveying and excavating prehistoric sites throughout a vast geographic region under very serious restraints of time, Fowler’s sketches of the personalities involved in the salvage project are vividly drawn and full of humor, especially his portrait of the fearsome Jesse Jennings, the Dark Knight of Utah archaeology. He even includes some of the crazy songs composed by and for the archaeologists, which they used to while away the hours around the campfire. Best of all, though, is Fowler’s self-deprecating narrative of his own evolution from a confessed urbanite who had never slept on the ground to not only an expert archaeologist, but also a highly competent boatman and quartermaster who could organize the supplies and equipment for an entire field season. Those of us who were not there missed out on a lot.

GARY TOPPING

Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City

Working on the Railroad, Walking in Beauty: Navajos, H0zh = ,and Track Work.

By Jay Youngdahl (Logan:

Utah State University Press, 2011. xxi + 185 pp. Cloth, $32.95.)

THIS SLIM VOLUME ADDS to a growing body of literature about Navajo economic development during the mid-to-latter half of the twentieth century as livestock practices gave way to wage dependence. The author, who holds a law degree and a master’s of divinity from Harvard, used these two disciplines to examine Navajo history and culture as indicated by the title. The first part, Working on the Railroad, is highly successful. As a lawyer who has often defended injured Navajo railroad workers in court, Youngdahl builds his case concerning three main entities representing corporate America—read profit motive over human welfare. The primary triangle of institutions that interfaced with Navajo workers was comprised of the railroad who specified labor needs; the Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) created in 1935 to handle pensions, unemployment insurance, and job placement for workers; and trading posts scattered across the reservation who recruited laborers to work in “gangs.” Each of these groups benefited financially while the Navajos provided excellent service, laboring beside other blue collar employees in menial, often dangerous tasks. Indeed, of all nationalities toiling in this setting, the Navajos were preferred. In 1951, for example, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad hired 7,500 Indian workers, 85 percent of whom belonged to this tribe.

There were, however, problems—everything from simple misunderstandings from mistranslation and cultural ignorance to large scale attempts to deny benefits, create unfair charges, and hide a paternalistic orientation under an outward appearance of assistance. Each of the organizations received enough scrutiny from the government and Navajo legal services (DNA) to change the entire process of hiring workers. By the mid-1970s, trading posts lost their role as recruiters and began to either shift business practices or close; the RRB stepped aside from direct contracting, a job assumed now by the railroads who hired and offered directly employment benefits. By using rarely accessed railroad and government documents, the author gives a clear but little-known picture of Navajo relations with the railroads and their cooperating partners.

The second half of the story, Walking in Beauty, is not as successful. The author proclaims: “The soul of this book and the focus of the interviews in it, examines the religious practices that play a major role in helping these men to find the required resources to navigate their terrain and to build and maintain a productive and meaningful life” (22). While recognizing the role of the Native American Church and Christianity, he tends more toward traditional Navajo beliefs, which distinguishes these people from other tribes. The names of those interviewed are not in the bibliography, but

Youngdahl makes reference to a dozen men or couples that he talked to, none of whom get into significant depth about religious practices. There is mention of ceremonies, protective objects, miraculous results, and h0 zh= (a complex term often glossed as harmony) but how it all works is absent. Instead, the author turns to the white scholarly community for an intellectual dialogue about Navajo religious concepts then adds his own thoughts. A highly academic view, up-to-date citation of scholarly analysis, and an almost total absence of the Navajo voice keeps the reader out of the hogan and in the classroom. The problem is that he never gets to the root of their perception deeply embedded in language, traditional teachings, and mythology. To do so is a complex undertaking, but at the heart of what he set out to accomplish. Thus this book is highly recommended for those interested in learning of Navajo labor relations with the railroad, but one must look elsewhere for the philosophical underpinning of what made it bearable for workers plying their trade along the tracks of this nation.

ROBERT S. MCPHERSON Utah State University, Eastern-San Juan Campus

BOOK NOTICES

Press, 2011. 145 pp. Paper, $19.95.)

What was the experience of a young, non-Mormon English teacher at Cedar City’s College of Southern Utah in the mid-1960s? And why the admonishment against a violent act in the title? This delightful, humorous, and self-deprecating account reveals much about Utah’s unusual culture at a time when the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement dominated the national news. It is a personal history that exams assumptions, relationships, traditions, and motives. For those of the 1960s generation, and those who are not but are interested in what Utah was like nearly fifty years ago, this book holds a treasure of interesting insights and surprises.

Don’t Shoot the Gentile By James C. Work (Norman: University of Oklahoma

Where Two Streams Meet: The Personal History of a Town By Lyman Hafen

(St. George: Tonaquin Press, 2011. 292 pp. Paper, $19.95.)

In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the settlement of St. George—at the confluence of the Virgin and Santa Clara Rivers—Lyman Hafen, a fifth-generation southern Utahn and revered author, has published a collection of seventy-five short personal essays. They convey a sense of place and love of community that will resonate with anyone who feels a nostalgic tug to remember life in an earlier, perhaps less complicated time. This book might be described as a literary box of fine chocolates with its contents to be savored slowly one at a time.

Western Heritage: A Selection of Wrangler Award-Winning Articles Paul Andrew Hutton, ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. xvi +305 pp. Paper, $19.95.)

The center panel of Wilson Hurley Triptych’s, The Utah Suite: Monument Valley, a part of the Windows to the West series in Oklahoma City’s National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, graces the cover of this collection of twelve award winning articles. While most of the articles focus on broad themes and topics in Western American History, Sally Denton’s “What Happened at Mountain Meadows?” will be of particular interest to readers of the Utah Historical Quarterly.

The Nauvoo City and High Council Minutes John S. Dinger, ed. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2011. lxxxi + 616 pp. Cloth, $49.95.)

The separation of church and state (or religious practice and civic affairs) has been a point of discussion and often conflict since the early days of the United States and the settlement of Utah. Historians, politicians, and citizens have debated whether Utah was or even is a theocracy and what has been and is now the relationship of religion and government. This volume provides interesting insights into the nature of religious and secular activity during the Mormon pre-Utah period. With focus on the years from 1839 to 1845, minutes of the Nauvoo City Council and the Nauvoo

Stake High Council illustrates the complexities, contradictions, conflict, and cooperation that characterized religion and government on the eve of Mormon settlement of Utah.

Zebulon Pike, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West Matthew L. Harris and Jay H. Buckley, eds. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. x + 242 pp. Cloth, $29.95.)

Co-edited by Brigham Young University History Professor and authority on Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Jay Buckley, this volume offers an interesting examination of the other Jefferson Era explorer—Zebulon Pike. As the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806 began to open the door to the mountains and valleys of northern Utah, so did the Pike Expedition to the southern Rockies of Colorado and New Mexico that followed in 1806-1807 step onto the porch of southern Utah’s Canyon Country. Two of the seven essays in the volume are by Professor Buckley, “Pike as a Forgotten and Misunderstood Explorer,” and “Jeffersonian Explorers in the Trans-Mississippi West: Zebulon Pike in Perspective.”

Santa Rita Del Cobre: A Copper Mining Community in New Mexico

By Christopher J. Huggard and Terrence M. Humble (Boulder: The University Press of Colorado, 2012. xvii + 252 pp. Cloth, $45.00.)

This volume in the Mining The American West Series, edited by Duane A. Smith, Rogert A. Trennert, and Liping Zhu, recounts the history of Santa Rita in the southwestern corner of New Mexico at the heart of the state’s most productive mining district. As early as 1758, Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco, cartographerfor the 1776 Domínguez-Escalante expedition to Utah, drew a crude map plotting copper deposits in the area, and named the mountain range to the north Sierra del Cobre Virgen—or Virgin Copper Mountains. By 1803 the first copper ore shipments reached Mexico City. Apache hostilities and transportation difficulties curtailed development of the area until after the Mexican War when the United States acquired the territory in 1848 and extensive development followed. Open-pit mining commencing in 1910, four years after open-pit copper mining began in Utah. In 1933

Kennecott Copper Corporation acquired the operations and as the open-pit expanded the last buildings of Santa Rita were demolished in 1970—two years before those in Utah’s Bingham Canyon.

Blitz Kids: The Cinderella Story of the 1944 University of Utah National Championship Basketball Team By Josh Ferrin and Tres Ferrin (Layton: Gibbs Smith, 2012. 184 pp. Paper, $14.95.)

Written by the grandson and son of one of Utah’s sports legends and a member of the University of Utah basketball team—Arnie Ferrin—this book recounts the story of the underdog Utes and their victory in the championship game against the Dartmouth College team in the 1944 NCAA basketball tournament. The University of Utah basketball team, with four freshmen starters because older players were serving in the military, was selected to play in the tournament at the last minute when the University of Arkansas team was not able to participate. During the regular season, the U of U basketball team played its games in a local church because the Einer Nielsen Field House had been converted into a barracks for soldiers. At a time when AfricanAmericans were unable to play on university basketball teams and when racism was further enhanced by wartime anti-Japanese sentiment, the Utah team included two JapaneseAmericans, Mat Tatsuno and the five foot seven inch Ogden native and starter Wat Misaka. As the authors write in their introduction, “For a few moments the country seemed to have forgotten its woes and fears as they united behind a team that by all rights shouldn’t have even been playing in the championship game”(10).

People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture By Terryl L. Givens

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xvii + 414 pp. Paper, $29.95.)

Originally published in 2007, this paperback edition makes available to a larger audience an important study of the history of Mormon culture. After chapters that examine the foundations and paradoxes of Mormon cultural origins, the book is divided into two additional chronological parts—1830 to 1890, and 1890 to the present. The six chapters in each part looks at education and learning, architecture and city planning, music and dance, theater, literature, and the visual arts.

The Invasion of Indian Country in the Twentieth Century: American

Capitalism and Tribal Natural Resources 2nd ed. By Donald L. Fixico (Boulder: The University Press of Colorado, 2012. xx + 288 pp. Paper, $26.95.)

Anyone seeking to understand a Native American perspective on the exploitation/development of natural resources on reservation lands by non-Indian developers/capitalists would do well to read this volume whose first edition was published in 1998. The author, Donald L. Fixico, is of Shawnee, Sac and Fox, Muscogee Creek and Seminole heritage. He is Distinguished Foundation Professor of History and Affiliate Faculty of American Indian Studies at Arizona State University. Part one of the book includes six case studies that consider such natural resources as land, water, oil, timber, fishing and hunting, and the controversy about spirituality in the Black Hills. Part two, entitled “Defense Strategies for Tribal Natural Resources,” examines such topics as the demand for natural resources, legal battles, environmental issues and tribal leadership. The book concludes with chapters on American Indian philosophy, global concerns, and healing the earth in the twenty-first century.

South Ogden By Russell L.

(Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2012. 128 pp. Paper, $21.99.)

This volume in Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series focuses its 128 pages of photographs on the city of South Ogden which celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary of incorporation in 2011. With a population of eight hundred residents in 1936, the city’s population is now in excess of sixteen thousand. Using a strictly chronological approach, each of the chapters covers a decade in the city’s history, beginning with the 1930s and 1940s and ending with the 2010s.

Porter

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY FELLOWS

THOMAS G. ALEXANDER JAMES B. ALLEN

LEONARD J. ARRINGTON (1917-1999) MAUREEN URSENBACH BEECHER DAVID L. BIGLER

FAWN M. BRODIE (1915-1981) JUANITA BROOKS (1898-1989) OLIVE W. BURT (1894-1981) EUGENE E. CAMPBELL (1915-1986) EVERETT L. COOLEY (1917-2006) C. GREGORY CRAMPTON (1911-1995) S. GEORGE ELLSWORTH (1916-1997) AUSTIN E. FIFE (1909-1986) PETER L. GOSS LEROY R. HAFEN (1893-1985) B. CARMON HARDY JOEL JANETSKI

JESSE D. JENNINGS (1909-1997) A. KARL LARSON (1899-1983) GUSTIVE O. LARSON (1897-1983) WILLIAM P. MACKINNON BRIGHAM D. MADSEN (1914-2010)

CAROL CORNWALL MADSEN DEAN L. MAY (1938-2003) DAVID E. MILLER (1909-1978) DALE L. MORGAN (1914-1971) WILLIAM MULDER (1915-2008) PHILIP F. NOTARIANNI FLOYD A. O’NEIL HELEN Z. PAPANIKOLAS (1917-2004) CHARLES S. PETERSON RICHARD W. SADLER GARY L. SHUMWAY MELVIN T. SMITH

WALLACE E. STEGNER (1909-1993) WILLIAM A. WILSON

HONORARY LIFE MEMBERS

DAVID BIGLER JAY M. HAYMOND FLORENCE S. JACOBSEN STANFORD J. LAYTON WILLIAM P. MACKINNON JOHN S. MCCORMICK MIRIAM B. MURPHY F. ROSS PETERSON RICHARD C. ROBERTS WILLIAM B. SMART MELVIN T. SMITH LINDA THATCHER GARY TOPPING