History of Utah, Part 32

Author: Whitney, Orson Ferguson
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: Salt Lake City, Cannon
Number of Pages: 1026

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President Young, on meeting Captain Spencer's companies at Big Sandy, advised them to go on to Green River, and from there send back teams to assist the other trains which had lost so heavily in cattle. Several pioneers, having met their families, now returned.

At Little Sandy, on September 4th, the Apostles met their con- frere, Parley P. Pratt, and went into council. Two of the Twelve were sharply reproved by the President for undoing what the majority of the Apostles had done in organizing the camps for traveling. Good feeling being restored the President's company pushed on.

24-VOL. 1.

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Three days later they met Edward Hunter's wagons on the Sweetwater. It was now snowing, but the weather continued mild. A feast had been prepared for the President at the instance of Apostle Taylor and Bishop Hunter; the tables, richly laden with nature's bounties, tastefully prepared, being set in a grove under a bowery on the banks of the river. "It was a rare sight indeed," says Wilford Woodruff, "to see a table so well spread with the 'good things of this life,' in the heart of the wilderness so remote from civilization. The bill of fare consisted of roast and broiled beef, pies, cakes, biscuit, butter, peach-sauce, coffee, tea, sugar, and a great variety of good things. Fully one hundred people sat down to the table. The remains of the feast were distributed among the soldiers and pioneers, and the ceremonies of the afternoon were concluded with a dance." Another council of the Apostles was held at this point, and other differences adjusted.

Next day Jedediah M. Grant's hundred was encountered. Captain Grant, who was recently from Philadelphia, informed the President that Senator Benton, of Missouri, like Saul of Tarsus, was still "breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the Saints." While on the Sweetwater, the pioneer party, allowing their usual vigilance to relax in the cheering society of their friends, had about thirty of their horses stolen by Indians. The emigrants at the same time lost about twenty head.

On the morning of September 21st, an exciting though bloodless affray occurred between the pioneers and a band of Sioux, who were trying to stampede their stock. It was just after breakfast, and the camp was getting ready to start. Being detected in their manœuvres, the Indians shot at several of the guards, and seizing one, attempted to carry him off. He freed himself with his fists, knocking one of the red-skins down. The rest sounded an alarm, and in a moment the scene was alive with savages, coming from the bluffs and timber near by. There were fully two hundred mounted warriors. Firing a volley, they charged upon the camp. Wilford Woodruff had already given warning, and he, with Heber C. Kimball, Colonel

Joseph Horne

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Rockwood, Joseph Matthews and others sprang into their saddles, returned the Indian fire, and made a counter-charge, putting the savages to flight. Making signs of peace, the Sioux now returned and apologized to the pioneers for attacking them, claiming that they had mistaken them for Crows or Snakes, with whom they were at war. They wanted to smoke the pipe of peace with the leaders, and invited the President to visit their village, five miles away, where about eight hundred Sioux were encamped. It was not deemed prudent for the President to go, but Heber C. Kimball and a few others went instead, and smoked the calumet with the savages. They proved to be the same Indians who had stolen the horses on the Sweetwater. Through the courage and diplomacy of Apostle Kimball, many of the stolen horses were recovered.

At Fort Laramie the pioneer leaders dined, by invitation, with Commodore Stockton, who, with forty men, had just arrived from the Bay of San Francisco. The Commodore was described as a polite and affable gentleman. He purposed traveling from that point with President Young, but changed his plan and took the south side of the river. A few days later the pioneers heard that he had been attacked by Indians and one of his men killed.

Journeying down the Platte, over the road they had formerly traveled, the President's company, on the 18th of October. met Captain Hosea Stout and his mounted squad, coming to meet them. These were the old "Nauvoo Police," now the peace-officers of Winter Quarters. They were Hosea Stout, George D. Grant, G. J. Potter, William H. Kimball, Jacob Frazier, George W. Langley, W. J. Earl, W. Meeks, W. Martindale, William Huntington, Luman H. Calkins, James W. Cummings, S. S. Thornton, Levi Nickerson, James H. Glines and Chauncey Whiting. Messrs. Grant and Kimball had brought with them two wagons loaded with grain and provisions, of which the jaded company, which had been scantily provisioned from the start, now stood much in need. On the 30th they crossed the Elk Horn and were joined by Bishop Whitney and many others, witlı twenty wagons laden with supplies. Twenty-four hours later they

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marched in order into Winter Quarters, the streets of the town being lined with people waiting to welcome them.

Upon the mutual joy of husbands, wives, parents and children, meeting after such a separation, we need not dwell. Suffice it that during the absence of the pioneers, peace and prosperity had generally prevailed among their friends on the frontier. During the first few months, there had been much sickness and some deaths, but the atmosphere and climate, once so damp and sickly, were now much healthier, and the soil, being well tilled, had responded generously to the touch of the husbandman.

Returning now to the emigrants en route for Salt Lake Valley. It was in the latter part of September that the companies began arriving there. Early in October the last of the trains had reached the valley in safety.

A conference was held at the Fort on the 3rd of October. On that day the Stake organization previously provided for went into effect. Father John Smith was sustained as President of the Stake and Charles C. Rich and John Young as his counselors. A High Council was also organized, with the following named members: Henry G. Sherwood, Thomas Grover, Levi Jackman, John Murdock, Daniel Spencer, Lewis Abbott, Ira Eldredge, Edson Whipple, Shadrach Roundy, John Vance, Willard Snow and Abraham O. Smoot. Tarlton Lewis was chosen Bishop. Thus was organized the first Stake of Zion in the Rocky Mountains. A reorganization was effected after the return of the President from Winter Quarters.

The next arrivals in the Valley were from the west. They were members of the Mormon Battalion, recently mustered out of service in California. Soon after their discharge at Los Angeles, eighty-one of these volunteers, at the earnest solicitation of Governor Mason, previously mentioned, had re-enlisted for six months, and been ordered back to garrison San Diego. The main body started east, and hearing that the Pioneers had entered Salt Lake Valley directed their course thither. West of the Sierras they met Samuel Brannan and Captain James Brown, and learned from them that it was Pres-

Jos? Is Notle

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ident Young's advice for such of the discharged soldiers as were without means to remain in California, work through the winter, and come on to the Valley with their earnings in the spring. According- ly, about half the soldiers returned, some to secure employment at Sutter's Mills,* and to be heard from a little later in a way not dreamed of that September day, when they turned their faces west- ward and started back for the land of gold. The others continued on their way, arriving in Salt Lake Valley on the 16th of October. Two days later thirty-two of them, including Serjeant Daniel Tyler,+ set out for the Missouri river, braving the dangerous prospect of wintry storms and blockading snows in their anxiety to join their families on the frontier. After much hardship and suffering they reached their destination on the 18th of December.

The Battalion men, returning from California, brought to the Valley wheat, corn, potatoes and garden seeds. Subsequently some of the settlers visited the coast and returned bringing more seeds and live stock. Soon afterward trade was opened up with Fort Hall,} and a little later with the frontier states.

As winter drew near, the colonists, having finished their late sowing, moved into the stockade to await the coming spring. The fort was now enclosed, the east side with log houses, and on the north, south and west with adobe walls. Two additional blocks, or parts of blocks, on the south were being enclosed in like manner by the newly arrived immigrants, whom the original fort could not accommodate. Meanwhile, many were living in tents and wagons. The additions were merely extensions of the first stockade, with which they communicated by gates. There was a large gate on the east, which was kept carefully closed by night. The roofs of the

* Now Coloma, El Dorado County, California.

t Author of the valuable and interesting "History of the Mormon Battalion."

Captain Grant of Fort Hall, was the first person outside the Mormon community who brought goods to the Utah market for sale. He sold sugar and coffee at one dollar a pint, calicoes at 50 and 75 cents per yard, and other articles in proportion .- Deseret News Sept. 28, 1854.

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houses, or huts, all slanted inward. The doors and windows faced the interior, but each house had a small loop-hole looking out. The houses last erected were in some respects superior to the first, though even the best of them were poor. The mistake of making the roofs almost flat, instead of sharply slanting, eventually caused much discomfort. The fore part of the winter was exceptionally mild, but as the season advanced, heavy snows fell, then melted, and soaking through the dirt and willow roofs, descended in drizzling streams upon the heads, beds and larders of the miserable inmates; spoiling at once their tempers and their provisions. Apostle Taylor, whose house was one of the best,-having among other superior points a rough, whip-sawed plank floor,-had plastered the ceiling and walls with white clay, a fine quality of which was found in the neighborhood. But alas! the merciless water trickled through all the same, carrying with it in solution or in lumps the treacherous plastering. Umbrellas were in great demand, even while in bed, and it was no uncommon sight to see a good housewife bending over her stove, upon which the drops from above unceasingly dripped and sizzled, holding an umbrella in her left hand, while turning a beef- steak or stirring a mush-kettle with her right. The situation of the fort-dwellers, that season, though often ludicrous, was far from pleasant, and at times almost pitiable; quite so, indeed, where there was sickness, and a lack of needed shelter.

Other causes of discomfort were swarms of vermin,-mice, bed-bugs, etc .- infesting the fort. The bugs were indigenous, being brought in the green timber from the mountains. The mice were also "native and to the manor born" though some may have been carried to the Valley in the grain wagons of the immigrants. Great white wolves also prowled around the fort, making night hideous with their howling, and attacking cattle on the range. So intolerable became this nuisance that hunting parties were finally organized, to make war upon the wolves and other wild-beasts. Their depredations then gradually grew less. As for the vermin, they were dealt with according to the best approved exterminating methods

Jacob Houts

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then in vogue. Cats, if good mousers, were in high favor,-quite as much so as umbrellas.

It was probably owing to these discomforts that Lorenzo D. Young-ever on the lookout to better his own or his friends' condi- tion-as early as October sold his house in the fort, and having built a new log cabin on City Creek, north-east of the stockade, in December moved into it with his family .* Their leaving the fort was much against the wishes of their friends, who feared that they might be killed by Indians. "I'll risk that, and no one but myself shall be responsible," said "Uncle Lorenzo," and off to his new home went.

An incident occurred that winter which probably convinced him that the anxiety for his safety felt by his friends at the fort was not entirely groundless. It also illustrates the coolness and courage possessed by those early heroines, the pioneer women of Utah. It happened thus: Harriet Young was sitting with her infant child+ in their solitary home one day,-her husband and the rest of the family being absent,-when an Indian came to the door and asked for "biscuit." He was a fierce, ill-looking fellow, known throughout the region as "a bad Indian." Mrs. Young, going to her humble larder, gave the savage two of three small biscuits-all the bread that she had in the house. He took them and asked for more. She gave him the remaining one, but still he demanded more. More she did not have, and so informed him. Furious he advanced, and fitting an arrow to his bow, aimed it at her heart, fiercely repeating the request. Cool and collected the brave woman faced her swarthy foe, and for a moment thought that her last hour and that of her helpless babe had come. Not yet. An idea strikes her. £ In the

* This humble abode, which was on the site now occupied by the Bee-Hive House, was the first building erected outside the fort in Salt Lake Valley. The first tree planted by the Pioneers still stands in the yard of the Bee Hive House. It is a locust, and was planted by Harriet P. Young.

+ Lorenzo Dow Young, junior, born September 20th, 1847,-the first white male child born in Utah.

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next room, securely fastened, is a large dog, a powerful mastiff, purchased by her husband on leaving the fort, and kept upon the premises for just such emergencies as the danger now threatening. Making a sign to the savage, as of compliance with his request, she passed into the next room, and hastily untying the dog, exclaimed "seize him." Like lightning the mastiff darted through the door- way, and a shriek of terror, quickly followed by a howl of pain, as the sharp canine teeth met in the red-skin's thigh, told how well the faithful brute comprehended his mistress' peril, and the duty required of him in her defense. In all probability, the Indian, prostrate and pleading vociferously for his life, would never again have risen, had not our heroine, in whose generous heart pity for the vanquished wretch at once took the place of the just anger she had momentarily felt, after prudently relieving him of his bow and arrow, called off the dog and set the wounded savage at liberty. He was badly hurt, and cried bitterly. Mrs. Young magnanimously washed the wound, applied a large sticking plaster to the injured part, and sent him away a wiser if not a better Indian.

But the settlers of Salt Lake Valley were not much molested by the red men. Other settlements, formed later, fared worse. Fierce, at times, were the fights of the savages among themselves. One of the customs in vogue with them was to torture and kill, if they could not sell, their prisoners of war. Several Indian children were ransomed, the first winter, by settlers at the fort, to save them from being shot or tortured to death by their merciless captors. One of these, a girl, was purchased by Charles Decker, who gave her to his sister, Clara D. Young, by whom she was civilized and reared to womanhood.

Owing to the mildness of the first winter in the valley, logging, building and exploring were continued at intervals until spring. The heaviest snows fell in March, after the spring plowing had begun. During December, Parley P. Pratt and others went on horseback to Utah Lake, taking with them a boat and fish-net in a wagon drawn by oxen. At the foot of the lake they launched their boat and began

Hanneet Sage stlester young

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fishing. It was believed by Parley that these were "probably the first boat and net ever used on this sheet of water in modern times." They took a few trout and other fish, but on the whole met with poor success piscatorially. Having explored a day or two in that vicinity, most of the party returned, but Parley and a man named Summers remained. Striking westward from the foot of Utah Lake they partly explored Cedar Valley, afterwards the site of Camp Floyd, then passed over the mountains and through Rush and Tooele valleys. Continuing on to the Salt Lake, they turned eastward, crossed the Jordan and came home. So passed away the first winter of the pioneer settlers in Salt Lake Valley.

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CHAPTER XX. 1847-1849.

FOUNDING NEW SETTLEMENTS-BRIGHAM YOUNG AS A COLONIZER-DAVIS COUNTY OCCUPIED -- THE GOODYEAR PURCHASE-THE CRICKET PLAGUE-SAVED BY THE GULLS-DAYS OF FAMINE-THE FIRST HARVEST FEAST-HOW GOLD WAS DISCOVERED IN CALIFORNIA- IMMIGRATION OF 1848-MATTERS SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL-LANDS DISTRIBUTED TO THE SETTLERS-THE FIRST UTAH CURRENCY-MORE APOSTLES ORDAINED-THE STAKE ORGANIZED -SALT LAKE CITY DIVIDED INTO BISHOPS' WARDS.

LMOST the first steps taken by the pioneer colony in 1848 were toward the founding of additional settlements. Indeed, before the new year dawned movements had been made in that direction.

As Brigham Young had predicted, the day after entering the Valley, when organizing his exploring parties to traverse the surrounding region in quest of eligible sites for other settlements, no place so suitable for their chief city had been found or was destined to be discovered by those explorers in all their subsequent wanderings and searchings. And yet the pioneer leader had made that prediction intuitively, not from any previous acquaintance with this region; had made it, too, in the very face of reports received from experienced mountaineers, men thoroughly familiar with the country,-reports uniformly adverse to Salt Lake Valley as a place in which to plant a colony, and all favoring other localities. But Brigham Young knew better. The reports of the Fremonts, the Harrises and the Bridgers were nothing to him, when once his eye had rested upon the scene and surveyed the situation. Here was a place for a great city, and he knew it, and his "oracular soul" told him that in all this inter-mountain region no other place so suitable was to be found.

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It is said that the great Napoleon, at the very beginning of a battle, as with the instinct of Mars himself, was able almost invariably to foretell the outcome; and that on one occasion, at least, before the battle had fairly joined, he scribbled upon his saddle-bow a dispatch reading: "Victory is ours," and sent it off post-haste to Paris and Josephine. Brigham Young's victories were of peace, not of war, yet there was something Napoleonic in his genius,-in his marvelous intuition and foresight.

The fact is, Brigham Young was a born colonizer,-as much so, perhaps, as Napoleon was a born warrior; one of the greatest colonizers that the world has seen; a builder of cities, a founder of empire, second to none in the annals of the ages. This is not flattery. The world, sometimes slow, but always sure at last to open its eyes to the truth, will one day acknowledge it. The broad-minded and intelligent, whose attention has been drawn to the subject, recognize it already. Even bigotry will follow suit some day. Men may not credit, as Brigham Young did, as his people still do, divine inspiration with his success; for he always maintained that Mormonism made him, that it made Joseph Smith, and not they Mormonism. But men will yet acknowledge, far more widely than they now do, and impartial history, whose page is the past and present, but whose pen is the future, will yet record that Brigham Young was a great man, one of Time's greatest, and that genius, if not divinity, was manifest in his methods and achievements.

A man may have faults, and yet be great, as water may be clear though holding soil in solution; as the sun may have spots, and yet supremely shine. Brigham Young had his faults, as Washington, as Lincoln and Grant had theirs. But if greatness were denied to men because of their defects,-those shadows that form the back-ground of the most brilliant picture,-who of all men, save One, would be great? The incident referred to, though a mere straw in the wind, serving to show its direction, will illustrate in part the intuition and foresight of which Brigham Young was undoubtedly the possessor.

Salt Lake Valley was indeed, as he declared, the best place for a

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city-a metropolis-in all this inter-mountain region. The whole world knows it now. But there were other places in the vicinity, as he also declared, possessing every facility of situation, soil, climate and surroundings, for the formation of thriving settlements, and of future flourishing towns and cities. True, most of them were then barren and desolate, cheerless and forbidding in the extreme; but the sagacious eye saw past all this, and the future became present to its gaze. A few spots there were that were even then promising; where water was not so scarce, where verdure sprang spontaneously and the soil was naturally fertile. Among these were some of the lands now included in Davis County, and the Goodyear lands on the Weber, where the next settlements of our Territory were formed. Both these sections are comprised in a narrow alluvial strip lying between the western base of the Wasatch Mountains and the eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake. In fact those lands are a portion, a mere extension northward of Salt Lake Valley.

Peregrine Sessions, the original pioneer of Davis County-next to: Salt Lake County the first part of Utah occupied and settled,- was, as we have seen, a captain of fifty in Daniel Spencer's hundred; the very vanguard of the migrating trains that began arriving in Salt Lake Valley in the latter part of September, 1847. On the 28th of that month, a few days after reaching the valley, Mr. Sessions moved northward about ten miles and camped that night about half a mile from the spot where he now resides, and where sprang up Sessions' Settlement, since called Bountiful. Hector C. Haight, following Captain Sessions' example, camped six or seven miles north of him, on what was afterwards known as Haight's Creek, a little south-west of the present site of Kaysville. This was also in the latter part of 1847. There may have been others who moved into that section about the same time. Such was the beginning of the settlement of Davis County.

The object of these men in separating themselves so early from the society of their friends at the pioneer fort-the immediate object at least-was to find pasturage for their stock, the range of the

P. J. Sessions

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Jordan Valley being inadequate for all the cattle of the immigrants. These cattle, some of which had to be killed at once for beef, were almost worn to skeletons by their long pilgrimage over the plains. So literally was this the case that one of the new-comers, -- who was no other than Apostle John Taylor,-while sawing up one of these bony, juiceless beeves for the winter, remarked with grim humor to his assistant, Captain Joseph Horne, that he guessed they would "have to grease the saw to make it work." But though pasturing stock was the original purpose of the pioneers of Davis County, it was not the only one. At all events, though they did little else than herd cattle and horses through the winter, they began to till the ground the following spring, and thus formed the nuclei of some of the present flourishing settlements in that vicinity.

It was in March, 1848, that Peregrine Sessions, assisted by Jezreel Shoemaker, broke the first ground in Davis County for agricultural purposes. Later, came into the county at various times such men as Thomas Grover, Daniel Wood, A. B. Cherry, Anson Call, Daniel C. Davis, John Stoker, Joseph Holbrook, Nathan T. Porter, the Smiths, the Parrishes, the Duels, the Millers, William Kay, Christopher Layton and many others to be mentioned hereafter. Davis County was named for Captain Daniel C. Davis, of the Mormon Battalion, commander of the re-enlisted volunteers, a portion of whom, being disbanded at San Diego in March, 1848, rejoined their people in Salt Lake Valley in June. Captain Davis settled on a creek a little south of the present town of Farmington.

And now as to the inception of Weber County, the nucleus of which-speaking of its settlement by white men-antedates by several years either Davis or Salt Lake County. The greater part of the lands now comprised in Weber County were owned, or claimed, in 1847 by Miles M. Goodyear, whose name has more than once been mentioned in these pages. He was a protege, it is said, of Captain Grant, a well known, eccentric character of those days, representing the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Hall. Goodyear claimed the Weber lands by virtue of a grant from the Mexican government made to

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History of Utah, Part 32

Author: Whitney, Orson Ferguson Publication date: 1892 Publisher: Salt Lake City, Cannon Number of Pages: 1026

Author: Whitney, Orson Ferguson
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: Salt Lake City, Cannon
Number of Pages: 1026