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| Covered nearly ¼ of Utah. Slowly receded but results of water flow are still visible today. The Great Salt Lake and Utah Lake are remnants of Lake Bonneville. Rivers and creeks that continue to pour from Wasatch and Plateaus long after Lake Bonneville disappeared carry water for crops and people. |
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| Massive inland sea and a remnant of Lake Bonneville. Because it has no outlet, the water evaporates leaving a supersaturated solution of 13-27% solids. It covers an average of 80 miles in length 30 miles in width, with a depth of 32 feet. It supports and intricate ecosystem. Its marshes serve as home for migratory birds, small mammals, reptiles and amphibians. It yields salt, magnesium, and chlorine in commercial quantities. |
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| The Paleo-Indians were a group that spread from Utah to New Mexico until about 6500 B.C. They led nomadic or hunter-gatherer lifestyles, and stayed mostly towards the marshes of lakes and streams living in caves, brush, and wood shelters. They followed the plentiful habitats to live in and created pottery, arrow points (famously called the Clovis spear points), basketry and grinding equipment. They most likely ate a variety of small game, and plants and corn because archaeologists have found charred corn cobs in the ancient sites. |
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| The Archaic Peoples entered the Utah scene at about 6500 B.C. to about 300 B.C. and came with a variety of new artifacts which distinguish them from the Paleo-Indians. Some artifacts include Folsom points, atlatl (the principle weapon at the time), yucca sandals, decorated sticks for gaming, carved birds, weapons, and used clothing, and most of these artifacts are found in 13 feet deep “trash deposits” found in Danger Cave, Utah. The Archaic moved where the water was and often left when it dried up, which could explain why in 300 B.C. a new culture appears, although this could mean that the Archaic people’s culture changed or new people moved into the Utah. Little is known about the culture of the Archaic peoples. |
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| The Anasazi (or “ancient people”) culture began at about 345 B.C. and went through several transitions of a hunter-gathering party that began to practice “floodplain agriculture” with domesticated plants such as corn, beans and squash with natural plants such as beeweed, sunflowers, pine nuts, to a more stable agricultural group that created farms, gardens and lived in pit houses, or D-shaped rooms. These houses were also representative of their religion, the hole at the top of the house allowed ancestors of the Anasazi to come from one world to the next, the Anasazi believed that the animals moved from world to world and eventually became humans, they used rock art across Utah to display their religion. One other evolving group from the Anasazi was the Pueblo Anasazi, they lived in homes that were built on top of the earth or onto a wall and joined them together to create a wall of homes, however, these homes were not places of sanitation and parasites were common and passed through household turkeys and dogs, but the main destroyer of the Anasazi was the severe droughts that would happen periodically causing the people to leave or die. |
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| Tawa is the Anasazi creator for their religion, he made the stars and plants, he also placed the creatures in a hierarchy of ants and other insect creatures below the earth trying to teach them to understand the meaning of life, however, he is forced to send Spider Grandmother to bring them to a different world to live. This happens two more times as the people turn from insects to mammals to human beings. Unfortunately the witches come causing the people to deteriorate to gambling and alcoholism, which in turn causes them to not appreciate the gifts of Tawa. A very select group stay faithful to Tawa and he sends them to the surface to be divided into the tribes and follow Tawa’s path to peace and harmony on the earth. |
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| The Fremont people were in Utah around 400 B.C., there are several different kind of Fremont people who are usually characterized by being either “harvesters,” people who used native plants, corn and fished using nets and hooks, another group was called the “collectors,” they used a variety of plants and small game to feed themselves, the third group can be called the “agriculturalists,” who used the floodplain agriculture to grow corn, beans and squash, they even used a metate to grind corn, all of the groups roamed the land travelling from California and Arizona to trade their goods. They lived in partially submerged pithouses and were known for their highway building techniques. The Fremont are also known for their creations of gray figurines which are thought to be for religious purposes, they also made unique baskets out of brush or bulrush and created rock art like the Anasazi, and in the end, both the Anasazi and the Fremont suffered a similar fate to water drought. |
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| They came into Utah around 1100 A.D. and are made up of the Shoshone, Ute and Paiute people, they covered most of Utah as a hunter-gatherer party. They ate a lot of fish, gathered plants, roots, insects, berries, and lived in cone shaped dwellings (teepees) and covered them with animal skin, they wore leather clothing and breechcloths. The people organized themselves into ‘bands and groups,” as opposed to whole tribes, lived communally (a yucca plant was used by all, and land was used if one needed it, but the original owner would come back to claim it) and ruled through consensus, in fact, the family got revenge by murdering the wrong-doer or a family member. Their creation story is that a man named Sinauf had a bag full of people that was cut by the mischievous Wolf and eventually the people were spread across the earth; religion was highly individualistic and spiritual experiences had alone. |
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| Subsist partially on agriculture. They occupy Utah, Juab, Sanpete and Pahvant Valleys; the Uinta Basin, the high plateaus and much of the canyonlands. The live a nomadic hunter/gatherer lifestyle. The Timpanogots are the largest concentrations of Ute people in Utah. They follow the yearly cycle of moving to gather food and materials for clothing and shelter. |
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| The Southern Paiutes roamed in Southern Utah, they extremely talented foragers and had traded often with Utes and Navajos, even going down to Arizona and Colorado. They made clothing out of textiles, such as yucca or cliffrose bark, stalked large game, and ate plants, berries, nuts, and cooked out of textile baskets by heating rocks and dropping them into a basket until it had stewed. They created tools, such as portable kits filled with leater, snares, leggings, food, scrapers, fleshers and drills. Their chief passed through popular consent, not the son of the chief, a person of leadership was the shaman who would come to cure diseases, if they did not perform their duty they would reject and kill them, the shaman would place their forehead to the sick person’s forehead to heal them, women in pregnancy, if the baby would not come would have the shaman come to help the baby along. |
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| Person who uses magic to cure the sick, divine the unknown, or control events. Both men and women can be shamans. Shamanism is classically associated with certain Arctic and Central Asian peoples, but today the term is applied to analogous religious and quasi-religious systems throughout the world. SIG: As medicine man and priest, the shaman cures illnesses, directs communal sacrifices, and escorts the souls of the dead to the other world. He operates by using techniques of ecstasy, the power to leave his body at will during a trancelike state. In cultures where shamanism occurs, sickness is usually thought of as soul loss; it is thus the shaman's task to enter the spirit world, capture the soul, and reintegrate it in the body. A person becomes a shaman either by inheritance or by self-election. |
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| At about 1620 the Dine, or Navajo, appear on the San Juan, Utah scene and borrowed aspects of culture from Pueblo Indians. SIG: They would raid the Pueblo settlements and take, women, food, plants, weaving and even religion. They believed they originated from Utah, but most likely came from western Canada. |
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| The Dine creation story begins with color, the people believed that the holy people began in the color of black, then to Blue World where there were animals and birds, and then onto yellow World and finally Glittering world where the gods taught the people to live in harmony and forget the evil that caused them to move from world to world. First Man and Woman, part of the holy people, wanted a baby and found one in New Mexico, she had an affair with the Sun God and gave birth to Twins who went around the world killing monsters, however, they did not kill the monsters hunger, poverty, sleep, and old age. SIG: At this time Changing Woman decided that her people were ready for this earth and took parts of herself and made the four clans of the Navajo who were taught ceremonies, such as the Hataatii singers, to live in harmony. |
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| In 1765 the New Mexican government asks Juan Rivera to find the Rio del Tizon (the Colorado River) and to learn the extent of Indian settlements in the north, about other Europeans, and whether Lake Copala or Gran Teguayo lay in unexplored territory. Rivera travels along Spanish and Ute trails toward the Dolores River. He crosses into Monticello in October 1765. In Moab the expedition finds an excellent ford of the Colorado. SIG: This ford was later used by the Old Spanish Trail. Rivera also documented a portion of the route that Domiguez and Escalante later followed. |
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Expedition of Dominguez and Escalante in 1776. Same time as the year of “Independence” Escalante was the youngest of the two priests. These two priests led a small expedition (10 men) left New Mexico late in July and made way northward up to Ute villages in Grand Valley. One member of their party had been there and they were hoping to pick up a guide. Picked up a Ute Guide and a boy and proceeded to Jensen in Green River area, saw a buffalo. Then made their way down the Strawberry River and crossed over the Wasatch and down the Diamond Fork and made their way to the shores of Utah Lake and Spanish Fork. They spend several days there then proceeded south.
Two theories for the expedition: Connect New Mexico with California---Monterrey to be connected with Santa Fe. Second: missionary work |
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| After France sold the Louisiana territory to America, the Spanish became nervous about the American raiders in Florida and the increased land belonging to America, thus in the treaty they gave Florida to America and defined the southern boundary of the Louisiana purchase as the forty-second parallel, and placed Utah squarely under Spanish control. However, because no one exactly knew where the forty-second parallel was, Spain had very little power and Utah became “no-man’s land.” SIG: Utah is now not in Spanish control or American control. The perfect place for escaping Mormons to settle. |
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| A French Canadian trapper who, with his partner Antoine Robidoux, was one of the most famous of the Taos Trappers in Utah. They followed the Dominguez-Escalante trail and trapped along the way, when they reached the Jordan River and thus Utah Lake and the Great Salt Lake, thus he was probably one of the first European-Americans to see the lake. SIG: Fulfilling trapper stereotype of romantic hero, he came into contact with Shoshones, and met with chief Bad Gocha who, while they were smoking the peace pipe, sprung on the trappers and killed most everyone except Provost and a few others because Peter Ogden’s Hudson’s Bay Company killed a different Shoshone chief. Provost also met Peter Ogden and William H. Ashley, another fur trapper, on the same expedition, eventually Provo was named after him. |
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| British fur monopoly established in 1821 and led by Governor George Simpson. Headquartered at Fort Vancouver, it set up posts throughout the Pacific Northwest and the northern Rockies. The business tried to trap beavers to extinction to keep Americans out of Oregon territory. By 1830s, because of superior organization and vast resources, it bested other businesses. Their system of controlled posts and monopoly power was superior to the American rendezvous system. They sell fur to trappers for less than ¼ the cost of American goods. |
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| Johnson was a free trapper who defended Utah as American territory. Ogden was under orders from Governor Simpson to trap Utah to extinction, however, he ran into Johnson Gardner and band of Mountain Men who told Ogden he was on American soil and couldn’t trap there. He and his men tricked Ogden’s companions into joining the Ashley company by saying that the Ashley company bought furs for higher costs and twenty-three men left. Ogden continually persisted saying that he was on jointly occupied territory, but left the potentially life-threatening conflict with no war being declared. SIG: defended Utah from British, even though it really was considered British territory. |
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| In 1829 Antonio Armijo went from New Mexico to San Bernardino, California using information from the Dominguez-Escalante mission. The next year two trappers, Ewing Young and William Wolfskill, went from the San Juan River in Utah and followed the Rivera trail to California to trade with California ships. They went from the Green River to the San Rafael River to the Sevier and then went to the Colorado Rivers and essentially opening the Old Spanish Trail. However, travellers made some adjustments and some easier crossings of the Plateau Front. SIG: Created a trail that travelers would use through Utah and subsequently opened California. |
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| A famous Taos trapper who became the most active fort builder. He established Fort Uncompahgre in Western Colorado in 1828 and purchased Fort Reed in 1832. He either renamed it Fort Uintah or built a second fort nearby. In 1837 he built Fort Robidoux at confluence of White and Green Rivers. From here he competed in 1838 with Hudson’s Bay and American Fur Companies. He forced British and American companies out of Basin. He also encouraged immigration to California. |
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| fur trader and mountain man, he married Pomona, daughter of Ute chief Pe-teet-neet. As an American mountain man he had no association with any fur trader companies, he founded and built Fort Buenaventura in what is now Ogden, Utah. This fort built about 1841 by Miles Goodyear, as far as known, the first permanent house built in Utah, stood near the junction of Ogden and Weber Rivers. In 1847 it was sold to Captain James Brown of the Mormon Battalion with a Spanish land grant covering all of Weber County. SIG: Goodyear helps the Mormons to develop their establishments in Northern Utah along the Weber River. Also, he is an example of how successful fur traders often took Native American wives to establish ties with the local natives. |
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| Led by John Bartleson and John Bidwell, this group of pioneers split off from an Oregon-bound party and went down to Soda Springs and headed off on their own crossing Cache Valley to Salt Lake. However, due to bad roads and thirst the group abandoned their wagons and went on to California on horses and mules making it to California after six months. SIG: Besides carving a route through Utah, they were the first party to bring a Euro-American woman Nancy Kelsey and her child through Utah. |
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| Fremont was a trained topographical engineer who believed it was Manifest Destiny to create an empire in the west. Known as the pathfinder, Fremont conducted 5 expeditions to the west, mapping routes and naming distinctive landforms. SIG: Fremont’s expeditions dispelled myths, mapped trails, popularized and enthused Easterners to head west. Fremont emphasized that CA rather than OR was the place to go and his recommendations of the Salt Lake Valley as a place for the Mormons to settle influenced Brigham Young’s decision to emigrate to Utah. |
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| heading west in 1846 followed the route through Fort Hall and northwestern Utah—followed the Bear River to Evanston and passed through Devil’s Gate into the SLV and moved west to California. |
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| president of the eastern states mission approached James Polk. Made an agreement to use influence and allow Mormons to move into Mexican territory and to give odd numbered sections of land they acquired to the US. Woodruff, repudiated the agreement. Part of an exploring party that went north along the valleys into Bear River and threaded his way to Cache Valley. |
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| After Joseph Smith died, the Saints became persecuted by people in Illinois, the church leadership assured the Illinois government that they would leave when the “grass grows and the waters run,” or in the spring because they needed time to prepare to leave Nauvoo. They crossed the plains and stayed at Winter Quarters, Nebraska, and then onto Wyoming and finally, Salt Lake Valley. They suffered from diarrhea, caker, nosebleeds, and toothaches, yet nevertheless, only 1300 out of the 65,000 died; they came by wagons and hand carts, which were small wagons pulled by the people themselves. It was considered a family migration led by God and they entered Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. |
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| The Mormons were struggling to feed themselves after arriving at the valley, so they tried to plant crops in late December and by spring the crops were beginning to grow. However, the grasshoppers, or “Black Philistine,” descended on the crops and began to eat the crops to the ground. It was at this time that the seagulls went to the crops and began to eat the crickets later gorging themselves in the Great Salt Lake, although this was miracle, the pioneers “grandurized” the story for the seagulls did not eat all of the crickets and the crop was meager. |
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| organized in 1854 sponsored programs in the arts and humanities led by Eliza R Snow and Lorenzo Snow—attendance grew so the society met in public buildings in SLC. It organized branches in a number of wards and a children’s auxiliary to teach the fine arts and humanities to the people in the community. The Reformation was the death knell to society. |
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| The Relief Society was started in Nauvoo under Emma Smith, Joseph Smith’s wife, it gave women spiritual experiences and charitable service, Matilda Dudley, Mary Hawkins, Amanda Smith and Mary Bird organized what they called, “Indian Relief Society,” which was created to serve the Indians. Eventually Relief Society’s across the Valley began to create general Relief Society’s to create cultural and charitable organizations. One example was an organization led by Phoebe Woodruff who made quilts, carpets, and clothes and then made a donation to the Perpetual Emigration Fund. |
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| grandiose region that extended into present day Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, and Northern Arizona/New Mexico—area restricted in 1850 by the Territorial Organic Act under Millard Fillmore. |
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| temporary solution to the issues of slave vs. free states; compromise on Texas’ western boundary, assume state’s debt, and renounce claims on its lands; stronger fugitive slave act outlawed the slave trade in DC, organize Utah and New Mexico territories where locals could decide whether to allow slavery or not. |
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| Utah territory originally ranged from the east border of California to the Rockies and then from the disputed forty-second to the thirty-seventh parallel. It was originally restricted by the 1850 Territorial Organic Act. The territorial government looked exactly like a state, but the governor and other “executive officers,” were appointed by the president and later approval by the Senate. They choose the name Utah after the Native American group the Utes. |
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| Perry Brocchus, from Alabama was appointed one of the first associate justices of Utah. He did not get along with Secretary Harris and eventually Brocchus asked permission to talk at a special conference of the church to gather donations to the Washington Monument, and then began to explained that the American government could not do anything to fix the loss that they had in Missouri and then he told the people to stop verbally abusing the federal leaders and abandon the practice of polygamy. Eventually he left Utah Territory due to the frustrations and violence of the Mormons. |
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| Brigham Young believed that the Mormons were becoming spiritually lackadaisical, that they were not beautifying their homes, church attendance was low, novels and card playing, apostasy was high, and that the converts from across the sea were just trying to get a ticket to America and were not truly converted, thus he began to chastise the Saints and bring more stringent rules. Some of those rules were a re-emphasis of the law of consecration, rebaptism, catechism, and the blood atonement, which meant that Celestial Law needed to be put in place as opposed to man’s law. Plural marriage was also reemphasized, Wilford Woodruff commented that not a girl over fourteen wasn’t married or promised to someone.. This stringency was due to the pioneers belief that Christ would come in their dispensation, thus they needed to be prepared. |
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| Mountain Meadows Massacre |
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| In the height of the Mormon Reformation a group from the East called the Fancher Party, a wealthy wagon train who passed through Utah. Led by Isaac Haight, a group of Mormons and a group of Paiutes attacked the party and killed everyone except a few young children. It could have been because of the fervor of the Mormon Reformation, the abhorrence to sin, bitterness to the Missourians and the supposed harassment of the Fancher Party. Brigham Young neither desired nor ordered the massacre, and rebuked Isaac Haight, eventually the LDS church formally apologized to the Paiutes and the Fancher Party. |
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| Deseret Agricultural and Manufacturing Society |
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| led by Edward Hunter until 1862 when Wilford Woodruff took over—import improved varieties of sheep and cattle to experiment with seed for wheat, sweeteners, and other products to bring in agricultural machinery—tried to promote more extensive economic development throughout the territory. |
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