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Show 27 Mountains began northward, but turned to the south in only a couple of years. Even before they moved to the south, however, the conflict began. The first encounter took place over the grazing of cattle in the Draper area. The Indians killed some cattle that had in all probability replaced the game that had grazed the area. The incident is briefly noted in Mormon records. The need for land was pressing and the Mormons moved south to Sanpete Valley under Isaac Morley in 1848 with two hundred settlers. The following year the predecessor settlement of Provo, Utah was founded and given the name "Fort Utah." The word "fort" was correct as a name, for the place of the original settlement was surrounded by a stockade and protected by cannons, several twelve pounders, as Bancroft observed, "for the purpose of intimidating the Indians." The threatened loss of an area that had been a center for them since before the tjime of Escalante meant enough to the Utes that they decided to resist. \ By January 1850, the Utes had killed enough of the cattle and horses of the new occupants that one of the Mormon leaders, Isaac Higbee, asked for and received permission to "chastize" the 2 Indians. At a campsite near the fort, the Mormon militia attacked the Indians on February 8, I85O; the Utes took refuge in a log house where Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Utah (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, Inc., 1964), pp. 308-309. 2Ibid. , p. 602. |
