Fort Utah p.2

Fort Utah (Provo). Fort Utah in the winter of 1849-50 as depicted by Howard Stansbury in his Great Salt Lake. Fort Utah was the name first given to Provo, Utah which was founded in 1849. Made by Ackerman Lithograph Co. UHS Collection. FORT UTAH AS IT APPEARED DURING THE CHRISTMAS OF 1849. Augustus Fay's engaging lithographic view of the earliest white settlement on the future site of "Provaux City" on "the left bank of the Provaux or Timpanogas River" is based on sketches made in Utah Valley when the fortification was less than a year old. In November or early December of 1849 this wintry scene was recorded by the artist accompanying the "trigonometrical and nautical survey" of Captain Howard Stansbury for the Topographical Engineers. Despite the alarm which the arrival of Stansbury's men raised among a people who had been taught by past persecutions to suspect the intentions of all governmental enterprise, Stansbury was able to build cooperative, even amiable, relations with the Mormon people. He was, in fact, to leave Brigham Young's infant State of Deseret with praise for "the very happy social state enjoyed by [the Mormon] commmunity--being so much of one mind and always speaking to each other in terms of brotherhood." But the Saints' objectives were not always obtainable through fraternal means, as they discovered especially in their early contacts with their Lamanite bretheren. Within two months of the first Christmas in Utah Valley, the persistent hostility of the "Pah Utahs" provoked the Mormons to the "Fort Utah War." Its bloody, but swift, settlement broke the power of the Utes of the valley and opened the way for permanent colonization. The Philadelphia edition of Howard Stansbury's official report of the expedition--titled "Exploration and Survey of the Great Salt Lake of Utah, Including a Reconnaissance of a New Route through the Rocky Mountains" was published in 1852. The print reproduced here, at its origianl size, is from Commodore Matthew Perry's copy of this report--the copy which Perry was to present to the Bishop of Victoria at the end of the Christmas season on 1853, shortly before returning to the Far East to complete what has been called "one of the chief diplomatic achievments of the 19th century": the opening of Japan. ---Phillip Ashton Rollins Collection of Western Americana, Princeton University Library. (see also picture 3)