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Show Forces That Shaped Utah's Dixie 129 People's perspectives of what is significant differ. People's measurements of value also differ. After all, what is success? And, wdiat is important anyway? And, if one uses other criteria—the impact of these Mormon church leaders on people's lives, by which they gave them the faith, the hope, the commitment to build the kingdom, to settle Dixie—then history judges them much more kindly. Utah's Dixie does have many qualities that are distinct, qualities that have been sustained by her "leftover" geography. Nevertheless, it was the settlers who actually hammered out the pragmatics of survival. It w7as they who tamed the desert and made it bloom. T h e day-to-day heroics of settlement came from the pioneers themselves: Jacob Hamblin riding a caving bank into the raging Santa Clara flood; Daniel Bonelli writing with eloquence to Brigham Young that irrigation water from Santa Clara Creek passed the Swiss settlements' orchards, vineyards, and gardens unused, only to sink into the streambed before reaching the fields; schoolteacher M a r t h a Spence Heywood accepting tuition payment in the form of cow7 pats to fertilize her garden; Brother Nielson donating his hardearned dollars to buy windows for the new tabernacle; George Hicks lamenting his call from Cottonwood; Charles Walker recording his hope for a better life in Dixie. Yes, and John D. Lee administering to a dying child, George W. Brimhall praying for rain, or Dudley Leavitt giving up his horse to be killed for food as Jacob Hamblin's party returned from the Hopi Indians or his wife "Aunt M a r i a h " Leavitt racing by buggy to deliver another baby. And what about George Brooks, Miles Romney, Erastus Snow, Orson Pratt, Jr., the Gardners, the Gublers, the Hafens, the Toblers, the Stahlis, the Iversons and Sprouls, the Larsons and Jolleys, Bishop Covington, and all the others. Certainly some of them complained, as well they might. As one family man with three hard years down on the Muddy River asked after abandoning the place, " W h a t did we get out of t h a t ? " And then answered his own question, "Well, I guess we got experience." T h e pioneers came, they stayed—that is, the tough ones did—and finally they succeeded. These were the people who gave Dixie a special character. And although Mormon church leadership inspired the sacrifices settlement demanded, it did not provide the blueprints for the future. Those came from the national forces. T h e prosperous Dixie of today came only after her geographic barriers had been breached by Interstate 15 and her people had sought alliances with the larger communities of the nation. |
