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Exploring Great Salt Lake the mustering officer for the State of Wisconsin at Madison, where e he died in April of 1863. 3 John Williams Gunnison suffered a more spectacular fate. After a two-year stint in surveying the northern lake regions, he was promoted to captain and, on March 3, 1853, was ordered to survey a route by way of Huerfano River, Cochetopa Pass, in Colorado and the Green River Valley to Santa Clara in south- western Utah. Near Sevier Lake, southwest of Great Salt Lake, on June 23, while his party of ten was at breakfast, a band of Pahvant Indians attacked the camp and killed Gunnison and six others, mutilating their bodies. Although charges were made that a party of Mormons had aided in the murders, the allegations were dis- credited, and proof was offered that the Indians had acted entirely on their own, seeking revenge f r 0 atrocities committed against them by a party of emigrants. Captain Gunnison was survived by a wife and three children." The third member of the triumvirate who had explored Great Salt Lake suffered a rather dismal end after a distinguished career as a Mormon leader. Albert Carrington served as the editor of the leading Salt Lake City newspaper, the Desevet News, for nine years during the 1850s and 186Os, was a member of the legislative council of Utah Territory, and in 1870 became one of the Twelve Apostles of the Mormon church. He acted as Brigham Young's secretary for twenty years. Four years before his death, Carrington "fell into transgression," as his Mormon biographer so quaintly puts it, and was excommunicated from his church. Before his death on September 19, 1889, he was "permitted to renew his covenant by baptism" and so died a member of the Mormon faith.' The one quality, above all others, which distinguished the efforts of Stansbury and Gunnison in their exploration and survey of Great Salt Lake was the determined industry with which they pursued the task. In a day when the reputation of the American 3 Johnson, Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 17, p. 516. 4 Ibid., vol. 8, 52. p. 5 Jensen, Biographical Encyclopedia, vol. 1, p. 126. 194 |
