A Gentile Account of Life in Utah's Dixie, 1872-73

Gentile Account, page 023

need to be something more than our timid village lads. They are often killed by Indians, being but feeble defenders of the cattle, and must be always on the alert for hidden enemies. I believe it was only two years ago that the herd boys of this set- tlement were attacked, and one of them killed by the Pi-edes.35 Even the heroic son of Jesse would not have relished this addition to his perils with the lion and the bear!j6 In the evening my husband brought in D. C.3i-a brave man who was for a long time a missionary among the Moquis Indians38 in whom even I must admit that I cannot help taking a great interest. Th ey are a strange race of half civilised Indians living across the Colorado in Arizona, and like the Zunis of New Mexico, dwelling in walled towns. I have read many of the facts C. told me before, but some were new. He says that the Moquis differ from all other Indians he has known in the earnestness of their belief that the spirits of their fore- fathers hover round them, and that some day they will be able to talk with them. They bury their dead in an upright position; %i most Mormon communities, herd boys picked up the livestock of the villagers in the morning and drove them to the common pasturage outside the fenced settlement for daytime grazing. In the evening they herded them back to the village and down the streets to their individual barns to be milked and/or bedded down for the night. Barrington, Great Ba.rin Kingdom, 9. `"Samuel 1:16. %;This is probably David Cannon, the local blacksmith who had been a missionary to the Indians. In 1872 he was a counselor to Daniel D. IMcArthur, bishop of the St. George Ward. November 1, 1872, Report of the Southern Mission (L.D.S. Historian's Department). i"Xlso known as ,Moki or Hopi Pueblo Indians. For more information on this unique tribe see Frederick Webb Hodge, Handbook, of .Imerican Indians (Washington, D.C.: United States Printing Office, 1912), 560-61. 23