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

Gentile Account, page 028

"Another day, we were sent for to visit the Queen. We went down the ladder to her room, and she was as pleasant as could be. Presently she signified we were to eat with her, and went to the fire where she put on a pot of water to heat. While it was warming, she began to unbraid her hair, which she wore in two long tails, and first she dipped one side of it in the pot of water, and then she began to braid it up again, sleeking it as she went on by dipping her hands in the water. Then she did the same with the hair on the other side; and then, when the water boiled she began sprinkling the meal for our mush into it! `Pettit' says I, `If you can't; neither can I-this time. Let's wing!' And we put right up the ladder, though she called after us. We pretended we couldn't understand." [TK: Explaining his frequent mentions of going up & down the ladders] C's description enabled us to understand now their queer houses or castles as he called them are adapted to their requirements. He explained what he meant about going up and down the ladder, by saying that their [TK: the Moquis] houses are built larger below than above each story being smaller than the one below it. There are no side entrances, nor windows, but you ascend each story by a ladder leading to the platform from which the next story rises, and having a square hole in it, by which you descend into the apartment below. Light comes in through the same hole. It is in these largest apartments down below that area. Pettit returned to Salt Lake City only a few days before the mission was attacked, the missionaries killed, and the fort captured by the Indians. This was the only mission Pcttit served to the Indians, and by 1872 he had taken an additional wife and was farming and raising stock in Salt Lake City. Ethan Pettit Diaries, 1855-1881 (MS 180) are available in the Manuscripts Division, Special Collections Department, University of Utah Library. 28