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Show Utah State Historical Societv 300 Rio Grande Salt Lake Cit? LTT 81101 The Female Indian Relief Society h 1847 H~ H~ TSEE TTLERS IN SALTL AKEV ALLEYs quatted on land claimed for generations by Shoshonis. The Shoshonis apparently did not occupy the valley all year. The only permanent Indian village lay at the south end of the valley and was led by a ' Eutaw" ( Ute) Indian named Want- A- Sheep whose lodgers all spoke Shoshoni and whose son married a Shoshoni woman. The Shoshonis and Utes were traditional enemies. Early Mormon settler Adelia Cox Sidwell once observed a Ute victory celebration in which captives were forced to dance while holding poles topped with the heads of vanquished Shoshoni males. Utes laughed and jeered as the Shoshoni women danced and sobbed. Pioneer Azariah Smith summarized the Mormons' attitude toward this and other Indian behaviors: " We were taught to be kind to the Indian in their low, degraded state. " Mormons attempted to teach Indians to bathe, dress themselves fully, and raise potatoes, cattle, and sheep. The Indians' distaste for farming did not strike 19th- century Mormons as a desirable cultural trait. Besides these efforts to make the Indians adopt their values, Mormons organized Indian Missions, both proselyting and charitable. The preaching was done by Mormon men. The charity was usually undertaken by women. In June 1854 women of the Thirkenth Ward in Sdt Lake founded the Female Indian Relief Society. Its purpose was to manufacture clothing for those Indians ' that should seem to be most necessitous or most deserving our sympathy and assistance." An earlier Mormon Relief Society had functioned in Nauvoo but became dormant following the martyrdom of Joseph Smith. It is not clear what inspired the Thirteenth Ward women 14 years before women's groups reorganized in wards throughout Utah. Possibly the impetus was Edwin D. Woolley, newly appointed bishop of the ward, whose wife had been a friend of Emma Smith. The new society was ' neither complete nor permanent." Its first president, Susan Townsend, soon resigned, to be replaced by Matilda Paschal ( later Dudley- Busby), who chose as her assistants Augusta Cobb, Sarah Cooke, and Martha Coray. These assistants were later replaced by Mary Ann Young, Hannah Perkins, and Elizabeth Goddard. The ' Indian" society had a respectable initial membership of 177 that included every woman in the ward over 18 years. Actual attendance averaged 10. Even Mary Woolley, the bishop's first wife, rarely participated. This may have been because the meetings, held once a month, often in some member's unheated spare room, lasted an entire day, and Mary was in poor health. In the first month of the 1856 Reformation, attendance jumped to 30, then subsided to 10 just before winter adjournment. But the following spring and summer, meeting in the basement of ( more) the Social Hall ( which stood inside ward boundaries), attendance averaged 23 and occasionally as many as 50. The society's primary function fulfilled its name. In four 1854 meetings, members sewed six cotton dresses and two chemises for indigent Indians. Women unable to attend sewing sessions donated money and materials. In September the society hostessed a community ball, netting $ 39.39 after paying the band $ 20 and the custodian $ 18. The money purchased weaving materials. Another function of the society was to bind women to each other and to Mormonism. Each year members pledged to ' speak no evil of each other nor of the authorities of the Church, but endeavor by means in our power to cultivate a spirit of unison, humanity and love.. . . ' Predictably, given Bishop Woolley's policy of running a tight ship, the society soon bent to male leaders' purposes. Before long Woolley had the women assembling rag carpets for the Tabernacle. In January 1855 he asked President Dudley- Busby to canvass ward members to " find out how many poor there were ... that wanted help." This she did on February 19, 20, and 21, discovering two families in want. During 1855 the society manufactured seven quilts, seven garments, and an unstated number of straw hats for poor whites. In 1856 members of the Indian Society created an exhibition carpet which they presented to Brigham Young at the second annual fair of the Deseret Agricultural and Manufacturing Society, organized by church and business leaders to promote home industry and agriculture. For the second fair the society sewed another quilt plus a rag carpet. The Indian Society disbanded during the Utah War and the move south of 1857- 58. Thirteenth Ward sisters did not organize again until 1868, when the women's Relief Society was revived churchwide. For 50 years thereafter wards varied in their interpretation of the relationship of Relief Society president to bishop. When this uncertainty was resolved in the 1920s, it was done the way Bishop Woolley and Sister Dudley- Busby had done it in the 1850s. Sources: " Minutes of Relief Society Meetings held in SLC in 1854," typescript made from a book sent to the LDS Church , Historical Department in October 1918 by George Busby, Chester, Idaho, son of Matilda Dudley- Busby, presideat of the society, 1854- 57 ( this book is now in the vault of the LDS Relief Society secretary- historian, Salt Lake City); Manuscript History of the 13th Ward, LDS Church Archives; Joel C. Janetski, " The Ute of Utah Lake," ( Salt Lake City: University of Utah Anthropological Papers, 199 I), No. 116. THEH ISTORYB LAZW is produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by - a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. 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