A History of Garfield County

Early trade and exploration

CHAPTER 3 EARLY TRADE AND EXPLORATION The Spanish Explorers The traditional date for the beginning of the historic period in the southwestern United States is 1540, when Spanish conquistadors, led by Captain Garcia Lopes de Cardenas, discovered the Grand Canyon and claimed for Spain the entire American Southwest. A number of Spanish explorers and traders followed, penetrating northern and central Utah, beginning with Father Estevan Perea in 1604.1 By the mid-1600s Spaniards were trading with Utes as well as raiding them for slaves on the eastern Colorado Plateau. The Spanish settlers in Mexico and New Mexico of this era found the less-docile tribes like Utes, Apaches, and Navajos difficult to govern and Christianize, but they could-and did-have some measure of con­trol over them through slavery. Thousands of Native Americans were sent into the mines of northern Mexico and to the haciendas of the landed gentry of New Mexico where they toiled away their lives in hopeless bondage.2 39 40 HISTORY OF GARFIELD COUNTY Bryce Canyon in August 1916. (Utah State Historical Society) Although there is little or no evidence of any long-term settle­ments of Utes in the Garfield area, their hunting grounds crossed Garfield County from Panguitch Lake to the Colorado River. For the most part, small bands of Paiutes lived along the Sevier River from present-day Marysvale south through Garfield County. Just south of EARLY TRADE AND EXPLORATION 41 Bryce Canyon in Kane County is a region around Skutumpah Creek where Ute, Paiute, and Navajo lands overlapped. Members of all three tribes were acquainted with Bryce Canyon. The Paiute legend for the creation of this natural wonderland tells of lizards, birds and other animals that occupied the land and could turn themselves into human forms: They did something that was not good [and] Coyote turned them all into rocks. You can see them in that place now . . . some stand­ing in rows, some sitting down, some holding onto others. You can see their faces, with paint on them just as they were before the became rocks. The name of that place is Angka-ku-wass-a-wits [red-painted faces].3 A change in relationships between the various groups of Numic peoples was also taking place. Utes saw social and economic benefit in trading with the Spanish from New Mexico. At first, furs, buckskin, and dried buffalo meat constituted the items of exchange. The Spanish, however, were interested in more than furs-they wanted to expand the lucrative Indian slave trade. By the early 1760s tribes between the Wasatch and Rocky Mountains were being exploited by New Mexican traders from Taos and Santa Fe. Small bands of Utes that traditionally had little political cohesion combined under war chiefs whose power rested on their ability to acquire and keep horses for their followers. They eventually learned that if they engaged in the slave trade themselves their own people were less likely to be sold into bondage. Consequently, they would become the scourge of the Goshute and Southern Paiute bands as they raided their camps for women and children to trade to the Spanish. In 1776 a party of Spanish explorers headed by two Franciscan priests, Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante, traveled into much of Utah in a failed attempt to find a new route overland from Santa Fe to the newly established missions in California. The expedition journal indicates that they were "fol­lowing the Ute Trail" and "the old slave route." Members of the party spoke the Ute language well enough to communicate with the bands they encountered.4 Although members of the Dominguez-Escalante expedition 42 HISTORY OF GARFIELD COUNTY never set foot in the Garfield County region (they circled far around it), no less than seven place-names in the county would eventually honor Silvestre Velez de Escalante: the town of Escalante, Escalante Canyon, Escalante Mountain, the Escalante River, Escalante Basin, and Escalante Natural Bridge. Eventually most of the Numic Indians, except for the Western Shoshone and Southern Paiute, obtained horses either from the Plains tribes or from the Spanish. With the introduction of the horse, the Ute and Northern Shoshone became much more mobile and effi­cient at hunting large game and at raiding and warfare. Trade and contact with distant peoples, including the Spanish, became easier and occurred more frequently. Tepees made of hide and poles became common, as horses enabled the people to transport cumber­some materials with greater ease. Meanwhile, Spanish explorers continued to seek trade in Utah. Maurice Arze and Lagos Garcia led a company of seven men to the Great Basin and the San Sebero (Sevier) region. In 1821 Utah became part of the territory of the Mexican government when they won independence from Spain. The newly liberated Mexicans lost no time in taking over the trade and mining enterprises of the Spaniards, con­tinuing contacts between Santa Fe and the Indians in Utah until after the Mormons reached the Salt Lake Valley.5 The first American to travel overland to southern California, frontiersman Jedediah Smith, is credited with rediscovering the Sevier and Virgin rivers. Many subsequent traders, but by no means all, followed the route of the Dominguez-Escalante party. Several groups either came or left Utah through the southern regions on what would become the Old Spanish Trail. By the mid-1830s it had become an established trade route between Santa Fe and California. It had numerous variants, but the main route traveled northwest from Santa Fe, crossed the Colorado River near Moab, and forded the Green River near the present town of Green River. From there the trail swung southwest and split at Fremont Junction. One section-a later short-cut-snaked west through Salina Canyon and then fol­lowed the Sevier River Valley south through future Sevier and Piute counties. The other route took the Forsyth Valley to the Loa-Fremont area EARLY TRADE AND EXPLORATION 43 then crossed west to Otter Creek. It traced the creek south through Grass Valley along the eastern side of today's Piute County until it met the Sevier River's East Fork north of Antimony. The two trails came together at the junction of the East Fork and the main flow of the Sevier River.6 From there Spanish caravans continued south with their captives and other trade items, following the river across the northwestern corner of future Garfield County from Circle Valley (in Piute County) south to the present site of Orton. There the trail curved west and then south along Bear Creek and up onto the Markagunt Plateau, which forms Garfield's western boundary.7 The trail followed Little Creek down the other side of the mountain near the present town of Parowan before meeting the Dominguez- Escalante route near present-day Cedar City. Utes, Navajos, and Mexicans frequently used another trail from the south through Garfield County for their raids on Paiute camps. They came into Utah at the Crossing of the Fathers (also known as Ute Ford, now submerged by Lake Powell) where the Dominguez- Escalante party forded the Colorado River on their return trip to Santa Fe. From there the raiders went up the Paria Valley, into Tropic Canyon, through the northern part of Bryce Canyon, and over the Markugunt Plateau to the Great Basin trails. A story persists today that one party of Spanish traders tried to cross Boulder Mountain and got caught in early snow north of the Escalante River. Bitter cold and starvation took the lives of nine of them before spring thaws finally allowed the survivors to leave the mountain. Later settlers reportedly found nine grave markers, which were visible for many years before being "obliterated by shifting sands."8 Trappers and Traders In 1830 mountain men William Wolfskill and George C. Yount led a group of twenty trappers the entire length of the Old Spanish Trail-the first documented group to do so. They traveled the east­ern half of the loop through central Utah. Somehow they missed the turn in the trail where it snaked up Bear Creek and down Red Creek to present-day Paragonah. They continued along the Sevier River through Garfield County near the present site of Panguitch and on 44 HISTORY OF GARFIELD COUNTY to the 9,000-foot Markagunt Plateau, where they ran into trouble. According to their account: Our trappers, with much toil, reached a strip of Table land, upon a lofty range of mountains, where they encountered the most terrible snowstorm they had ever experienced. During several days, no one ventured out of camp. There they lay embedded in snow, very deep, animals and men huddled thick as possible together, to hus­band and enjoy all possible animal warmth, having spread their thick and heavy blankets, 8c piled bark, and brush wood around & over them. . . . After the storm subsided and the weather had soft­ened, Yount & Wolfskill ascended a lofty Peak of the mountains for observation. In the whole range of human view, in every direc­tion, nothing could be discerned, in the least degree encouraging, but only mountains, piled on mountains, all capped with cheerless snow, in long and continuous successions, till they seemed to min­gle with the blue vault of heaven and fade away in the distance.9 The explorers eventually found their way into Little Salt Lake Valley, where they killed the last of the four cattle they had brought with them for food. From there to California they lived on mule and horse meat, some of which "was very poor."10 During the next two decades traffic on the trail-including the slave trade-peaked, even though California and New Mexico had passed anti-slavery laws in the 1820s. Trading caravans as large as 200 people traveled the Old Spanish Trail. The traders wore varied apparel. Elaborately embroidered jackets and vests adorned with sil­ver bell-shaped buttons contrasted with the scanty buckskin loin­cloths of the captured Indians. As the traders began their journey from New Mexico, they first swapped guns, blankets, and trinkets with Navajos in exchange for horses. The poorer-grade animals could be traded later as food to "Digger" Indians, as some of the Indian groups of the desert areas were later labeled, whose only trade com­modity was often their own children. (Both Paiute and Goshute Indians were referred to as "Digger" Indians because they commonly dug in the soil for bulbs and roots in their endeavors to find food in the harsh semiarid lands they inhabited.) Along the way, the traders also purchased captives from Ute bands who had taken women and children in hit-and-run raids on the unmounted Paiutes and EARLY TRADE AND EXPLORATION 45 Goshutes. In California the New Mexicans traded the captives for more horses or sold them for cash-the top rates reportedly being "$100 for a boy, and from $150 to $200 for healthy girls, who were in greater demand as house servants."11 The slave trade was a profitable business. After about 1840 contact with Europeans became increasingly frequent, dramatically affecting the native inhabitants of the Garfield region. Traders and fur trappers had been in and out of southern Utah for decades, frequently using parts of the Spanish trails. Often they sent pelts to Taos with the New Mexican caravans. Although these men were not ones to leave a written record of their experi­ences, it is highly probable that some of them obtained their furs from along the Sevier River and the waterways in Garfield County, since mountain men traveled throughout the West in search of beaver, which was in high demand to make fashionable tophats. The streams of southern Utah never yielded a high numbers of furs, par­ticularly beaver, however. The trappers soon moved on to other ter­ritories and eventually to other occupations as the fur trade dwindled by the early 1840s. Mormon Exploration Although John C. Fremont's scientific exploration of Utah for the U.S. government in 1843-44 did not take him into the Garfield region, his report published in 1845 had far-reaching implications for the eventual settling of the future county. Fremont, an army topo­graphical engineer assigned to "furnish a scientific description of the Far Northwest," traveled through northern Utah in 1843 on his way to California. The return trip followed the Old Spanish Trail from Los Angeles to Parowan and then proceeded up the present-day Interstate 15 corridor to Utah Valley. Fremont and his men exited through Spanish Fork Canyon, cutting across future Wasatch, Duchesne, and Uintah counties into Colorado and from there on to Independence, Missouri.12 Fremont's report became particularly important to leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons or LDS), who were seeking a place of refuge for their beleaguered followers. The church had been organized by Joseph Smith in New York state in 46 HISTORY OF GARFIELD COUNTY 1830, and had moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, by way of Ohio and Missouri because of harassment and persecution. In June 1844, the Mormon's prophet had been murdered. His successor, Brigham Young, and other church leaders found Fremont's description of the Great Basin pivotal as they considered options for resettlement of their people. Eventually, with the coming of the Mormons to the Inter-mountain West in 1847, livestock and farming settlements would encroach on traditional lands that once supported the region's Native Americans. And while the slave trade would ultimately end, European diseases-including smallpox, influenza, and measles, for which the Native Americans had no immunity-would cut a swath of death through their communities. Between July 1847 and the beginning of 1850, the arrival of thou­sands of Mormon immigrants to the Salt Lake Valley made it imper­ative for their leaders to find new sites for settlement. In addition, thousands of forty-niners heading for the gold fields of California soon passed through the Salt Lake Valley. Miners bought mules and supplies and then moved on, but those in wagon trains intent on set­tling in California sometimes hired Mormon guides to take them via the new southern route to avoid being caught by winter in the Sierra Nevada like the Donner-Reed party of 1846. This route followed part of the Old Spanish Trail, which some Mormon Battalion members had traveled from San Diego to Utah in 1848, returning from California after serving in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War. They had been the first to take wagons over the route, which would eventually be known as the "Mormon Corridor" (roughly following today's Interstate 15).13 Mormon church leaders soon decided that they needed to know more about the land south of Utah Lake. The Parley P. Pratt Expedition Brigham Young stated in March 1849: "We hope soon to explore the valleys three hundred miles south and also the country as far as the Gulf of California with a view to settlement and to acquiring a seaport."14 That same month he also asked the newly formed Legislative Assembly of the Provisional Government of the State of EARLY TRADE AND EXPLORATION 47 A^;;-'i Parley P. Pratt who led an exploring expedition to Southern Utah in late 1849. (Utah State Historical Society) Deseret to commission Parley P. Pratt to explore the central and southern portions of Utah with a party of fifty men.15 Pratt, already known for his competent leadership, chose his men carefully. They each needed skills and talents that would aid in the success of the expedition. Among his choices were John Brown, William Henrie, and Joseph Mathews, who were expert hunters; Robert Lang Campbell, a seasoned clerk and camp historian; William W. Phelps, an accomplished surveyor; and Dimick Huntington, an experienced scout with a uncommon aptitude for trading and con­versing with the Indians. Some of those chosen were Mormon 48 HISTORY OF GARFIELD COUNTY Minute Men; others, like Isaac C. Haight, had been with the Mormon Battalion. In age, the men ranged from eighteen-year-old Alexander Lemon to Samuel Gould, who was seventy-one. The expedition was to "maintain a complete record of soil con­ditions, topography, vegetation, streams, timber, pasture lands, and all other natural resources" necessary to locate new settlements. They were also to return with specific recommendations for town sites. It was quite a task, considering the expedition began its winter journey on 24 November 1849, with deep snow covering much of the route, and were to return in February. They would be the first Mormons to enter future Garfield County. Twelve large wagons lumbered out of Cottonwood Creek in Salt Lake Valley at noon on 24 November under cloudy skies. Each wagon, pulled by two yoke of oxen, carried food, blankets, tools, Indian trade items, and other necessities. One carriage, a brass field cannon, and thirty-eight saddle horses and mules, along with a num­ber of cattle, were part of the procession which would swell to forty-seven men, three less than had been planned, by the time they left newly settled Provo. The caravan would follow old Indian trails and part of the Old Spanish Trail where no wagons had ever been. And they would cut new trails within the wilderness of southern Utah. Snow and cold temperatures, often well below zero, would plague the explorers much of their journey. They traveled through Utah and Juab valleys, then turned east through Salt Creek Canyon to the Sanpete Valley and the two-week-old settlement of Manti. There, five more men volunteered to join the expedition, bringing the total to fifty-two and adding two more wagons. They followed the Sevier River through future Sevier and Piute county regions, crossing craggy passes in deep snow and freezing cold, and crossing into the Garfield County area on 15 December. There they camped in the south end of Circle Valley along the Sevier River. Robert Campbell described the terrain before them in his jour­nal: "The Valley terminated in an impassable canyon, and an abrupt chain of mountains sweeping before and on each hand, and the river rushing like a torrent between perpendicular rocks."16 The wagons remained at that site for two days while several members of the group searched for a trail either to the south or west that would take them EARLY TRADE AND EXPLORATION 49_ out of the valley. The Ute chief Wakara (Walker) had told them a week earlier that there were no passes over the mountains to the east of the Sevier River, and, even if there were, the dry and inhospitable country on the other side would not grow corn. Sometime after dark on the second day, John Brown, John Bankhead, and Robert Campbell arrived back in camp with mixed news. They had discovered a route, which Campbell declared "very difficult, but not impassable, winding over a succession of canyons with steep ascents and descents, nearly perpendicular in places, with rocks and cobblestones all the way." At the conclusion of the report the rest of men reportedly shouted a loud, "We can go it!" Campbell lightened the task ahead with a song, which he sang to the men before the bugle called them to prayers. We've found out the trail boys, Where over we go; It lies thro' the mountains, Deeply covered with snow; It's rough rocky road, The route we have been; But there is plenty of deer, For them we have seen; We looked away far beyond, But nothing could we see; Save the blue expanse of ether, So clear and so free; But to a high Mountain, Some of us did go; And we spied out a trail, Where the Mountains can go. 17 The next morning, 17 December, the party divided. The first group started ahead to clear rocks and timber from the route, while the remaining men readied the wagons and started them over Brown's Pass, newly named for its discoverer, John Brown. Hampered by the steep, undulating terrain and four to six feet of snow, the lead party made only seven and a half miles; the rear company traveled only four and a half miles. The most difficult and temper-trying day since leaving Salt Lake 50 HISTORY OF GARFIELD COUNTY Valley was 18 December. The trailbreakers at times dismounted to stamp and pack the snow to make a trail for the horses and wagons; at other times they opened narrow passages with picks and shovels or cut through the six-foot snowdrifts. The forward company retraced their tracks several times to help lower the wagons with ropes over the steepest and most precarious sections. By nightfall the rear group had traveled only two miles beyond the forward com­pany's encampment the evening before. The lead group camped on the other side of the ridge just north of present-day Spry. The next day the party turned west. When a temporary impasse made it seem as though they could go no farther, some of the men became disheartened. Even when they were on their way again, the men were too cold and tired to exhibit good spirits and dispositions turned ugly. Schyler Jennings brandished a club at Dan Jones, swear­ing at him for allowing his horse too close to the wagon Jennings was driving. Pratt jumped into the fray, ordering the men to stop, then scolded all who had "enmity towards their brethren." After he fin­ished the chastisement, he and three others climbed into the wagon to pray for forgiveness.18 That night they camped on the western edge of Garfield County. On 20 December, the expedition passed into Iron County near where today's Utah Highway 20 links the east and west corridors of the state. Parley P. Pratt and John Brown had located the pass leading into Parowan Valley and the Southern Route. Had they done their exploring in the warmer months they would doubtless have found the more passable Old Spanish Trail through Sevier, Piute, Garfield, and Beaver counties. The expedition explored along the modern 1-15 route as far south as present-day St. George. From there they looped northwest through Snow Canyon, then north along the edge of the Escalante Desert, before turning east to Cedar City to meet the Southern Route again. They started home facing deep snow and temperatures as low as thirty degrees below zero. The Southern Expedition traveled some 700 miles in a little over two months, with the first members of the company arriving back in the Salt Lake Valley early in February 1850. Some of the men experi­enced permanent injury from frostbite, but none died. Although one EARLY TRADE AND EXPLORATION 51 might question the wisdom of such an undertaking in the worst pos­sible time of year, the information Pratt and his men brought back with them proved valuable. Within fifteen years, thirty-seven towns had been located on sites Pratt had recommended in central and southern Utah. Undoubtedly, some of these sites would have been settled regardless of Pratt's report, but the achievements of the Southern Expedition combined with later exploring endeavors to open Garfield County to settlement in 1864. The John D. Lee and John C.L. Smith Explorations In 1851 Mormons began building communities and forts south of Utah Valley-the first being Parowan beginning in the third week of January. They laid out towns and built homes along the same creeks and rivers that native peoples had used for thousands of years before them. They explored the mountains and valleys for timber, game, and minerals. During the first week of June 1852, eight men from newly settled Parowan responded to the invitation of a Paiute chief, Quinarrah (Kanarrah), to visit his camp over the mountain to the east of the new settlement. The eight men were John Calvin Lazell Smith, John Steele, John D. Lee, John L. Smith, John Dart, Solomon Chamberlain, Priddy Meeks, and ET. Whitney.19 John D. Lee led the small group up Center Creek onto Prince Mountain, where they had a clear view to the west into the Parowan Valley. To the east they could see Panguitch Lake-the first recorded sighting of the lake and this portion of Garfield County. Panguitch Lake is a beautiful freshwater lake in a rugged forested area eighteen miles south of where the town of that same name would be settled. The name of the lake and the creek that flows from it comes from the Paiute word pawguh'uts and the related Goshute word Pawngweets, both meaning "fish" or "big fish." Trout were so abundant in the lake that the natives had only to walk along the shore and spear them to have a plentiful supply. The Goshutes from near the Utah-Nevada border and the Paiutes from the Parowan- Panguitch area occasionally visited each other's lands. Nearly every person in these two bands would later be massacred by a company of U.S. soldiers while the Indians camped together at Spring Valley, between present-day Baker and Ely, Nevada.20 52 HISTORY OF GARFIELD COUNTY John D. Lee who was among the first to explore Panguitch Lake and the Upper Sevier River. He built a home in Panguitch. (Utah State Historical Society) The explorers followed Indian trails nine miles down the moun­tain, where Chief Quinarrah welcomed them to his village of about a hundred Paiutes near Panguitch Lake. With John D. Lee as their interpreter, the men from Parowan traded flour and bread for fish. When they refused to trade gunpowder, Quinarrah became angry, saying they "were not the friends" they claimed to be. Although Lee had a difficult time interpreting all of the long speech that followed, he clearly understood that the chief was "very much displeased."21 EARLY TRADE AND EXPLORATION 53 Tense moments followed as the guests' eyes darted around the area looking for the quickest, safest exit. Lee, however, calmed Quinarrah before a retreat became necessary and succeeded in glean­ing information about the land that lay below them along the course of the Sevier River. Although the visit to Panguitch Lake was short, the party of explorers returned to Parowan impressed with the pos­sibility of settlement in the four-mile-wide, timber-covered valley, and determined to explore the area further. With John C.L. Smith as their leader, a group of seven men left Parowan on 12 June 1852 to examine more closely the Sevier River Valley and to find the headwaters of the Rio Virgin, the lower por­tions of which had been investigated by them the previous January and February. The men were Priddy Meeks, John C.L. Smith, John Steele, Francis Whitney, Solomon Chamberlain, John Dart, and John D. Lee.22 This time they followed the Old Spanish Trail at least part of the way up Little Creek to the summit; they then crossed over into Panguitch Valley. Upon scouting the area, they found water plentiful and ample land for farming. John Steel wrote: "There is a good chance for a small colony . . . some 50 or 100 families, who might wish to go into the lumber trade, as this is good country for timber." He also noted that "some very handsome, open kanyons, with plenty of poles, house logs, and saw timber, and good water" lay to the east.23 For the next two days the party traveled south along the west edge of the Sevier Valley to Assay Creek, passing from present Garfield County into today's Kane County, where they found the headwaters of the Sevier River's East Fork. John C.L. Smith in his report to the Deseret News stated: "There can be a good wagon road got from the Sevier country, to this point. There are plenty of hops and timber, and some handsome places for settlements in the narrow but fertile bottom of the stream."24 Circling through the southeast portion of present-day Zion National Park and back north through the present town of Toquerville, the explorers arrived back in Parowan on 24 June 1852. They completed their 336-mile trek in only twelve days, reporting their travels in a letter to the Deseret News two days later.25 It would take ten more years, however, for Mormon pioneers to bring their wagons and cattle into Panguitch Valley, which John Steele had described so promisingly. 54 HISTORY OF GARFIELD COUNTY Parowan men would continue to make trips to Panguitch Lake for fish to augment the town's meager food supply. These excursions would become particularly important in years of poor harvest due to grasshoppers or low water supply, or both. John C. Fremont's Fifth Expedition, Winter 1853-54 Assigned to locate a central route across the continent for the Union Pacific Railroad, John C. Fremont mostly traversed Spanish trade routes. In the winter of 1853-54, however, he and his men crossed the Green River near the mouth of the San Rafael River and followed it to a river that would later be named the Fremont. They then crossed over the Awapa Plateau south of Fish Lake and down Grass Valley to the Sevier River. Fighting deep snows and bitter cold, the men wandered for three days through the same northwest corner of future Garfield County that the Parley P. Pratt expedition members had found so difficult. With snow "up to the Bellies of the animals" and sub-zero temperatures, they struggled to break trail. Wrote one: "None of us had shoes; some of the men had raw hide strapped round their feet, while others were half covered with worn out stockings and moccasins. We were reduced to rations of dried horse meat."26 On 7 February 1854 they found a pass (now named Fremont Pass) into Buckskin Valley and to Parowan. One man had died, sev­eral more had to be carried in. They had eaten nothing for two days. Fremont wrote: "At Parowan the Mormons treated us very kindly; every family took in some of the men, putting them into clean, com­fortable beds, and kind-faced women gave them reviving food and pitying words." In a letter he wrote, "The Mormons saved me and mine from death by starvation."27 Some of these same Mormons would be the first settlers in Garfield County in 1864. ENDNOTES 1. Rick J. Fish, "The Southern Utah Expedition of Parley P. Pratt: 1849-1850" (Master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1992), 119, iden­tifies eleven Spanish expeditions into Utah before the Dominguez-Escalante expedition of 1776. 2. L.R. Bailey, Indian Slave Trade in the Southwest (Los Angeles: Westerbe Press, 1966), flyleaf. EARLY TRADE AND EXPLORATION 55 3. Clifford C. Presnath, "The Legend of Bryce Canyon as Told to the Park Naturalist by Indian Dick," Zion and Bryce Nature Notes 8 (March 1939), as quoted in Nicholas Scrattish, Historic Resource Study: Bryce Canyon National Park, 7. 4. Fish, "Southern Utah Expedition," 8. 5. Ibid., 14. 6. The town of Junction, which is the Piute County seat, gets its name from the junction of the Sevier River and its east fork about a mile east of the town. 7. John W. Van Cott, Utah Place Names (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990), 244. 8. Lenora Hall LeFevre, Boulder Mountain audits Peoples (Springville, UT: Art City Publishing, 1973), 5. 9. William B. Smart, Old Utah Trails (Salt Lake City: Utah Geo­graphic, 1988), 45-46. 10. Ibid., 46. 11. Bailey, Indian Slave Trade, 146. 12. Fish, "Southern Utah Expedition," 24-28. See also John C. Fremont, Report of the Exploring Expeditions to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842 and to the Oregon and North California in the Years 1843-44 (Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, 1845), 272-74. 13. Fish, "Southern Utah Expedition," 39, 41-52. Captain Jefferson Hunt, formerly of the Mormon Battalion, had been sent back over the route to get supplies for the immigrants the first winter the Mormons were in the Salt Lake Valley. Even though most of the stock he purchased died on the return trip, he knew the trail and was one of the Mormons who took California-bound wagons across it. 14. Journal History, 9 March 1849, LDS Church Archives. 15. Brigham. H. Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, vol. 3. Reprint (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1965), 485. Pratt was a member of the legislature and was present at the session. See also Fish, "Southern Utah Expedition," and Parley P. Pratt, Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt (Manchester: James Jones, n.d.). 16. Robert L. Campbell, Journal, 15 December 1849, Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hereafter cited as HDC), Salt Lake City, Utah. 17. See ibid., John Brown, Journal, and Journal History, for 16 December 1849, all in HDC. 18. Journal History, 18-19 December 1849; Campbell, Journal, 18 December 1849. 56 HISTORY OF GARFIELD COUNTY 19. Ida Chidester and Eleanor Bruhn, Golden Nuggets of Pioneer Days: A History of Garfield County, 9. Chidester and Bruhn give the Paiute chiefs name as Ow-wan-nop, while Wayne K. Hinton gives it as Quinarrah in The Dixie National Forest (Cedar City, UT: U.S. Department of the Interior, n.d.). 20. LaVan Martineau, Southern Paiutes: Legends, Lore, Language, and Lineage (Las Vegas: KC Publishing, 1992), 60, 160. Martineau says the sol­diers- who caught the Indians unaware and massacred men, women, chil­dren, babies, and even the dogs-may have been from Camp Floyd, Utah, or from Camp Douglas. 21. Deseret News, 7 August 1852. See also Journal History, 26 June 1852, and journals of John Steel, Mahonri Moriancumer Steel, and the Priddy Meeks. Thanks to Fred Esplin for a typescript of the Meeks journal. 22. Priddy Meeks, Journal, 56. 23. John Steel, Journal, 33. 24. Deseret News, 7 August 1852. 25.Ibid. 26. As quoted in Herbert E. Gregory, "Scientific Explorations in Southern Utah," American Journal of Science 248 (October 1945): 532-33. 27. Ibid.