Editor's Table: The Slaying of Gunnison; Sunday Baseball

Editor's Table

The Slaying of Gunnison— An Ancient Slander as to the Cause Revived in an Otherwise Excellent Book

From the book publishing house of G. P. Putnam's Sons there has just come a volume that is meant to be truthfully written and is intended to throw strong, new light upon the explorations conducted coincident with the opening of the era of settlement in the Far West. The book is a biography of Edward Fitzgerald Beale, published apparently at the instigation of his son, and written by Stephen Bonsai. In the spirit which prompted this late effort to honor Beale, allUtahns will heartily join. He is not entirely unknown in this region, where tales of his once-famous camel corps, which was disbanded in the wilds of New Mexico, are still to be heard. Beak's dream of solving the problem of transcontinental transportation by camel caravans was coincident with dreams of ? relay-route for balloons, and dreams of all-water routes up the Missouri and down the Colorado and the Columbia, the nature of whose headwaters were then but slightly understood. But unlike the other dreams that of Beale went at least so far as the achievement of at least one trip from coast to coast with camels, and gave our own intermountain country a substantial basis for its oft repeated legend of droves of wild camels that travelers allege they have sighted in the wild country beyond the Grand Canyon. As a trail-blazer, a fighter for the conquest of the Far West from the desert, Beale of course deserves much greater honor than has ever yet come to him, and will in the end have the story of his fight for his camel corps recorded alongside of Brigham Young's plan for relay-settlements to Los Angeles, and the Mormon Battalion's struggle to build a wagon road to the southwest coast. But in spite of a hearty concurrence with the main purpose and the general accuracy of this new volume concerning General Beale, there is one statement in the book against which it is neces-

:

256 IMPROVEMENT ERA

sary to enter a decided protest. The statement is apparently made on the sole authority of Stephen Bonsai, the author, since no document accompanies it, and there is no citing of any other authority on which Bonsai could have relied. Indeed, the narrative of General Beale, which leads up to the assertion here complained of, seems entirely to contradict it, and leaves one wondering why Bonsai dared to go so far afield from the obvious deductions of his text.

On page 171 of the volume is published a letter from the famous Senator Thomas H. Benton, of Missouri, congratulating Beale upon his safe passage through southern Utah, then infested by the warring Ute Indian, Walker. "You have established yourself with the country," wrote Benton to Beale, after hearing of

his exploits in Utah, "the more so because of the massacre of Gunnison's party by the same tribe that was so hospitable to you." To this reference the author of the volume appended a footnote in which he makes a grave charge against the Pioneers of these Utah valleys. Here it is

"Referring to the fate of the" exploring and surveying expedition under command of Lieut. John M. Gunnison, U. S. A., Gunnison and seven of his men were murdered by a band of 'Mormons' and Indians, near Sevier Lake, Utah, Oct. 26, 1853."

Other passages in Mr. Bonsai's book make it hardly a surprise that he should insert the footnote as he did. A little earlier in his volume he told of the splendid courage of General Phil Kearney in rushing west during the Mexican war with the only troops ready to go, a whole season ahead of commanders who had tried and dismally failed to recruit troops in other fields than that in which General Kearney worked. But he did not pay the simple tribute demanded by the facts, of acknowledging that these troops comprising Kearney's "Army of the West" were "Mormon" troops raised in the wilderness at thecommand of Brigham Young, at a moment when his loyalty to the Nation was put to the severe test of a demand that he furnish the fathers of the "Mormon" families, outcast from Nauvoo, for a National war. Nor did Mr. Bonsai in any of his references to the Kearney operations in California, after his "Mormon" troops had achieved what has been officially designated in army general orders as "the

EDITOR'S TABLE 257

greatest march in the history of infantry," account to these troops in a way to disclose their identity or the circumstances of their enlistment. In repeating the ancient slander that Lieutenant Gunnison met his death at the hands of the "Mormons," Mr. Bonsai, of course, dealt with a man whose name in the Far West is a household word, preserved in the name of a majestic island in the Great Salt Lake, and in the name of a city, a river, and a valley, near the scene of his tragic death. Gunnison, as we all well know, is fully entitled to honor as one of the first Salt Lakers. Witness this experience which he had within the waters of our own great lake as he records it in his diary: — he was out in a boat probably the first boat, larger than a canoe, that was ever upon the surface of the lake. Captain Stansbury, his chief, with whom he was surveying the lake, missed him at night when one of those terrific lake gales, with which all our amateur mariners are now fully familiar, came raging up out of the northwest. Stansbury lit signal fires for Gunnison, but the lieutenant failed to come in. Next morning he arrived— like most of our storm-tossed sailorfolk of these days— "covered with salt from head to foot"— to quote from Stansbury's narrative— "and wet, hungry, and thoroughly exhausted." "Our skiff dragged into three inches of water," wrote Gun- shipwreck, "and the nison, in recording the story of the lake's first boat in showers the rain and hail came spray dashed over the ;

hands were drenched to the skin. down in torrents and soon all

spend the night under a bit We curled up in the boat's bottom to

of torn sail. Nearly frozen to death, we hailed the first streaks of pushed our boat a day and jumped cheerfully into the icy mud, it until the water couple of miles from where the storm had driven found ourselves was deep enough to float her. and in two hours anxiously awaited us once more in camp where Captain Stansbury with dry clothes and a hot breakfast." acclimated Lieut. That was a sample of many incidents that the intermountain country. Gunnison to life as it is experienced in made him welcome, who ac- The yarn that the "Mormons" who assault upon Indian fortifica- cepted the aid of his associates in an his pen many tributes in the tions at Provo, who received from upon him and murdered him. eastern press, afterwards turned

258 IMPROVEMENT ERA

was one of a sort with scores of others originating among unscrupulous enemies of our pioneers at a similar period. But Mr. Bonsai should have been protected from it by the very narrative he was preparing for publication. Some day the entire story of the Far Western trails will be written. Then it will be shown that for twenty years before the pioneers came to these valleys, lone explorers had disastrous encounters with Indian brigands camped along the Spanish trading routes, and that massacres marked the course of every path through Utah, to an extent fully as great as in Colorado or Montana, or the valleys further eastward. Provo, indeed, takes its name from Etienne Provost, whose trading and trapping party was massacred there in 1825. The Ute Chief Walker, whose braves slew Gunnison, was perhaps the worst of the Indian brigands between the Wasatch and the Sierras. He had gathered renegades from all tribes and had established them a decade before our pioneer era, along the old Spanish trail leading through southern Utah from Santa Fe to Monterey. And these brigand Indians were professional cutthroats and looters of exploring expeditions. Fremont found what is now known as the "Mormon Trail," from Utah to Los Angeles,

an avenue of "bleaching skeletons," when he came that way from California, in 1844, and one of the things that Beale chiefly found to honor in his friend Kit Carson was the way Carson avenged murders committed by Walker's band among Fremont's party on this very trail, not so very far from where Gunnison eleven years

later met his death. Jedediah Smith, a trapper, who used the trail as early as 1827, left the arrow-pierced bodies of members of his party all the way westward from Utah Lake and indeed, our Rio Virgin is ;

said to be named from Thomas Virgin, one of Smith's men, who fell there in one of his frequent Indian encounters. But Beale himself gives a stirring tribute to the way in which the "Mormons" met the conditions in which Gunnison became involved, and outlines better than could any evidence local to Utah the relations between the "Mormons" and those whom Bonsai charges with being their allies in the Gunnison massacre. Beale while keeping his diary was coming westward from the Arkansas river valley into the settlements of southern Utah. While still east of the Green river he records that Indians began to

EDITOR'S TABLE 259

swarm into his camp, to demand presents and assume a threatening attitude. Beak's one hope, he records, was to get through their country swiftly and seek refuge in the "Mormon" outpost settlements, then stretching out southwestward along the trail leading from Salt Lake to San Bernardino. As they came towards the "Mormon" settlements, Beale and his party heard rumors of the bad treatment they would receive. But a stern necessity drove them forward with cocked and loaded guns and constant friction with their ever-present Indian convoys. Harried and harassed they touched the "Mormon" settlements first at Paragoona in the valley of the Little Salt Lake.

— Then, to let the Beale narrative, as edited and annotated by Mr. Bonsai, —take up the story : .

"We found that shortly before our arrival in the valley hostilities had broken out between Walkah, a Utah chief, and the 'Mormons,' and we found them in a state of great alarm and excitement in consequence of some of his recent acts."

An important thing to remember, in considering Beale's tributes to the "Mormons" and his pictures of the Indian situation, is that he was in the identical section where Gunnison was killed in the same year that the masacre took place, and indeed only a

few weeks prior to its occurrence.

"We did not remain long in Paragoona," Beale continues, "for soon after our arrival the inhabitants, in obedience to a mandate from Brigham Young, commenced removing to the town of Parowan, as he considered it unsafe for them to remain in Paragoona. It was to us a strange sight to witness the alacrity with which these people obeyed of an order which compelled them to destroy in an instant the fruits two years' labor; and no time was lost in commencing the work of de- struction. Their houses were demolished; and wagons were soon on the road to Parowan, loaded with their property. "We left Paragoona in the afternoon, and rode to Parowan over bridged in many an excellent wagon road, made and kept in repair and places by the 'Mormons.' We passed, a mile at our left, a large grist and saw mill worked by water power. our late jour- "This ride to Parowan furnished a large contrast to cross-roads were finger-posts neyings through the wilderness. At all

and mile-stones measuring the distance. square and "Parowan contains about one hundred houses built in a and outside of the town, are vegetable facing inwards. In their rear about one hundred gardens, each dwelling having a lot running back

:

260 IMPROVEMENT ERA yards. By an excellent system of irrigation, water is brought to the front and rear of each house, and through the center and outside boundary of each garden lot. The houses are ornamented in front with small flower gardens, and are fenced off from the square and are shaded with trees. The field covers about four hundred acres and was in ahigh state of cultivation, the wheat and corn being as fine as any thatwe had seen in the states; the people took a laudable pride in showing what they had accomplished in so short a time and against so many obstacles."

And then came in a brief picture of the "Mormon" policy toward the Indians, even then worthy of comment by the traveler, despite the cruel conditions under which it was being carried out

"Most of the day was spent in having the animals shod," runs the diary for Aug. 3, "and in getting extra shoes to replace those lost in

crossing the desert region. An American blacksmith, assisted by a couple of Pah-Utahs did this work, and we were surprised to see what skilful workmen the Utahs made. Most of the 'Mormon' families maintained one or more Utah children, who were treated with kindness and even tenderness; were taught to call their protectors 'father' and 'mother,' and instructed in the rudiments of education. The Indian children are not interdicted from intercourse with their people, who are allowed freely to enter the town; but the latter evince very little interest in their offspring."

And then comes a picture of "Walkah," the chief with whose braves the "Mormons," in spite of the evidence of this disinterested witness, are alleged by his biographer to have executed in a joint partnership a terrible massacre :

"The Utah chieftain who occasioned all this panic and excitement," says Beale, "is a man of great subtlety and indomitable energy. He is not a Utah by birth, but has acquired such an indomitable ascendency over that tribe by his daring exploits that all the restless spirits and ambitious young warriors in it have joined his standard. Having an unlimited supply of fine horses, and being inured to every fatigue and privation, he keeps the territories of New Mexico and Utah, the provinces of Chihuahua and Sonora, and the southern portion of California, in constant alarm. His movements are so rapid and his plans so skilfully and secretly laid that he has never once failed in any enterprise, and has scarcely disappeared from one district before he is heard of in another. He frequently divides his men into two or more bands which, making their appearance at different points at the same time, each headed, it is given out, by the dreaded 'Walkah' in

: :

EDITOR'S TABLE 261

person, has given him with the ignorant Mexicans the attribute of ubiquity. The principal object of his forays is to drive off horses and cattle, and among the Utahs we noticed horses with brands familiar to us in New Mexico and California. "He has adopted the name Walker (corrupted to Walkah) on account of the close intimacy and friendship which in former days united him to Joe Walker, an old mountaineer, and the same who discovered Walker's pass, in the Sierras. "The 'Mormons' were surprised at our having passed safely through Walker's territory, and they did not know to what they were to attribute our escape from destruction. They told us that the cattle tracks we had seen a few days previous were those of a portion of a large drove lifted by Walker, and that the mounted men we had noticed in the mountains on the evening of Aug. 1 were scouts sent out by him to watch our movements. They endeavored to dissuade us from prosecuting our journey, for they stated it was unsafe to travel even between the towns without an escort of from twenty-five to thirty men."

From the consideration of the Indian chieftain who was terrorizing the "Mormon" settlers, Beale turns to the settlers themselves. He says

"The kind reception we received from the inhabitants of these settlements, during our short sojourn among them, strongly contrasted with what we had been led to anticipate from the reports of the Mexicans and Indians whom we had met on the road. We spent the evening of our arrival in Parowan at the house of Col. [George A.] Smith, who was in command of this portion of the territory, and was organizing a military force for its protection. He related to us the origin of these southern settlements, the many difficulties and hardships they had to contend with, and gave us much interesting information concerning the geography of the surrounding country."

The government party left Parowan and its "Mormon" hosts at twilight on the evening of Aug. 3, 1853. After that, in the diary which Mr. Bonsai edited, there were many references to desert hardships on the way to San Bernardino, but only one more reference to a "Mormon." Here it is as recorded under the date of Aug. 13

"In the afternoon we reached Aqua Escarbada, where we expected to have to dig for water; but the ground had been so deeply excavated that a running spring had been reached. Shortly after reaching this place we found on the roadside the remains of an American, with

262 IMPROVEMENT ERA From papers which were scattered the mark of a rifle ball in his skull. around we ascertained that he was a 'Mormon' on an exploring expedition, and his buckskin garments not having been wet by the rain, proved that he had been killed this season."

And thus the references to the "Mormon" country and the — "Mormon" people terminate except for Senator Benton's remark about the "tribe" of Indians that killed Gunnison, and Bonsai's gratuitously inserted note that the massacre was the work of "a band of 'Mormons' and Indians." The purpose here is far from purporting seriously to discuss evidence as to the quality of Bonsai's absurd statement. The unanimous, and fully recorded testimony of everybody who could have known the slightest thing about the sad massacre, including the mute testimony of a "Mormon" guide who perished with Gunnison, and the formal reports to Congress of officers of his military escort who escaped, have removed that question from the of legitimate controversy. field The only open question concerns Mr. Bonsai himself and the sources from which he gained the hardihood to write such a footnote into the midst of such a text as that left him to edit. The people of the Intermountain West are a little fatigued at the slanders in which many facts of their early history have been clouded ; will Mr. Bonsai wish to maintain his assertion, in the face of the records easily available to him ?

Sunday Baseball A short time ago, while attending a stake conference, I was requested to state, through the Era, my position on the question of Sunday baseball. The brother making the request said that he had been informed that I had publicly advocated the playing of baseball on Sunday. I am opposed to Sunday baseball, and have been so from my boyhood days. When a young man, I was passionately fond of the game, but today am happy in contemplating the fact that, much as I loved to play it, I never played a game on Sunday. I am grateful to know that I also persuaded more than one young man from playing on Sundays. Not only am I opposed to Sunday baseball, but I am de-

EDITOR'S TABLE 263

cidedly and emphatically in favor of a Sunday law which will not only prevent the playing of baseball, but which will provide for the closing of theatresand other places of amusement. In my opinion, our legislators, from the date of Utah's admission into the Union, have neglected a very important duty to the public, and I hope such a law on this subject may be placed on our statute

books when the next legislature shall meet. I never think of the quiet in the great city of London, on

Sundays, and compare it with our own city, that I am not humiliated. I once had the honor to be president of a large livery company. My compensation was the free use of the horses and carriages ; but even with this opportunity, I am glad that I never indulged in a Sunday pleasure ride. I regret that any person ever should have given out the impression that I favored Sunday baseball. Heb-er J. Grant.