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TENDERFOOT DAYS 
 
 IN TERRITORIAL UTAH 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE ROBERT BIRD 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 BOSTON 
 THE GORHAM PRESS 
 
 MCMXVIII 
 
Copyright, 19 18, by Richard G. Badger 
 
 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 APR -4 \m 
 
 Made in the United States of America 
 
 The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 
 -©CLA492841 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 This book is neither a History nor a Topog- 
 raphy of the Territory of Utah in the early 
 seventies of the last century. The volume is due 
 to the experiences of an outsider who tried to be 
 impartial in his views and sympathies. The per- 
 sonal note, of course, rings in this record of those 
 past days. No onslaught is made on the "wild 
 and woolly" west, nor on the eccentric religion of 
 the majority of the people. 
 
 Through much peril and privation, the wild 
 wastes of the Territory had been occupied by a 
 people whose hard toil had redeemed the desert. 
 The picture of life presented in these pages is in 
 accord with the facts, the only changes made are 
 in the names of some of the characters. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XL 
 
 XII. 
 XIII. 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Going West in 1874 . . . 
 
 A Far West City .... 
 
 Pilgrims to a Modern Zion . 
 
 Church, State and Camp . 
 
 The Co-Operative Industry of 
 Utah 
 
 The Valley Settlements . 
 
 A Long Ride Through Utah 
 Valley 
 
 Through Spanish Fork Can- 
 yon and Thistle Valley . 
 
 Opposition to the Liberal 
 Schools 
 
 Behind the Curtain . . . 
 
 The Creed that Caused the 
 Deed 
 
 The Passing Prophet . . . 
 
 The Mixed Multitude . . 
 
 The Old Prospector . . . 
 
 A Lively Mining Camp . . 
 
 9 
 18 
 29 
 39 
 
 49 
 56 
 
 63 
 
 72 
 
 80 
 92 
 
 104 
 119 
 129 
 138 
 154 
 
6 Contents 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XVI. The Town and Canyon of 
 
 American Fork 167 
 
 XVII. Tenderfoot Superintendents . 178 
 XVIII. A Tenderfoot's Romance . .191.. 
 XIX. Mind as the Master Worker . 209 
 XX. A Latter Day View of a Lat- 
 ter Day State 215 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 Sage Brush . . s » Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 puffalos ..... 
 
 . 16 
 
 Great Salt Lake .... 
 
 32 
 
 jSalt Lake Desert .... 
 
 64 
 
 Rocky Mountains .... 
 
 96 
 
 Wasatch Mountains 
 
 128 
 
 Dead Man's Falls, Little Cottonwood 
 
 160 
 
 Bears ...... 
 
 192 
 
TENDERFOOT DAYS 
 
TENDERFOOT DAYS 
 
 IN TERRITORIAL UTAH 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 GOING WEST IN 1 874 
 
 I WAS one of the multitude of young men who 
 heeded Horace Greeley's advice, "Go West, 
 young man, go West!" in the days when he was 
 the ruling spirit of the New York Tribune. Dis- 
 credited as a prospective president by the people 
 at the polls, he yet was accepted by many as a 
 prophet of agricultural authority on the "Oppor- 
 tunity of the Great West." 
 
 To me, from boyhood, the word "Mississippi" 
 had a winsome charm. I had read of De Soto and 
 the Jesuit Fathers as the first voyagers on the 
 great river of the West, of the Lewis and Clark 
 explorations by the pen of Washington Irving in 
 his Astoria: and to go West, was my one aim as 
 conditions were ripe for it. The great lakes to 
 the North and the cane-brakes to the South were 
 
io Tenderfoot Days 
 
 not in it with the West as a drawing card to me. 
 
 I left the charmed scenery of central New York 
 state in the early spring of '74 headed for the 
 wonderful Porkopolis of Chicago. That city was 
 just beginning to rise from the ashes of the ter- 
 rible fire of '71 when I first set foot in it. Wide 
 areas resembling San Francisco in 1906 were 
 black with the fire's work, and temporary board 
 structures even at the depots were in common evi- 
 dence. But there was the tang and the vim of 
 the West in the faces of its hustling population 
 that foretold the vigorous growth of after years. 
 
 Crossing Ohio, I passed through the famous 
 Western Reserve, supposed to be, in its day, the 
 real West. When I saw the orderly neatness of 
 farm, road, and townsite, I smiled at the invita- 
 tion of an old college chum of the previous year; 
 "When you are in the West be sure to call on me 
 in the Western Reserve. I liva at Youngstown, 
 Ohio." 
 
 The "Father of Waters," as the Indians so 
 fitly call the Mississippi, was bank-full when I 
 crossed it one Tuesday morning. The prairies 
 of Illinois and Wisconsin were green with the 
 early spring color that also clothed the trees along 
 the borders of this great stream. I was not dis- 
 appointed, save with the awkwardly built stern- 
 wheel steamers, that were either wildly swinging 
 
Going West in 1874 n 
 
 down or laboriously puffing up its course. When 
 I stepped off the cars at Dubuque, Iowa, at last 
 fairly West, I delighted in the breezy speech and 
 the freedom of the people; men and women of 
 adaptation to circumstances, — of a width of view 
 like the plains that they were subduing. 
 
 For a year Iowa with its agricultural beauties 
 along the Mississippi held me prisoner. Then the 
 craving for the far West took hold of me as I 
 heard the accounts of the returning pioneers of 
 Kansas or Nebraska. The plague of locusts had 
 driven them back and they had returned for sup- 
 plies for another start. 
 
 It will be remembered that Uncle Sam was 
 more than generous in his land gifts at this time. 
 The pre-emption laws allowed pioneers to buy 
 outright one hundred and sixty acres of the best 
 level land in Iowa and Minnesota at one dollar 
 and twenty-five cents an acre. Five years' time 
 was given to pay for this, no other obligation was 
 required beyond the settler's own interests to live 
 on it and improve it. 
 
 I saw, as I travelled west, hundreds of these 
 pre-emptors at work building small sod or frame 
 houses, and breaking up the heavy grassed prai- 
 ries. The cars to western Iowa and Minnesota 
 were crowded every day with land seekers. The 
 Danes, Norwegians and Swedes were mainly in 
 
12 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 evidence; so new to the country that they could 
 not make themselves understood, but had to talk 
 through their agents when inquiring, or buying. 
 These people's descendants of this day are the 
 intelligent and prosperous farmers of the choicest 
 locations in country and town. Beginning with 
 nothing but their brawn and industry, they are 
 independent citizens of the best prairie states. 
 
 I crossed another great river at Omaha, the 
 Missouri. With the imagination of youth, I saw 
 the older population of this country of illimitable 
 plains. The Pawnees, the Sioux, the Omahas, 
 whose gatherings gave the name to Council Bluffs, 
 upon the Iowa side. I saw also the black rolling 
 tide of bison racing before the yelling red hunters 
 or before the redder tongues of prairie fires. 
 While I was denied my hope of running down a 
 buffalo, I was able to see several of them in their 
 wild state, as I went farther west. A great and 
 reckless slaughter had thinned them down but 
 one did not then have to visit a government park 
 to see a buffalo. 
 
 It was a great event in that day for the over- 
 land express to leave Omaha for San Francisco. 
 People made preparation for this pullman ride 
 with all the gravity of a sea voyage. Baskets of 
 supplies, wraps, rugs, and dust coats filled the 
 arms of the passengers boarding the cars. 
 
Going West in 1874 13 
 
 The express averaged sixteen miles an hour, 
 including stops. The road-bed was of very light 
 caliber and simply spiked down without fishplates, 
 allowing no forty miles an hour speed. We 
 swayed and teetered along some parts of the road 
 in a way that reminded me of a branch line on 
 the Grand Trunk in Canada, where the train 
 dipped and curtseyed in the cuttings like a sail 
 boat on the lakes. No harm came of it. We 
 stopped often for fuel and water, and to oil up 
 the small, wide-funneled engine, or to cool a hot- 
 box in the heavily freighted baggage car. 
 
 The winds of Nebraska are worthy of men- 
 tion for they are in the business of blowing, and 
 if the people are much affected by them, they are 
 certainly in danger of being the biggest boosters 
 of the West. Anyway, I saw the effect of these 
 constant winds on all faces; the men being as red 
 as Indians and the women, despite the long poke 
 bonnets they wore, were almost as brown. Ma- 
 dame Recamier's cream so much advertised then, 
 should have had a great sale in Nebraska, if the 
 women were at all solicitous of their complexions. 
 But they were all of stern stuff and did not mind 
 the Nebraska breezes, whether hot as a blast in 
 summer, or cold as a blizzard in winter. They 
 were a people that moved as briskly as their 
 winds, going at top speed in their buggies and on 
 
14 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 horseback. 
 
 I saw women riding astride and they rode like 
 cowboys. There were villages of marmots or 
 prairie dogs and these little canines shared their 
 earth-holes with both snakes and owls. Once in 
 a while "Lo," the Indian, in his native costume 
 was seen on a hill near-by sitting on his cayuse, 
 stoically viewing the white man's fire wagons as 
 they trailed past. These natives were also in 
 evidence at every eating station, either to sell 
 their bead and buffalo ornaments, or to share in 
 the white man's fire-water. 
 
 Those were the days of corn-whiskey, as yellow 
 as gold and as hot as fire, and which keeled over 
 the drinker at "forty rods." The western men 
 aboard the cars, filled up with four fingers of this 
 stuff at every stop. Temperance was not to the 
 fore then and the front streets of railroad towns 
 were given up to saloons of vigorous titles, and 
 they were black with men from the cattle ranges 
 around. These bandy-legged bravos whooped 
 and rode races with the cars and even wasted 
 some ammunition in celebration of the passing 
 express, that scarcely out-speeded their ponies. 
 
 Those days are gone. The cowboy is now his- 
 toric. The open range is now homesteaded or 
 desert-claimed by the nester. The great meat 
 manufactory has passed from the range, and is 
 
Going West in 1874 15 
 
 now in the hands of the farmer, who stall-feeds 
 his cattle on the cultivated roots and grains of 
 the ranches. 
 
 With the next morning's sun we saw the faint 
 outline of the Rocky Mountains. We had been 
 slowly climbing and the elevation was sufficient 
 to lower the horizon line of this backbone of the 
 continent. I was interested to see with my own 
 eyes those mountains made famous in my boy- 
 hood days by the stories of that writer for boys, 
 Captain Mayne Reid. 
 
 Though the scenes that he so graphically de- 
 scribed were in the great range farther to the 
 south, and on the Mexican border, yet the name, 
 Rocky Mountains, satisfied me that I was in the 
 neighborhood of those old friends Rube and 
 Geary in Scalp-Hunters, or The War Trail. We 
 are more or less children and beneath the layers 
 of riper years, lie recumbent the old imaginations 
 of youth. So I sat and deamed again my boy- 
 hood hours and felt young, though sad, since I 
 could never be a boy again, nor see the boy com- 
 panions of those book days. Scattered to the four 
 corners of the globe, some at sea, some at antip- 
 odes, some citified and thus changed; and one 
 old chum gone away to the far country from which 
 no traveller returns. 
 
 What a day that was for the prospector and 
 
1 6 Tenderfoot Days '■■ 
 
 the cattle man! The sheep-man, so omnipresent 
 in Australia, was despised and seldom seen in this 
 great West. The cattle owner hated the sheep- 
 man almost as much as he did the Indian. It was 
 the day of gun rule, for the sheriff and the con- 
 stable were persons few and far between. The 
 reprobate was in the land by voice and deed. All 
 the dare-devils and the scum of the East drifted 
 this way, and were stranded like river debris, in 
 these little, hideous shanty railroad towns. Ten 
 years earlier these characters ran everything to 
 suit themselves. The war was still raging, and 
 Uncle Sam's hands full, thus giving the rowdy 
 and robber full swing to kill and steal. Some of 
 these gentry were still about, with faces hardened 
 by excess and crime, yet the great majority had 
 gone to the greater majority via the hangman's 
 rope or the hands of the Vigilante Committee and 
 the yet quicker way of the sawed off shot-gun. 
 
 Next came the canyons. I had always thrilled 
 at that word; it seemed to suggest roaring waters, 
 Mexican riders and red-men yelling. These can- 
 yons were tame, the surveyors had selected the 
 best grades and the engineers had made a level 
 road for the rails. We went orderly along these 
 mountain streets, with little noise beyond the tired 
 asthmatic cough of our over-taxed engines, for 
 we now had two engines to draw us up these 
 
Going West in 1874 17 
 
 heights. How frail they looked, compared with 
 the immense monsters of to-day, dun colored and 
 mighty, without brightness or glitter beyond their 
 headlight! Our engines were gaudy ones, brass 
 bound, bright-painted, polished to the shining 
 point, showing all their works to the onlooker; 
 the cylinder and driving-rods working in full view. 
 We halted at last to change cars; it was Ogden, 
 at the junction of the Union and Central Pacific 
 Railroads. 
 
 We saw here, for the first time, the orange- 
 colored cars, which took all over-landers to Cali- 
 fornia. I was not booked for the real sea, but 
 was bound for the Great Salt Lake, or Salt Sea, 
 in Utah Territory. As I looked around I missed 
 the green earth and the wide expanse of the 
 plains. I found that I was among rocks of craggy 
 height, overlooking little narrow valleys, where 
 irrigation was needed to make things grow. I was 
 in the far West at last though I knew that there 
 was a farther West, which some day I meant to 
 see. A lazy train soon started with the regula- 
 tion speed of sixteen miles to the hour and we 
 slowly passed along the south line of the Salt 
 Lake, a sea so dead and dreary that it resembled 
 the dead sea of that memorable land, ancient 
 Palestine. Then we came, at last, to the city of 
 the Latter Day Saints. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 A FAR WEST CITY 
 
 "Westward the course of Empire takes its way/' 
 
 Berkley 
 
 SALT LAKE CITY was a real city for that 
 day. It was not an electrically wired and 
 telephonic town, for all those and related con- 
 veniences were then unknown to the multitude. 
 The telephone was yet in its infancy and a curious 
 toy to the initiated in electricity. It was a city 
 of twenty-five thousand people, mainly Mormons 
 by religion and emigration from the prairie west, 
 with a thin fringe of others locally known by way 
 of contrast as Gentiles. 
 
 The further strange thing was that most of 
 these adventurous Gentiles were Jews. The He- 
 brew is an enterprising shopman and into these 
 new valley communities and freshly organized 
 mining camps, he had pushed his way to sell his 
 goods, — and he was making good at his trade as 
 he always does on the frontier. 
 !§ 
 
A Far West City 19 
 
 There was a sprinkling of the South; men of 
 broken fortunes since the close of the Civil War — 
 who could not endure the changes made by the 
 emancipation of the colored man, and who pre- 
 ferred to face their poverty in new surroundings. 
 Thus their pride could not be offended or tram- 
 pled on by former slaves. 
 
 There were men of the cowboy and hunter 
 class with belted waist-line and prominent gun, — 
 not exactly gunmen, for these were usually of the 
 professional gambler class, but men who knew 
 how to use a gun and based their claims upon a 
 gun. Then again the investor and the traveller 
 were there in ever-increasing numbers, nosing out 
 the golden opportunities always found in a newly- 
 opened country. 
 
 For it must be remembered that up to the time 
 of the close of the Civil War, Utah Territory 
 was a closed section to all save those whose af- 
 filiations with the dominant religion of the region 
 were cordial and sympathetic. 
 
 The soldier was then in his camp on the en- 
 virons of the city but this military host was resi- 
 dent as a military police, keeper of the peace, and 
 main reason why Uncle Sam was recognized as 
 overlord of these mountain valleys. Outside of 
 these residents, the rest — a vast majority — were 
 the peculiar people known among themselves as 
 
20 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 the Latter-Day Saints. 
 
 As I stood on Main Street, Eastside, that first 
 day in Salt Lake City, I recalled with a thrill that 
 I had seen that identical spot in a very inferior 
 picture some eight years before. It was at a show 
 given by Artemus Ward of humorous fame, in a 
 lecture given by him in the Egyptian Hall, Lon- 
 don. This gifted fun-maker was in the last stages 
 of pulmonary tuberculosis, with hatchet features 
 telling of the swiftly approaching end. Yet his 
 eyes were bright and his speech alight with humor. 
 With wit he rehearsed his story of the Mormons, 
 and apologized for the unusual inferiority of these 
 picture daubs to illustrate Utah scenes. He 
 showed with comical enthusiasm, "the Main 
 Street, Eastside," which he further explained was 
 "the eastside of Main Street, Salt Lake City"; 
 and the one story brick block, faithfully pictured, 
 was the very block and corner where I now stood 
 recalling this former introduction. This sad-faced 
 funmaker was long gone to his rest, but his laugh 
 seemed to echo about the locality. 
 
 The climate here is genial. Something of the 
 oriental was given to the looks of the city by the 
 wide streets, lined with mountain ash shade trees, 
 by whose roots water courses bubbled. Little 
 brooks flowed down each side of the principal 
 streets, keeping green in the heat of the summer 
 
A Far West City 21 
 
 the park-like spaces between the walks and the 
 roadway proper. 
 
 Much good judgment and taste was evidenced 
 in the platting of the city by its first settlers, and 
 it is the more remarkable since the settlement was 
 made in great privation and after a long overland 
 journey. Somehow religious enthusiasm refines 
 and exalts taste and gives an impulse to look well 
 in one's appearances. 
 
 The old time poverty of the first days was evi- 
 denced by an occasional adobe house of small and 
 mean build here and there amid edifices of the 
 popular style, clapboarded, Venetian shuttered, 
 and-wide-verandaed buildings of the days before 
 the Civil War. 
 
 I was in search of a newly-married couple to 
 whose hospitality I bore letters of introduction. 
 Dr. Welch and his bride, whose cherry-colored 
 cheeks bespoke her youthfulness, were settled on 
 Second South Street, near the city's center; and it 
 was not long before I was seated at their table 
 and enjoying their talk. The Doctor was a sol- 
 dier of the late war and bore traces of the priva- 
 tion and strain of that awful strife between 
 brothers. 
 
 Already the seeds of a fatal disease were at 
 work, which within a few years were to cut him 
 down in the prime of life. War is not alone 
 
22 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 deadly at the cannon's mouth but it slays long 
 after the fight. The roll is not complete that 
 gives the long list of wounded and killed in a 
 battle's campaigns, but in the tragedies of incom- 
 plete lives, as in this case, where a young bride 
 lost her love and hopes soon after marriage. We 
 knew nothing of this coming shadow as we chat- 
 ted of Utah's present condition and future pros- 
 pects. 
 
 While these young people were, in a sense, new- 
 comers themselves, yet their experiences in this 
 western territory amid Mormon surroundings af- 
 forded me much good advice and direction for my 
 own course of action. 
 
 I had made up my mind not to antagonize 
 everything that I did not approve. In this I de- 
 parted somewhat from the course pursued by 
 many recent visitors and writers from the days 
 of Artemus Ward to the year of my own arrival 
 in Salt Lake City. 
 
 Of course Artemus Ward was a humorist, using 
 incorrect spelling to throw the spell of fun over 
 his readers; and I recalled his account of his ex- 
 perience with Utah wives, as follows : — 
 
 "'Cum and hev wives sealed to yu!' said a 
 bunch of strappin' yung wimen tu me, wen I kim 
 out of ther meetin' house. 'Kum and build up 
 Zion in our midst. We welkum yu!' 
 
A Far West City 23 
 
 " 'No yer don't!' sez I, a tearin' myself loos 
 frum ther buksum arms. 'Nary a seal frum me!' 
 and I fled the sene, gatherin' up my coat and hat, 
 and left the city, which is inhabited by the most 
 onprincipuled and dishonust pepul which I ever 
 met' " 
 
 Now this statement, with others printed in fun, 
 and read wherever Artemus Ward's books were 
 read, caused great wrath among the Mormons. 
 They had to face many gross caricatures and mis- 
 representations of their peculiar doctrines and 
 practices, on the part of subsequent writers and 
 visitors who too freely followed the example of 
 the Yankee showman, Artemus Ward. 
 
 Every ward of this city of the Saints had its 
 meeting house. The sound and aroma of religion 
 were more evident than those of education. To 
 go to meeting was the acme of life and it was 
 truly surprising to see with what zeal the crowd 
 attended these meetings when nothing but the 
 commonplace occurred. 
 
 In those days and in that religious life there 
 was no need of a fulsome and flaming advertise- 
 ment to draw the crowd. Just the announcement, 
 and like the flies settling on the kitchen back-door, 
 the crowd came and settled in their seats to remain 
 to the last. 
 
 It all goes to show what suffering and sacrifice 
 
24 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 for one's religious faith will do for the first ad- 
 herents of a religion. Opposition to the follies 
 of faith seems to strengthen those follies. We 
 read that the "blood of the martyrs is the seed of 
 the church," as in the times of the early Christian 
 persecutions. 
 
 I was soon seated in a packed row of people in 
 the rear of one of the ward meeting houses. I 
 was anxious to see these people at one of their 
 everyday services. They seemed to the eye to be 
 just like common people such as you meet in any 
 church gathering. Plain, clean, simple and just 
 ordinary bright folks. 
 
 They evidently took their religion seriously and 
 not as a social function. I imagine, as most of 
 them were middle aged, that they felt all they had 
 passed through to win a home and place for their 
 faith. They evidently regarded the broad-built, 
 and bearded men, on the platform, as inspired 
 teachers, and listened to some very ordinary talk 
 quite spell-bound. 
 
 Of course there were some young people there; 
 the vacant-eyed youth and the giggling girl who 
 had only to glance at each other to see something 
 funny in that simple fact. No religious meeting 
 would be complete without that rear appendage 
 of risible youthfulness ; and the huge joke of 
 pinning John's pants pocket to Eliza's skirt 
 
A Far West City 25 
 
 flounces. Such opportunities for rare and rich 
 calf-love as a church meeting afforded, could not 
 be overlooked even in such a serious gathering as 
 a Mormon ward house meeting. 
 
 An Apostle spoke at this gathering. He re- 
 joiced in the common name of Smith, and yet it 
 was almost a royal name in that locality. For 
 was not Joseph Smith the Seer, Revelator and 
 Leader of these Latter Day Saints? 
 
 This apostle was a relative of the martyr of 
 this church who fell the victim of a Missouri mob 
 of fanatics, who did nothing more by their crime 
 of murder than to feed the flame of a hated faith. 
 He was a tall, bearded man. Here let me remark 
 that almost all these men of leadership were 
 apostolically bearded. It seems the part of all 
 religious reformers or zealots to cultivate long 
 hair, both on the head and the face. The razor- 
 cleaned manly countenance of to-day was then a 
 sign of infancy and lack of manhood. The hairy 
 man was the popular man, and no thought was 
 given to the lack of sanitation of mouth, nose, 
 head, neck or collar in those days when "germs" 
 were ignored. 
 
 Apostle Smith was eloquent in the longwinded, 
 adjectival way of speech. He certainly was well 
 up in stock phrases and popular platitudes; and 
 brought the handclap now and then like any po- 
 
26 Tenderfoot Days j 
 
 litical ward speaker. Experiences, scripture, re- 
 count of past persecutions, the claims of their 
 faith and exhortations to live their religion con- 
 stituted the subject matter of this address. 
 
 They had the long prayer as well as the long 
 speech. The Apostle Snow, a man of snowy head 
 in keeping with his name, led this devotion. It 
 reminded me of the long prayer of Pastor Wil- 
 kins, in the days of my earliest youth, who prayed 
 about forty minutes, with rousing shouts at times 
 as if the Lord was inattentive to his words, while 
 my little legs hung aching from a hard seat; 
 forcibly kept still by a mother's hand placed on 
 them during this solemnity of the church service. 
 
 Another Apostle, Orson Hyde by name as I 
 recall it, then spoke. We were in Zion and the 
 headquarters was prolific of leaders, and many of 
 the Apostolic twelve and a multitude of Patriarchs 
 of the Church were always available for what was 
 voluble. 
 
 In this last speaker I beheld a typical Mormon 
 as I had imagined him to be. He was heavy set 
 and "bearded as the pard," rather coarse of 
 feature and more carnal than spiritual in his gen- 
 eral appearance. His heavy voice and dogmatic 
 manner were in keeping with himself and his sub- 
 ject, as he thundered denunciations of divine 
 wrath on the Gentiles who were invading this re- 
 
A Far West City 27 
 
 ligious city and bringing in their corruptions. He 
 meant the mining camp morals of the adjacent 
 canyons and gulches; and also the wicked eastern 
 world which the Mormon had shaken off and 
 which had persecuted him from city to city. It 
 was the regular religious tirade which makes splen- 
 did copy for the Speaker who talks in meeting to 
 meeting-house people, and which invariably con- 
 cluded the proceedings of these ward meetings. 
 
 I took a stroll about the town. There were two 
 good hotels. The Walker House, which was kept 
 for the aliens who came to Zion. That is to say 
 the miner, the millionaire, the tourist and the gam- 
 bler. All were well-dressed men who gathered 
 here and defensively spoke against Mormonism 
 as though this atmosphere of religion was likely 
 to rob them of their unbelief. It was rather funny 
 to hear so many, whose religion was homeopathic 
 indeed, talking so religiously. It was in the air 
 then and shows how psychologically catching the 
 religious idea is even when we do not like it. It 
 spreads like measles and we have to have it be- 
 fore we can get over it. I laughed at this ridicu- 
 lous ridicule. Some of these Mormon-haters in- 
 dulged in much of this kind of talk while discuss- 
 ing topics of which they had such small experi- 
 ence. 
 
 The other hotel was the Townsend House, a 
 
28 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 much more ancient structure and the gathering 
 place of the Mormons and those of Mormon 
 sympathies. Here the talk was of the past and 
 the persecutions by the people of the States; and 
 certain disloyal and seditious sayings were very 
 common. The wounds of the past were not 
 healed and the arm of authority, in the form of 
 Camp Douglas, with its regiment of United 
 States regulars, was a constant subject of heated 
 speech. 
 
 It was very evident that two sides were here, 
 and no fence between them of sufficient width for 
 a comfortable seat for the non-committal, easy- 
 going man who wanted to be friendly with all and 
 a foe to none. 
 
 The new element, known as Gentile in the 
 phraseology of this region, had its belligerent 
 news-sheet, the Salt Lake Tribune. It had able 
 men devoted to its sarcastic bitter gibes at the 
 territory's majority of people. To offset this 
 sheet the Mormon church had The Deseret News,. 
 and it was just as ably edited and just as caustically 
 worded as its opponent. It was a real treat in 
 comparative hatred to read both these papers in 
 one morning. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 PILGRIMS TO A MODERN ZION 
 
 "Far from the worldly crowds and strife, 
 To a visioned city, they toiled their weary way, 
 Seeking amid towering hills the sequestered life 
 Of a peculiar people, a holy nation of the latter 
 day." 
 
 Bird 
 
 JERUSALEM of old, the city of song, sacri- 
 fices and tears, the city to which the Hebrew 
 captives looked from their land of exile on the 
 banks of the Euphrates, had its modern repeti- 
 tion in this Zion of the Latter Day Saints settled 
 and nestled in the tops of these Rocky Mountains. 
 The topography of the country is singularly like 
 that of the Holy Land of history, with the differ- 
 ence that north is changed to south in its water 
 system. 
 
 It has its Dead Sea — the Great Salt Lake — 
 at the north end of this valley and its divide, con- 
 necting by a river — the Jordan — flowing out of it 
 29 
 
30 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 and receiving canyon streams on its way south, 
 with the Sea of Galilee — Utah Lake — a fresh 
 water sheet supplied from the springs in the Wa- 
 satch Mountains. Of course there is no Tyre and 
 Zidon, no Joppa and Mount Carmel overlooking 
 the Sea, since this is an inland country far from 
 the ocean. But here are fertile plains and warm 
 valleys, watered by bubbling brooks; here is a 
 land, under the touch of man's hand, that flows 
 with milk and honey. 
 
 No wonder then, that these religious enthu- 
 siasts marshalled into a religious host by Joseph 
 Smith, with captains like Brigham Young and 
 Herber C. Kimball; such exhorters and teachers 
 as Orson Pratt and Lorenzo Snow, full to the ex- 
 tent of human capacity with "zeal not according 
 to knowledge," should see in this region, secure 
 by distance and the hills from persecutors, the 
 Promised Land. 
 
 It did not take very much imagination, so often 
 found joined to enthusiasm, on the part of these 
 saints of the Latter Day to see in themselves a 
 modern Israel coming forth out of a modern 
 Egypt — such as the slave-making states of Ten- 
 nessee, Kentucky and Missouri — and, under a new 
 Urim and Thummim vested in their priests and 
 leaders, to make the desert pilgrimage into the 
 land of promise and peace. 
 
Pilgrims to a Modern Zion 31 
 
 Only a little warm exhortation, and it was 1 
 never wanting, was needed to strengthen this 
 fancy into fact. 
 
 Originating in New York State, in Wayne 
 County, the site of the memorable hill Cumorah, 
 where Joseph Smith received his revelation by 
 vision and found the historic plates of a past 
 prophet — Mormon — and a defunct people — the 
 Lamanites — this new faith and its following 
 passed with the migratory spirit of the '40's to 
 Nauvoo, Illinois, in the black prairie belt. Soon 
 their peculiar faith made them obnoxious to their 
 neighbors of narrow vision and bigoted belief, so 
 out of their scarcely warmed nest they had to go 
 yet farther west beyond the great river, the Mis- 
 sissippi. They put down their stakes a third time 
 in Missouri, a state just then settling with a mixed 
 population from both the South and the North. 
 
 Since these Mormons — for such they were now 
 called by the general community — were "Come- 
 Outers" and were separate from their neighbors, 
 they became first unpopular, then obnoxious to 
 those who differed from them. It must be re- 
 membered that the '40's were the years of reli- 
 gious divisions and debates. People loved to argue 
 about shibboleths of religion, even to fighting out 
 their differences. 
 
 This fighting was of course generally verbal 
 
32 <_ Tenderfoot Days 
 
 and ended in another new bisection of religion — 
 some sect of a sect cut off from the parent body. 
 The itinerant preachers who did much good in 
 their rough way with a rough people amid rude 
 surroundings, loved to verbally fight exponents of 
 other shades of opinion. 
 
 They found fine stuff for a fight in these "pesti- 
 lent Mormons." More especially as this peculiar 
 practice of polygamy set these new religionists on 
 the hill of observation and criticism. Here was 
 a fine chance to show up the enemy of orthodoxy, 
 and all the sons of Boanerges — sons of thunder in 
 the pulpit — fulminated at the Latter Day Saints. 
 
 Soon this sort of preaching bore its expected 
 fruit. Animosity and hatred were developed and 
 this give and take often ended in blows at these 
 debates and denunciations. 
 
 We are not excusing the Mormon leaders or 
 people. They were set in their ways and posed as 
 martyrs of faith. Their undeniable zeal and sin- 
 cerity won many a female convert from the homes 
 of other faiths, and when such women became 
 embosomed in the Mormon church and the polyg- 
 amous consorts of some preacher, elder or 
 bishop of this new faith, then the rancor reached 
 its climax in riot. 
 
 I do not go into the details of history on this 
 subject. Books ad nauseam have been written 
 

Pilgrims to a Modern Zion > 33 
 
 on the subject pro and con. The Mormon side 
 has been voluminously voiced by good recorders 
 and recounters, while the other side has met it 
 with equal heat and greater volume. 
 
 Truth is not entirely on either side and both 
 sides made a sorry exhibition of the so-called re- 
 ligion of peace and purity. We know the arrest 
 of the two Smiths — Joseph and Hyrum — ended 
 in the jail being besieged by an angry host of 
 Missourians, who shot down the two brothers on 
 the jail steps and thus ended their leadership of 
 this new-born faith. 
 
 Justice could not be had in such a day and place. 
 Men and women were too intense and narrow of 
 temper to give place to anything but prejudice. 
 Out again the Mormons had to come from their 
 settlements and homes, and then followed what 
 the Dutch would call the "Great Trek." 
 
 Brigham Young, a man of powerful frame and 
 forceful mind, stepped into the shoes vacated by 
 the dead Seer. With lieutenants of this same 
 shrewd Yankee stock, for he was a Vermonter and 
 they were mostly from down East states, he or- 
 ganized these people into a marching brigade to 
 cross the great American Desert to the Rocky 
 Mountains, there to find a home for them all in 
 a new promised land. 
 
 In 1848, the first band set out, with ox wagons 
 
 
34 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 and a few horses, to make the long journey that 
 we now swiftly cover in forty-eight hours in a 
 pullman. Innumerable creeks and sloughs to 
 cross, after passing the great Missouri, never end- 
 ing plains, like those of Kansas, Nebraska and 
 Wyoming, constituted the highway of this host. 
 The Indian, wild and in war paint, was abroad, 
 for he had been greatly nettled and annoyed by 
 the frontier hunter and trapper of those rough 
 days, trespassing on his happy hunting grounds. 
 The bison roamed in vast herds, and the prairie 
 fires swept to the horizon through the long grass 
 of these wild fields of pasture. 
 
 But these men and women, of faith, girded up 
 their loins and strapped on their guns, their all 
 housed in the prairie schooner wagons under the 
 hoops and canvas covers; with a "haw" and 
 "gee," they started out with the spirit of adven- 
 ture in their eyes and the zeal of their religion in 
 their hearts. Oh! the wild ride that they made 
 through these unknown wastes of land. They 
 fought the Indians at the fords, the savage beasts 
 at night, the fires in the fall when the herbage was 
 dry as tinder; they suffered the sickness that ac- 
 companied insufficient food and poor sanitation 
 in camps, when they had to make long rests for 
 their cattle to recoup. 
 
 They had started too late in July for so long 
 
Pilgrims to a Modern Zion 35 
 
 a journey, and recked not of the early winter of 
 the mountains to which they journeyed. 
 
 This has been the fault of most migrations, — 
 a late start, — and insufficient knowledge of the 
 length of the way. Oh! they were weary, more 
 weary than the people of Israel in the desert of 
 Sinai, who wearied of the length of the way as 
 recounted in the Scripture. Israel had a Pres- 
 ence in the cloud by day and in the fire by night, 
 and thus they said to themselves, in that day, "If 
 the Lord be for us, who can be against us?" An 
 infallible guide did not call these Mormons to 
 halt and make camp. 
 
 Their leaders were known as prophets, priests 
 and elders ; but they were fallible men, not guides 
 familiar with the plains and the seasons. So win- 
 ter caught them, weak from the long trek and 
 want of food, cattle gaunt, or gone to dust on 
 the road far back. 
 
 Many lay down to die by the way, and many a 
 little mound spoke of the children's resting place 
 after the mother's arm had to give them up. Still 
 their faith flowed on although their blood grew 
 thin and their knees were feeble as they pushed 
 forward. Through the canyons they passed into 
 the valleys of the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 Brigham Young with a few others pressed 
 ahead looking for the place that he claimed he 
 
36 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 had seen in vision and which was to be their 
 destined home and the promised land of peace 
 and plenty. 
 
 This little scouting party came out of the moun- 
 tains just above where the City of Salt Lake now 
 stands. They stood upon the hill, — afterwards 
 the site of Camp Douglas and the post of author- 
 ity of Uncle Sam during territorial days, — and 
 saw before them the Salt Sea, the valley widely 
 stretching south, the river flowing to the limit of 
 their vision through the divide which hid yet an- 
 other and greater valley. 
 
 "Here is the place that the Lord has chosen 
 for this people!" 
 
 It was Brigham Young's voice and the others 
 bowed in assent as to the voice of a prophet. 
 
 Thus they came to jtheir seat in the tops of the 
 mountains, and from this center they spread out 
 to occupy any ground that had water tributary to 
 it, — for this was a land where irrigation was 
 necessary. 
 
 Other divisions of the Mormon host followed 
 the next season; and soon this waste was peopled 
 with a race fitted to endure hardships such as 
 face all pioneers. 
 
 The over-zeal of the leaders, however, a little 
 later on led to a fatal mistake. The order went 
 out to the rest of the waiting people on the banks 
 
Pilgrims to a Modern Zion 37 
 
 of the Missouri, not to provide themselves with 
 wagons and oxen, but to content themselves with 
 two-wheeled push-carts in which they were to 
 stow their goods; to come on thus in faith, and 
 the Lord would provide. Fine sounding words 
 to the faithful, but foolish council to the remnant 
 of these people, eager for their earthly Zion. Of 
 course they started and at first did well; but the 
 length of the way was too much for the strength 
 of the carts and those who pushed and pulled 
 them. 
 
 It is wonderful how this multitude of men, 
 women and children got so far. They had walked 
 to the canyons of the Rockies late in the fall 
 season, — for it was slow work going this way by 
 foot. Then the sudden cold caught them and the 
 snows covered them. They fell down as they 
 halted for the night and many were still down to 
 stay, when the dim morning light pierced the fall- 
 ing snow flakes. 
 
 The others struggled on to drop as their fel- 
 lows before them, the snow their winding sheet. 
 A few hardy ones struggled through the drifted 
 passes and like ghosts appeared in the city of the 
 Saints with cries: — 
 
 "They are dying! Come with food and help !" 
 
 The relief went out with hope, but it was a hope 
 not realized; only an expectation without fruitage. 
 
38 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 They found the train of way-worn pilgrims but 
 they had all passed on to another life. 
 
 Faith has its triumphs, but also its tragedies. 
 Faith can overcome mountains, but faith can fall 
 in the climbing; like all other human things, faith 
 has its failures. No matter what the directors of 
 this push cart expedition believed possible in the 
 interests of faith, no matter what the obedient 
 host did in trying to obtain success through faith, 
 the impossible blocked the way and this mighty 
 pilgrimage of faith ended in a fiasco. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 CHURCH, STATE AND CAMP 
 
 "He sees that this great roundabout, 
 The world, with all its motley rout, 
 Church, army, physic, law, 
 Its customs and its businesses — " 
 
 Cowper 
 
 THE ecclesiastical is first in evidence in this 
 modern city of the saints. This you would 
 expect in view of its earlier history and because 
 of its existence as a religious center. 
 
 "Where is the Beehive?" I ask in the innocence 
 of my tenderfoot knowledge. You see I had 
 been told by some joker that the principal church 
 building was so called because it was always 
 crowded like a hive, when the bees are busy honey 
 making. 
 
 Certainly at the times of meeting, the Taber- 
 nacle, for so the Mormons called the central place 
 of worship in their accustomed Old Testament 
 phraseology, was like a hive of bees, for it fairly 
 39 
 
40 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 swarmed with people. In those days, and in that 
 place their was no dearth of attendants and few 
 empty seats. There was nothing original or spec- 
 tacular to draw the crowd beyond the names of 
 the celebrated Mormon leaders. Their services 
 were, in themselves, rather plain and common- 
 place. 
 
 I found my way, guided by the stream of com- 
 mon looking people, to the entrance of the Taber- 
 nacle. It was no tent or temporary structure like 
 those reared by special collections to house evan- 
 gelists on revival occasions. This was a solidly 
 built structure and, because of its peculiar shape, 
 was called by the outsider "the Soup Tureen." 
 
 It did look like one on a very large scale, in- 
 verted so the bottom was the top with the cover 
 removed. On stubby pillars, with low walls, a 
 huge oblong dome covered a generous space, mak- 
 ing an immense interior under one roof. It was 
 perfect in its acoustics. You could almost hear 
 a pin drop if silence prevailed. 
 
 An immense organ, erected at the end and lifted 
 high up to near the roof, made the giant space 
 resonant with musical sounds. A genius played 
 it the day I was there. It throbbed and sobbed as 
 though voicing the woes and throes through which 
 these people had found their way to this moun- 
 tain land of theirs. 
 
Church, State and Camp 41 
 
 A choir as large as an ordinary church audience 
 sang well during the occasions for song. The 
 audience itself was worthy of the place and filled 
 all its twelve thousand seats with a mixed multi- 
 tude of men, women, and children. The last were 
 decidedly visible and sometimes audible. There 
 was no church finery in dress but, in place of the 
 usual "go-to-meeting" garments, was the evident 
 interest on the faces of almost every one present. 
 
 There was just one phrase of scripture that 
 came into my mind unsolicited as I looked at the 
 long lines of faces directed one way. 
 
 "All these have come out of great tribulation." 
 Whatever their faith and its faults they had suf- 
 fered for it, and having paid in tears a goodly 
 price for what they had obtained, they seemed by 
 their earnest gaze at the leaders who spoke to 
 them to prize it seriously. 
 
 The speaking was by many and from unique 
 pulpits. Below the organ and choir, a large space 
 was given over to tiers of seats in a wide semi- 
 circular form. These were occupied by the Seventy 
 and the Apostles of the church. 
 
 This was no one-man pulpit. Furthermore each 
 of these tiers of seats had its pulpit in the exact 
 center of the tier; so from above down there 
 were these pulpit-tribunes in line with each other 
 and facing the center aisle of the Tabernacle. 
 
42 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 The lower tier and pulpit was for the Apostles 
 and the President or Revelator of the church. In 
 this case it was Brigham Young. I heard several 
 speak from these tribunes of different tiers. This 
 speaking was interspersed with choir and congre- 
 gational singing. That of the choir was excel- 
 lent in voice and execution. That of the people 
 was vociferous but commonplace. The speaking 
 was of the same order as the singing, and was 
 full of platitudes and rehearsals of the sufferings 
 of these people at the hands of the outsider. 
 There was 3 of course, some ground for what they 
 said and the speakers made the most of it to a 
 very sympathetic audience. 
 
 But I came to see and hear Brigham Young, 
 whose name to me was synonymous with Mor- 
 monism. My wish was gratified, for this leader 
 was present. He was a big man in head, face and 
 frame. Full-bearded like most Mormon elders, 
 he poised well as a leader, and looked at ease 
 as he sat in the lower tier with the Apostles. He 
 rose to speak at last and stepped into the pulpit- 
 tribune of the apostolic tier, and his voice and 
 diction were that of a master of assemblies. 
 
 A fine presence and forceful speech riveted the 
 attention of all, but the subject matter was a dis- 
 appointment. Nothing out of the ordinary was 
 uttered. He upbraided "his saints" like a Jere- 
 
Church, State and Camp 43 
 
 miah or an Isaiah of the Jews, and yet he did not 
 fail occasionally to insert a modicum of praise. 
 
 "You are not too good! Not as good as you 
 ought to be ! But you are better than the best that 
 these Gentiles can produce!" Again and again 
 he would say, "Copy not their ways, neither speak 
 their words ; their oaths and foulness. Follow my 
 advice and live your religion." 
 
 It struck me on hearing all this parade of 
 speech, in these long services, that the whole of 
 Mormon church worship was a matter of "too 
 much speaking." It was speech gone to seed. 
 The flower, perfume and color, was fled as a sum- 
 mertime past, and the husks of the harvest were 
 only left. I had seen the very opposite of this 
 in religious conventions, where speech was for- 
 gotten in intonations, invocations and reverbera- 
 tions of ceremonial pomp. So goes the pendulum 
 or religious custom, from one extreme to another. 
 
 They observed a very democratic communion 
 service. Bread and water; for here the wine was 
 turned to water. All were given these emblems 
 of communion. Even the little children and 
 babes drank out of the glasses, which were filled 
 constantly from white stone pitchers, passed along 
 by a band of ushers. We, too, who were "out- 
 siders" and Gentiles were generously included in 
 this religious repast. Of course the bread was 
 
44 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 but a morsel and the water but a swallow, but 
 there was no "fencing of tables," after the manner 
 of those old Covenanters, who fought for their 
 faith in troubled Scotland. 
 
 With the final anthem and last words, the great 
 audience swarmed out of this hive of humanity, 
 like the bees after flowers. We went out after 
 fresh air and relief. For I heard many a sound, 
 like a sigh of satisfaction, when the service was 
 over and outdoors was a possibility. The streets 
 adjacent were like city sidewalks during show- 
 time, as this great crowd went homeward. 
 
 I saw another side of this city's life the next 
 day. I was introduced by Dr. Welch to Governor 
 Emery, who represented the Powers that Be at 
 Washington, D. C, and not the powers that were 
 in Mormondom. He and Judge Beatty were to- 
 gether and I heard some words, in course of a 
 brief interview, which showed that the Federal 
 authorities were non-sympathetic, if not antagonis- 
 tic, to the majority of the people of this country. 
 Of course they were appointees of the president 
 and depended not on this locality for their posi- 
 tions. They evidently were like the Missourians 
 of a previous generation, as they were in need of 
 "being shown" whether any good thing could 
 come out of such a thing as a modern Zion. They 
 discounted the over-zeal of the Latter Day Saints, 
 
Church, State and Camp 45 
 
 and doubted their loyalty to the Union; more 
 especially as most Mormons voted the demo- 
 cratic ticket, a ticket which to all good repub- 
 licans of those reconstruction days, was almost the 
 same as sympathy with secession. 
 
 The bitterness of the Civil War was yet voiced 
 in the talk of most of these civil servants, who 
 could not forget the late strife. 
 
 Utah had its Mormon legion which made Brig- 
 ham Young and the Hierarchy of the church in- 
 dependent of, if not opposed to, the Union. I 
 found, and did not wonder much at it, that the 
 representatives of the Federal Government all 
 felt as though they were living in hostile ter- 
 ritory. 
 
 I heard Governor Emery speak at a meeting 
 to promote higher education in the Territory. 
 This was at the opening of a collegiate institution 
 in Salt Lake City. What he said was well said, 
 and so it ought to have been since he was a very 
 long time in saying a very little. He spoke with 
 a deliberation that was almost painful to one's 
 patience, and with a caution that outdid any Scot 
 I ever heard speak on a crisis : but he spoke with 
 decision and most earnestly to the effect that a 
 new order of intellectual teaching must be pushed 
 in the Territory if it was to advance and be 
 worthy of the future times. He said the war of 
 
46 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 swords was over but the war of words had yet 
 to be fought and settled, before true republican 
 freedom could dominate the offices of the Terri- 
 tory. He did not wave a bloody-shirt, as some of 
 the political men of that day were wont to do, but 
 he did point several times to the evidence of 
 Uncle Sam's presence in the camp at Fort Douglas. 
 
 That speech led me to make a visit to the Fort 
 on the next day, where the regiment of blue 
 soldiers were stationed. 
 
 Down in the city I found a guardhouse and a 
 sentry stationed there, who paced back and forth 
 with rifle and fixed bayonet. He was a mere boy 
 in the sky-blue uniform and forage cap of the days 
 of the sixties. This guardhouse held a half dozen 
 men in telegraphic communication with the Fort 
 on the bench land, overlooking the city to the 
 north. This guardhouse was well down in the city 
 on First South Street, and in full view of the 
 Amelia palace — Brigham Young's principal home 
 — the Tithing House of Zion Co-operative Mer- 
 cantile Institution, and the Tabernacle. 
 
 There is no need to describe Camp Douglas; 
 it was just like any ordinary military headquarters 
 to be found in the West during this period. 
 Parked artillery with frowning guns were pointed 
 Zionward. There were such guns as they then 
 had, but mere pop-guns in comparison with the 
 
Church, State and Camp 47 
 
 modern scientific weapons of the twentieth cen- 
 tury. Yet these guns over-awed Zion and were 
 meant to do so. 
 
 Seditious speech had been common on the 
 streets of this mountain city a few years previous, 
 when the people were restless under the newfelt 
 pressure of the Federal and victorious Republic. 
 Utah had come in line with Texas, California, 
 Arizona and such outlying regions, which were so 
 hard to reach because remote from the seat of 
 government. Moreover many hostile Indians 
 roamed between the middle settled West and the 
 plains and mountains neighboring to Salt Lake 
 City. In the days when the Mormons had their 
 own militia it was not an uncommon remark, in 
 everyday talk, to hear such words as these : 
 
 "We can whip these U-nited States if they git 
 too interferin'." 
 
 So I was not surprised, when I chatted with 
 the boys in blue, to hear one of them say, as he 
 patted the black muzzle of a big gun: 
 
 "Say, Doc, these little fellers are trained onto 
 that old soup-tureen, you visited the other day." 
 Said another: 
 
 "Gosh! wot a hole for the daylight we could 
 let into its roof." 
 
 It never so happened that such extremities were 
 necessary, but there were times when feeling and 
 
48 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 faction ran very high. When a spark might have 
 led to a blaze, which would have started a small 
 internal war, much worse and more bloody than 
 any Indian raid. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CO-OPERATIVE INDUSTRY OF UTAH 
 
 "How doth the little busy hee 
 Improve each shining hour, 
 And gather honey all the day 
 From every opening flower." 
 
 Watts 
 
 VERY suggestive of the Mormon view of in- 
 dustry and business are the two symbols 
 chosen to represent the co-operation of the peo- 
 ple in making the desert into a garden, and that 
 garden to bloom like a rose. I use that term as it 
 was a favorite expression in those formative days 
 by all the Mormon settlers with whom I talked 
 about their business lives. 
 
 For these people were a very practical people. 
 They were enthusiasts in their religion, but never 
 dreamers, monks, nuns, and transcendentalists like 
 so many of the earliest enthusiasts of religious 
 history. 
 
 49 
 
50 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 These symbols were two: a hive and an eye. 
 The hive was a bee-hive of platted straw with 
 conical top; and the eye was a single eye within 
 a circular ring, wide open and viewing you as 
 you regarded it. What did these symbols mean? 
 The first meant the industry of the busy bee — 
 making sweets out of the wild flowers and desert 
 plants so that they became of commercial value. 
 
 So the Saints were makers of values, through 
 their industry, as they toiled on the land allotted 
 to them, and watering it by furrows so that the 
 desert should bring forth and bear a hundred 
 fold. 
 
 The second symbol meant that the eye of the 
 Lord, which seeth single and true, was on them 
 always as they worked ; and they must deal fairly 
 one with the other, neither cheating nor defraud- 
 ing their fellow man. This was where their re- 
 ligion stepped in to keep straight their industry. 
 For want of it now-a-days, business is much like 
 the shark's life, existing to bite one another. 
 
 You can imagine the effect of these ideas, voiced 
 by the symbols on the front of every store in 
 Mormondom. These suggestions of industry and 
 probity are excellent and sufficient. Absorbed as 
 they were in time by the subconscious mind of a 
 generation of a people, the effect was a toiling 
 busy crowd at work on the land, the foundation 
 
The Co-operative Industry of Utah 51 
 
 of any and every commerce. Every man, woman 
 and child was a worker, with no drones or bums 
 allowed. 
 
 Of course they raised produce, of course they 
 needed warehouses, stores, and selling markets; 
 and so arose the Institution which made business 
 a unit, and was the first Trust formed in the 
 Territories — Zion's Co-operative Mercantile In- 
 stitution. 
 
 The institution was Zion's and thus the probity 
 suggested by the watchful eye of God was over 
 all its transactions. In fact, we find these Latter 
 Day Saints actually fulfilling, to their ability, the 
 old-time cry of the Jewish prophet Micah — "Do 
 justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy 
 God." 
 
 They made some bad breaks in this good order 
 of life at times, as all do who are even of the best 
 people, and we would be sour curmudgeons, in- 
 deed, if we allowed a dislike for some of their 
 teachings and some of their practices to blind us 
 to the hearty effort, on their part, to be just in 
 their business relations as well as good in their 
 religious life. 
 
 It certainly was a stroke of genius, when the 
 idea of God being a witness to every business deal- 
 ing was suggested by the "Onlooking Eye" ; asso- 
 ciated with the "Honeykeeping Hive," on the 
 
52 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 front of their places of business in city, town and 
 hamlet, and even in the outlying country store. 
 
 Of course being simply humans, they slipped a 
 cog in this wheel of commerce. This great co- 
 operative store, handling the business of all 
 workers, tended to become a trust; to object to 
 competition; to make arbitrary rules and penalties 
 for those obnoxious to the managers and leaders. 
 
 Where will you find men, who are fit for leaders, 
 who do not soon boss, instead of simply directing, 
 their employees and their customers? 
 
 I knew many cases where men who were lax in 
 their religion were punished by these business 
 stores, in being "boycotted," so they could not sell 
 their goods or buy the commodities they required. 
 
 With all its faults this co-operation was a liv- 
 ing business spine to carry business nerve and 
 force to every section of the territory, and build 
 up both its products and its trade. 
 
 The main plant of this great business house was 
 in Salt Lake City, but each town had its store, 
 and at the stores everything could be sold that 
 was produced in the country and was in a saleable 
 condition, and everything from a needle to a steam 
 engine could be bought if wanted. It could be 
 paid for in money or in kind. 
 
 At first it was all trade, like that of the early 
 settler in the East and west of the Mississippi. 
 
The Co-operative Industry of Utah 53 
 
 But industry breeds wealth and so it was not long 
 before the sod houses gave way to clapboarded 
 structures in the city, and to adobe houses — sun- 
 baked brick — in the towns and countryside. 
 
 It was a day of one price, and since there was 
 but one business house, there was no opposition. 
 That house representing the interests of the peo- 
 ple and only charging a fair profit on the time 
 and capital invested, was popular to the last de- 
 gree. There was no effort nor desire to build up 
 a millionaire institution or make a great fortune 
 for any individual. 
 
 Of course since there were some very shrewd 
 Yankees among the leaders of the church, it fol- 
 lows that they made the best of their opportuni- 
 ties when trading through this mercantile house, 
 and put things so that they personally profited by 
 their inside knowledge of market prices. 
 
 Still there was lacking the graft of modern busi- 
 ness and the insane desire, bred by such men as 
 Gould and his confreres of that day in the East, 
 through their speculations, to smash financially 
 every competitor in their own line of operations. 
 
 It was before the days of millionaires and trusts 
 but, even then, the shadows of these business 
 evils were overhanging the land. 
 
 This co-operative business house gave the church 
 a chance to execute a little side business of its own. 
 
54 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 Since it handled nearly all the products raised by 
 the people, and since these people had obligated 
 themselves to pay a tithe or tenth to the church, 
 here was the chance to collect these dues in regular 
 Old Testament fashion. 
 
 Now the church of the Latter Day Saints is 
 nothing if it is not obedient to the Old Testament. 
 This we shall presently see when we consider its 
 teachings and its theology. While a modern ex- 
 pression of religion, yet that religion is stamped 
 with the old patterns of Jewish days, and so the 
 tithe or tenth part of one's income became the 
 scale of giving, and so through these produce 
 stores the church collected its tithes and filled its 
 ecclesiastical coffers. 
 
 Religion is nothing if it does not take up a col- 
 lection. The old story is in point, that tells of a 
 shipwrecked crew, afloat in the south seas, in the 
 ship's long-boat. A pitiless sun and but few 
 showers, with scant rations saved from the wreck, 
 soon brought the hardened crew to a religious 
 mellowness ; and some one urged a religious serv- 
 ice to propitiate the Power of Heaven in their 
 distress. As none could pray, and there was no 
 preacher aboard the boat, and moreover their 
 singing powers were limited to sailor shanties, for 
 none remembered their childhood hymns; this re- 
 ligious service consisted in taking up a collection 
 
The Co-operative Industry of Utah 55 
 
 by passing the hat. No sailor failed to remember 
 that function of a religious service, and since it 
 was all they could do, they did that one thing. 
 They felt better after this collection since they 
 thought the Lord would look after — "Poor Jack," 
 since he had looked after the interests of the 
 Lord's church. 
 
 I do not mean to say that this ideal church 
 finance was always carried out. There are too 
 many kickers in every kind of thing of human 
 management. But a lot of tithing came to hand 
 by way of the Co-op, as it was called for short, 
 and many were the sneers of outsiders as they 
 spoke of this "cinch" the church had on the in- 
 dustry of the land. 
 
 "Who wouldn't be a leader, and even a Mor- 
 mon, with such fat pickings coming in from the 
 fields?" 
 
 Such resources were stable, and unlike the volun- 
 tary offerings, which support the usual ecclesias- 
 tical efforts of the denominations. So Zion could 
 build stores, schools, ward houses and meeting 
 places, until finally a temple was built that took 
 forty years to finish. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE VALLEY SETTLEMENTS 
 
 "The desert shall rejoice and blossom like a rose!' 
 
 Bible 
 
 A STRING of valleys, rich of soil, but scant 
 of water, stretched from north to south in 
 this territory from Salt Lake City to Saint Tjeorge. 
 
 It was the policy of these people to occupy the 
 land in settlements similar to those of the French 
 Canadians. No doubt the idea was born of the 
 observations, made in earlier days, by the Mor- 
 mon leaders who were mostly from the New Eng- 
 land States. They were probably visitors, at 
 times, across the border from New Hampshire or 
 Vermont, and so knew how the French habitant 
 was housed in villages with their farms farther 
 afield. To their labor they went forth in the 
 morning, to return, at the call of the "Angelus," 
 from their fields to their settlement-firesides at 
 night. 
 
 This made for social life, and suited well the 
 56 
 
The Valley Settlements 57 
 
 gregarious and garrulous genius of the French 
 race stock that settled that eastern portion of the 
 great Canadian Dominion. It did more. It gave 
 the religious leader and teacher, the priest of the 
 Roman Church, the power and opportunity to 
 reach, by ready speech, the people whose easy 
 assembling was possible, after work hours, since 
 they were village residents. 
 
 There were no solitary farmhouses, often out 
 of sight of a neighbor, and so out of mind, touch 
 and sympathy; such as we see on the wide plains 
 of the Dakotas of the North- West; or could have 
 seen, in those early days, on the prairies of Illinois 
 or the woodlands of Indiana or Ohio. 
 
 So these Utah settlers occupied town and ham- 
 lets, and the meeting house, the center of its life, 
 was always well filled by adjacent residents. By 
 every water course, small or large, near or dis- 
 tant, from the hills which supplied these rills, 
 these settlements were formed. Each was fully 
 organized and often incorporated, having mayor, 
 council, wards; like any city. 
 
 The lands adjacent were divided up among the 
 people so that each family head, and those acting 
 as heads of or for families, could have the pro- 
 verbial forty acres and a mule, a sufficient start 
 in life on the soil. How sensible, stable, and 
 socialistic this was, is seen in the contentment and 
 
58 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 progress of these settlers from the first days. 
 Right speedily the ground tickled with the hoe, 
 laughed with a harvest, everywhere that the lavish 
 waters of the towering Wasatch or Orquirreh 
 Ranges could be diverted. 
 
 The silver streams of embryo wealth to a 
 desert-land came, in torrents, down the rough 
 granite studded canyons, to waste their life giv- 
 ing power by falling into the Utah Jordan, and 
 then rolling south into Utah Lake, the modern 
 Sea of Galilee with towns around its watery 
 shores. 
 
 But industry harnessed these waters as the 
 Eastern settlers did their mill-streams by dams, to 
 make them commercially profitable and powerful. 
 So the Mormon people by canals cut to suit the 
 contour of the land brought water to every little 
 patch of arable soil. The fair clime and genial 
 sun of Utah, mountain-sheltered from the Borean 
 blasts that swept the prairie wastes to the west, 
 made farming both a delight and a success. 
 
 I have never seen finer wheat than the sym- 
 metrical, golden kernels of grain in the Utah 
 Valley. And the yield was most generous when 
 properly watered; forty and fifty bushels being 
 common. What toothsome loaves the housewives 
 made from this wheat, milled by Utah's Co- 
 operative Institution. 
 
The Valley Settlements 59 
 
 The fruit of these settlements was on a par with 
 the grain. Peaches, especially, were finely-flavored 
 and were generally raised. Almost every slop- 
 ing shed-roof, in the season, was covered with cut 
 peaches drying in the sun, for the market at home 
 and abroad. In fact, these people, who knew the 
 keen bite of poverty for the few first years, soon 
 had all that the mouth and stomach asked for, in 
 the way of varied foods. 
 
 Cattle, too, well-fed, throve and helped the 
 dairy to flourish, and the meat market to be well 
 supplied. 
 
 I think that you can see the character and ap- 
 pearance of these settlements. The borders of 
 each incorporated town touched those of the suc- 
 ceeding one, as you travelled south, so in one 
 sense you were never out of town. 
 
 This applied to the good land districts above. 
 Of course there was much benchland, sagebrush 
 areas, for which water could not be procured, be- 
 ing either too expensive to grade to the land in 
 need, or there was not sufficient dependable water 
 to be had to warrant the laying out of a settle- 
 ment. So Utah still had its waste places, and the 
 silences belonging to all waste places. 
 
 These valley settlements began around the 
 Great Salt Lake, the main city of the Saints being 
 the principal one. They then spread generally 
 
60 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 southward, over the divides separating these val- 
 leys of the mountains and so continued to the limit 
 of the territory where it slipped over the rim of a 
 basin, to lower altitudes, in northern Arizona, at 
 St. George. 
 
 At this latter and remote settlement, there was 
 a sanitarium of climate, whose soft mildness in 
 winter made it a resort for those who could afford 
 the expense of a long stage trip in search of a 
 change of season and the restoration of broken 
 health. 
 
 I rode about the towns that fringed the shores 
 of Utah Lake and as I looked at its waters, quiet 
 now, and the next hour swept by the torrential 
 winds that came out of Spanish Fork Canyon as 
 though shot from a high-powered gigantic air- 
 gun, I thought of the blue Sea of Galilee, and the 
 tempestuous night passage by Christ and his dis- 
 ciples. 
 
 Down the long stretch from Payson, the town 
 at the south end of this fresh water inland sea, 
 to Nephi beneath the lofty crest and ancient snows 
 of Mount Nebo, overlooking its quiet streets, one 
 travels through little settlements of the types, 
 which I have already described; occupied by a 
 class of small farmers, all doing well, but not one 
 of them rich. 
 
 The territory of my day was a land of little- 
 
The Valley Settlements 61 
 
 landers and small fortunes; the capitalist was 
 nosing in, but he was a gentile, or a foreign in- 
 vestor, who was after mines and commodities, and 
 fought shy of farming and soil investments. 
 
 Mount Nebo, whose height was unclimbed by 
 any Utah prophet, was the dividing range that 
 intervened between the settlements of San Pete 
 Valley, filled with Scandinavian settlers, and the 
 main valley by Parowan, down which the railroad 
 of this modern age passes on its way from Salt 
 Lake to Los Angeles. 
 
 I left the railroad at a little south of Payson, 
 and from thence all my travelling was by stage or 
 canvas covered wagon, or on the broncho of that 
 region. 
 
 I found the people homely, happy in their way, 
 self-satisfied as to their sainthood and church life, 
 but quite unintellectual. I do not mean that they 
 were more ignorant than the usual rural popula- 
 tion of the West of that day; they had a lot of 
 homely wisdom and quaint sayings, with the usual 
 horse-trading cuteness and wit; but as to thinking 
 for themselves they were not remarkable, for like 
 many a church folk in many a clime, they left all 
 their thinking for the professional thinkers and 
 creed makers; and so like sheep, satisfied with 
 their shepherds, they listened to the voice of their 
 authorities and acquiesced in all their demands. 
 
62 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 I have sat in many a cosy parlor, with the 
 visitor's chair in evidence, and enjoyed the hos- 
 pitality and good will of industrious house-wives. 
 I saw very little evidence of married unhappiness, 
 or of a pronounced polygamy. Of course it was 
 there, and some of the homesteads gave ocular 
 evidence of plural wifehood with separate doors 
 and windows of section-made adobe houses visible 
 from the roadside. 
 
 The children were barefooted, browned, and 
 healthy. They were wild-eyed and shy when ques- 
 tioned by a stranger, but very little more so than 
 those of any rural people who see but little of the 
 outside bustling world of commerce. 
 
 Surely these settlements, utilizing these broad 
 acres, otherwise idle, were a better product, de- 
 spite these peculiarities, than a waste of sage and 
 sand given over to hordes of coyotes, the prowl- 
 ing bear and wildcat. 
 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 A LONG RIDE THROUGH UTAH VALLEY 
 
 "It were a journey like the path to Heaven, 
 To help you find them." 
 
 Milton 
 
 IT was the midsummer of 1876, when I was 
 invited to take a long distance drive through 
 these Mormon settlements, with a missionary. 
 
 He was not a Mormon missionary, however, 
 but a representative of an orthodox Protestant 
 denomination; several such religious bodies were 
 seeking a foothold for school and church in this 
 territory. 
 
 In a certain sense we were doing scout duty for 
 a Mission Board in New York City. As Moses 
 of old sent spies into the land on the other side of 
 Jordan of Scripture, so this Board sent its repre- 
 sentatives to spy out this Promised Land, not 
 from Dan to Beersheba, but from Ogden to 
 Mount Pleasant. 
 
 We were almost boys in spirit, and not far 
 63 
 
64 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 removed in years, so this task appealed to us as 
 a sort of adventure mixed with duty imposed. 
 
 We did not go afoot but drove a one-horse 
 wagonette having for its load two dozen school 
 desks and seats for an incipient academy of ele- 
 mentary grade. The hope for the educational 
 up-lift of a miseducated Utah. 
 
 This to some, in these now liberal days, may 
 seem a bigoted endeavor and a youthful assump- 
 tion of a capacity to instruct others; but it, never- 
 theless, was the outcome of the wise and weighty 
 council of older men who accepted our offer as 
 adventurers in this Pioneer Mission in San Pete 
 Valley. 
 
 It was not then given us to see the long, hard 
 grind of work and duty to establish this educa- 
 tional plant, so we went cheerfully south, like 
 sailors shipping for a distant port. 
 
 The pull for one lone horse, of these seats for 
 future scholars, to say nothing of a box of heavy 
 books, was unfair when we came to see the sand- 
 ridges in our way on the roads over the valley 
 divides. It was get out and push behind while 
 the horse panted in front. 
 
 If we had been better horse-jockeys, we would 
 have insisted on a team when we left the city; 
 but our commercial and theoretical well-wishers 
 and providers, in their scholarly incapacity as 
 
A Long Ride Through Utah Valley 6$ 
 
 mountain travellers, insisted that one horse was 
 ample. 
 
 Well, we crawled along, and whiled away the 
 time with some healthy and also some unhealthy 
 discussions of religious questions in comparative 
 theology. We were like most of the young men, 
 quick to discuss deep problems, and rushed in with 
 our logic on subjects where "Angels feared to 
 tread." 
 
 Both warmed in body from our cart-pushings, 
 and in mind from our arguments, we passed the 
 heat of the day and the divide of land, so that at 
 the sunset we saw no longer the Salt Lake to the 
 north, but the sea of fresh water to the south; 
 Lake Utah colored by the last rays of light. 
 
 My companion was a Mac, one of the numer- 
 ous Macs, whose forebears came from Scotland, 
 and he lived up to his clan as "Varra creetical" 
 in discussions. Now it is very hard to overcome 
 a Scot in argument and so I had the worst of it 
 just then. My companion wore a thin smile of 
 victory and conceit at his superior intellectual 
 prowess, more especially as he prided himself on 
 the possession, not only of a B.A. and B.D., but 
 an M.A. degree, whereas I had not quite finished 
 college life when I had to mix with the world. 
 
 But I had rubbed edges with that world; had 
 been tutored by city stock-brokers and had been 
 
66 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 a photographer, when a man had to be not only 
 an artist but a chemist, to ply his trade; all this 
 before I received my teaching degree. So I had 
 my companion when it came to business things, 
 and pushed him hard to the wall over this "scrub 
 horse" that he had been tricked into by a trader; 
 and the awful load that his ignorance of teaming 
 had put into the wagonette for so long a drive. 
 
 Crossing a creek about twelve miles on our way, 
 the strain was too much for the harness and 
 "crack" went one of the tugs. 
 
 Here I gave my chum a little verbal rub on the 
 unwisdom of cheap harnesses. I rubbed it farther 
 in during the hour we spent in mending the leather 
 with old rope ; as I informed him that no Western 
 man ever travelled far without a coil of buckskin 
 to meet such disasters as had overtaken us. He 
 learned a great deal about the sorrows of a ten- 
 derfoot before he was through with the trip, and 
 his harness, often repaired, resembled some of 
 those rare bargains offered to the green-hand in 
 junk stores. 
 
 The point of the mountain, seen all day from 
 our Salt Lake City start, ended our up-grade pull, 
 and now down-grade we went to our first stopping 
 place. We were high enough to overlook the 
 Jordan river, flowing well within its banks; for 
 this Utah Jordan never overflows them to swell 
 
A Long Ride Through Utah Valley 67 
 
 its waters like its Palestinian brother-river. We 
 could see the haze over the Great Lake north, 
 and the forming film of vapor over the smaller 
 lake south of us, where Lehi and American Fork, 
 two Mormon settlements, showed up their dry 
 streets and the green fields adjacent. 
 
 "Well, Mac! do we camp when we reach the 
 borders of that lake?" I asked, fully supposing 
 that he wanted to do the correct thing and sleep 
 under the sky. 
 
 "We'll not need to camp. We will make Lehi 
 soon, and there's a chance for a room for us, and 
 a corral for the horse." 
 
 "Any hotels in these towns?" I asked, for he 
 had been this way before by road. 
 
 "None: but I know a Mormon family. The 
 elder will take in travellers, if he likes their looks, 
 and they don't catch him too much unawares." 
 
 We carried a camp outfit, but did not wish to 
 trench on our supplies, if possible, so early in the 
 journey. The tired horse, that had done wonders 
 from any point of view, but was dubbed a lazy 
 brute by Mac, pulled us slowly into the distant 
 town, and along its adobe-lined streets. 
 
 "That is a long-drawn-out one?" I said, point- 
 ing to a low-built house of sun-dried brick, "five 
 doors and five windows all in a line." 
 
 "Yes," said Mac, "that is an indication of 
 
68 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 plural marriage. Each door and window is in a 
 separate section. The patriarch, who lives there, 
 has five wives." 
 
 At last we stopped before a house. Our tired 
 horse sighed as though his heart would break with 
 relief. But we were to face disappointment. 
 
 "No room for travellers this night," said the 
 elder when Mac accosted him. I saw by the 
 man's eye that he disapproved of us and our 
 errand, although he looked with pity on our tired 
 horse. He pointed south. 
 
 "You can make American Fork in three miles." 
 
 It happened that we entered this new town in 
 the right place for us, A rather larger adobe 
 than usual, was lighted up and the owner agreed 
 to shelter us for the night by our paying a good 
 stiff fee. 
 
 I gave the horse a good feed and rubbed him 
 down before I went in to wash and eat. 
 
 Our host was a hearty old man, and one of the 
 early converts from Wales. He had prospered 
 in lands and goods, and was loud in his praise of 
 this practical religion. I cannot say much for his 
 table manner; for he ate with dirty hands, and 
 used them twice to break up lumps of sugar in 
 the bowl. The table-ware was primitive, indeed, 
 but the cloth was clean and the meal well cooked 
 by his energetic daughter. 
 
A Long Ride Through Utah Valley 69 
 
 "Sugar was a very scarce article in my early 
 days here, and I don't like to see it wasted." 
 
 He was a widower, but no polygamist. He was 
 a sample of the earnest, but ignorant peasant 
 class of the old world who had greatly improved 
 their material welfare by this change of country 
 and faith. 
 
 Mac met a horse trader at the table, and I 
 was highly entertained by their efforts to make a 
 swap. The trader's animal was a little worse 
 blown than Mac's, but after all he was not the 
 easy mark that he was supposed to be, and he 
 kept his horse. 
 
 We pulled out the next morning somewhat re- 
 freshed but hauling the same full load. We 
 passed over dry creeks, sand ridges, and through 
 the town of Battle Creek; the site of an early 
 fight; through Provo, the county seat, to Spring- 
 ville, the most progressive of all these valley 
 settlements. 
 
 A knife-edged lofty ridge, Mount Aspinwall, 
 overlooked us all the way on the east, while the 
 lake glittered in the sun, six miles distant on the 
 west. Down the canyons of this range at times 
 the winds swept with sudden blasts, and crossing 
 the lake, churned its waters into a fury. The 
 breezes were refreshing since they blew across the 
 road and not along it. We saw many pretty spots 
 
70 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 of green, such as fields of wheat, nearly ripe, al- 
 falfa patches of emerald hue and thrifty peach 
 and prune orchards. We carried off, from one 
 farm a bale of alfalfa, and a generous sample of 
 early fruit. 
 
 Just one year later, I rode through this region 
 on a long horseback journey, and all the green was 
 gone although it was yet early summer. The 
 locusts were in the land. They had come in such 
 clouds as to darken the day, and with such hearty 
 appetites that even the bark on the orchard trees 
 was consumed before they left. Their hatching 
 ground was in mountainous Idaho, on the north, 
 and periodically they passed out, leaving destruc- 
 tion in their track. Even a piece of green-straw 
 matting hung on a fence to air and dry, went down 
 their ready throats. 
 
 While in Springville, we prospected for a site 
 in the interests of a liberal school. We had been 
 invited to do so by some of the local men of in- 
 fluence. There was a desire for something new 
 in this progressive town at that time, and it bore 
 fruit three years later in a well built brick edifice 
 for school and mission work. It was later known 
 as the Hungerford Academy, under the auspices 
 of the Presbyterian Mission Board. It was put 
 in charge of George Washington Leonard, an ex- 
 staff officer of the Union Army. 
 
A Long Ride Through Utah Valley 71 
 
 Of course we conferred with the so-called lib- 
 eral element. In most of these settlements there 
 were to be found a number of disaffected people. 
 Some were so because they had been treated 
 domineeringly by the church authorities, who 
 ruled the civic as well as the religious interests of 
 these valley towns; others because they had 
 changed their views, with their increase of knowl- 
 edge of the world at large, due to their contact 
 with the new and non-Mormon elements filtering 
 in to the population of the territory; still others 
 because of business interests which carried them 
 outside of the commerce of the co-operative stores 
 to deal with mining men and mining machinery. 
 
 In the old hortatory days, when the Mormon 
 preachers painted every gentile with a coat of 
 black, they gave a false idea of the outside world, 
 which these business men now found to be un- 
 true, for the gentile was not as black as he had 
 been painted. 
 
 A natural reaction set in, and a friendliness for 
 the new-comers sprang up, and we found a few 
 men, but no women, who desired an established 
 opposition to the dominant church; in order to 
 check its power and to give a spice of life in the 
 business world in place of the old-time autonomy 
 and monotony. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THROUGH SPANISH FORK CANYON AND THISTLE 
 VALLEY 
 
 "Now let us sing, Long live the King, 
 
 And Gilpin, long live he; 
 And when he next doth ride abroad, 
 
 May I be there to see!" 
 
 Cowper 
 
 NEXT day we pushed our slow way up 
 Spanish Fork Canyon. Some faint tradi- 
 tion of the early Spaniards, the conquistadores of 
 the days of Iberian rule, having reached as far 
 north as this section, riveted the name upon this 
 great gap in the mountains. 
 
 There is no doubt those hardy men almost 
 demons in a way did dare the extreme both in 
 perils and distance. Some of them may have 
 gazed with their fierce eyes set in bearded bronzed 
 faces upon these very hills and vales. 
 
 They were too far afield for them to put more 
 than the stamp of their name on this region, so 
 
Through Spanish Fork Canyon 73 
 
 when the Mormons came, the Redmen, the Piutes 
 and the Utes, were the sole possessors of the soil. 
 
 It was an up-hill and rocky road with the heat 
 of mid-day reflecting from the granite rocks lin- 
 ing the canyon sides and producing much perspira- 
 tion, both for drivers and their steed. 
 
 Yet the evening drawing nigh, the characteristic 
 wind-blast down, this rocky tube chilled us to the 
 bone, a quick change from the noon's torrid heat. 
 
 "I know of a good spring hereabouts," said 
 Mac, "one of my liberal friends of Mount 
 Pleasant comes this way at times, and always 
 camps by it; and he told me to be sure to sample 
 its waters." 
 
 This was refreshing news to me, for our last 
 drink had been from a muddied and shallow irri- 
 gation ditch. Round point after point, we slowly 
 toiled, still ascending and looking for this spring 
 that never appeared. It was about two hours 
 later that we caught the odor of rotten eggs, and 
 knew that our spring was a sulphur and thera- 
 peutic one. Our liberal friend had his joke on 
 Mac, when the latter stood at this actively boil- 
 ing spring, with no desire to drink. 
 
 Yet at this writing a costly sanitarium occupies 
 the ground, people come from afar to spend both 
 time and money for their health at this evil-smell- 
 ing spring. Pure water is a prize when difficult 
 
74 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 to obtain, and at that particular moment having 
 no foresight of the future business value of this 
 sulphur spring, we would have exchanged it for a 
 few gallons of the cold article. 
 
 We pushed on with dry tongues, and toward 
 evening we entered Thistle Valley, now alive with 
 the coal industry and the overland railroad, but 
 then a wild, remote, upland plain. 
 
 Here we found water in a little rill oozing out 
 of the rocks, clear and cold as a Kentucky spring. 
 
 "Why not camp out here? Plenty of wood 
 around for a fire. It will be dark soon!" 
 
 "No. Not here. Let us push on," said Mac. 
 "I know a valley rancher at no great distance. 
 He is what is called a 'Jack' Mormon and favors 
 our work for the liberals." 
 
 I grumbled, for I had no great liking for Mac's 
 "little" distances, as I remembered that his eye 
 was lacking in accuracy when it came to his re- 
 membering mileage by the road. 
 
 On again we went making a long day of it. I 
 expected the poor horse to strike, not for pay, but 
 for shorter hours; but the good animal had more 
 grit than his appearance suggested. The miles 
 were Irish ones, if not Russian, such as make the 
 Siberian Versts such a weary terror to the travel- 
 ler. We passed curve after curve in the road; 
 crossed land-draws without number, expecting 
 
Through Spanish Fork Canyon 75 
 
 every moment to sight the rancher's roof. It re- 
 alized a modern war-song: 
 
 "It's a long, long way to Tipperary, 
 It's a long way to go." 
 
 It began to look as though Mac had been sold 
 again as to this ranch house ; as he had been with 
 reference to the sulphur spring which he had been 
 urged to sample. 
 
 We broke another tug, just by way of diversion 
 and use of a little more time which we could not 
 spare. I used the old rope again and, of course, 
 being tired I had to say something about buck- 
 skin, as an essential part of an "experienced" 
 traveller's outfit, the same being lacking with 
 us. 
 
 The moon rose. Her silvery face shone above 
 the hills before us and made the uneven road 
 visible, but the chaparral on either hand looked 
 all the blacker. My imagination began to work 
 concerning the Indians, who were off the reserva- 
 tion, trailing us in these dark places; or those 
 white bandits, of worse blood, who often waylaid 
 travellers at such an uphill disadvantage as was 
 ours. 
 
 We were nervously silent, but if a bear had 
 crashed through the brush, a coyote had yowled, 
 or an owl had hooted, we might have shouted 
 from fright, expectant of an attack from Indians 
 
76 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 or bandits. 
 
 Just then a dog barked with a homelike sound, 
 and before long we saw the outline of a corral 
 fence lining the road; then a house loomed up all 
 in the dark. 
 
 We drew up at the bars across the road and 
 holloed. The tired rancher, waked out of his 
 first sleep, came down to us in no gracious mood; 
 but who could blame him at that midnight hour? 
 
 We were the victims of Mac's defective judg- 
 ment of road distances. He had come this way 
 once before, with a fast road-team downgrade, 
 and had expected as rapid return upgrade with 
 one horse and a heavy load. 
 
 We squared this late call with our "Jack" Mor- 
 mon host in the way which is usually acceptable 
 to midnight landlords. We fed our horse and 
 bedded him with straw, and then climbed to an 
 empty loft under the house roof, pillowing our 
 weary heads on hay. 
 
 This Thistle Valley is known for its rich soil. 
 The greasewood grows high and strongly, a sure 
 evidence of the depth of earth. It was sparsely 
 settled in that day. At one end there was an 
 Indian Reserve: a section of the great Uintah 
 Reservation for the Piute nation. 
 
 We met a crowd of Indian horsemen the next 
 morning. They were wild and saucy, mocking us 
 
Through Spanish Fork Canyon 77 
 
 and our outfit and racing around, whooping just 
 to scare our horse by their antics; but it was 
 wasted effort. They did not know that our horse 
 was a sedate Presbyterian charger, whose charg- 
 ing days were long past. Our beast just looked 
 at them in surprise, and plodded on. 
 
 We grinned at these red-painted horsemen and 
 cried "How!" in return to their "How!", and so 
 passed on. 
 
 It was right here that an emigrant tragedy 
 occurred some twenty years earlier. The foot- 
 hills slope often into the valley with a long finger 
 of lower hills that finally sink to the level of the 
 valley road. Behind this projection, a war party 
 of these same Piutes or Utes lay in ambush for 
 the overlanders to California. 
 
 Two wagons, the prairie schooner kind, with 
 covers like an ark, and loaded to the guards with 
 everything for the household, came crawling along 
 this upgrade. Too independent to travel with 
 the majority, they had struck out by this shorter 
 way to reach California by the road via Saint 
 George and Arizona; thus avoiding the awful 
 Nevada deserts. 
 
 Unsuspecting and unprepared they here were 
 attacked by the Indians, who made a dash from 
 behind a low hill abutting the road. It ended 
 in the usual way. After a sharp and gallant fight 
 
78 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 the strong white men fell, and all were slain, even 
 to the babies. Blood and scalps and burning 
 wagons, yelling Indians and dying men made the 
 spot memorable. 
 
 We looked at the scene and could almost see it 
 enacted again; one of many such bloody halts to 
 the stream of gold seekers, where a family passed 
 out of knowledge, and left but a rumor to satisfy 
 the anxiety and long waiting of friends left be- 
 hind. 
 
 At last Thistle Valley opened into a larger one, 
 the San Pete Valley, and from our high ground 
 we could see, by the dark patches along the val- 
 ley's sides, the sites of the various settlements in 
 this remote region populated by Scandinavian con- 
 verts to Mormonism. 
 
 The telephone, the rural delivery, the automo- 
 bile of this favored day have brought all this 
 section into the hustle of the world, since that 
 quiet day when I first looked upon this broad ex- 
 panse of fertile land. The mountains, then so 
 silent, now glow with the electric lights of great 
 mining centers. The richest coal is found, and 
 feeds the mountain freight engines of the railroad 
 which, as the agent of modern commerce, has 
 invaded and captured this region of riches. 
 
 Our good old horse, and I was really getting 
 proud of his grit despite his disreputable looks, 
 
Through Spanish Fork Canyon 79 
 
 brought us late in the day to the Liberal Hall 
 fronting the Main street of Mount Pleasant, a 
 town of three thousand inhabitants. 
 
 Here were the headquarters of the liberal ele- 
 ment of the valley, and this also was our destina- 
 tion. In this Hall was the school, in embryo, for 
 which the seats had been brought from afar so 
 toilsomely. I laughed when they had been 
 arranged in the lecture room of the Hall, to see 
 one after another, the men, Liberals and Mor- 
 mons, sit in them to test their strength. They did 
 it so boyishly and with much evident interest. 
 These seats were then up-to-date, but by this time 
 they are antiquated, and broken up for fuel. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 OPPOSITION TO THE LIBERAL SCHOOLS 
 
 "The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to 
 him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in 
 full military array." 
 
 Lord Brougham 
 
 MOUNT PLEASANT, the town to which 
 I conducted my reader in the previous 
 chapter, was the scene of the first firm stand for 
 liberal schools in the territory. This stand with 
 the opposition to it was due to the advent of my 
 companion Mac, who not in the best of health, 
 came, under medical advice, in the spring of 1876, 
 to the mountain altitudes and air of Utah Ter- 
 ritory to recuperate after an arduous course of 
 higher education. 
 
 Though frail in body, his mind and spirit were 
 sound and needed no tonic. In fact, he was full 
 of grit in this respect, a primary condition of suc- 
 cess in any line of endeavor in the Far West of 
 that period. It is an uphill enterprise to estab- 
 80 
 
Opposition to the Liberal Schools 81 
 
 lish a new order of schools anywhere, for the 
 conservatives invariably oppose new methods on 
 the principle that the old are better. 
 
 At that time the Mormon schools were very 
 elementary, for they had been overshadowed by 
 the religious teaching and zeal of a people who 
 combined church and state, and who regarded 
 advanced education as a door of infidelity. 
 
 Making due allowance for the distractions of 
 frontier life, and the strenuous claims of agri- 
 culture in a new land on its people, it remains 
 true that the mental nourishment given, as school- 
 ing, to the children was very poor. 
 
 Mac and those who backed him in far-off New 
 York felt strongly in the matter of a better and 
 American training for the children of this remote 
 territory. Thus his health and his task joined to 
 establish his interests in a territory so far distant 
 from his home. 
 
 Invited to Mount Pleasant, by certain men of 
 liberal views, he found himself one March morn- 
 ing stepping from the bi-weekly stage at the 
 town's post-office, a stranger among a strange 
 people. This was the first attempt, outside of Salt 
 Lake City, to establish the cause of liberal edu- 
 cation. 
 
 At the beginning he did not have very intel- 
 lectual associates. An intellectual man himself, 
 
82 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 and a fine teacher, his best helpers were no orna- 
 ments to education. His Mormon opponents soon 
 dubbed two of Mac's closest attendants, "Right 
 Bower," and "Left Bower." 
 
 "Right Bower" was a peripatetic sewing- 
 machine agent, who was zealous in the interests of 
 the original Howe sewing-machine, of very heavy 
 running gear, and which sold readily, at that time, 
 for one hundred and ten dollars each. "Left 
 Bower" was an old miner, down on his luck, with 
 the illuminated face of a free-drinker, whose resi- 
 dence in the valley was due to the marriage of his 
 only daughter to a son of a zealous Mormon 
 elder. 
 
 It was these two men who created the first lib- 
 eral sentiments among the "Jack" Mormon class 
 of the people, an element rather weak in the 
 faith, although not quite apostates. 
 
 The Mormon elders were first amused at this 
 effort to supplement their establishments, but as 
 the school drew and grew, concern followed 
 amusement and soon anger succeeded this con- 
 cern. A vigorous call for aid was sent to Salt 
 Lake. Brigham Young himself with two apostles 
 came down to organize a crusade of words against 
 this liberal movement. 
 
 The little town was wrought up to fever heat, 
 and after Brigham Young returned to his head- 
 
Opposition to the Liberal Schools 83 
 
 quarters, Mac expected trouble. It came. One 
 night he had just closed a meeting in the adobe 
 hall which they occupied. There had been noisy- 
 exits, and noisier calls outside. A crowd surged 
 in front and filled the yard. They began throw- 
 ing stones and adobe bricks from a pile of mate- 
 rial close by, with cries of: 
 
 "Run him out of town!" 
 
 "Rock his building good and plenty!" 
 
 "We want no Liberal here!" 
 
 "Come out and clear out!" 
 
 "Take him out, boys!" 
 A rush was made for the door. It had been 
 closed a few minutes before. It bent beneath 
 the weight of many shoulders, and threatened to 
 break. 
 
 Mac had a Colt revolver which he carried by 
 the advice of the officers at Fort Douglas. From 
 a small side window his head and arm appeared 
 suddenly. He ordered the crowd to step off from 
 the property, and retire to the street. 
 
 "If any one of you breaks down that door I 
 shall feel at liberty to defend my property with 
 this weapon." He pointed his revolver at them. 
 Mac, while small of stature and somewhat frail 
 of build, in that day, yet had the square jaw and 
 prominent chin of the Scot. His grit had its 
 effect, for while more stones and bricks were 
 
84 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 thrown, no more rushes at the door took place. 
 
 In fact in a few minutes the crowd withdrew 
 with muttered threats. The Mayor of the town, 
 who also was the bishop of that Stake of Zion 
 had just come forward, and with a few words so 
 quieted the people that they dispersed to their 
 homes. 
 
 I do not think they would have gone to such an 
 extreme course as to imperil Mac's body, since 
 the military camp at Fort Douglas one hundred 
 and thirty miles north had a with-holding power 
 on fanaticism. 
 
 It was a well-executed effort to scare him off, 
 and would have succeeded against a faint-hearted 
 man. Mac went to his cot-bed that night as 
 quietly as usual, but his gun was under his pillow. 
 He might trust in the Lord but he kept his powder 
 dry according to the code of Oliver Cromwell. 
 
 We expected such demonstrations of opposition 
 at the first opening of these new schools. I have 
 personal knowledge of a school beginning at 
 American Fork, a town near the canyon of that 
 name, where the scenery is said to rival in gran- 
 deur that of the Yosemite Valley. This town had 
 a liberal element and a school was begun with 
 a teacher in charge. 
 
 "Why do you come here? You are not wanted," 
 said the Bishop of that Stake of Zion. 
 
Opposition to the Liberal Schools 85 
 
 "We come to teach the young people better 
 manners and methods." 
 
 "We can do all that now as we have done other 
 things in the past. There is no need of you or 
 your so-called work." 
 
 "We are at liberty to do our work here, if law 
 abiding, wherever the flag flies. The flag flies in 
 this Territory now." 
 
 This Bishop gave the quiet word to the town 
 roughs to annoy the teacher and his school. A 
 howling brigade was formed on the occasion of 
 every night meeting, and hideous noises were 
 made outside the door. Then followed a throw- 
 ing brigade, and stones showered on the building. 
 At the last part of the assault, several adobe 
 bricks were hurled through the windows, breaking 
 the sash as well as the glass, and striking the 
 opposite wall of the room. The Bishop, being 
 the Mayor of this incorporated town, did not heed 
 the complaints made to him in his civic capacity, 
 and the disturbers had full swing until they grew 
 tired of this outrage themselves, and the suf- 
 ferers were rewarded for their patience by a lull 
 in the opposition. 
 
 Meanwhile the Liberals were boycotted at 
 the Co-op stores, and they had to send to Jew 
 merchants in Salt Lake City for their supplies. 
 It was nerve-racking, yet a combination of pa- 
 
86 Tenderfoot Days ' 
 
 tience and courage wore out the first hot opposi- 
 tion. Then followed an entrenched, stubborn 
 action of the church elders which by personal 
 visits and threats kept away most of the young 
 people and older children for a time. 
 
 While I was temporarily in charge of the 
 Mount Pleasant school, during Mac's absence in 
 the East, I came in contact with "Lo," the Ute 
 Indian of the Territory, in all his blanket and 
 gun glory. These Utes were a fine race of men 
 physically. Beneath their brave exterior, of 
 course, there was left, despite Mormon church 
 teaching, much of the cruel temper of the Apaches 
 or the Arapahoes. The Mormons made much of 
 these Utes, for according to their theology the 
 Redmen of North America are the descendants 
 of the Lamanites, the original inhabitants of the 
 land in the times of Mormon their prophet. For 
 further particulars, see the book of Mormon. 
 
 They had a way of calling these natives by a 
 pet name, "The Battle Axes of the Lord," and 
 used them, in harmony with that name, to do their 
 disagreeable work, as I shall have to recount in 
 a later chapter. 
 
 I have always thought that the Bishop of 
 Mount Pleasant sent this band of Battle-Axes to 
 scare me off. I did not look so fierce of face as 
 Mac, the organizer of the school. Late one 
 
Opposition to the Liberal Schools 87 
 
 warm afternoon in June, the doors were ajar to 
 catch all the air possible. I was in the front room 
 of the house adjoining the school hall, and before 
 I was aware of it, with a sudden tramp of feet, 
 the kitchen to the rear of the house was filled with 
 blanketed Utes. As I came in, an array of keen 
 black eyes regarded me. They were squatted, 
 Indian fashion, around the walls, each with his 
 gun held well within his knees. A deep voiced 
 demand followed. 
 
 "Want meat! Want pie! Heap hungry!" 
 How they knew that we had a batch of pies baked 
 that day puzzled me at the moment, but I after- 
 wards heard that the Bishop had told these strong 
 allies of his, that I had a liking for the American 
 national pie, and they would surely find some at 
 my house. 
 
 The speaker was really tall and straight, a 
 fair copy of Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans;" 
 but he was very lean and hungry looking. He 
 had a crafty face, and his eyes were full just then 
 of malice and insolence. 
 
 Their attitude towards me was due to the fol- 
 lowing fable, told to them by the Mormon elders. 
 
 "The Mormon was the Indians' true friend and 
 brother, while the American was the Redman's 
 white-faced foe, who took away their land, and 
 shot them when they resisted this robbery, using 
 
88 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 the blue-coated soldier to do the deed." 
 
 These Indians' ancestors, in earlier days, had 
 come in fighting contact with the migratory and 
 invading white man and much injustice, spoliation, 
 and slaughter had followed that contact of fiery 
 spirits of both sides, as the Redman sought to 
 stop the emigrant invasion of his hunting grounds. 
 
 I had been skillfully associated, by the Mor- 
 mons, with the frontier white men whose com- 
 mon saying was "The only good Injun is a dead 
 Injun," and this accounted for the unfriendly 
 looks of my Indian visitors. 
 
 Now the kitchen larder was not very full. To 
 supply with food a baker's dozen of strapping 
 natives, was a problem. It was our policy to 
 please rather than to offend these men, in an en- 
 deavor to counteract base stones to our prejudice. 
 
 It so happened that a big batch of dried-fruit 
 pies had been cooked that very morning by a busy 
 company of women who were interested in our 
 Liberal Hall work. 
 
 "No meat to-day; too many mouths," I said to 
 the modern fac-simile of Cooper's Indian. 
 
 "Go to the Bishop up the street, who has a big 
 house; also many cooks. He can give you much 
 meat to eat." 
 
 The Indian's eyes glittered as I mentioned the 
 Bishop. 
 
Opposition to the Liberal Schools 89 
 
 It was the duty of the Church rulers, in accord- 
 ance with their creed, to entertain strangers or 
 travellers, white or red, and to make no charge 
 for this hospitality. The Bishops especially 
 prided themselves on keeping this ancient custom 
 alive. I knew this and also did "Lo," the Indian. 
 
 "You give pie. American pie heap good for 
 Ute." 
 
 "Do you eat white man's pie?" I asked, eyeing 
 them all in turn. "I will see if there is enough to 
 go around this circle." 
 
 It had come to me that the batch of pies, now 
 on the shelves of the little six by six pantry, would 
 serve a better purpose in the tough stomachs of 
 these Utes, than in those of visitors assembling 
 that evening in the Social Hall. 
 
 The eyes of all the Indians followed me into the 
 pantry, and were on me when I came out with a 
 dozen of the ladies' pie-provisions. I handed 
 them to "Lo." With the rest in the pantry there 
 was just enough to go around the circle, which in 
 itself was fortunate, for it gave to every man a 
 pie, and so all were on an equality. It was a 
 sight to the eyes to look at such an Indian feast. 
 They enjoyed those pies, and I enjoyed seeing 
 them eat. 
 
 The meal was soon over, for it does not take 
 an Indian long to eat a pie. They were pleased 
 
90 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 and amused at my good natured response to their 
 demand. Said the leader: 
 
 "Heap good man. Heap good pie." 
 
 Then they stood up, and, with grins and more 
 friendly eyes, they went out in Indian file, and I 
 saw them no more. I never heard of their call 
 on the Bishop. I was rather pleased at the out- 
 come of this visit. 
 
 I soon had visitors of another kind. A delega- 
 tion of six women came rushing in. 
 
 "What were those Indians after here?" they 
 cried. 
 
 "After pie." 
 
 "What! our pies! You surely did not feed 
 those lazy beggars our pies." 
 
 "I did. They came demanding food with guns 
 in their hands, thinking to scare me. To please 
 them and gain their good will, and off-set the 
 Mormon stories of American hate, I fed them 
 your pies," 
 
 "Oh! oh! oh! Our pies! What shall we do 
 to-night?" 
 
 "Bake some more now. Those in the stomachs 
 of the Utes are heralds of peace for us. It de- 
 pends on your cooking whether their repast will 
 disturb their digestion." 
 
 "No fear of that! An Indian's digestion is 
 that of an ostrich." 
 
Opposition to the Liberal Schools 91 
 
 Soon I was hustled out of the little kitchen, all 
 too small for six active women. These women 
 knew that at the social of the evening, some food 
 distinctively American, would be in demand. 
 They decided that a batch of New England pies 
 would be ideal, so they re-doubled their morn- 
 ing's efforts and doubled the pie out-put for that 
 night's festivities. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 BEHIND THE CURTAIN 
 
 "Is this a dagger which I see before me, 
 The handle toward my hand? Come, let me 
 clutch thee." 
 
 Shakespeare 
 
 AFIELD fence in Utah often occasions a 
 marked contrast in the appearance of the 
 soil. On one side of it there is green alfalfa, 
 peach and plum trees as thrifty as the best, due to 
 the little rills of irrigation water. On the other 
 side of the same fence there is nothing but the 
 silt and sand of a pure desert, the habitat of sage 
 brush and the horned-toad. 
 
 The two sides of a shield are often quite dif- 
 ferent; and there are two sides to Mormonism, 
 as in most religions. I have shown you the fair 
 and fertile looking side, but in order to be true 
 to the facts, as I saw them, I must show you the 
 other. 
 
 I am not the critic or judge in this matter. The 
 92 
 
Behind the Curtain 93 
 
 reader can occupy that position, if he sd desires. 
 Otherwise time and the great future must unite 
 to be it, and will pronounce a true judgment. I 
 am but a recounter of my own observances and 
 experiences. 
 
 First a few words about the Mormon Rurales, 
 Rough Riders or Destroying Angels. These 
 were the Danites, or Mormon military police, and 
 their work was for both Church and State. 
 
 These strangely gathered people were isolated, 
 enthusiastic, then intolerant, and afterwards 
 crafty and cruel in the administration of their 
 public affairs. Many vile things have been said of 
 the Mormons. I do not join in that abuse. 
 Where so much smoke has arisen there must be 
 some fire as the cause of it. 
 
 We know that the Mormons, as an outgrowth 
 of the persecutions they endured in the East, and 
 as a defensive measure, organized a militia, called 
 the Nauvoo Legion. It drilled openly and was 
 perfected as an engine of war shortly before, and 
 also during, the days of the Civil strife in the 
 States. Those days saw interests, so paramount 
 to an insignificant evidence of Mormon dis- 
 loyalty, that amid the rush of events and the crash 
 of war, no notice was taken of this Legion, or 
 steps enforced to put it down. 
 
 In the Utah of my experience, this Legion was 
 
94 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 kept sub-rosa; yet remained intact as a military 
 arm, of Mormon interests, and could be used at a 
 moment's call. It had been the great reserve 
 force of the Territory in the past and was the 
 power behind the throne which enabled Brigham 
 Young to execute his will in the days of the' 
 5o's. In fact, the Mormon police or Rurales, 
 popularly known as the "Danites" or the "Des- 
 troying Angels" ; using the biblical phraseology so 
 common among these people, were really the active 
 and executive arm of this militia. 
 
 Thus the Church had something more than 
 moral force to give power to its mandates. It had 
 a physical force, like any country armed to meet 
 its foe, or put down rebellion within its own bor- 
 ders. 
 
 These were picked men in horsemanship, and 
 the use of weapons. They were "Angels" of help 
 to their own kind, but "Destroyers" of all opposi- 
 tion. They had a picked leader in the person of 
 Porter Rockwell, and an able second in Bill Hick- 
 man, both men of that period, and the products 
 of the open wild life of the far West. 
 
 Porter Rockwell was a romantic person in ap- 
 pearance. Well proportioned, with dark aquiline 
 features, bright black eyes, and long curling hair, 
 he was a brunette Custer in his style and charm of 
 leadership. 
 
Behind the Curtain 95 
 
 Probably his most important act was leading 
 his band south in pursuit of the Missourian over- 
 land party of emigrants, the especial objects of 
 hate; since it was in Missouri that Joseph Smith 
 and his brother had been slain by the mob. 
 
 I had some facts given me by a little man, 
 whose name was Little. He was indeed insig- 
 nificant to look at, but a perfect wasp in the sting 
 of his words when he was willing to talk about 
 these things, "behind the curtain" as he called 
 them. He had a small farm at a little town 
 called Benjamin near the borders of Lake Utah; 
 and was well acquainted with Rockwell and his 
 band. What his former relationship to the 
 Danites was I never could get him to tell, but he 
 had inside knowledge of many dark deeds of those 
 early days. 
 
 "Old Brigham used to hunt down these apos- 
 tates with Rockwell's men, like you'd hunt rabbits 
 in the brush." 
 
 "What did he do with them when he caught 
 them?" 
 
 "Sent 'em to hell across-lots. That's the way 
 the old prophet talked of them as knew too much, 
 and had dropped out the Church." 
 
 "Well, what does that phrase really mean?" 
 
 "Just this. You never saw those men alive 
 again. They were caught slipping through the 
 
g6 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 canyons, east or west, but they never got clean 
 away. If any one asked for them it was said 
 that 'the Injuns raised their hair.' " 
 
 "You mean that they were killed and scalped?" 
 
 "Yes. But they weren't killed by Injuns, 
 though their scalps might hang at a Piute's belt." 
 
 That was as near as I could get Little to say 
 who killed them. You can reach your own con- 
 clusions. 
 
 The Mormons had a crude doctrine, which they 
 derived from the Old Testament theology. 
 Human blood might be shed when necessary. The 
 red line is seen running through these Jewish writ- 
 ings. The Mormons called this doctrine "Blood 
 Atonement," and meant by it, that the shedding 
 of a man's blood, though it destroyed his body, 
 was the means of saving his soul from final 
 apostasy. To the Latter Day Saint, who was 
 initiated in all his religious ritual, it was the un- 
 pardonable sin to forsake the Church of the 
 Latter Days, once you had become a member. 
 
 I tried to get Little to give me the names of 
 these men who died, because they had dropped 
 out of the Church, and also the dates and places 
 of their deaths. He was mum. 
 
 "See, I've had to' take a fearful oath to keep 
 silent. I dare not tell. The Church, here, is a 
 secret order, and has its penalties, which are 
 
Behind the Curtain 97 
 
 carried out." 
 
 "Well there is no fear of that now that Brig- 
 ham is dead at last, is there?" 
 
 He only shook his head. This conversation 
 was in October, 1877, two months after the auto- 
 crat of the Mormons had died in Salt Lake City. 
 
 I met Bill Hickman when in Bingham Canyon 
 at the mining camp. This was in 1875. Porter 
 Rockwell was not living then, and Hickman had 
 himself dropped out of action, although you 
 could not say that he was an apostate. He was 
 a stout-built, cynical-featured man, with an eye 
 that glittered and said things; but his lips were 
 silent as to the past. He was not put out of the 
 way, because, as he himself said, "I know too 
 much for them to do it." 
 
 He was still an active man, although his hair 
 was grey; but his mount of a horse was like that 
 of a cowboy in the round up days, and you could 
 see that his home was in the saddle. He dropped 
 to his feet with the soft touch of a cat, and in his 
 earlier years he must have been a hard man to 
 handle in a fight. 
 
 Both Rockwell and Hickman were at Mountain 
 Meadows in '57, when the hundred and fifty Mis- 
 sourians, on their way to California, were killed 
 to the last man and child by the Indians (?). 
 
 It would have been a great thing to have gained 
 
 
 V 
 
98 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 an account of that massacre from Hickman, but 
 when asked, he only answered with a shrewd lift 
 of his eyes. 
 
 There was a man whom I knew, an old soldier 
 of Uncle Sam, who was one of the first of the 
 soldiers who came to the Territory prior to the 
 Civil War when the Government thought it wise 
 to have a military camp in the neighborhood of 
 Salt Lake City. 
 
 This man fell in love with a daughter of Utah, 
 a buxom young woman, who beguiled him into 
 joining the Mormon Church in order to marry 
 her. He was never at heart a very loyal Mor- 
 mon, and so was in a frame of mind to give im- 
 partial testimony. 
 
 John Bennet was of Scotch birth, and could 
 never get away from the conscience for truth, 
 which he had imbibed from the Old Kirk. 
 
 I met him in American Fork, and found he 
 knew a good deal of the past of the Danites, and 
 was willing to talk. 
 
 "Were you here in 1857, when the Missouri 
 party went south?" 
 
 "Yes, I saw them go through this town, a tired 
 looking lot." 
 
 "How did you treat them?" 
 
 "None of us loved a Missourian. They had 
 badly treated us fourteen years before and we had 
 
Behind the Curtain 99 
 
 not forgotten. These emigrants were hard up 
 and wanted to buy supplies from us. We wouldn't 
 sell them a thing." 
 
 "Didn't you do anything for them?" 
 
 "Just a little. I had no personal reason to hate 
 'em, so I gave, to a tall thin man with a big 
 family, a sack of flour and a ham on the sly." 
 
 "You say on the sly; was there a watch kept 
 over them by the Mormons?" 
 
 "Yes, and a close one. The order had gone out 
 to let them feed themselves, if they could, and not 
 to take their money for any food; so I had to be 
 cautious. I felt pity for the sick wife of this man, 
 she looked so worn, and had such hopeless eyes. 
 I fancy she foresaw the fate awaiting them far- 
 ther south." 
 
 "Did they stop here?" 
 
 "Yes, they camped a day, just outside the town, 
 to rest their beasts, and fill their water casks from 
 the lake three miles away. I talked to one man, 
 who wanted a drink for his wagon-load of young 
 ones. My house was not far away. I noticed 
 his hat as he took the bucket I gave him. It had 
 once been a fine felt hat and white. It was very 
 dirty from use, but he wore it so it resembled a 
 sugar-cone, with a string band around the bot- 
 tom. It looked like those conical hats the Mexi- 
 can greasers wear, only theirs are straw made and 
 
ioo Tenderfoot Days 
 
 this one was fine felt." 
 
 "Did you ever see him again?" 
 
 "No, but I saw his hat; I'll tell you about it. 
 After these people went on, a little rested, with 
 water but no food from us, all was quiet for a day 
 or two; then a band of the Danites rode into 
 town, with Bill Hickman at the head of them. I 
 didn't see Porter Rockwell, for I understood that 
 he had gone ahead, with a select few, to keep 
 close trail on the emigrants. 
 
 "They kept pretty mum. They were all around 
 and rode good horses, and seemed in a great 
 haste; for they left in a few minutes, in a cloud 
 of dust." 
 
 "Did you see this band again soon?" 
 
 "Yes,, in about ten days I suppose, they came 
 back a weary looking lot; but this time they had 
 something to say." 
 
 "What was their report?" 
 
 "That the Missourians were all killed by the 
 Indians, who had caught them unawares and sick 
 at Mountain Meadows, far to the south and 
 every man, woman and child had been scalped." 
 
 "How did they speak of this massacre?" 
 
 "Well, they said, it served 'em right. They 
 got their dues for what they did us years ago ! 
 The Indians have saved us a lot of trouble." 
 
 "Did the Danites show any signs of being in 
 
Behind the Curtain 101 
 
 the fight?" 
 
 "Yes, a few had wounds. They all had more 
 weapons than they needed apiece. And one man, 
 I am certain, wore that conical white felt hat 
 that had been on the head of the tall, lean Mis- 
 sourian whose family I watered at my place. I 
 was curious and got near to him to ask about it, 
 but he wouldn't talk. Yet I saw a bullet hole in 
 that hat, that showed that its wearer had been in 
 a fight, before it fell from the head of its first 
 owner." 
 
 The Battle Axes of the Lord, the Piutes were 
 a good disguise for the Danites, and scape-goats 
 for the blame of this massacre. There is little 
 doubt, both Utes and Destroyers, were together 
 in the deed. Doubtless they looked like a band 
 of hostile Indians. In that far-away meadow, the 
 grass was red with blood, shed to avenge an an- 
 cient wrong, done by other Missourians, and in 
 this was fulfilled, to the letter, the old Jewish cry 
 of, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." 
 The avengers of blood got the blood they sought 
 after fifteen years of vengeful waiting. The 
 mills of time grind slow, but they grind most 
 surely their grist. 
 
 The Piutes of the San Pete and Sevier valleys 
 had the odium of this massacre in the eyes of the 
 public for many a long day. There were those 
 
102 i Tenderfoot Days 
 
 who knew enough to be dissatisfied with this stere- 
 otyped explanation, and it took twenty years 
 more for justice to bring the evil doers to its bar. 
 
 It was in the spring of 1877 that one saw a 
 satisfied expression on the face of every Gentile 
 in the Territory. The United States Courts, af- 
 ter years of examination and preparation of the 
 case, at last had prosecuted to the full extent of 
 the law the murderers of the emigrants of '57. 
 
 The culprit was no Indian. He was a white 
 man. It might have been Brigham Young him- 
 self, since he was autocrat of both Church and 
 State in those days. He skillfully evaded the 
 blow, which he saw was inevitable, and it was 
 allowed to fall upon the local Bishop, John Tf 
 Lee. He was the responsible person, through 
 whom, the authorities carried out their purposes 
 in that locality. Although promises were made 
 to him that he should be safe-guarded from gov- 
 ernment prosecution, he was allowed to carry all 
 of the responsibility to the last. 
 
 Having been found guilty by the government, 
 the higher-ups let him go, as a sacrifice, and he 
 was "hanged by the neck until dead." 
 
 Everywhere that I went I noted the dismay 
 of the Mormon that the government could ferret 
 out so old a misdeed. No effort of the Church 
 could offset the chagrin of the people. 
 
 % 11 Yl 
 
Behind the Curtain 103 
 
 I suppose many other deeds, committed in the 
 same high-handed and fanatical way, were trou- 
 bling the leaders. They feared that they also 
 might be brought to the bar of justice, and the 
 guilty ones punished. There is no question that 
 a good deal of killing took place between 1850 
 and 1865 that was not due to accident, Indians, 
 personal quarrels of a frontier population, but 
 was the result of fanaticism. 
 
 It went about arresting men and women, who 
 were not staunch of faith, and was not content 
 with putting them into prison on manufactured 
 charges, but put them to death in a quiet way. 
 
 But it was the spectacular and wholesale killing, 
 together with the vengeful boastings of the 
 Church, that called so much attention to the 
 Mountain Meadow's crime and so brought the 
 sword of Justice to smite in behalf of the law. 
 
 As we study human nature and history, we find 
 this strange mingling of good and evil in religion, 
 the red and white line woven into one strand. It 
 is hard indeed, as human beings, to be the judges 
 of such people and their acts. They endeavored 
 to do well and right, but they fell through the in- 
 fluence of an over-zeal, which swept them away 
 to folly and the spilling of blood in the name of 
 the Lord. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE CREED THAT CAUSED THE DEED 
 
 "So many gods, so many creeds! 
 So many paths that wind and wind, 
 When just the art of being kind 
 Is all this sad world needs." 
 
 Ella Wheeler Wilcox 
 
 THE shot does not leave the gun unless there 
 is a powder charge behind it. The things 
 which I have noted before and behind the Cur- 
 tain of Events in Utah, could not arise without a 
 sufficient cause. 
 
 That cause is found in the creed of the people 
 who settled the Territory while yet a wilderness, 
 the hunting ground of nomadic Indians. 
 
 A history of world populations records the 
 shedding of much human blood at the behest of 
 creeds. It is the easy mistake of earnest faith to 
 follow the path of intemperate zeal. Egypt, 
 Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome, as nations, 
 saw the priests of religion offering the blood of 
 104 
 
The Creed that Caused the Deed 105 
 
 human beings to the gods, on splendidly built 
 altars. The same is true of the New World. 
 Cortez and his men-at-arms, great shedders of 
 human blood, beheld the Aztecs of Anahuac, an- 
 cient Mexico, offering human sacrifices at the al- 
 tars' steps; yet these Spaniards in the retreat of 
 "Noche Triste," the Doleful Night, shed as much 
 blood of the Aztecs as religion had done in a 
 score of years; since that older Doleful Night, 
 when Caiphas, the High Priest, spoke concern- 
 ing Jesus of Nazareth, "It is expedient that one 
 man die for the people." 
 
 In every land and clime, human blood has been 
 offered in religious sacrifice. In Jewish ancient 
 days, in Classic days, in the days of Nero, in those 
 of the Inquisition, in Auto-da-Fe's, on St. Bar- 
 tholomew's Eve in Paris, at Smithfield fires in Lon- 
 don, in Protestant and Catholic revenges, in Flor- 
 ida and Louisiana, — on to the days of the Mis- 
 souri mob-violence, when the two Mormon 
 Smiths fell, the holocaust of blood for religion's 
 sake was continuous, until the slaughter in the 
 lonely wastes of Southern Utah showed the error 
 of it all. 
 
 To use a theologic term, the Mormon creed is 
 Anthropomorphic. It teaches a materialized 
 Deity with body, parts and passions as a man. 
 Here we have the key to this creed of strangely 
 
106 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 mixed theory and practice. I do not go into the 
 matter of the credibility and genuineness of the 
 Mormon books of belief. A war of words has 
 raged since 1827, and there is no need of another 
 syllable on the thread-bare subject. What I say 
 here I have gathered from the printed sermons 
 of such leaders as Brigham Young, Orson Pratt, 
 Heber C. Kimball, Orson Hyde, and Lorenzo 
 Snow; all discourses published by the press of the 
 Mormon Church, between 1855 and i860, in Salt 
 Lake City. In these discourses I found the doc- 
 trines really preached to, and accepted by, the 
 people. These rough, and often rude, pulpit 
 teachings were subsequently 1 withdrawn by the 
 Church authorities at Salt Lake, and at the time 
 of my sojourn in Utah, it was difficult to purchase 
 the volumes. However, a friend of mine in 
 Provo, a county seat overlooking Lake Utah, 
 loaned four of the volumes to me for examination, 
 but would not sell them at any price, and after re- 
 turning them I was unable to secure other copies. 
 As I remember these sermons to the people, 
 they seemed to teach that Adam was the only 
 God of this world; and he was also the God of 
 Jesus Christ. It was admitted that Christ had 
 a previous era before appearing in this world, and 
 that he is to have a future era of Millennial Tri- 
 umph in Salt Lake City. This is affirmed with 
 
The Creed that Caused the Deed 107 
 
 strength. 
 
 There is a strong tinge of Millennialism and of 
 modern Russellism in these teachings. But Christ 
 is as God to Joseph Smith, and so this first prophet 
 of the Faith called the Church he established 
 "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day 
 Saints." Now follows the nut of all this. It is 
 this. That Joseph Smith is the god of this gen- 
 eration of men, and so the Latter Day Saint re- 
 gards his assassination with the same feeling that 
 orthodox Christians regard the crucifixion of 
 Christ by the Jews. 
 
 According to these sermons, Joseph Smith, 
 when living in Wayne County, New York State, 
 was visited by the angel Moroni, son of the 
 prophet Mormon, who revealed to him the an- 
 cient history of America. He showed him the 
 written plates, whose hieroglyphics were inter- 
 preted by the stones, called the Urim and Thum- 
 mim. 
 
 He learned that America was first peopled by 
 Noah, and later by the family of Lehi, a rem- 
 nant of the Jews who had escaped from captivity 
 in the days of King Zedekiah. These came across 
 to Chili, and then traveled north by the Pacific 
 coast, and so became the progenitors of the Red- 
 men. Eras of faith and apostasy followed to the 
 year before Christ 500, when the prophet Mor- 
 
108 , Tenderfoot Days 
 
 mon was slain, and these record plates were hid- 
 den in the hill Cumorah in Wayne County, there 
 to remain until time was ripe to reveal them to 
 Joseph Smith by the visit of the angel Moroni. 
 
 This angel further revealed that this book of 
 Mormon was to be added to the scriptures of the 
 Old and New Testament. The Faith, founded on 
 the whole of these books, was to be preached until 
 the Millennial Dawn of Christ's Triumph. This 
 Triumph should be reached in the interior of 
 North America, in the tops of the mountains. 
 Moreover this Latter Day Faith was to be the 
 recipient of everyday revelation from Heaven to 
 its leaders. As an organization, it was to include 
 all the ancient orders of priesthood. 
 
 It had two kinds of priesthood: The Melchi- 
 zedek, which included the Prophet, the First Pa- 
 triarch, the Twelve Apostles, the Seventy Coun- 
 cillors, and the whole body of the High Priests; 
 and the Aaronic priesthood which included the 
 Bishops, Lower order of priests, the Elders, Dea- 
 cons, and Ward Teachers without number. 
 
 When I was a resident of Utah, it was claimed 
 that there were 7,234 religious offices in the 
 Church, whose membership was then estimated at 
 100,000 people. This creed claimed to possess 
 the powers of revelation, inspiration, miracles, 
 prophecy, visions, tongues, and healing gifts. All 
 
The Creed that Caused the Deed 109 
 
 these were in active use, and all this was supposed 
 to be resident in Salt Lake City in the Church, 
 called the "Latter Day Saints." 
 
 You can see at once how unlike any other new 
 western city this one was. It was another Je- 
 rusalem brought down to date. Welded to these 
 strange doctrines and excessive claims, were the 
 following very practical, and sensible teachings: — 
 
 "We believe in being honest, virtuous, and up- 
 right; in doing good to all men, and that an idle 
 or lazy person cannot be a Christian nor have 
 salvation." You see in this the powder that had 
 explosive force enough to make a telling shot, 
 with the multitude of half taught and visionary 
 people found all over the world of to-day. 
 
 There is no place here for the grafter, the 
 boodler, the promoter, the liar, the bum and the 
 tramp. In fact I did not find that type of hu- 
 manity among the Mormons. I had to go into the 
 gentile mining camps to come across that kind of 
 human trash. If my reader wants a full, detailed 
 account of this strange faith, let him read one 
 of the many worthy and competent authors who 
 go into this subject exhaustively, such as Burton, 
 Robinson, Dickson and Stenhouse. 
 
 Polygamy, so prominent, when I was in Utah, 
 was really an afterthought of this faith, and came 
 into prominence through Brigham Young, as a 
 
no Tenderfoot Days 
 
 new revelation in 1857. 
 
 The two Smiths, Joseph and Hyrum, the mar- 
 tyrs to Missourian violence, did not proclaim po- 
 lygamy or practice it, if their family descendants 
 are to be credited. The Josephite branch of the 
 Mormon Church repudiates the doctrine, and the 
 practice to this day. 
 
 So much in the Bible seems to condone if not 
 permit polygamy from the days of Abraham, the 
 father of the Jewish race, with his Hagar as 
 well as Sarah for a wife; to the times of Jacob 
 and his concubines with two sisters for wives. 
 Then uxorious David and his still more wived son 
 Solomon, whose glory so much bespoken was not 
 seemingly dimmed by his harem of one thousand 
 concubines. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at, that a certain type 
 of mankind should revive the polygamy of the 
 ancient world, give it standing by claiming a reve- 
 lation permitting it among the faithful, in order 
 to build up Zion with a seed of true believers. 
 
 It was not so difficult for a born leader and 
 master of assemblies like Brigham Young to rivet 
 this practice on a credulous people. He saw if he 
 succeeded in getting a good many good people 
 and leading men committed to this practice, that 
 he had them bound tight in a bundle of life from 
 which there was no escape and which would make 
 
The Creed that Caused the Deed in 
 
 them stick together against all opposition. 
 
 He saw how it would make the people singular, 
 and keep them intact from the seductions of the 
 world. He saw that it would prevent the social 
 evil of great cities, and, as a matter of fact, Utah 
 had no white slavers in those days. 
 
 He knew the Moslem element was strong in 
 many men, that a sensualistic God and carnal 
 pleasures as a reward would win with such men, 
 where the more spiritual and monastic teachings 
 of historic Christianity failed. 
 
 So with these factors at work, and the ap- 
 parent sanction of Old Testament scripture, to 
 give authority to a new revelation, Brigham 
 Young, a genius for religious leadership, pro- 
 claimed polygamy as a doctrine of the Latter Day 
 Church. 
 
 Yet polygamy has its horrors, and they were 
 constantly out-cropping in domestic circles. 
 
 I will relate a few instances that came under my 
 eyes. 
 
 While staying in American Fork, I met Profes- 
 sor Orbs, of the town schools. This school cov- 
 ered the educational ground from the elementary 
 to the academic. It was all under one roof. The 
 higher branches were but poorly attended. The 
 young men and young women could not come 
 regularly to the school, since their services were 
 
ii2 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 more needed in the homes and the fields. Orbs 
 was a scholar, and a graduate of old Bowdoin 
 College. After the Civil War was over, he went 
 west like many of the enterprising young men of 
 that period. He was finally invited to teach in 
 Utah Territory, and was offered a principalship 
 by the Mormon church authorities. He was not 
 then an announced convert, and his wife, to whom 
 he had been married only a few years, made him 
 promise solemnly never to become a Mormon. 
 On his agreeing to this, his wife consented to go 
 to the Territory. 
 
 When I knew them, they had been in the Terri- 
 tory some ten years, and Professor Orbs was rank- 
 ing high among the Mormons as one of them. 
 He had not kept faith with his wife, and she was 
 full of fears about the future. They then had 
 four children. 
 
 Mrs. Orbs came to me one day in great mental 
 distress. 
 
 "My husband is really going into polygamy." 
 
 The tears were in both eyes and voice. 
 
 "He promised me years ago never to do it. 
 Now the Church authorities have pursuaded him. 
 He says it is a step up, and will better his finances. 
 Oh! will you not go and see him; urge him to 
 give up this thing?" 
 
 "He is not sincere in thinking it his duty, is he?" 
 
The Creed that Caused the Deed 113 
 
 "He says he is, but the girl he is going to take 
 is but eighteen, and has been one of his scholars. 
 She thinks it is a promotion to be a wife of a 
 professor." 
 
 I did all that I could to comfort the poor lady 
 and promised to see her husband. I did this some 
 days later. He was quite abrupt with me, and 
 said: 
 
 "I think that this is no matter of yours. Our 
 Church believes in plural marriage. It is my 
 own matter." 
 
 I could see at a glance he was fully committed 
 to grieve his wife. It was the old incentive. A 
 new young wife was attractive to a middle-aged 
 man. He was ready to put aside his promise, 
 the society of his faithful wife, the children she 
 had raised in their home. The rosy young girl, 
 offered him by the Church, was irresistible to 
 a mind coarsened by the Mormon inoculation. 
 
 The next I knew of him was a new house he 
 had built for the new wife, adjoining his family 
 home. He left for Salt Lake City, and the En- 
 dowment House, where he went through the rit- 
 ual of taking another wife, and returned with her, 
 and the Church's approval of living his religion. 
 
 His wife was broken-hearted, and the condo- 
 lences of other polygamous women did not give 
 her any comfort, since she was not of Mormon 
 
ii4 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 stock, and kept intact her old Eastern views of life. 
 
 Eliza Snow came down with several of her 
 associates. She was the great woman of this 
 social horror. In public she spoke eloquently in 
 its favor. Quoted the Old Testament times, and 
 characters. She trotted out Abraham, Jacob, Da- 
 vid and Solomon, all men approved of God she 
 said, and whose polygamous children became the 
 ancestors of Israel. 
 
 "There is a higher exaltation for the women 
 who aid in building up Zion; who do their zealous 
 part to populate this territory for the Saints. 
 
 "We must occupy the land. We must keep out 
 the Gentiles. We must give him no place of rest 
 for the sole of his foot. Women only fulfill their 
 end when they bear many children. Children are 
 the great asset of the Church. It is the prophecy 
 of the scripture that 'in Zion the streets shall be 
 full of boys and girls playing.' " 
 
 Such teaching as this was given to, and received 
 by, a great audience in every town on Eliza 
 Snow's tour, in the interests of polygamy. I was 
 surprised at the audiences she drew. 
 
 My early opinion, that all women were opposed 
 instinctively to this doctrinal horror, was upset 
 when I heard these leaders, among the women of 
 the territory, thus advocating polygamous mar- 
 riages. They were women of good education and 
 were apparently refined, both in their manner of 
 
The Creed that Caused the Deed 115 
 
 speech and dress. 
 
 I felt sure that if it had not been received so 
 meekly, and willingly by the women of the 
 Church, and if it had been stoutly and socially 
 resisted by them as a body, that the practice of 
 polygamy would never have existed in the Mor- 
 mon Church. 
 
 That Church would then have stood on the 
 same basis for criticism as those other religious 
 denominations of America, that meet with no 
 overt opposition or persecution. By this doctrine 
 it stands alone, singular, as an anachronism; as a 
 reversion to the type of Old Testament days, and 
 is unfit for a place in these later days of higher 
 ideals for women. 
 
 While I was in San Pete County, I called at the 
 residence of the Bishop of Mount Pleasant. It 
 was not a pleasant errand I was on. It was to 
 make complaint of the hoodlumism of the youth, 
 supposed to be under his control, in stone throw- 
 ing at the hall where the Liberal school, and its 
 meetings were held. 
 
 The Bishop was not an imposing sight. There 
 was nothing stately about him, nor did he wear 
 anything like canonical robes, such as we asso- 
 ciate with the historic bishop. He was in his shirt 
 sleeves with slop pants and was carrying swill for 
 his pigs. He was evidently an industrious man, a 
 
n6 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 practical character. He had need to be. His 
 house was wide and big in style, since his family 
 was large. He had five wives and fifteen children, 
 and there was, of course, a financial side to this 
 establishment, which made the Bishop a rustler. 
 
 While I talked, I stood before the front porch, 
 which was a long, low screened affair, shadowing 
 the whole front of the house. There were dark 
 shadowy corners in it, but not sufficiently dark to 
 hide the array of womankind seated along its 
 length. Five women occupied as many chairs, all 
 busy with their hands at woman's tasks. All, did 
 I say? No, I must omit the fifth, the youngest 
 looking, who had nothing to do but look about. 
 She also was the best dressed. She evidently was 
 the favorite wife of the Bishop. 
 
 The oldest woman was grey, with eyes that had 
 in them a look of shyness, as well as pain. What 
 a history those eyes had seen in that household. 
 She was the wife of the Bishop's youth, and by 
 her age she must have seen something of the ear- 
 lier history of the territory. 
 
 The other three women were stout and healthy 
 looking and graded in their ages from the first 
 to the last wife; for no new wife, added to the 
 Mormon household, is older than her predecessor 
 on the polygamous list. This is so common, that 
 it is of the nature of a rule. It is the way also 
 
The Creed that Caused the Deed 117 
 
 of human nature, the way of the world, and may 
 I say, the way of foolish womankind; for with- 
 out woman's consent, this matrimonial horror 
 could not exist in a land of laws and freedom. 
 
 The wonder to me was the placidity of these 
 wives. The situation was accepted. What Mos- 
 lem ideas were growing up among the younger 
 generation, as they advanced in years and became 
 familiar with such a scene as I have described. 
 They had to recognize, from their infancy almost, 
 the many mothers of a Mormon home. There 
 was no fear of racial suicide in these houses. 
 Children were all around, playing in the dust, 
 before their homes, or out on the squares or 
 streets of the town, in fact visible everywhere. 
 
 The advocates of polygamy claim that for 
 health and growth they outdo the children of mo- 
 nogamy, since they say that the mothers have 
 more time and leisure to fulfill their maternity. 
 
 It is a subject that has its physical and medical 
 side, as well as its sociological one, but hardly fit 
 for discussion in a popular book for all sorts of 
 readers. I must say that I never saw healthier, 
 sturdier young ones than the Utah children. 
 
 Of course the splendid climate and the air of 
 these valleys, sheltered from the chilly blasts of 
 the eastern Rockies, with easy temperatures and 
 generous sunlight, accounted for much of the 
 
n8 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 rude health that I saw. 
 
 Also the outdoor life and the frugal food, due 
 to limited circumstances, together with the active 
 labor in the gardens and the field, from early 
 childhood, wrote health on the cheeks, put good 
 blood into the arteries, and a firelight and snap 
 into their eyes. Yet I also saw how this anoma- 
 lous state of matrimony coarsened the speech and 
 habits of young Utah, both girls as well as boys. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE PASSING PROPHET 
 
 "Your Fathers, where are they? And the 
 Prophets, do they live forever?" 
 
 Bible 
 
 THERE he goes ! The fraud ! The cheat ! ,s 
 Ole Petersen, of Ephraim townsite, in the 
 San Pete valley, added some vigorous oaths and 
 gestures to these words. He was an angry man 
 striding back and forth on the front porch of the 
 only public hotel in the little town. 
 
 I had gone to meet this tow-haired Scandina- 
 vian in the month of June, 1877, with the inter- 
 ests of the Liberal work at heart. He was one of 
 a few, in that section, who was opposed to the 
 backing of the Mormon Church. 
 
 This valley was mainly settled by people from 
 Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. They had re- 
 nounced the stately Lutheran Church of their coun- 
 try, and had welcomed, with enthusiasm, this Lat- 
 ter Day faith. It fed their fanaticism with prom- 
 119 
 
120 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 ises of forty acres of land, in each man's name, as 
 a gift of a new, practical religion, now existing 
 in free America. These people had come over 
 to receive their new start in life. By their industry 
 they had made homes for themselves in this broad 
 valley. Everything of their own here, they owed 
 to the church. Why should they not stick to it? 
 
 Now what was the matter with Ole Petersen, 
 that he should revile the head of that church, as 
 he was passing through this town of Ephraim? 
 He was an apostate of the most violent kind. 
 He had reacted powerfully against the Church, 
 which had brought him out, as a boy with his 
 father's household, years before. He had cause 
 for it, and that cause was concrete in the person 
 of Brigham Young, who was just then in full view 
 of this incensed son of the North Seas. 
 
 He had lost his property, and that loss had 
 caused his apostasy. All this was due to some 
 fine real estate machinery on the part of Brigham 
 Young's office. His titles were voided and he was 
 now almost penniless. He had been too free of 
 speech, for Ole Petersen was a tonguey man, and 
 the Church had paid him up for his talk, by tak- 
 ing away his estate. This was done through some 
 such crooked financial trick, as happens nowadays 
 in California, when an eastern tenderfoot is 
 fleeced by a real estate broker, whose office is on 
 
The Passing Prophet 121 
 
 the curb of the street. 
 
 Of course Ole Petersen laid all of his troubles 
 and losses to the autocrat of Utah's finances, Brig- 
 ham Young. And now this prophet was passing 
 by. He was taking his last ride from St. George, 
 in southern Utah, where he had wintered, and 
 was on his return to headquarters in Salt Lake 
 City. 
 
 Brigham had been sick. The strokes of time 
 began to tell on his giant frame ; and to face the 
 winter in the low altitudes of St. George, below 
 the rim of the basin and near the border of Ari- 
 zona's canyons, was deemed the best for him. 
 But a man of affairs must attend to his affairs. 
 Certain events of late, like the successful prose- 
 cution of John T. Lee for the Mountain Meadows 
 affair, and the odium that the hanging of this cul- 
 prit had brought on the Church, made it necessary 
 for the ailing prophet to get back to his seat in 
 Salt Lake City. So as soon as his strength would 
 permit, he started on a stage ride of two hundred 
 miles to the terminus of the railway, some hun- 
 dred and ten miles south of the city. It was a 
 ride through an almost hostile territory, since 
 through this end of the country the dead Bishop 
 had a host of relatives and friends, who were 
 angry and incensed at the coup the government 
 had made. 
 
122 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 Lee's own family were out with threats to shoot 
 the head of the Church, and, while Ole Petersen 
 was no relative, he was hot in sympathy with 
 these threats. 
 
 This was Brigham Young's last outing, though 
 he did not know it. He was not to fall from the 
 shot of some vengeful Mormon, but from the 
 stroke of disease. Dysentery carried him from 
 the sight of man the following August. 
 
 I had seen him two years before robust, though 
 aged. I caught a glimpse of him as he was now 
 passing by. He went fully armed and protected 
 like some European monarch in danger of assault 
 from disaffected subjects. 
 
 A cloud of dust announced the coming of the 
 cavalcade. He had left Manti, the county seat, 
 which like St. George was a temple city. In these 
 temple cities the rites of polygamy could be given 
 as well as in Salt Lake City itself. In this man- 
 ner the means of entering into polygamy was 
 brought to men's doors and the long ride and ex- 
 pense of a journey to Salt Lake was avoided. 
 
 Brigham had a great many friends in this valley 
 who took pains to protect him from Lee's two 
 sons, who were out to shoot. 
 
 "Here he comes ! Here he comes !" Such cries 
 brought me out on the hotel porch, with Ole 
 Petersen. 
 
The Passing Prophet 123 
 
 I had been talking with him, but found him a 
 restless listener. He was really listening for the 
 cries to herald the passing prophet. He fidgeted 
 and fretted. He was short and sharp in his an- 
 swers, and impatient in his manner. He ran his 
 hands through his hair, and pulled his long flaxen 
 beard again and again. 
 
 "That d — d cheat is coming through here to- 
 day. I'd like to take a shot at him." 
 
 "What has he done to you that makes you wish 
 to shoot him?" 
 
 I will tell his story in a few words. His parents 
 had died soon after settling near Ephraim and 
 they had left other property than the ranch they 
 had received from the Church. His people had 
 means to invest, when they first came over from 
 Sweden. Being a minor the Church had taken 
 charge of this property until he should come of 
 age. As soon as he had grown up, the Church 
 ordered him on a mission to Sweden to make con- 
 verts of his fellow countrymen. He knew what 
 this meant, since a Mormon missionary was sent 
 forth at his own charges and had to make his own 
 way and provide for his own expenses. 
 
 It was a very hardy and wonderful experience 
 that the Mormon missionary had to face, if sent 
 on a mission. Nothing but the hottest faith and 
 zeal could meet the need. Now Ole Petersen had 
 
124 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 cooled off from the faith of his people. He had 
 seen some things since childhood that he did not 
 like, and there were many things he could not be- 
 lieve. He had been born with a brain that wanted 
 to think out things, and not take them for granted 
 just because they were spoken with authority. 
 
 So he refused the mission, and decided to stay 
 and work his property himself. This did not suit 
 the Church, which had long used his property, 
 and did not intend to surrender the control of it. 
 
 He was disciplined for his disobedience, and it 
 was declared that he had forfeited his rights, and 
 the Church further claimed that the investments 
 made by the parents had proven failures, so there 
 was very little due him. 
 
 This little he was given. He was mad all 
 through, and left the Church's jurisdiction; and 
 was counted an apostate to whom the Church 
 owed nothing. He interviewed Brigham Young, 
 who had been very rough with him. He had gone 
 away in a hot-headed rage, and. his little home 
 being in this fanatical town of Ephraim, he had 
 had a fighting time with words and blows. 
 
 Yet he had the old Viking spirit, which kept 
 him on the field. He had not sold out, and left 
 for other parts, but stood his ground. He was 
 trying to get a Liberal school into this seat of 
 Mormonism. That was how I happened to meet 
 
The Passing Prophet 125 
 
 him that hot day in June. 
 
 If all this had occurred ten years earlier, Ole 
 Petersen would have been "sent to hell across 
 lots," like many others who had fought the 
 Church of their early faith. 
 
 "Here he comes! Here he comes!" 
 
 These repeated cries brought Ole out into the 
 dusty road, as the trotting cavalcade came up the 
 street. 
 
 Thirty Piute warriors in paint, feathers, and 
 blankets, rode first with their guns across their 
 saddles. These "Battle Axes" of the Lord had 
 watchful eyes for any movements that looked like 
 action. Ole eyed them as fiercely as they eyed 
 him, and the others in the crowd. 
 
 Next came a four horse covered carriage, with 
 an armed rider on each side of the vehicle. 
 Within, and yet in view, sunk back in the rear seat, 
 with a tired air of a sick man, sat the Prophet. 
 I caught a full view of his grim, grey bearded 
 face, sicklied over by long illness, with a sallow 
 tint so unlike the rugged hue that I had noticed in 
 the Tabernacle two years before. He looked an- 
 noyed as he leaned slightly forward, when he 
 caught the sound of Ole Petersen's strident voice. 
 
 "Oh! you Cheat! Oh! Church Fraud! You 
 coward to forsake your tools! You are the man 
 that they should have hung instead of Lee!" 
 
126 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 Ole Petersen's arms were in the air, but without 
 weapons; and this lanky, angry man shook his 
 fist at Brigham, as he rapidly drove past. A mo- 
 tion with a weapon, and there would have been a 
 hail of bullets about us. 
 
 The last I saw of Brigham Young was the tight- 
 ening of the mouth until it was a thin, firm slit 
 within a grey bearded face, that you see in the 
 characteristic pictures of this Mormon leader. 
 His hands clenched the seat as the carriage 
 swayed; and I had looked my last at the passing 
 prophet. He looked the sick man that he was. 
 
 "May you die the death! May God strike you 
 down!" This was Ole's parting shot as the car- 
 riage, and its advance riders, swept on. As events 
 showed, these words were more deadly than any 
 shot that he might have fired. 
 
 Thirty white guards followed close in the rear, 
 garbed like cowboys and armed. These men 
 grinned at us, and some few of them sneered at 
 the angry Swede, vociferant in the roadway. Then 
 the dust rose up, and hid them all from sight. 
 
 I never thought that Ole's imprecation would be 
 so soon fulfilled. I could see death in the eye of 
 this aged despot, and so expected his passing from 
 the world would not be long delayed. But hardly 
 two months elapsed when word came south that 
 the President of the Church of the Latter Day 
 
The Passing Prophet 127 
 
 Saints had left for the bourne from whence no 
 traveler returns. 
 
 There are some ancient faiths that proclaim 
 their saneness of life and creed, through the suc- 
 ceeding ages and changes. But all such become 
 inert, and if seemingly quick with life, it is but a 
 galvanized vitality like the movements of a dead 
 toad under the electric spark applied to a limb. 
 
 See how intact China, the oldest of all coun- 
 tries, has remained after the first discoveries and 
 civilization. It would not change. It would not 
 learn. So with Buddhism. It was content to med- 
 itate and forego action. It held its ground for 
 ages by the force of some fine, if not beautiful, 
 ideas, but where it lives to-day it is a quiescent 
 faith, its force lost to any dominance of the world. 
 
 Mormonism has truth elements within its 
 bosom, and because of this, it will live and thrive ; 
 but unless it sloughs off the anachronisms and su- 
 perstitions, it will be weighted with a corpse that 
 will hold it to a body of death which will retard 
 its power. But it has a practical element welded 
 to its theories, and this may cause it to change with 
 the times, and keep up with those times as they 
 change. 
 
 A heavy step in the entry, and a sharp knock on 
 the door, of the Liberal Hall, in Mount Pleasant, 
 and I opened to admit Ole Petersen, an excited 
 
128 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 and delighted man. 
 
 "You've heard the news? That Rascal's gone 
 to his account. My curse came true!" 
 
 There were many who felt like Ole Petersen, 
 but a great mourning was made throughout the 
 territory, as this modern Prophet passed from 
 among his people. 
 
 I soon got word from superficial observers of 
 the conditions in Utah, that now the Master Mind 
 was gone and his voice silent, the Church, which 
 he had built up, would crumble and break. This 
 was the general idea, just then, but it was a false 
 one. 
 
 This singular mixture of the practical and the 
 spiritual, withstood a change of leaders with about 
 the same ease that a kingdom meets the cry of, 
 "The King is dead! Long live the King!" 
 
 The old order of things went on under a new 
 management. The system was well fitted to meet 
 greater changes than a death could bring, and 
 even to face a new condition, and prosper in a 
 new environment, if necessary. 
 
. • 
 
 
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CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE MIXED MULTITUDE 
 
 "The Many-headed Multitude." 
 
 Shakespeare 
 
 IT was to avoid the so-called mixed multitude 
 that the Latter Day Saints sought an isola- 
 tion for themselves, and their posterity from the 
 every-day world. 
 
 In this they were the followers of the ancient 
 people of Israel, when they left the flesh-pots of 
 Egypt, by a most memorable desert march, and 
 sought the promised land. Canaan was, indeed, 
 such a land. Flowing with milk and honey — sup- 
 plied with cattle and bees — it was a land of olive 
 orchards and vineyards, watered by the early and 
 later rains, and well fitted to be a sample to these 
 modern wanderers, in their search for a desired 
 habitation. 
 
 I have shown how they found their heart's de- 
 sire in the secluded mountain valleys of Utah, 
 how also they sought to keep off intrusion, and 
 129 
 
130 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 to protect themselves from schism and apostasy. 
 I have shown the logical outgrowth of their creed. 
 It was pride in their peculiar customs and confi- 
 dence in their religion, which nerved them for all 
 this strenuous endeavor through forty years of 
 patient, persevering, and conquering industry. 
 
 Now they deserve their meed of praise for this 
 activity of mind and body, for changing a waste 
 into a garden, and in place of Indian tribes, 
 peopling the land with a civilized population. 
 They have done a good turn for the United 
 States, for while their religious policies have made 
 them often disloyal and antagonistic to Federal 
 Law; they have opened to commerce an immensely 
 rich region of soil and minerals, which would have 
 remained quiescent for fifty years longer. 
 
 I have tried to be fair and just to these people, 
 and while noting their errors of reason and ac- 
 tion, I have also noted their good intentions and 
 their hardihood, in all their history, as far as I 
 have had occasion to touch upon it. 
 
 For long years none but the wandering, curious 
 hunters and trappers travelled these Utah valleys, 
 save the Indian tribes native to the region. The 
 Mormon Church had no fear of friction with such 
 elements. 
 
 It was the "mixed multitude" they feared, and 
 for as long as possible they kept it at a distance. 
 
The Mixed Multitude 131 
 
 At last there filtered out of these mountains, car- 
 ried by Dame Rumor, stories of mineral wealth, 
 of gold and silver deposits in the hills; stories like 
 those coming from California in the '50's, which 
 set on fire such a tremendous enthusiasm for the 
 Pacific Slope. 
 
 Men stubbing their toes in climbing the foot- 
 hills after straying stock, had cast up nuggets 
 from the very "grass roots." Others, bending 
 over purling streams to quench their desert thirst, 
 had found "color" in their drinking cups. They 
 had stooped over to wash their clothes in moun- 
 tain creeks and remained to wash for gold in the 
 same vessels in which they rinsed their dirty gar- 
 ments. 
 
 Of course the usual exaggeration of these acts 
 gave a sort of Arabian Nights version to these 
 things, and they came to the eastern world with 
 all the charm of an Aladdin's Lamp. Then the 
 multitude stirred, and woke up. It cast covetous 
 eyes toward the hills which hid the Mormon 
 people from the world. Wealthy men "grub- 
 staked" hard up adventurers, and sent them out 
 as spies of wealth. They came, saw, and reported 
 that "the half had not been told." 
 
 This started a rush of capital and labor, 
 through the canyons by wagon road, and after- 
 wards by the Union Pacific Railroad. Miners, 
 
132 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 laborers, gamblers, storekeepers, cowboys, for- 
 eigners, Jews and Gentiles, one and all hastened 
 into these mountain solitudes which existed 
 through the policy of the Mormon Church un- 
 touched by the hand of Commerce. 
 
 Men of wealth, as usual, engineered the mass. 
 The era of the millionaire was at hand, but these 
 millions that came were from abroad at first, for 
 the United States was still over taxed, and stag- 
 gering commercially from the effect of four years 
 of war. British, French, and Italian money was 
 flung recklessly into the hills, to be sunk in am- 
 bitious mining camps, and stamp mills, under the 
 superintendence of men who had no interest in the 
 capital but their salary. 
 
 You can imagine the change from the quiet, 
 pastoral, and religious color of the past days to 
 the hurry, hustle, and vociferous business of a 
 new frontier life. 
 
 The Jew came in, as he always does, on the 
 crest of this wave of commerce. He seems built 
 for trade, and being both a genius at opening trade 
 centers, and a daring commercial gambler, he was 
 in Salt Lake City, and in every new camp of this 
 "mixed multitude" with his wares and ways. He 
 was too shrewd to enter purely Mormon towns 
 and so confront the great "Co-op." He wasted 
 no time on such ventures, but industriously sold 
 
The Mixed Multitude 133 
 
 his goods at three hundred percent profit to the 
 reckless crowd, whose taste for gold was ready to 
 pay any price for tools, goods, and food. 
 
 One son of Israel, I knew, a good kind fellow 
 he was too, who came into this business boiling 
 pot, with just a pack, and before I left the Terri- 
 tory, he was living in a palace in the city of the 
 Saints. From "Pack to Palace," in five years, 
 was "goin' some," as the miners say. 
 
 Now everybody could not do that, but every- 
 body thought he could. So you see the vim in- 
 troduced by the "mixed multitude," and the utter 
 impossibility of stemming such a tide. The Mor- 
 mon authorities simply gasped at the crowd, made 
 one futile effort to offset it with defunct laws of 
 the defunct state of Deseret. But they gave it up, 
 and grimly accepted the influx of new people, with 
 their new ideas. 
 
 At first this new tide of human life and industry 
 ran along by itself, very much as the muddy Mis- 
 souri does where its waters first enter the clearer 
 stream of the Mississippi. But you know the 
 universal rule. A little mud can cloud a whole 
 body of water, and while the Missouri loses itself 
 in the waters of the greater river, yet it is the hue 
 of the Missouri that gives color to the Mississippi 
 at New Orleans. 
 
 So with the "mixed multitude" and the Mor- 
 
134 Tenderfoot Days , 
 
 mons. Soon these newcomers inoculated the Ter- 
 ritory with their more modern notions of life, 
 and the two adverse streams, religious fanaticism 
 on the one hand, and the commercial greed for 
 gold on the other, ran a race side by side for a 
 decade; and then intermingled as one life in camp, 
 civic centers, and throughout the countryside; and 
 thus the isolation of the Latter Day Saint was 
 over. 
 
 So Utah, when I first saw it in 1875, was under- 
 going this change. The Missouri current of the 
 "mixed multitude" was giving quite a decided 
 color to the Mormonism of the past. 
 
 I saw a few signs of the old heroic days, but 
 wherever I went the stamp of the coming age 
 was evident, in the looser, freer speech, the less 
 respect, if not ridicule, given religion, and the at- 
 mosphere of hard materialism common to the 
 American frontier life. 
 
 The watchword in these regions, for a long 
 time, had been "Duty;" now it was to be "Dol- 
 lars." Loss and gain set over against one an- 
 other, as in most of the circles of this riddle we 
 call life. 
 
 The old settler, with his strong faith, gazed 
 sourly at this condition of things, and as sourly 
 proclaimed the coming wrath of God; but the 
 newcomer of the "mixed multitude" smoked his 
 
The Mixed Multitude 135 
 
 black cigar, stuck in the corner of his mouth, and 
 answered with a grin of derision, and a drive of 
 energy, that made the new order hum with the 
 engines of machinery. 
 
 Bingham Canyon sprang into life. It was a 
 great gash in the Oquirreh Mountains, facing the 
 salt sea on the one side, and the Utah Valley on 
 the other. It was a mineral fissure that drew the 
 crowd of "those who knew." It was not a high 
 grade camp, as those days valued mining camps, 
 where no ore was worked that did not yield forty 
 dollars to the ton; but it was a big camp, in that 
 there was no end to the veins, and the pockets 
 that were beneath its apparent sterile surface. 
 
 It was small then, with a population of four 
 thousand people, when I first put foot in the camp 
 one cold November day. It is now a mining city 
 that issues every year many millions in dividends 
 to its lucky stockholders. 
 
 Alta City, in the Little Cottonwood Canyon, 
 on the opposite side of the valley, in the Wah- 
 satch range, and still higher up in the air than 
 Bingham, with its altitude of ten thousand feet, 
 was a richer camp, and the site of the celebrated 
 Emma mine. This mine was sold for three mil- 
 lion dollars to British capitalists, but was found 
 afterwards to be a fraud, it having been "salted" 
 with "color" by the promoters to deceive the 
 
136 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 purchasers. 
 
 An amphitheater of hills, gave Alta City a 
 notable site. Dumps and tunnel exits could be 
 seen all around, and out of this circle of industry, 
 wealth poured and was carried down to market 
 by a miniature railway, with an average grade of 
 three hundred feet to the mile. 
 
 Nothing was withheld in the lavish outlay of 
 foreign money, that was making this a lively camp. 
 While it is true many became rich, it is equally 
 true that great hosts were made poor. This is 
 about the outcome of all mining and fulfills the 
 words of Mark Twain, who was himself an old 
 miner as well as an author — "As much goes into 
 the hole as comes out of it." 
 
 Park City was another outcome of this min- 
 ing fever. Situated in Big Cottonwood Canyon, 
 and nearer Salt Lake City, it was conducted by 
 a set of level-headed men who prevented any col- 
 lapse to the camp, as finally overtook Alta City. 
 The result was that while no furor was made over 
 its location, yet it always produced stable wealth. 
 Here it was that George Hearst, then a miner of 
 experience in California, bought out a claim from 
 a few discouraged tenderfoot adventurers. They 
 had come within a few feet of great wealth, when 
 they threw down their picks and said, "we quit." 
 George Hearst began the next day, and a few 
 
The Mixed Multitude 137 
 
 hours later was confronted with a vision of future 
 wealth. 
 
 He began his spectacular career, as a son of 
 fortune, at this time, and began building up his 
 remarkable success at the spot where others, more 
 faint hearted than he, gave up the fight. 
 
 Out of this mine came the means by which he 
 became Senator of the United States, as no man 
 at that time could become a Senator unless he had 
 a long, a very long pocket book. The state uni- 
 versity at Berkeley, California, and all the inter- 
 ests of the Hearst's Syndicate of American News- 
 papers, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, are under 
 obligation to this mine in the Big Cottonwood 
 Canyon. 
 
 Of course there were flat failures in some of the 
 camps. One such was at Tintic, where, at first, 
 great surface showings drew the rush, but it was 
 a case of "pinch out" for the camp, as it so often 
 is with a promising vein of ore in a shaft, or a 
 tunnel. It ends in a pocket, and a pocket holds 
 just so much, and no more. So Tintic, as a camp, 
 lies idle, dormant, dead. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE OLD PROSPECTOR 
 
 "Riches certainly make themselves wings." 
 
 Proverbs 
 
 THE prospector is the man that makes mining 
 possible. It is his enterprise, his everlasting 
 faith in prospects, his nerve and calm courage, that 
 does the trick. He casts a charm about lone grey- 
 hills whose land value is about "two bits" per 
 square mile, the price of a California miner's 
 drink. He rambles in the chaparral, sage brush; 
 and is familiar with the owl's hoot, the coyote's 
 howl, and the rattler's hiss. But he enjoys his 
 tin can repast, over a stick fire, amid such scenes; 
 since he lives expectant that a stumble of his foot 
 may unearth rich rock, that will give rise to a 
 camp to be known by his name as the discoverer. 
 Red Dick was such a man. I met him on the 
 slope of the Little Cottonwood Canyon one hot 
 afternoon in July. In midsummer the granite 
 walls of this canyon absorb the sun's rays, and 
 138 
 
The Old Prospector 139 
 
 the flinty rocks reflect this heat from side to side. 
 The bed of the canyon is at furnace heat during 
 mid-day, only cooling with the evening breeze. 
 
 Red Dick was wiping the sweat from a very 
 rubicund face with an old red kerchief, which he 
 wore loose about his lean red neck: the red flannel 
 shirt tucked into his old pants accentuated his color 
 characteristics, and the afternoon's heat. He was 
 spitting and swearing, when I came up to him, on 
 the trail to Alta City. His bottle was broken, for 
 a slip from his hand just as he lifted it, had let 
 it fall on a sharp flint at his feet. I saw disap- 
 pointment on the face of a thirsty and bibulous 
 man. It was not water he had lost, but the fa- 
 vorite old rye whiskey in common use, and this 
 gave greater volubility to his strong words. 
 Strong waters always beget words under the 
 stress of excitement. 
 
 "Say, Stranger, this is tough luck! Lost my 
 drink just at the lip!" 
 
 He eyed me anxiously, with the evident hope 
 that I had something stimulating hidden in my 
 pocket. Well, I had. It was not whiskey for I 
 cannot drink the stuff. I wonder that so many 
 men like its flavour. But I like wine, for my an- 
 cestors all drank it at meals, and I had been ac- 
 customed to its use, in that way, from the days of 
 my youth. I always thought of wine, beer, or 
 
140 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 ale as a beverage to be used as one uses milk, tea, 
 coffee, or water to quench thirst agreeably. 
 
 It was not a temperance age or locality, and a 
 strong drink was something everybody took, or 
 expected to take on a suitable occasion. What I 
 had was a flask of wine, some old Port, as a cor- 
 dial for the body when overtaxed or chilled. 
 
 "Here is something as good as what you have 
 lost," I handed my flask to him, with a smile. He 
 eyed it and myself, and grinned in a friendly way. 
 Next he tilted it to his dry mouth, and shut his 
 eyes while its contents gurgled down his long red 
 throat, his Adam's apple working , vigorously. 
 He was a gentleman, he knew when to stop. He 
 took a good drink as he knew I wished him to, 
 but he left me half the contents, wiped the flask 
 with his sleeve, and handed it back. 
 
 "Good stuff if it is wine ! It hit the right spot 
 at this pertickeler time." 
 
 I saw that he was a character, and was a prom- 
 ising find for a good story, so I set out to inter- 
 view him, like a reporter. 
 
 As to outfit, he was evidently down to bedrock. 
 A miner in luck is well, though roughly dressed. 
 This man had no coat, a very dirty shirt and hat; 
 while his overalls were held up by one lone sus- 
 pender. His boots, of course, were well down 
 at the heel, and almost open at the toes. Held by 
 
The Old Prospector 141 
 
 a thin rope across his chest, his bundle of blankets 
 hung under his arm. They were as well worn as 
 his clothes. He had tobacco and a pipe, for these 
 implements of the solitary came into sight straight- 
 way after the drink, and he filled up and asked for 
 a match. Soon the smoke was on, and I saw that 
 he was ready for a yarn, and so at it I went. 
 
 "Yes, I'm down, but I'm not out, pardner! 
 You can see that without my saying it. I've been 
 down many a time, but never quite out. Some day 
 I'll finish in luck or out of it; for this life is a 
 strange deal to some of us. Say! I've known the 
 day when I wore good clothes like yours. I got 
 a bit of an education to start with, so I knew some- 
 thing about chemicals and assay work. Yes ! I'm 
 an old Californian, and just missed being a forty- 
 niner. I was on the American River back of Sac- 
 ramento, in the early days, and panned out a heap 
 of gold dirt in those placer diggin's. Yes ! I 
 struck it rich there, but lost most of my pile when 
 I visited Frisco with a bunch of the boys. But I 
 had a good time, you bet! 
 
 "No ! never thought, in those days, of settling 
 down, or going into business. You see! those 
 times were pretty free, and the dust came easy 
 from the sands and rocks. We thought it would 
 never let up, but just go on that way; so what was 
 the use of saving the dust? Well! once I did buy 
 
142 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 a place. A poor fellow had made a farm out of 
 some flat bottom land on the Yuba River near 
 Marysville. He wanted to go East to see his 
 folks, as he was on his last legs, being a one- 
 lunger. I had coin then, and he hit me in a soft 
 spot I have at times. So I bought him out. You 
 never saw a feller so glad as this poor guy, when 
 he had my wad. 
 
 "Well! I had a ranch on my hands, and a 
 mighty fine vineyard too. I had stock and tools ; 
 a house and barn. In fact the whole outfit was 
 there. The boys plagued me to marry a widow 
 who had five kids of her own. She kept a feeding 
 house in Marysville, and the boys said it was a 
 duty I owed society to hitch up with her. Well ! I 
 didn't do it. I wasn't a marrying sort in those 
 days. I might have done it once back where I 
 came from. I ain't going to say where that was. 
 That's all closed, — final. But she was cattish, 
 and turned me down in a pet. So I felt very sore, 
 and I ain't got over it yet. 
 
 "My ranch was a bother to me, for I didn't 
 know a thing about farming. I like roving, and 
 this thing called for settling down. What d'ye 
 think settled it? The Yuba River! 
 
 "There came a flood such as you don't often 
 see. The whole Sacramento Valley looked like a 
 lake for weeks, and my ranch was washed clean 
 
The Old Prospector 143 
 
 off the earth by the time the water went down. 
 You never saw such rain, about like it was when 
 Noah went into the ark. Of course my ground 
 showed up after the freshit, but there wasn't a 
 thing on it, but mud and rocks, with some stranded 
 logs and timber. House, vineyard, crops, stock 
 all gone. So I let it slide, since the Yuba River 
 had changed its course, and ran partly over my 
 land. 
 
 "I wasn't pertickler sorry for I itched to get at 
 a pick again. So the old life went on. Flush one 
 year and busted the next. Went with the rush 
 to every new diggin's, till I got the rhumaticks 
 bad and had to quit for a time. 
 
 "Well ! I set up a sort of resort at Stockton, 
 which I bought with some coin I had left. I fed 
 the travellers on the road to the mines. I liquored 
 them at a bar, and let them gamble in my back 
 room. You bet I was popular. This sort of 
 thing did for a while, till a town fire burned out 
 the whole side of the street, and my outfit went 
 up in smoke. 
 
 "No insurance? Of course not. We weren't 
 that careful in those days. Bedrock again. 
 Then I joined a band of rangers to run out the 
 cattle thieves, and greaser bandits, which were 
 playing hob with the valley folks. In one hot 
 scrimmage I got a ball in the thigh that stopped 
 
144 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 horse riding for good, and brought back my old 
 rhumatiks. 
 
 "I was in a hospital in Frisco for about five 
 months, with one thing and another. The Doc 
 treated me fine, but shot an awful lot of stuff into 
 my stummick in that length of time. 
 
 "I came out thin as a lath, but full of go. I 
 went mining again, this time in quartz rock, on 
 the Mother Lode, at Sonora town. It was shaft 
 sinking, and I worked for pay, not for prospects. 
 I kept right poor, for it always took the whole 
 of my wages to live. D'ye notice that's the way 
 with a salary man, he can't save a bean, for the 
 life of him? 
 
 "Think of old age? No, never crossed my 
 mind once 'til one day in a barber shop I saw 
 I was gettin' grey and bald. You see I come of 
 a stock that frosts early at top. 
 
 "Then came the Colorado rush, and it carried 
 me right off my feet so to speak. A mining rush 
 always took with me. I joined a party of sur- 
 veyors, and we put through the desert for Denver. 
 If I was a writer I could fill a book with stuff 
 about that trip. I tell you we saw some awful 
 things; but to go on with this truthful yarn, pard- 
 ner, I prospected at Fairplay and Cripple Creek. 
 But, Lord! it wasn't like the old diggin's on the 
 Feather and Yuba Rivers above Marysville. No? 
 
The Old Prospector 145 
 
 Californey's the mining ground for me. It took 
 just four years to get foot-loose, and back to the 
 coast; as far as this derned Mormon country. 
 Say! I've just left them Emma Mine fellers, they 
 are sports, all right; but no good at cheating, like 
 them Yankee sharpers that sold them that salted 
 claim at such a Bonanza figure. Yes! I'm on my 
 way to Frisco, but I'm to try Bingham on this lap. 
 Anything doing over there, pardner?" 
 
 I have put his story in, almost without a break, 
 but I had to question him, at times, to keep him 
 going, in my endeavor to get his life story. 
 
 He was evidently nearing the age of sixty, and 
 I suppose, this old prospector would go on in his 
 way of life, till some day he would go over the 
 "divide," with about the same possessions he had 
 when he came into this strange life. 
 
 Looking at it in a broad spirit, would he not be 
 as well-to-do, as the man of millions, who, in dy- 
 ing, leaves his wealth behind for his sons to 
 squander, or his relatives to fight over? 
 
 Rolling stones gather no moss was written on 
 his face, and would be the fitting epitaph over his 
 worn body, when it occupied the only piece of 
 ground that he would own, when — Life's fitful 
 dream was over. 
 
 We exchanged a few things. He gave me some 
 odd specimens out of his pocket, and I gave him 
 
146 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 a few supplies from my travelling bag; for I was 
 horseback, riding old Blueskin, a veteran canyon 
 horse, on my way to Alta City. 
 
 The last I saw of him was his ragged hat, bob- 
 bing above some rocky points, as he swung around 
 a bend in the trail, going down hill to the valley 
 below, like a thousand more men of this strange, 
 strident, virile breed of prospectors. He was a 
 fair type of a set of men without whom the great 
 Rocky West could not have been opened to set- 
 tlement, railroads, and commerce. 
 
 It was a long uphill ride to Alta City, with 
 frowning walls high on either hand. Turn after 
 turn was passed, till at last we struck the snow 
 level, a little short of nine thousand feet altitude. 
 I stopped awhile at a wayside restaurant, kept 
 by a dapper little woman and her midget of a 
 husband. She gave me a meal for a dollar, — one 
 egg, two soda biscuits, a dab of butter, two corn 
 pancakes with a little syrup in a dirty glass, a cup 
 of coffee — of rather a washy kind — for my out- 
 lay. She said "vittles was dear as freight was 
 high." 
 
 She was proud of her husband, dubbed him 
 "her man," and asked me if I did not think him 
 a "proper sort," as he went out the back to hack 
 at some sticks for the fire. He seemed so obedient 
 that the big black cigar in his mouth looked out 
 
The Old Prospector 147 
 
 of place. She said that it was his "only failing," 
 and that a man ought to have some bad habits to 
 make him "real nice." 
 
 Refreshed, and my horse fed at about the same 
 cost as for my own food, I left the happy couple 
 of this upper world life to their restaurant and 
 its charms. By nightfall, I reached the camp, 
 just as the lights began to sparkle in the windows 
 of the buildings along the one main street. 
 
 I had a letter to an ex-Mormon elder. He was 
 in business, carrying everything in his store that 
 could be wanted in such a place. He slept in a 
 little recess at the rear of the store; where he had 
 an equally small kitchen. I know that we two 
 barely found room to sit down at a table, hinged 
 to the wall. He was hospitable and said I could 
 sleep on a shelf about three feet wide, under some 
 blankets. He started supper, first wiping out his 
 frying pan with some old copies of the Salt Lake 
 Tribune. He said that it was sanitary, and beat 
 a dish cloth, since you could use the paper after- 
 ward to start a fire. He pounded some tough 
 meat tender, he slushed his knives and forks in 
 some hot but greasy water, and laid them wet by 
 equally wet plates which had been washed in the 
 same manner as the knives and forks. He put 
 on a whole roll of butter and a lot of sad looking 
 soda biscuits. Meanwhile the meat frizzled and 
 
148 , Tenderfoot Days 
 
 some potatoes boiled. We had coffee out of a 
 big black can, that had stood heat and smoke of 
 many fires, but as it was strong and hot, it went 
 down. He had some condensed milk, then a new 
 thing, and of which he was very proud. Brown 
 sugar did the sweetening. Being polite, I ate as 
 he did, and made no comments. Still I enjoyed 
 this evening meal more than I did the mid-day 
 dinner at the restaurant on Main street the next 
 day; for I unfortunately passed through the kit- 
 chen at the wrong moment, wishing to dry a couple 
 of handkerchiefs at the big stove. Looking 
 around I was in time to see the Chinese cook in 
 the pantry making biscuits, and spraying the nicely 
 assorted nascent bread with his mouth in Chinese 
 laundry style. 
 
 That let me out. I never touched biscuit-bread 
 again in that camp, or in any other. I had either 
 pancakes or loaf bread. Still John did this in a 
 most innocent, matter-of-fact manner that made 
 me certain that it was the procedure in the prep- 
 aration of biscuit, by all such oriental cooks. 
 
 My host of the evening was a bright and clever 
 man. He had a fine mind, and so as we got onto 
 the subject of the Mormons and his departure 
 from them, we had a good talk on philosophy. 
 He was an advocate of the old idea of holding 
 your life views of religion, or aught else that 
 
The Old Prospector 149 
 
 was metaphysical, in an exoteric manner to suit 
 the multitude, and an esoteric manner to suit your- 
 self. That meant if it were popular and profit- 
 able, go with the majority externally, but mentally 
 hold your own view internally and subjectively. 
 In fact, be a hypocrite if necessary, but do not 
 give yourself away, if you change your opinion. 
 
 "Well if this is right?" I said, "why did you 
 leave the Mormons?" 
 
 "Well, I joined them because I had to; it was 
 policy and it was safe. You understand that I 
 left because I could leave them safe, since Uncle 
 Sam was here, and I did not like their views." 
 
 "Oh ! You left them because of polygamy, I sup- 
 pose." 
 
 "No. I could be a polygamist, if it paid to go 
 into that condition ; but not if I had to face poverty 
 and feed a lot of mouths. It's not a moral ques- 
 tion with me at all. Some are born to be polyga- 
 mous, and it is safer for them and their morals 
 to have several wives. No ! I saw more money in 
 these mines, and no way of making it if I stayed 
 under the great Co-op. I am running a Co-op 
 of my own right here." 
 
 "Well! when you get rich, what then?" 
 
 "The world is wide, and I will find a nicer nest 
 than rough camps and these loud-mouthed miners. 
 There are Art and Literary centers in Europe 
 
150 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 where one could live, if one had money." 
 
 This educated freethinker had some willowy 
 principles as the outcome of his hankey-pankey 
 playing with this "exoteric" and "esoteric" phi- 
 losophy applied to common every-day life. 
 
 Coming down from this mining aerie is no 
 tax on heart, but it is upon the heels. I left my 
 old horse, Blueskin for his owner to bring down 
 later, and took the trail afoot, since I had to con- 
 nect with the narrow-gauge railroad at the depot 
 eight miles below. At first over the snow it was 
 easy going. Although it was June there was snow 
 at this altitude, but as soon as I passed below the 
 snow line, I struck the ties of the tram-cars. 
 Mules took the place of the locomotive, as the 
 grade was five hundred feet to the mile, too steep 
 for steam. The mule cars had gone already and 
 I soon got into trouble with my heels. I had to 
 hurry, and so it was pound-pound steadily down 
 grade, my heels hitting the ties at every step. I 
 forgot the consequences of such foot-work. Eight 
 miles of this at top-speed and I made the train. I 
 also made some "tender-feet" too. The next day 
 I was on my back, due to contracted lumbar mus- 
 cles, from this severe jarring of the heels upon 
 the ties. The boys in camp laughingly called it a 
 tenderloin spine. .It was three days before I 
 could walk erect. 
 
The Old Prospector 151 
 
 While in Alta City I heard of a miner's easy 
 death. He was a veteran, and was ascending to 
 his work at one of the highest mines in the range. 
 The trail was long and winding, and the air was 
 thin at that great height. Out of breath, he sat 
 to rest on a jutting rock, a short distance below the 
 mine tunnel. From weariness he sighed, and as 
 he did so he expired. His breath came out, but 
 none returned. 
 
 "His heart but once heaved, and forever grew 
 still." 
 
 This camp has suffered from snowslides. A 
 wholesale tragedy of this kind occurred the winter 
 before my arrival. The food and ammunition for 
 the mines, in the winter go up the trail on pack 
 mules or freight sleds. This is slow climbing. It 
 is along a trail constantly covered by heavy snows, 
 and swept by avalanches from higher points. The 
 trail is too narrow to allow a team to turn round, 
 and there are only occasional places where the 
 width permits teams to pass each other. There 
 is no chance to increase speed beyond an unsteady 
 plod. In March a surface thaw had occurred, due 
 to a wandering Chinook wind from Oregon. A 
 heavy frost had followed. Then on this slip- 
 pery surface a heavy coat of snow had fallen 
 when Old Winter had shouted "I've not done with 
 that camp yet." A heavy deposit resting on 
 
152 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 such a slippery surface needed only a jar to start 
 a slide. It was this oft recurring condition that 
 gave to the gulch, where this tragedy happened, 
 the name of "Dead Man's Gulch." Nineteen 
 freight sleds, with as many men and teams, were 
 slowly passing the mouth of this gulch. The lead- 
 ing teamster was watching the crest of the gulch, 
 and saw the first signs of a slide, "the snow- 
 smoke." Instantly he yelled, "A slide! A slide! 
 Whip up, Boys!" Whips cracked and mules 
 struggled forward, the drivers looking up, with no 
 more time than for a look. With an increasing 
 roar, the whole slope seemed to start to life, and 
 swept downward. Snow, rocks, trees, mixed in 
 wildest tumult, formed an awful front which swept 
 on, and over the trail. A moment later nothing 
 was left of the long line of freighters but the 
 leading team. The driver was the only living 
 one to see this slide pile up in the bottom of the 
 canyon, the avalanche missing him by a few yards. 
 With his heart in his mouth, he pushed on, to Alta 
 City, to report the loss of all the others. Buried 
 a hundred feet deep they were hidden until the 
 July sun, melting the snow, exposed the wreck of 
 men, animals, and goods. 
 
 Another danger beset the traveller in this can- 
 yon. Near the entrance, and where the junction 
 of the locomotive railroad and the mule tram-cars 
 
The Old Prospector 153 
 
 occurred, was a mass of giant granite blocks fal- 
 len from the towering cliffs. Some were as big 
 as a house, others sharp-pointed like a tooth, while 
 more looked like huge pieces of cube sugar, so 
 square were they. These being accessible to the 
 railroad, they were being worked up by the ma- 
 sons for the walls of the Mormon Temple in Salt 
 Lake City. Asleep on these blocks and about the 
 crevasses were hosts of great rattle snakes, so nu- 
 merous that in the heat of summer you could de- 
 tect their peculiar odor as you passed by. A no- 
 tice, with the legend "Be careful," was erected 
 here for the safety of all travellers. A good deal 
 of revolver practice took place here ; the miners' 
 enjoying the sport of shooting off the heads of 
 these reptiles as they lay sunning themselves on the 
 rocks. I have seen the stage driver, with his skill- 
 ful whip, almost cut off the heads of some rattlers 
 near-by as we passed up the grade. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 A LIVELY MINING CAMP 
 
 "Thus far into the bowels of the land, 
 Have we marched without impediment." 
 
 Shakespeare 
 
 IF Alta City, as its name suggests, is a lofty 
 camp, Bingham City, in the opposite range of 
 the Oquirreh Mountains, was a lively camp. 
 
 I had often wished to see a typical mining camp, 
 to decide if the customary "gunfire" stories were 
 true, or exaggerated. Well! I found them about 
 true, as I will now relate. 
 
 This shanty city was along a narrow canyon, 
 which began in the low foothills, covered with 
 sagebrush, and then extended upward with a sinu- 
 ous course to what was known as Upper Bingham 
 where in winter the snow lies deep and slides are 
 common. 
 
 This is rather a treeless range, and there is little 
 that is picturesque in this canyon town by way of 
 view. What it lacked in nature, it made up in 
 154 
 
A Lively Mining Camp 155 
 
 human nature. All sorts of people were there. 
 To use the common phrase, "We are all here, 
 Jews, Gentiles, and Mormons." The business was 
 almost entirely Hebraic, the mining almost to a 
 man, Gentile, but not by any means gentle, and 
 the teaming and toiling by "Jack" Mormons, 
 meaning thereby such Mormons as had left their 
 piety in the valley, and were up in these hills, like 
 the rest of the human tide, "For what there was in 
 it." All these people meant to make money, and 
 then go home — "To behave and be respectable." 
 
 This canyon was well occupied by this indus- 
 trious town. Against the rocky sides the houses 
 pressed their backs, while their fronts, of most 
 varied designs of ugliness, looked boldly on "The 
 Street." This street was a narrow affair, without 
 pretense of road work, and was simply a wagon 
 trail up which loads of supplies and men were 
 carried. People thronged it because there was 
 no other place to walk. A sidewalk was an un- 
 thought-of thing. Little suggestions of such a 
 possibility were seen in several platforms, built 
 before the larger edifices, such as the saloons and 
 the hotels. These were nice things to land on, 
 in stepping from the stage on a muddy day, and 
 in good weather excellent places for pedestrians 
 to clean their huge boots, or take a "free rest." 
 
 When the weather was good and warm, these 
 
156 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 suggestions of coming sidewalks were occupied by 
 the idle and the tired to make swaps, tell stories, 
 take siestas, originate rows and quarrels, and any- 
 thing else to make life interesting in the camp. 
 
 The street was a sight at all times for a street 
 sweeper. The litter was terrific, for it was the 
 custom of the housekeepers to sweep the surplus 
 contents of their houses, with a dash of the broom, 
 into the street, and then to bang their doors with 
 an air of having got rid of a lot, and having done 
 a good day's work. 
 
 In this town there was no garbage brigade, with 
 shovels and brooms, to deposit this litter care- 
 fully in those bins labelled "For clean streets." 
 
 The grand climax to this was on Monday morn- 
 ing, after the strenuous work of Sunday was over, 
 the Camp's rest day but not religious day. Packs 
 of cards, used and cast away by those in bad luck, 
 were swept out by the barkeep, and the roadway 
 looked like an outdoor gambler's paradise. 
 
 The "hells" were all indoors, and you had to go 
 within to see them, and to smell them. I do not 
 deny that the odors of these places came out, but 
 the sniff you got when mixed with oxygen and the 
 ozone of the Bingham hills, was nothing in its 
 strength, to the full blast of the interiors. 
 
 The rest of this canyon was taken up by the 
 river or "Crik," that was always trying to pass 
 
A Lively Mining Camp 157 
 
 down and squeeze its way, with considerable noise, 
 over boulders, through riffles and sluices set in its 
 way by the industrious placer miner, and get out 
 into the open to find its peace in the bosom of the 
 river Jordan. I need not name the other occu- 
 pants of this narrow vent in these hills, since they 
 were only tarantulas, rattle snakes, and mammoth 
 spiders. 
 
 I came into the camp with a rush, for I was a 
 passenger on the four-horse stage. I had missed 
 the train, and took the chance to make the camp 
 that night by going through on Rory McDonald's 
 stage. He was a Scotch tough. I suppose that he 
 had been a good little boy in his early days, and 
 his "Scotch Mither" had made him toe the crack 
 to recite the shorter catechism. That may be, but 
 he had left it far behind and like many a boy 
 brought up to be "varra gude," he had swung to 
 the opposite extreme. Going west, and doing as 
 the West did in the '70's, Rory McDonald be- 
 came a tough, and carried a gun. He also car- 
 ried a charming brogue with a big Scotch "burr" 
 on his tongue's end, a tantalizing smile, an ogling 
 eye that disturbed the girls, and a most ingratiat- 
 ing manner, which made him many friends, and 
 popular with the travelling public. 
 
 There were several bloody affairs, gunfights and 
 homicides while I was there; but Rory McDon- 
 
158 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 aid was the man who was responsible for the 
 worst of these affairs. His glib tongue, and in- 
 different morals beguiled to his side as compan- 
 ion the wife of a lame shoemaker. The husband 
 was industrious in his way, but not a lucky man. 
 He did not climb, but remained financially below 
 par and his wife got tired of economy and poverty. 
 
 Rory McDonald was lavish with his money. 
 His stage line was paying, and he spent his prof- 
 its freely on this woman. Taylor, the shoemaker, 
 was chaffed coarsely by the men of the town, about 
 his wife. He was a pale-faced fellow, but his 
 courage was not lacking. Since he could not man- 
 age his side-stepping wife, he walked up to Mc- 
 Donald, and told him to "git heeled," as the next 
 time they met he would begin shooting. He 
 nearly began then, but since the sheriff was within 
 sight, several mutual friends parted the angry 
 pair. Everybody looked for trouble; but several 
 days slipped by. Men began to twit Taylor for 
 his easy sufferance of this blot on his honor. Then 
 it happened like a thunder clap. 
 
 Miss Minor, a young woman the niece of the 
 only resident physician, was standing on the porch 
 of her uncle's office, looking for the mail. As she 
 glanced down the street she saw a man coming up 
 on the opposite side, with a creeping, bending step, 
 and trailing a shot-gun. She recognized the red 
 
A Lively Mining Camp 159 
 
 face of Rory McDonald. It all happened in a 
 flash. A shout, as McDonald stopped in front of 
 the shoemaker's door, which was wide open. It 
 was a long narrow room, with the work bench, 
 and seat at the far end. There tapping heels, 
 Taylor was bending over his work. Following 
 the shout "look out" from McDonald, came the 
 crash of his shot gun, as it poured a charge into 
 the fated man. As an echo came the revolver shot 
 that struck McDonald's thigh high up. The sec- 
 ond barrel followed, and Taylor fell riddled, yet 
 in falling fired a second time. The bullet flew 
 high, through the open door, and across the street. 
 It struck the post of the porch, against which Miss 
 Minor's hand rested. Slivers of wood fell on her 
 head, and the bullet buried itself in the building. 
 
 I was up a gulch opening on the main street, 
 when I heard these reports. They sounded like 
 the falling of a lot of lumber from a wagon. Un- 
 til I saw men running I did not think the noise 
 was gunfire. When I reached the spot the crowd 
 held McDonald, who was white of face and bleed- 
 ing fast. Others were in the shop, viewing the 
 riddled yet breathing body of Taylor. He died 
 as they lifted him up. 
 
 Some were for lynching McDonald right away, 
 saying it was cowardly murder, to shoot a man 
 down in his store with no more warning than a 
 
160 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 shout. Others swept McDonald off to the local 
 jail, and had him out of sight in a few minutes. 
 A divided camp discussed the horror, and it soon 
 appeared that Taylor's friends were in sufficient 
 numbers to carry out their threat of a lynching 
 bee. The sheriff was persuaded to avoid a fight 
 by taking McDonald to Salt Lake City for safe- 
 keeping. During the early hours of the night, he 
 was smuggled into a wagon, under some baled hay, 
 and passed out of the camp without notice. When 
 the posse came to the jail later, the sheriff let 
 them look into all the cells, and then told them 
 they would have to go to Salt Lake City for 
 their man. 
 
 This was one of many coarse blood-horrors 
 common to these camps. Some months later Mc- 
 Donald's money and friends carried him safely 
 through a trial in court, and he came out free, 
 due to the jury's sentence, "done in self defense." 
 Taylor's threat "heel yourself," was deemed the 
 legal reason for the sentence. 
 
 McDonald met me in the canyon near the de- 
 pot, and came up with his usual ingratiating smile, 
 with extended hand. "I can't take your hand," I 
 said, "I think you did a cowardly thing. You 
 killed a man in an unfair fight." 
 
 "But he would have shot me, in the same way, 
 if he could." 
 
■■•'.■*' 
 
 DEAD MAN S FALLS, LITTLE COTTONWOOD 
 
A Lively Mining Camp 161 
 
 "Maybe, but he did not. If you had been the 
 man we thought you were, you would have called 
 him out, into the open, on even terms." 
 
 McDonald looked his surprise, then scowled a 
 moment, and turned on his heel with a growl. 
 
 He was always morose after that. It Is often 
 so. A man who is a killer soon loses his kindliness 
 of temperament. 
 
 Most of the camp ores went out by the narrow- 
 gauge railroad. They went to the smelters at 
 Sandy, at the junction of the broad-gauge rail- 
 road, from whence, in the form of lead, silver, 
 and gold ingots, they were transported to the 
 East. The passengers for the Camp came in on 
 the mixed train. Returning the engine remained 
 to bring out the loaded ore cars, but the baggage 
 and passenger cars made the trip by gravity, under 
 brake control; for the grade was, sharp most of 
 the way to the valley. I remember a wild ride, 
 by this gravity method, with a party of young 
 men of the assay and mining offices. We occu- 
 pied a number of seats together, and were in a 
 merry mood, since it was a vacation party. 
 
 In a neighboring seat was a middle-aged aggres- 
 sive Agnostic. At least he was loud in his pro- 
 fession of the philosophy of "Know-Nothing" as 
 to religion, although he was at the same time a 
 Spiritualist as to his superstition. I never knew a 
 
162 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 man of that stamp, who did not take up something 
 more credulous than the religion he rejected. 
 Moreover he was roughly Anti-Church and Anti- 
 Christ, and thus popular with a certain crowd in 
 the Camp. Now, none of us were of his way of 
 thinking. Most of the young men were not spe- 
 cially religious, although all of them had a little 
 of it somewhere in their make-up. I was openly 
 and avowedly religious, and tried my best to ad- 
 vance morality and sane religion in the Camp. I 
 had some influence too, and made public addresses 
 on Sunday, and conducted, the only day-school in 
 the Camp, on week-days. Mr. Agnostic sneered 
 at me, therefore, as an Eastern "Goody-Goody," 
 and took great delight, every Monday night, in 
 the Social Hall in ridiculing my addresses of Sun- 
 day. 
 
 Well; on this train he went for me about the 
 "fables" of the Bible. Especially he haw-hawed 
 over the Jonah incident, getting off the ancient 
 joke that "it was an awful fishy story, so fishy that 
 it smelled disgustingly of falsehood." I let him 
 go on for a time to see the kind of ammunition he 
 had to use against me, and a crowd gathered 
 around to listen, grin, and make "eye-brows" at 
 me. I was just beginning a reply to some of his 
 "points," as he termed them, when the car, which 
 had been slipping along very fast, gave a vicious 
 
A Lively Mining Camp 163 
 
 jolt which sat us sharply down in our car-seats. 
 
 Then the front door banged open, and the 
 brakeman looked in. Above the roar of the car 
 we heard his voice. "Hold tight all. We're on 
 the run. Brake's broke !" 
 
 We were just, out of the canyon proper, with its 
 many sharp curves, and were on the long straight 
 track for Sandy in the bottom of the valley. This 
 was fortunate, for the road was better ballasted 
 than in the canyon. We fairly leaped along, the 
 heavy baggage car behind the coach acting as an 
 accelerator. Mr. Agnostic was silent and sat still. 
 Soon signs of scare appeared, his red face visibly 
 whitened and he tapped his fingers nervously on 
 the seat. All of us were much stirred and took no 
 notice of him. We held our breath as the little 
 train swept, like a flash, past the telegraph-posts. 
 Some women aboard uttered suppressed shrieks, 
 bravely struggling with their oozing courage. We 
 expected a smash. I was anxious, but I had a mind 
 to note how differently the young men faced this 
 unexpected peril. Some had their heads high, and 
 nostrils wide, like a racer ready for the jump. 
 Others cringed in their seats and stared unseeingly 
 out of the window. A few fellows laughed. One 
 man swore. I did not hear a single outcry from 
 any man. It showed what a self-contained set the 
 Westerners are. In Eastern waters, when con- 
 
164 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 fronted with the probability of speedy death, I 
 had been among men of a more emotional sort. 
 I recalled a six-day gale in mid Atlantic, on a 
 liner, so poorly ballasted, and so narrow of beam 
 that she rolled to the extreme limit of gravity. 
 Occurring every few minutes, these desperate ship 
 swings broke everything that could come loose. 
 These violent rolls broke the nerve of both pas- 
 sengers and crew, so that I heard the fool, the 
 infidel, and the coarse liver, alike pray, spurred 
 thereto by fear. But after the storm was over, 
 and their fright passed, these men were the same 
 as before. "The dog returned to its vomit again, 
 and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in 
 the mire." 
 
 The other occasion was on the Canadian Lakes. 
 It was on a sort of "penny-whistle" steamer, her 
 engine and boiler were so small. She had an am- 
 bitious load of cordwood aboard, and was top 
 heavy. Crossing Georgian Bay from Parry Sound 
 we faced a furious storm. For five hours we just 
 barely kept our stem to the choppy sea, and had 
 the tiller ropes broke, or the helmsman lost his 
 nerve and hold, the little craft would have 
 broached-to, and gone down with all hands. Dur- 
 ing these wild hours, humanity was the same, on 
 this little boat of a freshwater lake, as it was on 
 the big Atlantic liner. 
 
A Lively Mining Camp 165 
 
 So, here, on this runaway train, it proved the 
 stamina of both women and men, the women show- 
 ing almost equal coolness with the men. Suddenly 
 we rushed and rocked past buildings which bor- 
 dered the Jordan River. Next we roared across 
 the bridge, and toward the rising grade leading 
 to the smelters at Sandy. We were safe from a 
 smash. The upgrade acted as a brake, and the 
 cars soon slowed down sufficiently for many to 
 drop off the platform, one after another, like ripe 
 pears from a shaken tree. The yardsmen slipped 
 a few spare ties behind the wheels, and the train 
 was at rest after a wild ride. It left us sobered. 
 Mr. Agnostic came out limp and tame, with his 
 aggression all gone for the time. He met some 
 cold, sarcastic grins from the fellows who had 
 noted his complete scare. 
 
 "Say! Old Man, you looked as though you 
 really did believe in a Hell!" 
 
 This was the salutation he got from a passing 
 miner, but he received no response from Mr. 
 Agnostic. He had lost his sand. We reached 
 Sandy Junction, to gather about a poor fellow who 
 was brought down from Alta City "leaded." 
 Long labor in lead ores brings on a painful disease. 
 The blood is devitalized, the flesh takes on the 
 hue of death, and the pain is both neuralgic and 
 rheumatic. No one can say that the miner is 
 
1 66 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 paid too much for his labor and risks. 
 
 It was in Sandy that I met with some old-time 
 courtesy from a modern young man. Perhaps 
 Mr. Terhune would not now be considered mod- 
 ern, but he was then very much up to the times in 
 his knowledge of minerals, and the roasting and 
 smelting of ores. The immense smelters at Sandy, 
 whose pungent smoke was wafted south, so you 
 could sniff the odor twenty miles distant, were 
 under his charge. Both capital and skill were in- 
 vested in the giant plant. Mr. Terhune showed 
 me the process, and the products, and the great 
 stacks of silver-lead bars corded up in the open 
 shed. 
 
 "Do you not fear robbery where so much bul- 
 lion lies about?" 
 
 "Just lift one of those bars and you will see if 
 a thief takes anything without noise. We have 
 our watchman." 
 
 An effort was needed on my part to move a bar, 
 and I saw how safe weight made wealth. These, 
 with other plants, helped to make silver another 
 cheap commodity, and give rise to the Silver Ques- 
 tion of a later day. Mr. Terhune was a product 
 of the old Dutch stock of Knickerbocker days, 
 and the amiable brother of a most gifted sister 
 whose name, as a writer, is well known far and 
 wide in the United States. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE TOWN AND CANYON OF AMERICAN FORK 
 
 "So green, so full of goodly prospect and 
 melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of 
 Orpheus was not more charming.'' 
 
 Milton 
 
 THE town of American Fork is a picturesque 
 little place. It is situated beyond the point 
 of the mountain divide that looks toward Lake 
 Utah. It fronts this lake, whose sheen in the 
 sunlight resembles "Blue Galilee," and is an 
 American Bethsaida. The spurs of the Canyon 
 are near and looking eastward the lofty knife-like 
 ridge of Mt. Aspinwall is visible for nearly 
 twenty miles. 
 
 I met some strangely interesting people in this 
 little town. I remained here some time to estab- 
 lish a liberal school, and another in the adjoining 
 town of Battle Creek. This latter place got its 
 name from a fight with the Utes in very early 
 days. I rode into American Fork in the rain of 
 a long-continued storm. My ride was made in a 
 167 
 
1 68 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 heavy-wheeled farm wagon and under a flapping 
 low-hung canvas cover. This afforded shelter 
 from the driving rain, but was a constant weight 
 on one's head and shoulders, since the bows were 
 so weak and few that the cover sagged under the 
 weight of the rain and the pressure of the wind. 
 On our way we stopped for refreshment at a 
 store-hotel. I hyphenate the word for it was a 
 combination of the two. Some visible groceries 
 and a strong odor of invisible cheese and kerosene 
 indicated the first business. A round stove with 
 round backed chairs about it, a huge spittoon, a 
 desk, a counter with a bar and bottles, suggested 
 the latter occupation. Also there was a rear room, 
 on the door of which was written in letters of 
 local talent, this legend, "DININ' RUME." So 
 we had hope of something to eat in there. 
 
 It was here I acted as a member of a volunteer 
 fire department. I sat drying my garments at the 
 expectoration-anointed stove, listening to the 
 sounds of frying meat in the rear roorri. Sud- 
 denly something soft, light and warm fell on my 
 arm. I saw it was a flake of burning soot. An 
 upward glance, through the stove-pipe hole, re- 
 vealed a light, and in an instant more a blaze. 
 The stove-pipe had parted with the heat expan- 
 sion, and the under side of the shingle roof was 
 on fire. "FIRE!" I yelled, and sprang on a chair 
 
The Town and Canyon of American Fork 169 
 
 to get at the opening. The others yelled too, and 
 the host came running in. 
 
 The building was one of those cheap shells of 
 unpainted rough lumber, which enterprising fron- 
 tier men liked to build in those days. So utterly 
 ugly that it was a boon to burn them down. It 
 meant sharp work, if we were not to lose our 
 supper, and our host his "Hotel." Sharp was 
 the word. The boss was up a ladder and on the 
 roof with a few movements of his long legs. Off 
 came the burning shingles. Others of us tore 
 apart the ceiling boards above the stove, and threw 
 up water from kitchen buckets, pans and kettles. 
 Five minutes later there was an awful mess around 
 the stove, a big hole in the roof, a rustling, ex- 
 cited crowd moving around, but the fire was out. 
 The host felt generous toward the helping com- 
 pany, and gave us a free supper of fried ham, 
 eggs and potatoes, with the usual "hotel" coffee. 
 
 We arrived in the town of American Fork 
 about dark. We passed a two-story adobe house 
 with dormer windows in the roof to lighten and 
 enlarge the upper story. 
 
 "Who owns that fine large house?" I asked. 
 It was so unlike the usual adobe house in these 
 Mormon settlements, that I was curious, and put 
 this question to the teamster. 
 
 "Oh! That belongs to one of Brigham's 
 
170 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 relicts." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Well, one of his widows, 'grass widows' I 
 mean. Mrs. Allen's her name; ought to have 
 been Mrs. Young, you know." 
 
 "Why! I thought Brigham Young married all 
 of the women whom he called his wives." 
 
 "So he did in a way. This one was sealed to 
 him in celestial wedlock. He is said to have had 
 several dozen married in that way. He had about 
 nineteen, or twenty, married regular in the En- 
 dowment House." 
 
 "Did he build homes for all of these celestial 
 wives or widows, what ever their relation might 
 be?" 
 
 "No ! Not he, but some pressure was brought 
 to bear in this case, and Mrs. Allen was a very 
 pretty woman then. She was a favorite of this 
 great personage." 
 
 "Oh! I see. Something after the order of the 
 European Courts in the days of the French, dur- 
 ing the reign of Louis XIV." 
 
 The teamster was an intelligent man but he 
 was not up in the history of Europe. He could 
 doubtless tell all about the small incidents of 
 American history from the Colonial days down, 
 but across the Atlantic was too remote to interest 
 him. 
 
The Town and Canyon of American Fork 171 
 
 Here I met a man from Aberdeen, "Awbur- 
 deen" so he pronounced it; and he was "that 
 Scotch you could see it a distance." It is not often 
 that the canny Scot is caught in the meshes of 
 "soopersteeshun," such as catches the more ex- 
 citable, and less cautious native of the States. 
 Robert and William Peters, brothers, were both 
 here. The former had been, and the latter still 
 was, a Mormon. In fact, William Peters was an 
 official, not only of the railroad, of which he was 
 the local depot master, but he was high upon the 
 rungs of the ecclesiastical ladder of this Utah 
 "Kirk." Robert had left, not only his first love, 
 the old Scotch Kirk of his boyhood, but his second 
 love, the church of his "beguilement," as he 
 phrased it. 
 
 "I was that looney onct, that I was caught, like 
 a feesh by the gills, and hooked for fair by them 
 Mormons," he said to me in explanation of his 
 position. 
 
 He was now a liberal and offered to aid me 
 as much as possible to start a school. 
 
 "My brither, Willyum, is still sae saft that he 
 sees not onnything but this new fangled kirk, but 
 I left the same lang syne." He had the true 
 Scotch grit, and was able to take his position and 
 take it alone. He led a lonely life, and made his 
 living by making shoe lasts, and was a master 
 
172 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 workman at his trade. He could take your foot 
 measure, and out of a block of maple wood, cut 
 your last so accurately, that a shoe, built on it 
 by a good shoemaker, resulted in the comfort of 
 an individual fit. Moreover, when you put these 
 lasts into ye • boots, we wore boots high up the 
 calf of the leg in those days, and the shape 
 "lasted." 
 
 This was another comfort, that once discovered 
 by those who could afford it, resulted in Robert 
 Peters' getting many an order for the lasts, both 
 for men and for women. 
 
 There is nothing like a singular handicraft, de- 
 pendent upon the individual skill, to make a man 
 independent as to bread and butter. This does 
 not mean that Robert ate much of either. For 
 he did not. He was a singular Scot in several 
 ways. He never married, and would only eat 
 certain foods of his own cooking. 
 
 He made Scotch scones, rather too solid for 
 me, and these, with potatoes and salt, and cold 
 water, constituted his main food supply. A little 
 herring and "parritch" three times a week were 
 luxuries. 
 
 "Sugar? No I niver ate it. It's just salt with 
 the parritch. Onnything else would spoil the taste 
 for me." 
 
 It was evident that Robert's simple food was 
 
The Town and Canyon of American Fork 173 
 
 not burdensome, and as the high cost of living was 
 then unknown, he kept well within his slender 
 means. 
 
 I found out that he put his savings into some 
 Scotch charities in Aberdeen, his old home city, 
 and also that he helped a little in the efforts to 
 establish schools in Salt Lake City. That is to 
 say he put in his mite. 
 
 "Twa'd be the saving o' the people, if they were 
 taught the Shorter Catechism and the Lord's 
 Prayer." 
 
 This was a reversion to type, by way of preju- 
 dice, and a Scotchman is nothing, if he is not 
 prejudiced in favor of something Scotch-born, like 
 the Shorter Catechism. At heart, I expect, he 
 was a believer in only a few of the universal 
 truths of all religions, but he kept up a bold front 
 about Presbyterianism, just out of opposition to 
 the dominant rule in Utah. 
 
 "I? Do you ask what I am? I am a true 
 blue Presbyterian," he said. 
 
 He reminded me of the Wood brothers of 
 Bingham Canyon. They were teamsters and 
 drove mules, bringing down timbers from the top 
 of the mountains to the different mining tunnels, 
 much timber being used to make these tunnels safe. 
 No man not a saint far advanced can drive mules 
 and not swear. In fact, it is said that mules in 
 
174 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 tight places will not move unless a volley of oaths 
 is first launched their way. This I had from sev- 
 eral Army men whom I knew, that had driven 
 mules in the Civil War. 
 
 I am afraid mule-driving is hard on the sanctity 
 of speech. The Wood brothers were Presby- 
 terians, "away back" where they came from in 
 the first place. They forgot all about it in camp 
 life, during the six laboring days of the week 
 while working with their mules; but on Sunday 
 they braced up. When they put on clean shirts 
 and collars — mark that — they put on something 
 of their old time "away back" religion, and went 
 to church, if there was one, and put their quarter 
 in the church collection. 
 
 So a good many at first sight considered them 
 staunch church people, but hearing them deliver 
 themselves of "mule talk" as they were driving 
 their teams, they altered these views. 
 
 "Saw two of your Presbyterian Elders to-day, 
 the air was bluer than their Presbyterianism, all 
 about those mules of theirs; the Wood brothers I 
 mean; better look 'em up, and give them a word 
 of spiritual advice," said a superintendent of one 
 of the mines who liked to be considered a humor- 
 ous man. Yet one of these men, sweaty and cov- 
 ered with dust and having sworn all day long, 
 showed signs of remorse. 
 
The Town and Canyon of American Fork 175 
 
 "Say, I know I'm not right, but a man's temper 
 can't keep with mules and they must be driv' that-a 
 way. I am goin' to get out of this business some 
 day and live like a Christian ought." 
 
 I tell this because it is so with hundreds of 
 men out West. They know the way that they live 
 is not right and all of them mean to do better some 
 day. The how to do it, is always beyond them 
 during the present time. You can see that the 
 exponents of other forms of religious life and 
 faith, with such followers and hangers on, could 
 not deal in criticism or denunciation of lapsed 
 Mormons, or for that matter of standing Mor- 
 mons, for they were no worse in their actual lives. 
 
 Robert Peters used to go to church when the 
 liberal element was strong enough, as it soon was, 
 to erect a building and open services, on Sunday 
 night. The lady who played the organ had a 
 little girl, so small that she had to be held in the 
 lap. Robert Peters became nurse for the time 
 being and faithfully held and quieted the child. 
 
 I think the old man really enjoyed, and was 
 happy in assisting in this way to aid the proprieties 
 of public worship, after the grave Scotch manner. 
 In leaving the town for the city, where his busi- 
 ness was likely to be better for him, he left for 
 the little baby girl a book that she might read in 
 riper years. It was an old Scotch Sunday School 
 
176 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 book, thought to be adaptable to young children, 
 and had for a title, The Valley of Baca and a 
 beautiful figure on the cover representing a weep- 
 ing woman bending over a well. "In the Valley 
 of Baca they maketh it a well," accommodated 
 from the Book of Psalms. 
 
 The irreverent hoodlums, who used to sit in the 
 back seats at meeting, dubbed Robert "the Pres- 
 byterian Nurse," a title he was proud of to the 
 last day that I knew him. William Peters was a 
 man in conflict with himself. His past was too 
 strong for his present, and this kept him uncom- 
 fortable. His face and speech showed his ire. 
 He could not accept some things of his new faith. 
 
 "He's peeved about polygamy," said Robert, 
 "he couldn't swallow that, for Wyllum is a good 
 man at the bottom, and thinks much of his wife, 
 wedded in Scotland; but I spewed out the whole 
 lot." 
 
 I can see his red weather-worn face, his spare 
 body, and can hear his brogue whenever I call 
 him to mind. A man of individuality and grit; 
 with a better education, he might have made a 
 mark in the world instead of being a waste timber 
 thrown up by the sea of life, one of those sad 
 wrecks left by the tide of religious opinion, which, 
 while it has floated many to a safe haven, has en- 
 gulfed a great multitude in bitterness and isolation. 
 
The Town and Canyon of American Fork 177 
 
 The canyon of American Fork is worthy of 
 notice. As it has been much described, I will 
 simply say that its varied, rugged, rock-scenery 
 rivals, in lesser magnitude, the splendors of the 
 Yosemite Valley in California. A railroad ran up 
 its winding, rocky sides passing over and around 
 the purling, foaming mountain stream rushing 
 down to the lake. 
 
 A prosperous camp was once the business life 
 of the railroad; but when I knew it, its commercial 
 glory was gone. It had been smashed by the 
 extravagances and expenditures of the many pro- 
 moters, who are the real curse of all such enter- 
 prises. They are after the "wad" held by in- 
 nocent, trustful, tenderfoot-investors and stock- 
 holders. They get it and go away, leaving the 
 ruins of a promising camp in their wake. The 
 railroad was of principal use to haul wood down 
 the canyon, and the tourists up. Often the depot 
 at American Fork was crowded with visitors. 
 
 Many times I have met distinguished men there, 
 bent on seeing the beauties of the mountain 
 canyon; bishops, senators, generals, financiers and 
 the capitalists, came and went. 
 
 I could mention some notable names, were I not 
 purposely avoiding personalities in these pages, 
 and confining myself to descriptions of real life, 
 and character, such as Utah presented, 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 TENDERFOOT SUPERINTENDENTS 
 
 "Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, 
 Now green in youth, now withering on the ground: 
 Another race the following spring supplies, 
 They fall successive and successive rise." 
 
 Pope 
 
 I WAS a Tenderfoot, in the vernacular of the 
 camp, but there were many others of the same 
 grade of experience. While, here and there, vet- 
 erans were in charge of mining interests, tender- 
 foot superintendents abounded. 
 
 I suppose the moneyed men and the stockholders 
 of the various incorporated companies in this 
 camp were under the spell of romantic adventure 
 in the use of their surplus wealth in this distant 
 region, because distance lent enchantment to their 
 view. It is remarkable how romance has influ- 
 enced wealth. Otherwise rich-freighted ships 
 never would have been sent across wide seas, in 
 search of unknown lands, during the times of 
 178 
 
Tenderfoot Superintendents 179 
 
 Queen Elizabeth. It surely was romance which 
 formed, under the charter from Charles II, the 
 trading company with this sonorous title, "The 
 Govenour and Company of Gentlemen Adven- 
 turers Trading into Hudson's Bay." Romance 
 helped to send Francis Drake around the world in 
 search of both gold and Spaniards, and Walter 
 Raleigh to make his ventures in Virginia. Ro- 
 mance lies back of Arctic Voyages and Northwest 
 trading trips to "where rolls the Oregon," or 
 "where the wolf's long howl is heard on On- 
 alaska's shore." 
 
 I do not wonder that romantic young men were 
 found and commissioned, by romantic old men, to 
 superintend these mining ventures. 
 
 These tenderfoot superintendents came out 
 West smartly garbed, even to cuffs and white shirt 
 collars, A few were dressed in theatrical garb, to 
 look their part from the Eastern view-point. They 
 looked ridiculous to the seasoned miner, used to 
 hard tack and hard times. The camp had quite 
 a group of such young men, full to the brim with a 
 book and college knowledge of minerals, tunnel 
 and shaft mining. They were educated in their 
 way, but babes to the real business of finding ores 
 and making the search profitable. 
 
 Of all these tenderfoot superintendents, three 
 were known to me very well, and the first I name, 
 
180 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 became a warm friend. 
 
 Clarence Waterman was a youth for his posi- 
 tion, for he was only a little past his majority. He 
 was growing a downy moustache and whiskers, 
 but these indications of manhood were silky with 
 the touch of youth. He was a really good fellow 
 in many ways, especially in his cheerfulness. He 
 had the youth's bump of conceit well-developed. 
 But this bump may have helped him over ob- 
 stacles which his youthfulness could not have sur- 
 mounted. No doubt it was this conceit which ob- 
 tained him his position as superintendent. I can 
 imagine his father and his father's friends, at a 
 company meeting, saying, 
 
 "Clarence! Do you think you can manage our 
 mines out there in Utah?" 
 
 "Oh yes indeed. I can do that easily." So, 
 being a favorite son, and a favored one by the 
 company, this young Mr. Inexperience was dubbed 
 Mining Superintendent, financed for his journey, 
 and entrusted with the funds to open new work in 
 Bingham Canyon. 
 
 Tom Robbins was a dark-featured, gloomy-vis- 
 aged young man, who grew a fierce black mous- 
 tache. His eyes showed much of the sclerotic coat, 
 and he had a way of rolling his eyes which made 
 him look fiercer and more commanding than he 
 really was. He had charge of the Grey Eagle 
 
Tenderfoot Superintendents 181 
 
 group of mines, and to hear him talk you would 
 feel sure the only real mineral wealth of the camp 
 was in this group. He was of a musical turn, and 
 put a great deal of the company's money into a 
 Steinway piano, which was placed in his office in 
 the best hotel of the town. He was a rattling 
 player, and spent much of his spare time in the 
 company of some musical young women of a neigh- 
 boring boarding house. This tenderfoot super- 
 intendent was ideally togged out by Eastern tail- 
 ors, and looked like a stage hero, much to the 
 delight of the girls. 
 
 The third of these men was James Shuthler. He 
 looked more like a dry-goods clerk in size, build, 
 and manner of carriage than a forceful boss of 
 mining men of the wild West. Shuthler, like most 
 little men, was a great talker, but there was a 
 steely look in his pale-blue eyes which showed he 
 had "grit" at the bottom. He had a hobby. It 
 was playing a worn, shabby violin, which he af- 
 firmed was a hundred and fifty years old and once 
 the property of a German master of music. He 
 certainly got very sweet strains out of its strings, 
 and he and Robbins were the center of attraction 
 at every social and dance. 
 
 Clarence Waterman's special interest was a di- 
 vided one. When not thumping his Remington 
 typewriter he was riding his rat-tailed broncho. It 
 
1 82 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 was one of those vicious little beasts which show 
 their mustang origin. When a horse uses his 
 tail like a whisk-broom, and puts back his ears like 
 a rabbit when you saddle him, you naturally look 
 for trouble of some sort. Waterman loaded down 
 his little broncho with a full outfit of Mexican 
 saddlery, and the little beast was double-bitted, and 
 so strapped fore and aft that his inexperienced 
 rider seldom came to grief. He paid some horse- 
 shark one hundred and twenty-five dollars for a 
 fifteen dollar animal, but he was so proud of his 
 nimble purchase, for the horse could run, that we 
 left him alone in his glory. 
 
 The real work in these mines was done by the 
 foremen, usually old hands; while these superin- 
 tendents got all the honor through correspondence 
 with headquarters, and the disbursements of the 
 payroll money that came regularly through their 
 hands. 
 
 One old foreman was a former cook. This I 
 knew since I ate a Thanksgiving dinner which he 
 produced out of the abundant stores of the mine, 
 and his skill with a big cook stove. It was a fine 
 assortment of food built out of canned goods, all 
 save a huge steak smothered in onions. This re- 
 past sufficed for six hungry miners and three visi- 
 tors, besides himself, and cost the management 
 quite a penny. 
 
Tenderfoot Superintendents 183 
 
 But miners, I found, are nothing if not hospit- 
 able ; and one never failed to be invited to a good 
 meal if one happened in at the right time. 
 
 I went up to see all of these mining ventures, 
 entered all of the tunnels, and went down all of 
 the shafts; also asked a great many useless ques- 
 tions, while the working-shift patiently answered 
 between pauses in shovelling rock. 
 
 The Ilion Mine, Clarence Waterman Superin- 
 tendent, — if you had read the sign board on the 
 tunnel house, — was a wet mine. They were sup- 
 posed to be seeking the rich mineral vein, beneath 
 the discovery hole on the summit of a rocky bluff 
 overlooking the canyon. 
 
 An able mineralogist, a learned geologist and 
 the surveyor specialist, — all high priced men, — 
 had reported that the signs indicated a big bonanza 
 below this discovery hole. So after it they went 
 with men, money and machinery. When I went 
 into the wet workings, the tunnel's breast was nine 
 hundred feet from the entrance. A large gutter 
 was cut, as they ran the tunnel in, since the face 
 and walls oozed water so constantly that a little 
 river ran out of the entry and down the mountain 
 side. This whole tunnel was timbered and re- 
 quired no end of prepared wood and a couple of 
 carpenters to keep up with the miners. Now 
 wages were high, four or five dollars a day, tim- 
 
184 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 ber scarce and high too. You could see money 
 going into the hole, but you could not see it coming 
 out. The Ilion people had great faith in their 
 great mine, but that did not prevent its being a 
 great failure. Stereotyped reports of the workings 
 were sent in every week, and for a time the goose 
 that laid the golden egg kept on laying it. The 
 miners laughed over these reports, but receiving 
 their wages regularly they worked on at what 
 their practical knowledge foresaw would be a bar- 
 ren result. At the time I left Utah the mine was 
 closed down, another one among a hundred fail- 
 ures. 
 
 I started a day school. The community had 
 voted against a public school, for the population 
 was a transient one, and little interested in family 
 life and in the care of children. Several respon- 
 sible men urged me to undertake a private educa- 
 tion for the public. I rented a part of a vacant 
 hotel, the parlor and dining room, and this made 
 a good sized schoolroom to accommodate fifty 
 scholars. 
 
 I also purchased the red-wood shelving of a de- 
 funct dry-goods store, and worked up this lumber, 
 with a little outside help, into seats and desks in 
 lieu of the usual school furniture. People were 
 not so particular then about the outfitting of a 
 schoolhouse. In a camp like Bingham, where the 
 
Tenderfoot Superintendents 185 
 
 church building was an old saloon, somewhat al- 
 tered, it was not difficult to make a hotel parlor 
 serve for a schoolhouse. 
 
 These camp buildings were of the up-and-down 
 rough-lumber sort, with the cracks covered with 
 strips of the same stuff. None of the buildings 
 were painted, save one pretentious hotel, the aris- 
 tocrat of the camp. 
 
 I used to have the room full of boys and girls, 
 who came at 9 A. M. on Mondays to pay their 
 school dues in the dirty, sticky currency of the day. 
 "Shin-plasters," these little bills of the Federal 
 Treasury, were called. We seldom saw a piece of 
 silver coin, lor it had all gone either to Canada 
 or Europe. Our school hours were from 9 A. M. 
 to 1 P. M., with a recess midday. I secured a 
 supply of old books, maps, and blackboard mate- 
 rial in Salt Lake City, and gave them free to the 
 school. The cost of this education to each scholar 
 was a fifty-cent "shin-plaster" paid every Monday. 
 
 Most of the children were studious and seemed 
 glad to have the chance to get at their books. I 
 had a little trouble now and then. For instance, 
 a couple of boys of twelve and fourteen years, sons 
 of a saloon man, seemed to be ambitious to rival 
 the toughs of the bar-room. One of them carried 
 a big knife on the inside of his leg-boot, while the 
 other secreted a small caliber Smith & Wesson 
 
1 86 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 revolver in his pants rear-pocket. This last young- 
 ster was quite ferocious in his talk, for he asserted 
 that he had "got his man." It seemed, on inquiry, 
 that he had accidentally shot another boy, in rough 
 play, with a pistol. The foolish jests of the roughs 
 about his father's place had taken serious root in 
 his mind, so he was really proud of his "bloody 
 record," like any other "bad man." I took their 
 arsenal away and requested their father to come 
 for the weapons. This he did, and when I sug- 
 gested he lock up these weapons and keep his boys 
 out of harm's way he declared his boys were not 
 being raised "milk-sops," but to fight their way 
 through life. Probably years later these boys may 
 have fulfilled their foolish father's wishes and fig- 
 ured as "gunmen," ending their lives by dying 
 with their boots on. 
 
 This school ran all winter and well into spring, 
 when an epidemic of scarlet fever entered the 
 camp, through some Mormon teamsters from the 
 valley towns, and perforce the school was closed 
 for the season. This schoolroom was used two 
 evenings of each week for musicals. I had a small 
 organ, with handles, which Clarence Waterman 
 and myself carried back and forth from school to 
 church, as it was needed. 
 
 To these Sings in the schoolroom the tender- 
 foot superintendents before mentioned and a num- 
 
Tenderfoot Superintendents 187 
 
 ber of young women interested in music and church 
 work used to come. Without doubt the sex at- 
 traction had much to do with this weekly rally of 
 the younger element, since the men came generally 
 as escorts of the ladies. How much religion is 
 based on human interest, and how much on super- 
 human interest, is a vital query hard to answer cor- 
 rectly. I suppose the mysteries of life, and its ap- 
 parent dissolution, have a strong pull, which is 
 almost superhuman in its power for church going; 
 but I also think that Reuben and Rachel cut a 
 figure in the making of a congregation. There 
 were good musicians and some fair singers who 
 were willing to exercise their gifts and spend time 
 in this way, but no sense of duty was the motive ; 
 only the simple idea of something pleasant to do. 
 When it seemed an unpleasant task it was not 
 done, and they did not trouble to come. 
 
 I was forced to do a little mining. I occupied a 
 very small house, built close into the hill on a 
 narrow slip of ground; the road passing so close 
 in front that the ore wagons, in going by, often 
 struck the steps in front. A roaring creek was 
 just across the road. A slide of earth from the 
 steep hill, back of the house, bulged in the kitchen 
 wall. I procured the miner's weapons, a pick and 
 shovel, and began digging away the dirt. 
 
 "Say! pan out that dirt. You may find gold 
 
1 88 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 color." Waterman was passing and called to me. 
 I laughed at the boyish idea, but took his advice. 
 In the creek a few feet below I washed out several 
 pans of dirt, using the rotary movement which 
 carries the surplus dirt over the edge of the pan, 
 but no color appeared for some time. I persevered 
 and was rewarded by seeing a sparkle in the black 
 sediment in the bottom of the tin dish. This oc- 
 curred every now and then. By the time I tired, 
 and had removed all the land-slip, I was possessed 
 with a very small can of sediment. This I washed 
 over carefully and collected a few small grains of 
 color. In the assay office, later, I found my hour's 
 labor had yielded fifty cents' worth of gold. This 
 was a wage of four dollars a day of eight hours 
 of labor. 
 
 I record this to show how alluring the conditions 
 were to a tenderfoot. The creek was a rich placer 
 in many spots, the hills had often signs of pay 
 dirt, while the rocks, when mined, contained visible 
 veins of lead, silver, and gold leading to ore 
 pockets, and sometimes to great ore deposits which 
 required only the science of the smelter to reduce 
 to commercial wealth. 
 
 I witnessed the luck of one tenderfoot superin- 
 tendent. He had lost his job, for his company had 
 "gone broke," as the saying is. Tom Darmody 
 was a very easy-going fellow, who had brought out 
 
Tenderfoot Superintendents 189 
 
 his wife that he might have home cooking instead 
 of cook-house fare. They lived in a little shack 
 on the other side of the creek. He was mining 
 on his own account, and I often saw him come 
 home wet and disgusted with his hard labor. One 
 day he got back in time to find his wife on the 
 roof of the shack shrieking, "A snake ! A snake !" 
 
 A big rattler was in the kitchen, and had driven 
 the mistress outdoors. This was nothing strange, 
 for the rocks were full of these reptiles in the 
 warm weather. A little pistol work laid out Mr. 
 Rattlesnake, with eight buttons on his tail, a harm- 
 less but hideous corpse on the kitchen floor. A 
 bevy of housewives soon assembled to view the 
 creature and to congratulate the lady of the house 
 on her escape and the bravery she had shown. I 
 feel sure that Tom Darmody gallantly told it 
 around that his wife did the shooting. One day 
 Darmody came in on the stride and shouting, 
 "We've struck it rich!" He had broken into a 
 large ore chamber. 
 
 "Our fortune's made, my dear! We can go 
 home in a month." 
 
 They did. In a few days he sold out his fine 
 prospect to a mining crew for $25,000 and left 
 for the "East and Happiness," to use his own 
 words. He was sensible. He did not stay to re- 
 invest his fortune, nor gamble it away in expecta- 
 
190 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 tion of still better luck. 
 
 There was one lucky superintendent who was 
 not a tenderfoot. Old Judge Eelis, a man of sixty- 
 five, and his wife, an old-time lady of rare amiabil- 
 ity, were residents of the camp. I boarded with 
 Judge Eells for two months and found him a man 
 of fine character. He always had family worship 
 in his house every Sunday, and thought he was 
 doing well for the West. And so he was. Late 
 one Saturday night he and his partner opened up 
 a large pocket of ore ; he insisted on waiting until 
 Monday before demonstrating its extent. You 
 see the grit of the man in this action. His partner 
 offered him $ 1 6,000 for his prospects before Mon- 
 day was past. Listening to his wife's plea, he ac- 
 cepted the sum offered, and the old couple re- 
 turned to their home in Waukesha, Wisconsin, 
 there to enjoy their good fortune. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 a tenderfoot's romance 
 
 "How happy I'd be with either, 
 Were t' other dear charmer away." 
 
 Old Melody 
 
 THIS is a story of divided affections, which 
 threatened at one time to end in the divided 
 lives of two young people. Youth has its ro- 
 mances, and so had the youth, Clarence Water- 
 man. 
 
 I was going down the canyon by the way of the 
 mule tramway. It was built along the canyon side, 
 a little higher than the street. I used to look out 
 for rattlers, as it was a favorite place for the 
 snakes. They would crawl out in the sun and lie 
 along the track. The mules used to be affronted 
 at them and the drivers used to crack their whips 
 and sometimes their guns at these reptiles. 
 
 The tarantula spider often occupied the track. 
 I met one the day of which I am now speaking. 
 He was on a tie, and up on his long, high, hairy 
 191 
 
192 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 legs. His wicked eyes were on me when I first 
 caught sight of his pose. I knew that he was ready- 
 to jump, for this spider is as aggressive as he is 
 big. He did spring; but so did I, and he passed 
 me on the inside track, and struck the rocks, up 
 which he jumped out of sight. I later saw one 
 like him. He was in a big bottle and safe in al- 
 cohol to preserve him on his journey east. His 
 eyes and hairy limbs were suggestive of the temper 
 of this fighting spider. 
 
 Mrs. Eells, who was with me, said, "How hor- 
 rid! Take it away." This expressed everybody's 
 feelings. 
 
 It was just after this little episode in camp life 
 that I saw Clarence Waterman pass down the 
 street astride his broncho, garbed in full regimen- 
 tals as a broncho buster. I shouted aloud to him, 
 "Where are you bound for aboard that cayuse?" 
 
 "I'm due at the canyon-mouth to race Miss 
 Gladys Glynn's white pony. The wager is a new 
 saddle. Come on!" 
 
 He rode off. I followed along the track more 
 leisurely, until I neared the depot. 
 
 A good sized crowd was gathered there, for 
 just beyond this terminus of the carline the canyon 
 opened out into a big bay of land encircled with 
 the lower foothills. In this space was the cattle- 
 men's corral, the slaughter yards for the camp 
 and, around the outer limits, was a roadway in 
 
': - -:: > 
 
A Tenderfoot's Romance 193 
 
 imitation of a racing oval. This was the horse- 
 racing circle, minus restraining fence and bleacher 
 seats and grandstand. There was a rough sort of 
 stand for privileged spectators, and I saw the 
 elite of the camp beginning to occupy these seats. 
 
 A young woman sat on a white horse. The ani- 
 mal was small, but neat of limb and a pet by the 
 way its rider was caressing the arching neck and 
 silver mane. This was Miss Gladys Glynn, the 
 open-air belle of the region and the pride and ad- 
 miration of the cowboys. She was a rustic beauty 
 of the brunette type, and as her women friends 
 said of her, "as smart as a whip." Her eyes were 
 full of fire and fun. Her tongue was quick in 
 repartee and her mind active, intelligent and 
 charming. A good many of the men were charmed 
 with her, and very violently so was Clarence 
 Waterman. He had gone riding with this young 
 horsewoman several times and the present race, 
 just coming off, was the result of a bet as to the 
 speed of the white pony and the brown broncho. 
 
 A tall, dark-bearded man, in black coat and 
 top boots, was slapping a whip on his open palm 
 and talking to the girl rider. This I knew was 
 Dr. Howard Glynn, her father, and the owner 
 of the big cattle range and ranch just below us 
 in the valley. It was his sheep and cattle that 
 ranged the hills and who employed the bunch of 
 
194 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 cowboys standing by. It was his sage-brush fed 
 mutton that the camp ate, and so disliked. But 
 as the other fresh meat was not handy, we became 1 
 very familiar with Doc Glynn's sage-brush beef 
 and mutton; especially the mutton, as it retained 
 the sage taste with more pronounced effect, after 
 cooking, than did the beef. 
 
 He was a veterinary surgeon, retired from that 
 trying occupation, as he said, and fast getting rich 
 off a free range and sage-fed live-stock. The 
 canyon and camp was his bonanza, and he was 
 working it for all it was worth, in the way of a 
 close and ready market for meat. 
 
 Gladdie Glynn was therefore well known, and 
 the center of beaux of all sorts and ages. It was 
 said that a very prominent Mormon apostle want- 
 ed her for one of his wives, but if anybody dared 
 to repeat this rumor he was very likely to get into 
 a fight with the men of the camp. , 
 
 "Come on, Prof," called Tom Robbins, as I 
 reached the depot, "you are just in time for this 
 Rodeo. Let's see Waterman licked to a frazzle 
 by Gladdie and her pony." 
 
 Waterman had told me some things about his 
 home life, and once or twice of an engagement to 
 a sweet looking girl, whose photograph stood on 
 his bureau. I thought at first he was just boast- 
 ing, but I found that it was a fact when a letter 
 
A Tenderfoot's Romance 195 
 
 came reporting her illness. 
 
 He kept the telegraph operator busy for some 
 days, until the young lady was reported out of 
 danger. It looked at one time as though he would 
 throw up his job and hurry East. Hence I knew 
 that he was serious and that he was an engaged 
 man. 
 
 I did not quite like his flirting with Miss Glad- 
 die Glynn, who showed more partiality for him 
 than she did for any other of her many admirers. 
 I suppose it was this evident choice of the girl and 
 the propinquity due to their horse interests that 
 made them a little more than friends or chums 
 and threatened a romantic end to their acquaint- 
 ance. 
 
 I could not see how Waterman could be car- 
 ried away thus, if he really loved the girl in the 
 East who wore his ring, but man, especially the 
 younger man, is a fickle force, as much so as for- 
 tune is a fickle jade. So I watched these two as 
 they met and noted the interested glances of both 
 and the more-than-warm handclasp. 
 
 It was a friendly affair, this race. The usual 
 fussy preliminaries by the self-appointed arrang- 
 ers followed the meeting of the principals. Until 
 I saw the crowd I was not fully aware of the in- 
 terest of the occasion, nor of the popularity of the 
 contestants. Four officious cowboys, with an air of 
 
196 - Tenderfoot Days 
 
 proprietorship, attended to Miss Gladdie's saddle, 
 bridle and bit. Another set of boys did the same 
 for Waterman's broncho, and the way in which 
 the creature switched its bottle-brush tail was a 
 strong proof that the animal's evil disposition was 
 fully awake. 
 
 Soon all was ready. It was to be four times 
 around the circle, which meant just two miles. Doc 
 Glynn fired his gun, and they were off, neck and 
 neck. Miss Gladdie had the pole by courtesy and 
 cowboy wit. Now Waterman's little beast was a 
 runner, when mad, and he was mad on this occa- 
 sion. I could see that the girl was the best rider. 
 She was born to the saddle, for her father had 
 been a cattle-man since her childhood. She was 
 raised to ride a horse. 
 
 Once round the circle they passed us in a cloud 
 of dust, still nearly abreast, the broncho having 
 the greater strength, but being handicapped by 
 being on the outer circle. Yells, cheers, and hat 
 wavings saluted them. Soon we saw the dust ris- 
 ing on the homestretch, and then something hap- 
 pened. Waterman put too much spur into his en- 
 couragement at this point and his broncho showed 
 his breed by a vicious buck almost unseating the 
 rider. 
 
 It needed but this little show-off to put the pale 
 pony in the lead by several lengths, and Miss 
 
A Tenderfoot's Romance 197 
 
 Gladdie passed the tape, giving the dust of her 
 passage to Waterman's cavorting steed, which' 
 came in more like a crab than a horse, a loser by 
 seven lengths. The outcome was very popular, of 
 course, and Clarence was in for a new saddle and 
 bridle for the fair winner. 
 
 "I knew that useless mustang of yours would 
 play hob," said James Shuthler; "don't see where 
 you can like the beast. I'd shoot him for just that 
 sort of trick." 
 
 "Why did you use so much spur?" I asked the 
 loser. 
 
 "Well, it's easy for you to talk, but I thought 
 that just that much of a prick would do the busi- 
 ness. I was gaining fast at the time." 
 
 "You don't mean to say that you were so un- 
 gallant in intention as to mean to win?" I said. 
 
 "Surely I meant to win; why not? It was a 
 race, and gallantry was considered ruled out of the 
 contest by the lady's own wish." 
 
 A merry crowd it was after the race. Several 
 cowboys showed off their tricks, but by degrees 
 the crowd thinned out and left the horsemen to 
 themselves. 
 
 This event brought the two young people closer 
 together and was the means of starting this ro- 
 mance. A good many knew nothing of Water- 
 man's eastern sweetheart, and supposed that he 
 
198 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 was the favored one. In fair play they "kept off 
 the grass," as they called it. Several days later 
 Clarence Waterman came to me. 
 
 "Can you get away to join a riding party to 
 Provo in the next valley? We are going to start 
 to-morrow at five in the morning and make the 
 fifty miles by sundown. The next day we ride on 
 to the end of the railroad, fifty miles further. Doc 
 Glynn has a lot of cattle coming up from Nephi 
 and Miss Gladdie and I are going with the boys 
 and her father. Would like you to come." 
 
 "Cannot do it just now. I have to go over to 
 Alta City to-morrow, and it is a three-day trip 
 before I get back." 
 
 So the Romance began. Just how far these two 
 understood one another I do not know to this 
 day. As far as looks go, they were mutually at- 
 tracted, and I think that the girl was really in love 
 at last. She had passed through much flirtation, 
 of course, and had received proposals by the dozen 
 from susceptible young men, cowboys, miners and 
 men of means. It was evident she was not so 
 heart-free as formerly, for Waterman's good 
 looks and good breeding had made an impression. 
 
 They started on the trip and had a merry time 
 of it the first day. A ride of fifty miles was a com- 
 mon thing for such people and such ponies. Their 
 stock of horseflesh was tough of breed and could 
 
A Tenderfoot's Romance 199 
 
 wear out more mettled and expensive stock, un- 
 used to these hills and valleys. By the afternoon 
 of the second day they met the herd of cattle, and 
 the Doctor and his cowboys took charge of the 
 return drive. His daughter and Waterman were 
 to return by train from the railroad terminus, their 
 horses being used by the cowboys. 
 
 Right then it happened. An unexpected delay 
 of a day in the transfer of the cattle by the former 
 owner, a Mormon rancher, gave the young couple 
 an idea. It was to ride over to Nephi, eighteen 
 miles south, and return on that surplus day. They 
 wanted to be alone. I am certain Clarence was 
 fast forgetting his Ida Gertrude in the East, whose 
 portrait stood on his dressing table in Bingham. 
 The bright eyes and charm of Gladdie Glynn were 
 doing the work of forgetfulness. Such is pro- 
 pinquity, the motive power of many a marriage 
 which afterward is regretted. Doctor Glynn 
 seemed to favor the desires of the two young peo- 
 ple, and said: 
 
 "Be back in time to give the ponies a good rest 
 before our start to-morrow. They don't ride back 
 on the cars like you two lucky ones." 
 
 They rode off. They had an ideal lover's ride 
 down to Nephi. Here they were to dine, rest and 
 return in the afternoon. Both horses had cast a 
 shoe. The blacksmith was absent, gone "to see a 
 
200 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 man," and two hours passed before he returned. 
 It took another hour before the horses were ready 
 for the road, and by that time it was almost dark. 
 Meanwhile one of those fierce wind-storms arose. 
 Locally it is known as a Mormon storm, because it 
 is all wind, dust and no rain. It is the dread of 
 the rider, especially if the rider be a woman. Now, 
 the two young people were not clad for a storm, 
 for they had left their heavy dustcoats with the 
 outfit at the station that morning. They had 
 thought to ride light and return in the warm after- 
 noon. 
 
 Then another thing happened. Was it fate? 
 A deluge of rain followed the blow, a thing seldom 
 occurring in this locality, and for hours the storm 
 raged. 
 
 "What shall we do? We can't go on till this is 
 over," said Gladdie Glynn. 
 
 "We are fixed to stay here until to-morrow; I'm 
 almost afraid to say it," answered Clarence Water- 
 man. 
 
 "Oh ! What will father think? He knows I'm 
 to be back with him this evening. He'll think 
 we've started out before the storm." 
 
 "But we can't start now, in such a storm as 
 this; can we?" objected Clarence. "We'll have to 
 put up at this one-horse hotel and start to-morrow 
 at sun-rise." 
 
A Tenderfoot's Romance 201 
 
 "What will people think of us?" said Gladdie 
 Glynn. She looked hard at her companion. 
 
 "It's none of their affair. We are straight liv- 
 ers. I'm not afraid, if you are not, to face silly 
 talk!" 
 
 "Well! If you think so, I'm game to stay on 
 here. I'm no more afraid of talk than you. But 
 I fear father will scold sharply for this delay. 
 You know by this time he has a fiery temper at 
 times; and this will be one of those temper-times." 
 
 "Oh ! When he knows the reason of our delay 
 I'm sure he would rather you stayed snug under 
 cover here than ride in the rain and darkness to- 
 night!" 
 
 They made known their needs to the hotel- 
 keeper. Now, he was a Mormon and saw a chance 
 to play a trick on these two young gentiles. Some 
 time afterwards I myself put up at this hotel and 
 met this very man. I did not like his eye. The 
 eye is the gateway of the mind, and I saw a malice 
 in his eye which explained some things concern- 
 ing this romance of the stormbound couple. 
 
 "I can accommodate you, young people. Are 
 you married or are you intending to git married?" 
 he said to them. 
 
 This was not a proper question, and yet it 
 seemed warranted by the circumstances. 
 
 "No, indeed," .said Gladdie Glynn, "and it's 
 
202 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 none of your business." 
 
 "I only asked, young people," answered the 
 landlord, "as there is only one spare room for 
 travellers, but I can fix it so as you needn't know 
 there's any one but yourself. I have a nice cot-bed 
 in the alcove, which can be curtained off. The 
 young man can use the lounge by the window. I've 
 done this way for lots of travellers, and no harm 
 came of it." 
 
 Clarence and Gladdie looked at each other for 
 a long moment; their eyes saw, mutually, respect 
 and confidence in the glance. 
 
 "I can stand it all right if you can," said Clar- 
 ence; "it's for you to say. I can go out and sit in 
 a chair in the office if necessary." 
 
 "If it won't hurt you it won't hurt me," said 
 Gladdie. "I don't wish you to sit up all night." 
 
 "Well, then, landlord," said Clarence, "fix it 
 up as you say." 
 
 Storm-bound, and mutually confident of one an- 
 other, and also brave to face the tattle of the gos- 
 siper, they did this thing and occupied the one 
 room in the inn. The girl slept out her tiredness 
 behind the curtains and Clarence snored to his 
 heart's content on the lounge by the window and 
 behind a blanket thrown over two chairs. 
 
 They were innocent of harm, but would the 
 world believe it? 
 
A Tenderfoot's Romance 203 
 
 It was a fair morning, and as early as they 
 could get off they left Nephi. They made the 
 railway depot in four hours for breakfast with Dr. 
 Glynn. He had been in a terrible temper over 
 their absence, and when he learned of the facts 
 of their hotel experience he looked darkly at 
 Waterman. 
 
 "You young fool! Can't you see what a cloud 
 this is on Gladdie? You've got to marry her now 
 whether you mean it or not," said the enraged 
 father. 
 
 Now, if Clarence had not been engaged, as he 
 was to Ida Gertrude, he could have answered this 
 demand with zest. 
 
 But here was the rub. It had come over him 
 on the ride that morning that he was in a fix. He 
 felt sure, from Gladdie's looks, she was ready to 
 say "yes" to a vital question, but he found he was 
 not ready to put it. 
 
 He suddenly realized that he was a fool to 
 play with fire in engaging a girl's affections, so 
 that she had consented to a compromising situa- 
 tion, that would reflect upon her honor in the eyes 
 of a cynical world. 
 
 "Why have I to do that? I haven't asked Glad- 
 die to marry me, and I don't know if she would," 
 he answered. 
 
 Dr. Glynn roared with rage. 
 
204 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 "Well, put the question, and be quick about it ! 
 She's got to say yes!" 
 
 Clarence went to Gladdie, but like a woman, 
 she refused to see him. His evident unreadiness 
 and lack of ardor in his suit at this crisis mortified 
 her mind and wounded her feelings. 
 
 Her father went to see her and she said to him : 
 "I won't be forced to accept any man in this way! 
 Let the nasty people talk if they must. My mind 
 is clean of any fault." 
 
 Now, this daughter was his pet and pride and 
 he could not be cross long with her, and soon gave 
 way to her wishes. The young woman was 
 wounded at Waterman's indecision. It came out, 
 as they returned by train that afternoon, that he 
 confessed his engagement to Ida Gertrude in the 
 East. She was angry, as they say, "up to the 
 hilt." 
 
 "How dare you play with me in this way? I 
 hate you now; don't speak to me again," said the 
 girl. 
 
 In this frame of mind they rode into Salt Lake 
 City both as miserable as disenchanted mortals 
 can be. Clarence was on the fence and could not 
 come down on either side. He could not break 
 with his sweetheart, and he could not propose to 
 Gladdie when it came to the pinch. She saw, with 
 a woman's quick intuition, the situation of this last 
 
A Tenderfoot's Romance 205 
 
 admirer. He had almost won her love, and she 
 resented his lack of courage to offer himself with 
 the ardor of a lover. 
 
 When it was all known publicly, through the 
 lightning speed of gossip which carries tattle 
 faster than the wind, many threats against Water- 
 man were heard. 
 
 I expected some one of the cowboys would shoot 
 him, but Dr. Glynn put a stop to all that by grimly 
 saying: 
 
 "If any shooting comes off I'll do it. Don't let 
 me hear of any of you fellows interfering, unless 
 you want me to take a shot at you ; keep off !" 
 
 Finally Clarence could stand it no longer. He 
 wrote to Ida Gertrude and told her the whole 
 story and asked to be released. Quickly came 
 back by an early mail his ring with no word in the 
 letter. He then went to Gladys Glynn and said 
 that he was free to ask her to marry him. This 
 he did before her father. 
 
 "I answer you no!" she said with snapping 
 eyes. "I want no belated lover, such as you have 
 proved to be." 
 
 "Cannot you forgive me and let me keep the 
 talk from injuring your reputation?" he said. 
 
 "I can forgive you, but my reputation is not in 
 need of your help. If any one slanders me I, too, 
 can shoot, and will do so." 
 
206 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 When the camp knew that Clarence had the 
 mitten from Miss Gladys there was a great laugh, 
 much joy among the jealous and good deal of chaff 
 for the troubled Waterman. He that had two 
 strings to his bow a little while before now was 
 without any strings, and his life was without music. 
 Thus strangely does life alter our outlook in a 
 few eventful days. 
 
 I was very sorry for him and said, "Let me 
 write Ida Gertrude and tell her just the facts. If 
 you two are really lovers this trouble ought to be 
 mended in some way." 
 
 "Well, do so as my friend; only be sure to put 
 it just as it is," replied Clarence. 
 
 I did write as an advocate of my friend and 
 showed the innocence of both parties. That it 
 was simply a case of youthful imprudence. That 
 Clarence was very sorry that he had been carried 
 away by a charming girl and that his inability to 
 love her, as she expected, was a sign that his love 
 still burned true for Ida Gertrude. Could not 
 she forgive him? If she was as much in love with 
 him as he was with her, she should not let a just 
 anger and some pride wreck the happiness of both. 
 
 I think that I put it with a wisdom almost like 
 Solomon's and it worked out happily. 
 
 Miss Ida wrote me that she supposed the West 
 was a loose living place and that Clarence needed 
 
A Tenderfoot's Romance 207 
 
 the East to keep him true. She said she forgave 
 him, and if he chose to write her she was willing 
 to hear what he had to say. 
 
 I told Clarence this and he brightened up at 
 once. I think that his Remington typewriter did 
 some good work about that time. I knowjetters 
 came and went. 
 
 Not long afterwards he sold his broncho. Next 
 I knew he had resigned his office and was no longer 
 a tenderfoot superintendent. 
 
 "Dear friend," he said to me, "you did me a 
 good turn. Ida and I are once more as we were at 
 first, and she wears my ring. I expect to put an- 
 other ring on that dear finger soon, as I have been 
 offered a good position in New York City. I'm 
 going East next week." 
 
 I was glad to hear of this end of the matter, 
 but was sorry to see him go. I saw him off at 
 Salt Lake City. Although I heard of his mar- 
 riage, a year later, and received a letter or two 
 from him, I never met him afterwards. 
 
 I knew that he was happily wedded and that he 
 was in good shape to become a successful business 
 man in New York City. 
 
 The other party to this story continued her out- 
 door life, admired as usual, yet strangely cool to 
 all lovers. A few years later her father sold out 
 his interests and went to California, where his 
 
208 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 daughter entered a woman's college in Oakland. I 
 heard of her graduation. She was a bright girl, 
 and is now the charming wife-companion of a well 
 known university professor in Berkeley. 
 
 It may seem strange that this open air girl- 
 should become the inmate of a studious home, but 
 life runs by contrasts. The professor, who is her 
 adoring husband, found in her active personality 
 just the foil to his scholastic gifts, while she saw 
 opening to her a world of letters, as new and as 
 interesting as the world outdoors, which she had 
 in her youth so gracefully championed amid camp 
 and cowboy life. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 MIND AS THE MASTER WORKER 
 
 "Mind is the great lever of all things; human 
 thought is the process by which human ends are 
 ultimately answered." 
 
 Daniel Webster 
 
 IN this age of applied psychology it is interest- 
 ing and educative to note the mastery of mind 
 over matter in the settlement, by civilized people, 
 of the wild wastes of Utah at the time of the great 
 Mormon trek across the plains. Mind was domi- 
 nant, later, in the scientific search for, and recov- 
 ery of, the mineral values, so long hidden and 
 useless, in the mountains of the territory. 
 
 The interaction of these two forces, the mental 
 and the physical, produce the evolution and there- 
 by the development of a country and its people. 
 Then comes wealth, comfort, ease, and further 
 exercise of mind to its higher possibilities. When 
 life is low-graded and the human mind content to 
 grub in the ground or to hunt wild animals for a 
 209 
 
210 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 living, a land remains the habitat of wild people. 
 
 A mind of a higher grade was the main asset 
 of the white discoverers of America. Their supe- 
 rior weapons, skill and transportation were en- 
 tirely due to the advance of mind from the times 
 of the dark ages. The early voyagers from Norse- 
 land, in their open-decked ships, were hardy sea- 
 men, but they brought no advancement to the new 
 continent, since these rude warriors had no mind 
 above fighting and despoiling their foes. 
 
 All that was unfamiliar to them in human life 
 was regarded as an enemy to be overcome by 
 force. It was the Era of Might, and the one of 
 the most Might was Right, because he won. The 
 barbarian era has, at all times, been hard to super- 
 sede, and even in these days of supposed "Kul- 
 tur" there are strong advocates of a reversion to 
 type of the old Norse Vikings, Attila the Hun, or 
 Caesar and his legions. 
 
 We do not affirm that the mentality of the Mor- 
 mon leaders was very high. These leaders were 
 men of keen wit but of little culture, judged by 
 their speeches and writings, while the people in 
 general were very commonplace. They had a 
 few scholars who occupied a back seat, for the 
 men of action and administration were the real 
 shapers of history in Utah. 
 
 Of course the mentality found in the religious 
 
Mind as the Master Worker 211 
 
 faith of the people was due to a religious genius 
 like Joseph Smith. If you consider a moment this 
 young man at the beginning of his mission, un- 
 known and obscure, yet possessing an inner men- 
 tal purpose and power sufficient to win over by 
 words, declarations, arguments and exhortations a 
 host of hard-headed Eastern and Western people, 
 you will see at once the power of mind when it is 
 illumined by a purpose born of faith in a revela- 
 tion from a higher Power. 
 
 The emerging of Joseph Smith from obscurity 
 to notoriety, as the American Prophet of a new 
 faith, reads like that of the emerging of Mo- 
 hammed, an uninfluential and epileptic young man, 
 amid the turbulent tribes of Arabia when he be- 
 came the Father of the Faithful, to the Arabians, 
 as Abraham became the same to the Hebrews. All 
 three characters are graphic illustrations of the 
 mastery of the mind. 
 
 It does not follow that an enthusiasm and de- 
 votion which carries one to the death is proof of 
 the cause advocated. It does prove the sincerity 
 and earnestness of the advocate making the sacri- 
 fice. 
 
 Many good people have perished in a poor 
 cause which they thought sublime. Delusions of 
 mind distort its visions, but not its powers. It is 
 for this reason that the exalted fanaticism of the 
 
212 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 early Mormons carried them on to strenuous 
 deeds, and yet did not impair their powers of com- 
 mon sense. They could subdue a wild country and 
 learn to utilize its hidden wealth. 
 
 We are prone to think it all bad, when some 
 part of a delusion obsesses a race or generation. If 
 this were true the Mohammedan illusion would 
 be rotten from core to circumference. Some in- 
 tense people so assert, but such is not true, as calm 
 reflection shows. A fine civilization existed in 
 Spain under the Mohammedan Moors for seven 
 centuries, superior in art and science to the ruder 
 life of both Franks and Teutons. 
 
 So, while the products of Joseph Smith's visions 
 and declarations were often erratic and fanatic, 
 nevertheless much honest-hearted goodness in 
 word and deed is in evidence if you are fair enough 
 to look for it. I found it to be so, and I affirm 
 that the mental influence of this Latter Day faith 
 had a constructive power to establish on barren 
 ground and amid the rude forces of nature, a 
 settlement of homes and firesides devoted to re- 
 ligion and to an honest life. Putting by the ex- 
 tremes of an ecstatic people, it is undeniable that 
 they excelled in usefulness as light excels darkness 
 the roving Indian aborigines. 
 
 When I walked about that modern Zion of Salt 
 Lake, "and told the homes and streets thereof," 
 
Mind as the Master Worker 213 
 
 I could not fail to read the evidence of the power 
 of mind over matter which had built a city where 
 the Indian's wikiup had stood and had made 
 farms out of land whose only products once were 
 sage-brush and reptiles. 
 
 Still, the Mormon mind was not scientific, but 
 ecstatic, and walked by faith, although it had the 
 common sense to work by sight. It was a fine mo- 
 tive force to lift to higher levels the lives of multi- 
 tudes otherwise inert, and to put the spade or hoe 
 of industry into idle hands. It redeemed a waste. 
 
 Utah would not have advanced to her present 
 prosperity and power had not another kind of 
 mentality sought out its treasures. It may seem 
 a sordid motive to seek for gold and silver in place 
 of seeking for the sanctuary and salvation. Yet 
 such a sordid search has invariably preceded the 
 higher development of a country. Trade has its 
 argonauts and argosies which in the end serve 
 for higher things. 
 
 With minds alert for mineral treasure, men 
 drifted into the Territory, at first a few, and later 
 on with a rush to supplement the civilizing work 
 of the Mormons. To some their advent seemed 
 a destructive one, for they were not religious, and 
 scoffed at the religion of the Mormons. They 
 pointed out its weak, if not wicked elements, and 
 laughed in derision of such a faith. They were 
 
214 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 a rude lot of humanity, and the Mormons coun- 
 tered back with accusations of their profanity and 
 immorality. These rough-living miners, unknown 
 to themselves, were the advertisers of a coming 
 superior mental culture, which would do much 
 for Utah's future. 
 
 When I saw the skilled miner, and the skilled 
 mineralogist at work with their machinery, as 
 nicely fitted for its task as a watch's mechanism, 
 I saw the mastery of mind over minerals, as I 
 had seen it over men. Whose eyes saw and whose 
 purpose sought out this secreted wealth? It was 
 the scientific miner, the chemist, the mineralogist, 
 the capitalist, the economist and publicist. One 
 and ^all, they united their heads and hands to do 
 it. Of the wealth that they won from the rocks, 
 some of it is in banks, some in ships, some in news- 
 papers, some in books, and some in great indus- 
 trial plants. Little of it is lying idle, for the men 
 who made this wealth were not idlers. Both Gen- 
 tile and Mormon have had a hand in the making 
 of a State and a Star in the constellation of the 
 Union. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 A LATTER DAY VIEW OF A LATTER DAY STATE 
 
 "Often do the spirits of great events stride on 
 before the events, and in to-day already, walks to- 
 morrow." Coleridge 
 
 I REMEMBER that it was the great fear of 
 the Gentile and liberal element in the Terri- 
 tory, that if the United States Congress gave state- 
 hood to the people, a return to the old order of 
 religious and political tyranny would begin. That 
 in due time the newer element would be driven 
 out by the usual political methods, or a terrorism 
 reign, like that in the Southern States over the 
 colored voter. 
 
 Statehood came in due course, but none of the 
 fears of the Liberals were realized. The people 
 seemed to have caught the free spirit of a free 
 country and realized that they were a part of a 
 great and growing republic. They immediately 
 divided on all political questions into the two great 
 party organizations, the Republican and the 
 215 
 
216 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 Democratic. Their religious affiliations did not 
 override their party affiliations, as a general rule, 
 and the great bugaboo of the alarmists was gone 
 like a nightmare dream. Utah had come to its 
 own consciousness of popular life, and had decided 
 that everything should go along on normal and 
 popular lines. The worth of commercial and re- 
 ligious interests should be decided, solely, by the 
 merits of the interests involved, and the prefer- 
 ences of a free people. 
 
 Thus many found their fears to be no more 
 real than worries. The reformers found reform 
 was still alive, and vital enough to make for bet- 
 ter things. The reactionaries found past bitter- 
 nesses were hardly at home in the bosoms of a 
 newer generation. 
 
 Some abnormal conditions, like polygamy, died 
 slowly, since the welfare and rights of wives and 
 children could not be ruthlessly disregarded. Time 
 is always softer hearted, in human history, than 
 the extremist and reformer. So we note how time 
 allowed a revelation to come, through the proper 
 way, and it was announced that it was no longer 
 an "order of Heaven" to live one's religion in 
 the bonds of polygamous marriage. It gradually 
 declined, but of course, being a social condition, 
 its actual cessation took some time. It is about 
 dead, at this writing, save in a few isolated cases, 
 
A Latter Day View of a Latter Day State 217 
 
 contra leges, and this is found in every well con- 
 ducted country. There are always law breakers 
 of some sort, but the law always prevails until 
 war or revolution breaks the peace. 
 
 No such effort was made to fight for polygamy 
 as was made for slavery for the simple reason that 
 no money value was at stake in the former "twin 
 relic of barbarism," while it was very prominent 
 in the latter. A man's "niggers" brought him in 
 money while a man's wives cost him a great deal 
 of money. So the Mohammedan tinge to the Ter- 
 ritory died out when statehood was fully estab- 
 lished. Those who had invested in polygamy and 
 were deeply involved as to character and social 
 standing through its practice, fought even to the 
 floor of the United States Senate for its existence 
 and "their right." Nothing harsh was done to the 
 offenders for the reason that this condition was 
 due to previous religious convictions and teaching; 
 but it was very soon evident that Utah, like other 
 states, must be monogamous in its domestic life 
 in harmony with the custom of the country. 
 
 Some foolish people who persisted, as they will 
 in anything religious that conflicts with the State, 
 in the practice of polygamy, found themselves un- 
 der arrest and in prison where they posed as mar- 
 tyrs of religious persecution. Some people pitied 
 them, but the majority laughed at them since this 
 
2i 8 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 was at the close of the Nineteenth Century, and 
 was not in the Middle Ages. 
 
 Thus the years, and the "Age-Patience," which 
 with the "Time-Spirit" does wonderful things for 
 us, shelved this heated question, and it faded away 
 like the light of a day that is dead. The mixed mul- 
 titude was the agent of the change. The fanatical 
 cannot last long where isolation ends, and contact 
 with the world begins. Here is the reason for the 
 call of the zealot, "Come out of her, my peo- 
 ple!" whether that call be voiced by a Hebrew 
 of the Hebrews, like Isaiah, or a Christian like 
 Athanasius, who gloried in standing ''''contra mun- 
 dum," or an ecclesiast like Torquemada, opponent 
 of all heretics, or a Brigham Young against a mod- 
 ern world. Religion, if it is to live, must live 
 right up against the world in which it lives, and 
 mellow it with good living. It will surely die if it 
 hides itself in monastic cloisters, beneath a nun's 
 garments, or rejects the law of the monogamous 
 life, the while men and women are being born in 
 just equal numbers all over the habitable world. 
 
 Now view this state as a place to live in. It 
 is a goodly land since its soil is of the richest. I 
 used fairly to ache, when my horse's feet turned up 
 the finest garden ground, growing only sage brush, 
 on the mesa or bench-land about the base of the 
 mountain ranges. I am an agriculturist in my 
 
A Latter Day View of a Latter Day State 219 
 
 tastes, and it seemed such a waste for all this soil 
 to produce no more than coarse brush. Of course, 
 the rainfall was too meagre for "dry-farming," 
 as they then thought. It can be done, and is be- 
 ing done, in these days of the more scientific cul- 
 ture of the soil. The snow-water of the great 
 ranges is ample for the cultivation of every foot 
 of good ground, if conserved in reservoirs, until 
 the heated season calls for its use. Here is where 
 capital and science can double Utah's acreage. 
 
 Then think of the climate of this land. There 
 is just enough winter to put "glame" into the at- 
 mosphere. Bright days and a generous sunlight 
 paint everything richly vivid. The oxygen of the 
 hills makes the eyes sparkle, the blood to flush 
 the cheeks redly, and gives the hands the grip 
 which full labor requires. The very grain grown 
 feels this climatic impulse, and the flour of Utah 
 wheat has a golden tint, shown in the bread-loaf, 
 and tasted in its good flavor. The fruits too, nota- 
 bly the peaches and apples, have a taste out-rival- 
 ing such products in California. 
 
 More than soil and climate and the fruits of 
 their union are visible in Utah's future. Uncle 
 Sam has a pocket-book in its mountain ranges. A 
 clasp holds the contents very tightly: gravity has 
 its strong hand on these treasures. Still Industry, 
 Understanding, Patience, Skill, and Capital, are 
 
220 Tenderfoot Days 
 
 the five fingers of another hand which can un- 
 clasp this hold of gravity on these hills, and allow 
 the wealth to pour out, in such rich recoveries of 
 ore as have made Bingham and Big Cottonwood 
 Canyons famous. There is enough in Utah to 
 keep generations busy with the soil and water and 
 with the pocketed ores of the hills. Such industry 
 will make comfortable, and therefore happy, my- 
 riads of homes to be established in this state. 
 
 So wide a physical outlook should have a coun- 
 terpart in a metaphysical one. The mind of the 
 people, in this age of free mentality, should also 
 expand to consider and solve great questions of 
 intellectual, philosophical, social and religious im- 
 portance. All these realms of mind are necessary 
 to make a population worthy of the land which 
 they inhabit, and out of whose generous bosom 
 they draw their physical life. 
 
 Yet what is physical life worth, if it does not 
 give the opportunity to climb higher to those meta- 
 physical realities which lie back of, and are the 
 cause of, these physical appearances. We say 
 that we see, we touch, we taste, and so these things, 
 sensible to us, are real. But we know that these 
 things change and decay. All this phenomenal ex- 
 istence, with its display of beauty, power and pro- 
 duction, is for the use of the minds which are 
 superior to these phases of matter. 
 
A Latter Day View of a Latter Day State 221 
 
 Utah, rich in material wealth to come, should 
 also produce a richer metaphysical wealth, in the 
 mental and moral intelligence of the people, and 
 that acquisition will entitle them to be called, of 
 a truth, the Saints of the Latter Days.