Part 2

Their wickiups were made upon a framework of poles lashed together at the top in such way as to leave an opening for smoke to escape. The poles, tied with sinew in the conventional tepee shape, were plied with brush or woven willows and then covered with long strips of juniper bark or with skins of rabbits. At one side an opening was left for an entry-way. The fire was built in the center, leaving space around the sides for eating and sleeping.

Camps were usually located on a mesa, hill or flat, so that water had to be carried some distance from stream or spring. For this purpose, they wove jugs with narrow necks from the limbs of the squawbush and waterproofed them with pitch from the pinyon pine. Sinews were tied to the necks of the jugs for shoulder or head straps. Basketry was competent, but there is no evidence of pottery among them.

Paiute equipment for life was simple. Clothing consisted of a breechclout for the men, and for women a brief skirt hanging from the waist. These were sometimes supplemented by robes hung from the shoulders for warmth, buckskin moccasins for the feet, and ornaments of various kinds, particularly beads and feathers. They had no regular head dress, but often painted themselves with a special red earth which gave them a weird appearance. Breechclouts, skirts and robes were usually made from rabbit skins. In order to have the fur both inside and out, they would take a strip of fur and roll it in a spiral around a sinew or yucca fiber. Many such strips sewed together with sinew thread made a skin cloth from which clothing could be fashioned.

Hunting equipment consisted principally of the bow and arrow, supplemented by stone skinning knives. Their arrows were shafted with feathers and tipped with hard wood or stone points, small ones for birds and small game and larger ones for war or big game, all held in place by sinews. The shaft of the arrow was made from a straight limb or from reed cane. Sinew was made by shredding the tendons of deer or other large game. If arrows were to be poisoned, a concoction was made by inducing a rattlesnake to bite into a piece of liver, letting it stand a few days and then mixing it with crushed black widow spiders. Arrow tips dipped in this were considered deadly.

The Paiutes used the rock grinder or metate and mano for grinding such foods as corn, mesquite beans, and the coarse grass seed from which they made bread. The meal was mixed with water to make a batter and was cooked on a hot rock in the fire. The rock was first rubbed with clay to keep the meal from sticking. According to one method, the batter was made thin and poured over the rock in a flat cake. The heat from the rock soon set the batter and the rock was then stood upright close to the fire so the cake would bake on both sides. In the other method, the batter was made thicker and put out on the rock in the form of a conical loaf and coals were heaped around it.

Though the Indians raised corn, squash and beans, they lived principally upon fish, birds, wild game, wild fruits, roots and seeds. The principal game was rabbit and deer but occasionally antelope and mountain sheep supplemented their meager fare, and any sort of smaller game was used when obtainable. Hyrum Leany, who settled in Harrisburg in 1862, relates how the Indians used to go hunting lizards and chipmunks (ta-bats pa-shugi). The boys would tuck the heads under their belts and sometimes would come home with a beltful. The chuckwalla lizards were regarded as delicacies and the Indians had learned the art of removing them from the crevices in which they puff themselves up until their sides are pressed tightly against the rock, thus making it difficult to dislodge them. By puncturing the distended lungs with a sharp hooked stick, they were easily extracted.

To cook a small animal, such as rabbit or chipmunk, the Paiutes laid it in the fire without any preliminary preparation other than the removal of the skin, and the hot coals were raked over it. All parts of the body were eaten and nothing edible was missed. Surplus meat was usually dried.

Among the plants, grass seed was a staple article of diet. It could be gathered in those days almost anywhere, though the grass has largely disappeared since the advent of the white man’s horses, cattle and sheep. The fruit of the cactus (tuna or prickly pear) furnished a food mainstay in midsummer. In places where the yant (_Agave_) was found, the young flower stalks were roasted barbecue fashion. This was a delicacy designated as pe-ya-ga-mint, “a sweet food.”

Sugar was obtained in small quantities from the water willows and from the reed cane (_Phragmites_) by cutting it when plant lice had been working on it. As it dried, crystals of sugar appeared. This was gathered by shaking off the crystals and using them as a delicacy.

Among the native fruits gathered in season were the wild grapes and the sour squawberries of the stream banks in the valleys, the little red ookie berries of the semi-alkaline flats, the weump berries (_Berberis fremonti_) of the foothills, the sarvis berries (_Amelanchier_) of the lower mountain slopes and the choke cherries (_Prunus_), strawberries, and raspberries (_Rubus_) of the mountains. Pine nuts obtained from the cones of the pinyon pines were a staple fall crop gathered in large quantities and kept for later use.

It is certain that the Parrusits Indians raised crops by irrigation before the whites appeared among them. Escalante, in 1776, remarked only about corn and squash, but it is believed that they also raised beans and probably melons. Their farms were located on small flats where water could be easily diverted from spring or stream. Farming implements were mainly sticks of various kinds, usually of ash, about three feet long and three or four inches wide toward one end, with the edges sharpened and running to a point. Ditches were hard to make and maintain due to periodic floods. Cultivated areas were usually very small, five acres being the maximum.

An old Kaibabits Indian named George graphically described the farming operations thus: “Kaibab Injuns no raise’m crops. ’nudder Injuns raise’m. No shovel, no hoe. Use’m stick; dig’m ditch; make water come. Dig little hole over here, over there, all around; plant’um corn.”

The squaws performed most of the labor in tending the crops. The bucks were the warriors and hunters. Harvesting the corn, carrying water, gathering grass seed, grinding corn meal, making bread, making clothing, all were squaw’s work. There may, however, have been a more equal division of work than appears to us now, since the food supply and safety of the home depended much upon the prowess of the hunter and the vigilance of the warrior.

The simple personal equipment and belongings gathered up by an individual during his lifetime were usually buried with him for his spirit journey. Nothing of material value was passed on from generation to generation; each had to depend upon his own efforts. Weaklings, cripples, and the aged had a hard time. If they became burdensome, they were usually abandoned and sometimes burned. St. George cattlemen at Mount Trumbull frustrated an attempted burning as late as the nineties. The Uinkarets had just left camp when the cowboys accidentally stumbled upon it. One wickiup was left standing. The doorway had been fastened, wood and trash had been piled around it and set on fire as the Indians left. Inside, an old blind Indian named Waterman was nearly suffocated when the cowboys released him. The Indians having abandoned him refused to care for him further and he became a burden on the whites.

At the time of the white settlement of the Virgin River Valley in the 50’s and 60’s, there were perhaps a thousand Parrusits in various bands along the stream with their principal camping places near Rockville, Virgin City, Toquerville, Washington Fields and Santa Clara. These all appear to have recognized the leadership of Chief Tut-se-gavits, head of the Tonaquint band living on the Santa Clara Creek, and to have been held together under regular tribal control.

G. H. Heap, one of the Argonauts, described the Paiutes in 1853 in the following uncomplimentary paragraphs:

The Pah-Utah Indians are the greatest horse thieves on the continent. Rarely attempting the bold coup-de-main of the Utahs, they dog travelers during their march and follow on their trail like jackals, cutting off any stragglers whom they can surprise and overpower, and pick up such animals as stray from the band or lag behind from fatigue. At night lurking around the camp, and concealing themselves behind rocks and bushes, they communicate with each other by imitating the sounds of birds and animals. They never ride, but use as food the horses and mules that they steal, and, if within arrowshot of one of these animals, a poisoned shaft secures him as their prize. Their arms are bows and arrows tipped with obsidian, and lances sometimes pointed with iron, which they obtain from the wrecks of wagons found along the road. They also use a pronged stick to drag lizards from their holes.

Yearly expeditions are fitted out in New Mexico to trade with the Pah-Utahs for their children and recourse is often had to foul means to force their parents to part with them. So common is it to make a raid for this purpose, that it is considered as no more objectionable than to go on a buffalo or a mustang hunt. One of our men, Jose Galliego [_sic_], who was an old hand at this species of man-hunting, related to us with evident gusto, numerous anecdotes on this subject; and as we approached the village he rode up to Mr. Beale and eagerly proposed to him that we should “charge on it like h—l, kill the mans, and maybe catch some of the little boys and gals.”[6]

The coming of the Mormon pioneers gradually upset the Paiute government. The whites frequently settled on Indian camp sites and occupied Indian farming lands. Their domestic livestock ate the grass that formerly supplied the Indians with seed, and crowded out deer and other game upon which they largely subsisted. This interference with their movements and the reduction in the food supply tended eventually to bring the Indians into partial dependence upon the whites.

Within a few years, farm crops and livestock brought to the whites more food and clothing than the Indians had ever dreamed of. No wonder they became beggars in the towns and thieves of cattle and horses on the range. As long as the whites were in the minority, they used to feed the Indians. In the words of John Dennett, an old settler of Rockville, this “gave them an idea of some other kind of food beside grass seed and wild game.”

As the whites increased and became strong enough to defy the Indians, the attitude changed from one of fear to that of domination. Although they continued more or less to feed the begging Indians, they soon put a stop to thievery on the range, punishing it in many cases by death. This transition was marked by bitter feeling and even by war between the races. In time, it became increasingly difficult for the Indians to maintain themselves.

Not only was their food supply reduced, but the whites also spread strange maladies among the Indians. Measles and smallpox are known to have been fatal in many cases. When Silver Reef, a mining town of 1500 people, was flourishing in the 70’s and 80’s it is known that venereal diseases were spread among the Indians. Fatalities from disease and the diminution of food supplies were undoubtedly heavy factors in the drastic reduction of the Indian population. Of the estimated thousand Parrusits living along the Virgin River in the 50’s and 60’s, there was only one survivor (until his death in June, 1945), an old fellow called Peter Harrison, who lived among the Shivwits Indians on the Santa Clara reservation.

Among the neighbors of the Parrusits there remained in 1933 only about seventy-five Kaibabits on a reservation at Moccasin, Arizona, some fifty Shivwits on a reservation on the Santa Clara Creek, fifty miles to the west; and about fifty Com-o-its in the vicinity of Cedar City. The Uinkarets and several smaller groups are today entirely extinct.

Asked to account for this tragedy, the old Kaibabits Indian George explained it this way: “When white man come, lotsa Injuns here; alla same white man now. Injuns heap yai-quay [meaning lots of them die]; maybe so six, maybe so five, maybe so two in night. Purty soon all gone. White man, he come: raise’m pompoose. Purty soon lotsa white man.”

Early Explorations

Zion Canyon was known to the Indians from time immemorial, but its discovery by white men, so far as is known, dates only from the middle of the 19th century. However, the series of explorations in this region which finally led to its discovery cover the period of three quarters of a century beginning in 1776.

In that year a party of Spaniards passed through the region and crossed the Virgin River within twenty miles of Zion Canyon without knowing of its proximity. This was the remarkable expedition led by Fathers Dominguez and Escalante through portions of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona. The object of the expedition was two-fold. The Spanish government desired a direct route from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the Presidio of Monterey, California, and the priests themselves had dreams of founding new Indian missions in the unexplored territory beyond the Colorado River. The governor of New Mexico furnished provisions, Father Dominguez provided the horses and mules and Father Silvestre Velez de Escalante was the diarist of the party.[7]

The expedition set out July 29, 1776 from Santa Fe, passing through explored territory as far as the Gunnison river in southwestern Colorado, whence it struck out into the unknown. The priests were fortunate in finding a couple of young Ute Indians from Utah Lake, who acted as guides and who led them safely across the Colorado (Grand) and Green Rivers up the Duchesne to its headwaters and across the Wasatch Range to their home on Utah Lake.

Obtaining fresh guides, the party proceeded about two hundred miles into the deserts of southwestern Utah to Black Rock Springs near Milford, heading for the Pacific coast. They had been longer than expected on their journeyings. Fall was rapidly advancing. A snowfall on October 5 dashed their hopes of being able to cross the great Sierras still blocking their path to Monterey. Provisions were getting low and they were a long way from either Monterey or Santa Fe. Casting of lots determined that they should go back home.

Instead of retracing their circuitous route, they determined to take a short cut. They turned southeast, coming out of the desert that now bears Escalante’s name, a few miles west of Cedar City. The high mountains to the east forced them southward nearly a hundred miles along the foot of the rough and rugged escarpment known as the Hurricane Fault. This deflected them far from their intended course.

It was on this detour that they discovered the Virgin River and came closest to Zion Canyon. The party left the vicinity of Cedar City, crossed over the rim of the Great Basin at Kanarra and descended Ash Creek, tributary of the Virgin. A short distance below Toquerville they passed the three Indian cornfields with well made irrigation ditches, to which reference has already been made, and reached the Virgin River at the point where Ash Creek and La Verkin Creek joined it. Escalante called Ash Creek the Rio del Pilar. The main stream of the Virgin River above this point he named the Sulphur River because of the hot sulphur springs that flow into the stream about a mile distant from the point where the great Hurricane Fault crosses the river.

The party climbed out of the canyon alongside a volcanic ash cone or crater standing north of the present town of Hurricane. While some of the members of the party probably lingered to investigate the hot sulphur springs, others went ahead across the Hurricane bench and striking some Indian tracks, followed them out of the proper route and found themselves in the midst of an area of red sand dunes several miles in extent, sometimes called the Red Desert. This may be seen from the road approaching Zion from either St. George or Cedar City.

The sand dunes made traveling very difficult and by the time the party had plowed its way through and stood on top of a high bluff overlooking the corrugated valley below, both the horses and men were so tired they could scarcely make their way down the bluff to water at the site of old Fort Pearce. Here they found a desert shrub, the creosote bush (_Hediondilla_) and tamarisk trees (supposed to have been introduced from the old world).

Here their provisions became exhausted, and from then on they had to subsist largely upon horse flesh and such food as they could procure from the Indians. The next morning, as they started on their journey, they met a group of the Parrusits Indians who were living in scattered bands along the Upper Virgin River, forming one of the dozen or more clans belonging to the Paiute tribe, and who warned them that they were headed toward the Grand Canyon at a place where it could not be forded. After much persuasion they agreed to show the explorers a route by which they could climb the Hurricane Fault and proceed eastward toward a ford of the Colorado.

The Indians led them four or five miles up a narrow canyon along a footpath that became so steep and ledgy that the horses and mules could not follow. Perceiving this, the Indians fled and the party was forced to retrace the rocky trail to the foot and press southward again, crossing the present line into Arizona. They became suspicious that the Indians were purposely misdirecting them.

That night they made a dry camp, and having neither food nor water, both men and animals suffered intensely. Early next day they found water but after traveling about twenty-five miles some of the men were so weak and hungry they had to stop to rest. After ransacking their camp outfit, they found odds and ends enough to satisfy their worst needs.

At this point they found a way to climb the bold face of the Hurricane Fault. Hungry and thirsty, they headed for rough country to the southeast where they found water after about eighteen miles. They also found Indians from whom they procured some food. Again being warned by the Indians of the great impassable Grand Canyon ahead they swung off sharply to the northeast.

Continuing the journey, guided only by the vague directions given by the Indians, the party spent several days during late October and early November in crossing the Arizona Strip and southern Utah before they found a ford of the Colorado, a few miles upstream on the Utah side of the state line, since known as the “Crossing of the Fathers.” The hardships of the party in traversing Northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico to get back to Santa Fe, however, are not a part of this story.

The journey lasted from July 29, 1776 to January 2, 1777. It covered a circuitous route through four states and the priests had been pathbreakers in new and unexplored territory. One objective, the route to the Pacific coast, had not been attained, but the other, that of locating sites for missions, had been abundantly fulfilled. Many possibilities were marked along the route, but apparently none gave the Fathers more satisfaction than the prospects among the Parrusits Indians on the Pilar River (now Ash Creek and Virgin River) who were already farmers.

On finding the cornfield and irrigation ditches of the Parrusits, Escalante remarked:

By this we were greatly rejoiced, now because of the hope it gave of being able to take advantage of certain supplies in the future; especially because it was an indication of the application of these people to the cultivation of the soil; and because we found this much done toward reducing them to civilized life and to the faith when the Most High may so dispose, for it is well known how much it costs to bring other Indians to this point, and how difficult it is to convert them to this labor which is so necessary to enable them to live for the most part in civilized life and in towns.[8]

The Spanish Fathers never fulfilled their dreams of missions beyond the Colorado, but they explored an uncharted area, into which other Spaniards followed. The records, however, are meager and information incomplete about these later expeditions. Two other Spaniards, Mestes in 1805 and Arze and Garcia in 1812-13, seem to have penetrated as far as Utah Lake and perhaps southward, but so far as is known, their trips had little significance.[9]

Still later, other Spaniards developed the route from Santa Fe to the Pacific coast which the Fathers had failed to do. Known as the Old Spanish Trail, this passed northwestward from Santa Fe through southwestern Colorado and central Utah and then southwestward to Los Angeles. It crossed Escalante’s trail near Cedar City. But before this route was developed, other explorers had opened the way.

After Dominguez and Escalante, the next pathbreaker of importance to enter the region was Jedediah Strong Smith, a trapper and trader bent on expanding his fur business. He was probably the first to finish the task started by Escalante, that of finding a route to the coast, which he traversed in 1826 and again in 1827. Smith’s epochal explorations, like Escalante’s a half-century earlier, were circuitous in nature and his first trip covered an area now embraced by four states, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California. The eastern side of his loop overlapped the western side of Escalante’s and probably their trails coincided for short distances where they crossed.

Smith belonged to the firm of Smith, Jackson and Sublette, which had purchased General Ashley’s fur interests and was trapping through the region southward from Montana through Idaho and Wyoming to northern Utah. The summer camp or rendezvous of the firm was at Bear Lake near the Utah-Idaho line and most of the trapping grounds were to the north and east. Knowing nothing about the region lying south and west of the Great Salt Lake, Smith fitted out a party of about sixteen men to explore and trap the unknown region.

He left the shores of the Great Salt Lake, August 22, 1826, and proceeded south and west to Los Angeles, arriving there late in November. His exact course through Utah was long a matter of controversy[10] but with the discovery, by Maurice Sullivan, of an additional letter[11] written by Smith, the controversy was settled. It now seems certain that he followed the route proposed by the author to Maurice Sullivan (ibid.) from Utah Lake Southward to Sevier River in the vicinity of Fayette, followed it up to the mouth of Marysvale Canyon, and mistaking Clear Creek for the head of the river (evidently not recognizing the stream coming through Marysvile Canyon), passed over the divide at the head of Clear Creek and down by Cove Fort, south along the west foot of the mountains to Beaver River (which he called Lost River), on past the present site of Cedar City to the rim of the Great Basin, thence to Ash Creek along the route Escalante had taken to the Virgin River, down the Virgin to the Colorado River and across the Mojave Desert to the Coast.