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Datum: Montag, den 8. März 2004, um 17:21 Uhr
Betrifft: Provo war nicht immer das Bollwerk der HLT-Heiligkeit

Diese nette Buchbesprechung gibt ein paar Einblicke in die frühe Geschichte von Provo. Vorsicht: Es fließt einiges an Blut und Alkohol.

Salt Lake Tribune
8.3.2004

A drunk and rowdy history, that’s -- wait, Provo?

By Mark Eddington
The Salt Lake Tribune

    PROVO -- Listen up, Salt Lakers.
    But for a few fractious Utes (the tribe, not the team), Utah Valley might have been the place Mormon pioneers chose to settle first in 1847. What’s more, Utah’s early hell-raisers were more apt to be from rowdy Provo than straight-laced Salt Lake City.
    Such nuggets come courtesy of Springville historian D. Robert Carter. Thanks to his new book, few can say that no man knows Provo’s history. Founding Fort Utah, a historical treasure trove commissioned by Provo City, is full of colorful characters, tragic twists and even a few surprises. Here’s a taste:
    * Provo was founded on April Fools’ Day.
    * In a letter to Spain’s king, the cartographer for the Dominguez-Escalante expedition called Utah Valley the most "beautiful and fertile site in all New Spain."
    * Gold-seeking forty-niners encamped at Provo didn’t take a shine to Mormon sermons. "They call us gentiles and regard themselves as entitled to superior privileges," one wrote.
    Carter’s 263-page book chronicles Utah Valley’s history from the Ice Age through 1850. The bulk of the book details the founding of Fort Utah -- which later became Provo -- and the relations between the Mormon settlers and the Timpanogots Utes.

    Almost the right place: Utah Valley trumped its northern neighbor in its suitability for settlement in the view of mountain men Moses "Black" Harris, Jim Bridger and others consulted by Brigham Young and the Mormon pioneers, according to tidbits Carter gleaned from LDS Church archives and elsewhere.
    Utah Valley had a freshwater lake full of fish; Salt Lake Valley had a dead lake full of brine shrimp. The former had more rivers and streams and richer soil. Even the pioneers themselves seemed to prefer the Provo area.
    "Most people have been brought up with the idea that there was only one place in mind when the pioneers left the Missouri River from Winter Quarters," Carter told The Salt Lake Tribune. "But the documents . . . of the people who were in Brigham’s company, even previous to their leaving Winter Quarters, tell another story."
    Carter says Young did not settle on Salt Lake until days before entering the valley.
    Young "felt inclined for the present not to crowd upon the Utes until we have a chance to get acquainted with them and that it would be better to bear toward the region of the Salt Lake rather than the Utah [Valley]," Willard Richards dictated in a letter delivered to Orson Pratt and the advance party about to enter the Salt Lake Valley. "[Young] thinks the Utes may feel a little tenacious about their choice lands on the Utah, [and] we had better keep further north towards the Salt Lake, which is more of a . . . neutral ground."

    April Fools: Mormon pioneers eventually made their way to the shores of Utah Lake. On April 1, 1849, about 30 families founded Fort Utah -- later to be named Provo in honor of fur trapper Etienne Provost. Previous accounts and even a historical marker at Fort Utah Park -- near the intersection of Geneva Road and west Center Street -- say the settlement began on April 3 or in mid-March.
    But Carter says April 1 is Provo’s real birthday. "The powers that be [several decades go] saw it differently and thought it would be derogatory to observe the city’s birthday on April Fools’ Day."
    The park boasts a far-from-exact replica of that first settlement. But the faux fort is in the wrong place. Consulting documents in LDS Church archives, Carter and his wife discovered record keepers had goofed in transcribing the fort’s location. A granite marker marks the actual site in a field between the Provo River and 200 North just east of Interstate 15.
    More ammo for historical nitpickers: The cannon perched on a platform at the park isn’t the original. The real one, Carter says, exploded at a July 24 celebration in 1855.
    "A guy named William Nixon overloaded it and then tamped in some potters clay to make a loud report," Carter relates. "It was louder than he bargained for, and that was the end of the cannon and Nixon."

    Wild bunch: Carter’s research shows Fort Utah’s early settlers were a "fractious bunch," who told Brother Brigham -- instead of being told by him -- that they were going to settle Utah Valley and also chose their own church leaders.
    After putting down roots, they seemed more intent on converting to the Utes’ way of life than converting the Indians to theirs, as their Salt Lake City brethren had urged.
    The settlers also indulged in smoking, gambling and racing horses with the Timpanogots Utes, Carter says. Provo’s pioneers tended to be violent, unruly and less educated than their more genteel counterparts to the north.
    "You look at some of the journal entries of people who traveled through the area, and they say how ramshackle, dirty and unkempt Provo is," Carter says.
    Not that the settlers didn’t have their pluses. Carter says they were brave, cooperative at times and often harbored good intentions toward the Indians. Still, he says, some of the more rambunctious elements contributed to the Battle of Provo River in February 1850, an engagement that tipped the balance of power away from the Utes and toward the pioneers.
    The book details the gory murder of a Ute, Old Bishop, who earned his nickname because he looked like early Mormon Bishop Newell K. Whitney. Three Mormon Battalion veterans killed the Indian -- who had been accused of swiping a shirt -- filled his body with rocks and sank it in the Provo River. The Utes found the body and the battle soon broke out.
    Carter says the settlers and a militia sent from Salt Lake City sought the spirit -- brandy, most likely -- before drafting their battle plan. The 10-day campaign included beheadings, executions and other bloody behavior.
    For instance, Gen. Daniel Wells and the militia captured a band of Utes on Table Mountain (now called West Mountain). Relying on journal accounts, Carter writes that roughly a dozen Indians were kept under guard through the night and summarily executed on the morning of Feb. 14. He dubs it Utah’s St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
    In all, one settler and between 20 and 30 Indians -- casualty counts vary for the Utes -- were killed.
    In chronicling the bad with the good, Carter says, he is not seeking to drum up controversy. Thus far, the book has been greeted with more cheers than jeers.
    The book "is well researched, well documented and well written," Utah State Historical Society Director Philip Notarianni says. "Carter has a knack for finding the interesting and human, and putting them into historical context."
    Provo leaders, who commissioned Carter to write the book a few years after the city celebrated its sesquicentennial, are pleased. "It’s unusual for a community to have a document that is as credible as this one," Mayor Lewis Billings says. The taxpayer tab: $9,100.
    As for Carter, he is grateful the city hired him to do the history and partly funded its first printing.
    "There probably are some not very farsighted people who would say, ’You could have filled a few chuckholes with the tax money you paid this yokel to do this history,’ " he says.
    "But I guess the city was willing to take a few slings and arrows and do this for future generations. Hopefully, the book will still be around long after I am gone."

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