History of Utah

rich people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals.

Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge.

Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope.

The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah.

The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys.

The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest.

The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe.

At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.

In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.

Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken and occupied.

The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it.

They created irrigation systems, for the dry desert lands, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools within just a few years.

While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.

Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti.

In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas (in future Nevada), and the Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.

These southern explorations eventually led to extended Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas, Nevada) and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona Territory Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas.

These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War.

The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California.

The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon.

Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known.

In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming.

The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war.

Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west.

Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming.

Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state.

Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872.

[21] Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time,[22] several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes.

Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents.

Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly.

Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis.