Making Space on the Western Frontier: Mormons, Miners, and Southern Paiutes

5. "To Hold in Check Outside Influences"

85 5 “To Hold in Check Outside Influences” The Mormon apostle Erastus Snow toured the fringe settlements of the Cotton Mission in southwestern Utah and southeastern Nevada in July 1869. His trip took him to Hebron, Clover Valley, Panaca, Eagle Valley, and Spring Valley, a string of ranching outposts that, in the words of Snow, formed a “frontier line” close to the mines of soon-to-be Pioche. Snow recorded his assessment of the region in a letter to Brigham Young, noting that “notwithstanding their proximity to the mines and a periodical influx of adventurers, the people, generally, with a few exceptions seem to be striving to live their religion.” Nonetheless, Snow perceived that these folk of the fringe were vulnerable and advised that they “need the watch care of a . . . thorough and efficient man.” That man, Snow clarified, should be someone who had “a little knowledge of law as well as gospel” and more importantly, someone who possessed “practical sense and wisdom to hold in check outside influences.”1 Although it is not clear that Snow ever found his man, the policy he dictated—”to hold in check outside influences”—came to characterize the nature of Mormon settlement on its southwestern edge. The five villages that formed that “frontier line” spent much of their nineteenthcentury existence posturing defensively, not only against miners at Pioche but also against the Southern Paiutes. The tale that follows explores the complexity of the Mormon defense, first against the miners and then against the Paiutes. It also seeks to understand the nature of the Saints’ 86 making space on the western frontier involvement in the intercultural space that they, along with the miners and Paiutes, helped to build. More than the Paiutes, the Mormons were directly affected by the political lines that limited Zion’s borders. They spent considerable energy attempting to safeguard their geographic and communal space against the perceived threat of mining. Over time, Mormon defensive tactics, like those of the Paiutes, were plagued with inconsistencies and evolved to meet the changing circumstances of frontier life. The Saints, nonetheless , were committed to their cause; it was more a spiritual contest than a geographic, economic, or political one for them, with eternal implications . When miners moved in, it was easy for frontier Mormons to cast the contest as a struggle between the kingdom of God and that of the devil. Brigham Young defined his kingdom largely in relationship to gentiles. At a counsel meeting in July 1847, four days after his arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, Young articulated a policy that he would spend the rest of his life encouraging his flock to follow: “‘We do not intend to have any trade or commerce with the gentile world, for so long as we buy of them we are in a degree dependent upon them. The Kingdom of God cannot rise independent of the gentile nations until we produce, manufacture, and make every article of use, convenience, or necessity among our own people.’” He further expressed his determination to “‘cut every thread’” connecting the Saints to the gentiles and vowed to “‘live free and independent , untrammeled by any of their detestable customs and practices.’”2 In essence, Young erected a rhetorical wall around his western Zion that divided space between Mormon and gentile, the sacred and the “detestable ” profane. Historians have primarily focused upon the Mormon capital as the site where outside influences eroded Zion’s communitarian space, thereby dragging Utah into mainstream American political, economic, and social worlds by the end of the nineteenth century. Even Mormon leaders perceived a corrosive force at work in Salt Lake City. In 1865, Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, declared to a Centerville, Utah, congregation: “I admit that the people are better in the country towns than in Great Salt Lake City, for the froth and scum of hell seem to concentrate there, and those who live in the City have to come in contact with it; and with persons who mingle with robbers, and liars, and thieves, and with whores and whore-masters, etc.”3 Even though Salt Lake City bore the brunt of the gentile impact, the contest over Zion’s soul also engulfed Utah’s southwestern frontier. In fact, due to the physical separation of gentile and Mormon towns, southern Utah leaders could more clearly draw lines meant to divorce the good from the evil. Mormons attempted to...