Echo is located at the mouth of the steep sided Echo Canyon,, the bottleneck that directed overland travelers toward the Ogden and Salt Lake valleys. While the Donner Party was the first major American overland group since the mountain men to pass through, the Latter-day Saints or Mormons were the first to make note of its geographical significance when their first wagon train encamp there for almost a week in July 1847. They viewed the spot as an ideal resting spot for overland travelers--a long, broad valley covered in grass and trees. James Bromely noted the location’s desirability and established a large stage station there in 1854, forming the first permanent vestige of a town.

Echo became a strategic location during the Utah War in 1857-1858 as a base of operations for the Mormon Nauvoo Legion defending the Utah Territory from the invading US Army. U.S. military leaders recorded that the narrow canyon and dramatic geological formations made the location perfect for both fortified defense and ambush. Travelers, having heard of Echo’s militant reputation, feared passing through the town for decades.

The Transcontinental Railroad entered Echo in 1868, building its own Hell-on-wheels style town to the northwest of the existing Mormon settlement. Echo became an important junction connecting the coal mines of Summit County and the gold and silver mines in Park City with the Union Pacific Main Line until the railroad consolidated its locomotive facilities in Ogden during World War II. After the construction of Interstate-80 in 1986, the town did not receive an interstate exit. Cut off from easy access, and with the railroad abandonment of its branch lines in 1988, the town withered and died.

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Determined to create colonies throughout the proposed State of Deseret, Brigham Young called hundreds of Latter-day Saints (members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) to settle valleys throughout the Intermountain West. With daily concerns of constructing adequate shelter and securing sufficient food for family, Mormon pioneers in Utah Territory learned to balance each of the most important aspects of their lives, including their religious organization. The religious setup and gradual alignment of unit leadership in Sanpete County provides an exceptional time and place to highlight the early evolution of ecclesiastical organization in the Utah Territory.

On October 1, 1859, Stake President (local ecclesiastical leader who oversees a number of "ward" congregations) Welcome Chapman called together a body of Latter-day Saints in Mount Pleasant to discuss the settlement of North Bend. He selected a group to form a new settlement and chose a leader to preside over them. “Appointed brother James N. Jones to act as President, or Bishop, for the present time,” Welcome Chapman recorded. The Saints then sustained Jones “by a vote of the people.” Jones, along with fifteen other men and their families, spent the next nine months building the Fairview settlement.

After Fairview achieved sufficient population stability, on 25 June 1860 LDS Apostle Orson Hyde officially organized the settlement and ordained James N. Jones as the presiding local religious authority. In a letter to Brigham Young, Orson Hyde reported that “James N. Jones was selected and ordained Bishop of that ward.” Several years later, “On the morning of the 25th [of April 1863] at North Bend in San Pete County, the chiefs Anterro, Tabby, George and old Sowiett and many other chiefs and braves, visited President Young and company at the house of Bishop Jones.

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In 1867, on the first of two expeditions down the Green and Colorado rivers, John Wesley Powell’s crew, consisting of ten men, embarked on the adventure of a lifetime. The trek exhausted them both physically and mentally. Sailing on in four poorly-constructed wooden boats, the crew made repairs almost every night. Powell experienced the turbulent rapids at the confluence of the Grand and Colorado rivers. After a devastating accident in ‘disaster falls,’ the men lost one of their boats and about a third of their provisions. The grueling journey continuously tested the company’s morale. Several men abandoned the expedition, planning to scale the walls of the canyon and hike to a Mormon village - they were never heard from again. After a difficult trek, the expedition arrived in Salt Lake City. Their survival solicited national attention, transforming the expedition party into American heroes.

Powell, a little bruised from his journey, remained eager to conduct a second expedition and finish the map of the Grand Canyon. The second expedition began in 1871, but this time Powell and his men came prepared. Landscape photographer E. O. Beaman accompanied them through the Grand Canyon. The photographs, depicting the men and their journey, drew public attention to the expedition. Ultimately, this second expedition contributed to Powell’s discoveries of the remaining blank space on the map. Ultimately, this second expedition, cut short because of the dangerously high and treacherous waters, still allowed Powell to gather extensive scientific information and complete his map. Powell’s sacrifice and adventures made it possible for the world to see the beauties of the American West. His explorations led to the foundation of the Grand Canyon National Monument.

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Ephraim K. Hanks' involvement in the transportation of mail across the plains began in 1851. In August of that year, Samuel H. Woodson subcontracted the delivery of mail between Fort Laramie and Salt Lake City to Hanks and another man named Feramorz Little. Contracted for $8,000 a year, the pair arrived at Fort Laramie on the fifteenth of every month to drop off outgoing mail, pick up incoming mail, and escorted any emigrants traveling to Salt Lake City. The trek required skill, resourcefulness, and hard work - all of which Hanks had gained through his many years of experience crossing the plains. The dangers of these trips was not lost on Hanks’ wife, Thisbee Read, who feared for her husband’s safety during his travels. Hanks, too, recognized the dangers, but also felt a sense of duty to accomplish the task that Brigham Young had entrusted to him.

During a seven-year period, Hanks made the 2,400-mile round trip more than fifty times. He once made the journey from Salt Lake to Independence in less than 23 days--the fastest recorded time during that era.

He frequently interacted with American Indians during his travels. Hanks’ quick thinking and friendliness enabled him to survive several potentially perilous encounters with Native Americans. The New York Herald praised Hanks for being the “most daring and intrepid of all Mormon mail carriers” for his ability to get the mail across the route safely and on time even though the “Indians on the route had refused to let others pass freely.”

His wife Thisbee spoke of his dedication and commitment to the job of getting the mail to its destination safely. His trips in the winter occasionally left him stranded in impassable snow. One on of these journeys, Hanks “lived in a cave on one of these trips with the mail, eating nothing but dried beef rolled in flour, until the winter snows melted enough for him to be on his way again.” Hanks set up a ranch near Emigration Canyon, which served as a Pony Express station and a way station for travelers passing through the area. Although no longer there, the approximate location of the Pony Express station is remembered by a historical land marker.

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The mid-1850s relationship between Latter-day Saints (or Mormons) and the United States government, who felt that they were growing too powerful, was tense. In response to the growing power of the leaders of the LDS Church in Utah, the federal government sent a large Army to Utah in 1857 to assess the situation and suppress any potential rebellions against the United States. With the army's approach, fear and anxiety spread among Mormon settlers in Utah Territory.

It was in this atmosphere that the Fancher party crossed Utah Territory on their way to California. Contention abounded between the Fancher Party and the Mormon communities through which they passed on their journey west. The emigrants chided Mormon settlers that the army was coming to suppress the religious group, and boasted that members in their group had persecuted Joseph Smith, the Church’s first leader. Their threats to steal from Mormon communities further enraged the Saints, creating a climate that resulted in extra-legal vigilantism.

In response to the perceived threats, LDS leaders in Cedar City and Parowan took matters into their own hands. Isaac C. Haight, William Dame, and John D. Lee solicited the aid of local Paiute Indians to steal the settlers’ stock while the local community plotted to attack the emigrant train encamped at ‘the Meadows.’ Under the ruse of a white flag, Lee led the Indians in the raid. Then, the local men disarmed the wagon train and killed around 120 emigrants on September 11, 1857. Only seventeen members of the party survived, all children too young to remember the attack. After the massacre, word came from Brigham Young in Salt Lake City for the Saints and the Paiutes to let the emigrant train pass unmolested. Unfortunately, his letter came too late to save the emigrant party from disaster. Some debate Young's knowledge and timing of the letter.

A series of cover-up stories allowed those responsible for the massacre to escape prosecution for years. John D. Lee faced trial in 1875, though the court did little to address the situation. A second trial commenced in 1878. This time the court attributed full responsibility for the massacre to Lee, ruling that his actions qualified as murder. The jury sentenced Lee to death and the federal representatives executed Lee on March 23, 1877. The involvement and role of Paiute auxiliaries is still debated to the present. The other men responsible for the massacre escaped legal punishment. Most of the massacre survivors eventually rejoined relatives in Arkansas and California. Representatives of the participants dedicated a memorial commemorating the tragedy and honoring the families who died at Mountain Meadows in 1999.

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Colonel Patrick Edward Connor, upon hearing miner’s charges that Shoshones had stolen good and animals from them, had led his California Volunteers north from Fort Douglas in Utah Territory to Bear Hunter’s Shoshone village adjacent to the Bear River. Connor, already antagonistic towards Indians and Mormons, had decided to attack the Indians in their winter encampment in order to participate in some form of military combat during the Civil War.

Connor’s men approached the Indian encampment early that morning. Upon seeing the approaching militia, the Indians quickly gathered up their weapons and the battle commenced. Once their ammunition ran out, the Indians asked to surrender, but received no mercy. The battle quickly turned into a massacre as the militia slaughtered 250 Shoshone men, women, and children while they California Volunteers suffered eighteen casualties.

At the sight of the confrontation, a national monument was to be erected, bearing the words “Battle of Bear River.” Mae T. Parry, a granddaughter of one of the chief Indians involved in the massacre, has begun to fight for the name of the Bear River Battle to be called the Bear River Massacre. “When you attack a sleeping village of Indian men, women and children, you can't call that a battle” Parry noted. Her ongoing fight to right the wrongs of history reflects the ongoing struggles of her people against the American government and for the inclusion of Indian point-of-view into the national narrative.

In 2008 the Shoshone Nation acquired the site and commemorated the 150 year anniversary at the site in 2013.

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President Abraham Lincoln placed Connor in charge of the 3rd California Volunteer Infantry at the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. Fearing that the Confederates would try to isolate the newly formed state of California from the rest of the Union, Lincoln ordered Connor and his men to Salt Lake City to protect the overland mail routes from Indian attack. Incensed by this assignment, Connor pleaded with his superior officers to allow him to take his men east to fight in the main theater of the Civil War. He argued that the men under his command wanted to "serve their country in shooting traitors instead of eating rations and freezing to death around sage brush fires..." They longed for “the privilege of going to the Potomac and getting shot." His request denied, he stayed in Utah Territory to protect the mail routes. He ordered his men to construct Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City.

After two years without any military action, Connor instigated an opportunity to fight. The Northwestern Shoshone periodically traded with emigrant parties on the Oregon Trail, one of the primary routes under Connor’s protection, or defended themselves against unscrupulous miners traveling between Utah Territory and the future states of Idaho and Montana. Mormon settlement in Utah Territory and increased traffic along the Oregon Trail limited the resources available to the Northwestern Shoshone. By the 1860s, the Shoshones had few choices but to exact a toll from emigrants and settlers utilizing Indian resources without compensating the tribe. Northwestern Shoshone warriors attacked a group of eight miners early in January 1863, killing two of them. The survivors made their way to Salt Lake City where they testified to Chief Justice John F. Kinney that Shoshones had attacked them. Kinney issued a warrant for the arrest of several Indian chiefs from the Northwestern Shoshone tribe including chiefs Bear Hunter, Sagwitch, and Sanpitch. The territorial marshal, Isaac L. Gibbs, recognizing that he would not be able to pursue and arrest the Shoshone chiefs by himself, requested the aid of Connor and his men. Connor accepted enthusiastically.

Connor made it abundantly clear that because his superiors denied him the chance to fight Confederates in the South, he intended to fight Indian warriors instead. “Connor anticipated that a major fight with the Indians would give his bored troops an opportunity to exhibit their fighting prowess and might gain him new and more exciting appointments.” He later admitted, “it was not my intention to take any prisoners.” His expedition had nothing to do with protecting the overland mail routes, or arresting the Shoshone chiefs--he simply wanted a chance to fight but instead orchestrated a massacre.

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For nearly a decade prior to the army’s arrival in 1857, the Mormons had lived relatively isolated and undisturbed by outside influences. Of early concern to church leaders, Fairfield, a satellite town of Camp Floyd, was viewed as bringing moral decay to some Mormons. Termed “Frogtown” by the Saints and army, it became a den of gambling houses, dance halls, brothels, and saloons frequented by soldiers, teamsters, emigrants, and even some settlers. Theft, prostitution, and murder frequently filled the streets and back halls. Church leaders mourned the spread of moral and social deterioration throughout the valley. One member said, “Camp Floyd Fairfield was full of rotteness and evil of every description and I'm sorry to say our people of both sexes mixed up with them largely and of how bad it did look to see young ladies whose parents were faithful.”

Despite the fear of moral and social turmoil that the army brought to Mormon communities, the Saints benefited economically from the army's occupation in the territory. The soldiers began building the immense fort at Camp Floyd as soon as they arrived. The fort consisted of buildings for headquarters, infantry and artillery units, storehouses, stables, corrals, workshops, powder magazines, a theatre, aqueduct, and so on.

At its height, Camp Floyd was perhaps the largest military installation in the United States prior to the Civil War. The Saints helped build the fort, laboring as artisans, carpenters, and mechanics, which allowed them to profit from trade with the army as Camp Floyd provided business opportunities for enterprising Saints. John Carson, for example, built the Stagecoach Inn, offering a simple yet comfortable environment for higher class visitors and military personnel alike. The inn later became an Overland Stage and Pony Express stop.

The commencement of the Civil War in 1861 struck the death knell for the army's military occupation in Utah Territory, and with it went a major source of conflict for the territory’s inhabitants. Johnston's army had opened the floodgates for travelers to pour into the territory, effectively ending the Mormons' isolation. Moral decay and social tension spread at an alarming rate from the camp to the Saints. Amidst all the social discord, however, the military presence had a positive impact on the territory's economy without which the Mormons would have struggled to keep their agricultural market afloat. Conversely, the success of the fort depended upon Mormon laborers and consumers. In the end, the Saints and Gentiles needed each other for Utah to grow and develop into a thriving territory.

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Settlers in Utah Valley discovered three separate caves in American Fork Canyon, seemingly undisturbed. Each cave is filled with exceptional varieties of stalactites, stalagmites, frostwork, flowstone, and other unique cave structures. The first of these caves was discovered in 1877 by logger Martin Hansen as he was cutting wood in the canyon. Mountain lion tracks near where he was working led to the entrance of a cave high up the canyon wall. His discovery came to be known as Hansen Cave. Inside the cave Martin discovered colorful and beautiful formations, which unfortunately were removed by visitors and miners over time.

The next cave, Timpanogos Cave, was not discovered until 1913. Two young men, James Gough and Frank Johnson, became bored while on a tour of Hansen Cave and went exploring. After becoming stuck and taking an alternate route back to their group, they stumbled upon an opening to another cave. This discovery was eventually lost after being covered by a landslide. Though the entrance was covered, rumors of its discovery were perpetuated by an article in the American Fork Citizen. In 1921, a group went to find it once again. Returning from the summit of Timpanogos, this group of friends decided to visit Hansen Cave in the hope of finding the new cave mentioned in the article. Surprisingly, they rediscovered the entrance to Timpanogos cave and subsequently formed the Payson Alpine Club dedicated to protecting the cave from the thieves and vandals that had destroyed Hansen Cave.

The last cave was discovered in 1921 by Heber Hansen and his nephew Wayne as they were hunting. While on the opposite side of the canyon, facing the two previously discovered caves, the pair spotted a potential third opening between the two other entrances. This third discovery eventually became known as Middle Cave. The three caves are now connected by tunnels to allow tour groups to pass through.

When the people of Utah Valley began to recognize the significance of the caves and the potential for tourism, protecting the caves became a higher priority. Mining claims and previous land disputes threatened the existence of the three caves, and only through the valiant efforts of local citizens, and an appeal to the president of the United States, did it become possible to protect and establish these three caves as the national monument that they are today.

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One of the most unique and easily accessible locations of ancient rock art in Utah is the Sego Canyon site near Thompson Springs in eastern Utah. Encompassing only three panels of rock art, four successive and distinct periods of human use are illustrated: Archaic, Fremont, Ute, and Anglo-American. Archaic, or Barrier Canyon style. The last of these styles may date as far back as 7000 BC and often features pictographs of large, rounded anthropomorphic figures. Fremont style paintings, dating from 600 AD to around 1250 AD, are pecked into the rock and depict angled anthropomorphic figures and abstract shapes. Ute style dates from 1300 AD to the mid-1800s and depicts animals, war figures, and shields painted in red and white. As American settlers arrived in the late nineteenth century, many sheepherders and cattlemen added their own additions to the artwork.

The site sits halfway between Thompson Springs, a center of ranching and railroading on the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railway, and the current ghost town of Sego, built to extract coal from the mines in the Book Cliffs first explored by Henry Ballard in 1881. G.K. Gilbert of the U.S. Geological Survey described the rock art in his 1883 report. In 1911, construction began on a railroad called the Ballard & Thompson Railway, which ran right in front of the largest of the three panels. After decades of vandalism by railroaders, miners, and ranchers, including a period where the cliff face was quarried out for building-stone, the BLM acquired the site in 1988. A restoration effort began in 1993 wherein they removed modern graffiti and patched the bullet holes to make the panels more visible.

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The Corps of Discovery relied heavily upon the geographic knowledge of Native peoples. They had been told of a set of impassable waterfalls high up on the Missouri River and finding them would indicate they were on the correct. However, in the late Spring of 1805, they reached a confusing confluence of two large rivers. Their Native informants had not mentioned such a large tributary - the Marias. The existence of this river puzzled the captains, who were unsure which river was the Missouri since the Marias matched it in size. Knowing the optimal months for travel were quickly passing, the captains spent a week on the decision, carefully evaluating each option knowing that a wrong choice would be costly. Eventually, Lewis and some men traveled up the Missouri where, to Lewis’ delight, they came across the Great Falls in June 1805. Lewis sent a message to Clark labeled “from the Great falls of the Missouri,” and Clark and his men rejoined the group.

Confident of their path, the captains believed the next portion of their journey to be easy, but they would find their information from Natives again incorrect. Although they had told Lewis and Clark “that the portage around the falls was not more than a half mile, the actual portage proved to be a torturous, eighteen-mile traverse that consumed more than a month of travelling season already far gone.” The water route was almost impossible to travel, forcing the group to continuously go on shore and walk, carrying their belongings. They encountered grizzly bears, rattlesnakes, and mosquitos, which created various problems and hardships for them. Eventually, they made it through the Great Falls and crossed the Missouri River, traveling onward to the west coast of the continent.

Today, Great Falls has a Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Interpretive Center where visitors can learn more about the expedition, participate in activities that the Corps would have done, and learn about the plants and animals Lewis and Clark documented during their journey through the Falls.

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From 1864 to 1868, the Navajos were forced to live at Fort Sumner on the Bosque Redondo reservation in eastern New Mexico, approximately 300 miles from their homeland. Around 8,000 Navajos were forced to make the journey. Hundreds, including the elderly and children, died on the way. Many more died during the four years at Bosque Redondo.

Navajo homelands cover northeast Arizona, northwest New Mexico, southeast Utah, and southwest Colorado. Their home, which they call Dinétah, is bordered by the four sacred mountains. Leading up to the Long Walk, the Navajos had difficult relations with the United States Army. This included broken treaties, the Army not protecting the Navajos from other raiding tribes, and some Navajos raiding the soldiers. Because of these raids, the military leader of New Mexico, James H. Carleton, wanted to control the Navajos. Carleton’s other motives were to assimilate the Navajos into an agricultural and Christian lifestyle. He also wanted their land for silver and gold mining. He gave the Navajos a chance to surrender but none did. He received help from Christopher “Kit” Carson, who eventually got the Navajos to abandon their land after burning and destroying everything they had. The majority surrendered, but others hid from and fought the soldiers.

In spring of 1864, the Navajos were forced to journey to Bosque Redondo. They did not know where they were going, how far they would travel, or how long the trip would last. They were not prepared for such a journey. Those who could not keep up were left behind. Fort Sumner was not big enough for the large number of Navajos plus the Mescalero Apaches that were also relocated there. Inadequate amounts of food and supplies caused near starvation. When they were given food, it was spoiled or they did not know how to prepare it. Crops that the Navajos grew failed greatly each year. Carleton’s experiment was unsuccessful.

On June 1, 1868, the Treaty of Bosque Redondo was signed by the United States Government and Navajo leaders. The treaty allowed them to return to their traditional homeland. They were granted “$150,000 for rehabilitation, plus 15,000 sheep and goats and 500 head of cattle, as well as token payments to each tribal member.” Part of the treaty included sending the children and future generations to government boarding schools where their cultural identity was stripped from them. The last of these schools closed in the 1980s.

The tragedy of the Long Walk is still evident in the culture and attitudes of the Navajo. While it is difficult for them to reflect upon, they remember the strength of their ancestors that led to the continuation of their people.

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Born in Canada in 1785, French-Canadian Étienne Provost moved west as a young man to pursue the life of a fur trader. Although he is recognized as one of the most influential mountain men during his time, his legacy hides in the shadows of more recognizable men, such as Jim Bridger. This portly, illiterate, self-made fur trader led expeditions and ventures through modern-day New Mexico and Utah before settling in Missouri. His influence lies within his namesake: Provo, Utah.

During his 1824 travels, Provost encountered some Shoshones between Utah Lake and the Great Salt Lake. Warren Angus Ferris, another trapper, included a version of their meeting in his writings, although he was not present at the time. He writes about an Indian “evil genius” known as “Bad Gocha” (an Anglicized version of the French nickname “mauvais gauche” or “the bad left-handed one”) who met with Provost. He asked Provost to smoke the peace pipe but requested that all metals be removed, as it would be problematic for the ritual. As the white men complied, the “Indians fell upon them and commenced their work of slaughter with their knives,” resulting in about fifteen dead. However, it should be noted that the number and story varies between accounts. The most likely estimate is that about eight died. Provost’s escape led to the renaming of the nearby Timpanoquint River to the phonetically spelled Provo. Later, when Mormon settlers moved into the area, the nearby city became Provo as well, although Provost likely never knew of either of his namesake landmarks.

While this story paints a picture of an unprovoked attack by ruthless, violent Indians, Peter Skene Ogden made a point of explanation when writing about the event. He noted that, not long before Provost’s company came, another group of white mountain men forcibly took horses and furs from the same group of Shoshone that resulted in a death of a Native American. Although there is not a record of a Shoshone perspective, this information helps to create a more relatable, human image instead of perpetuating the myth of the aggressive Indian.

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Lakota Sioux have lived in the present-day South Dakota area for centuries. The first reservation treaty between the Lakota and the United States was signed in 1851 when Europeans on the Oregon Trail started to cross the southern part of Lakota lands in large numbers. There were several clashes between whites and Lakotas after that, but the biggest and the most famous conflict happened in 1876 when several hundred U.S. soldiers were killed by Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho forces at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

By the 1870s, many Plains Natives had moved onto government agencies in Nebraska and South Dakota. However, in 1875, after discovering gold in the Black Hills on Lakota land, and anxious to civilize the buffalo-chasing nomads, the United States ordered the rest of the tribe to move or be punished. Move was something Sitting Bull, a well-known Lakota chief, could not do. For the previous ten years, Sitting Bull had pushed his people to reject the restrictions of agency life, which fought against Lakota religion, language, and tribal organization. In 1876, he started gathering Lakota, as well as their Cheyenne allies, into a huge moving village in southeast Montana far away from the agencies.

Angry at Sitting Bull’s defiance, President Ulysses Grant sent an army led by General Terry to march to Sitting Bull’s camp and force him to obey. Terry decided to split his army in half: the half led by him would attack from downriver with the help of a riverboat while the half led by General Custer would attack from upriver. Custer was impatient, started his attack early, and was overpowered by the superior numbers and fighting experience of the Lakota and Cheyenne warriors in the village. Of the 650 soldiers in Custer’s army, 268 of them were killed, including all of the soldiers who were fighting beside Custer at the time. The survivors managed to hide in a thrown-together fort until they were saved two days later by Terry’s army (who saw no action). The mission was a complete failure.

For the US, the battle was a terrible shock and Custer was turned into an American hero, like Abraham Lincoln or George Patten. For the Lakota, it was the happy fulfillment of Sitting Bull’s vision of a strong Lakota nation, free from American laws and land grabs. Over the next winter, however, bad weather exhausted the Lakota, and in 1877 they gave up the fight and moved to Nebraska. General Custer kept his hero status until the 1960s and 70s when Native American culture and history started to become more accepted and Custer was seen more and more as a villain who oppressed a nature-loving society. Today, the Battle of the Little Bighorn is still alive in the memories of both natives and non-natives as the moment in history when Indians proved that, despite what most whites believed, they were still very much a force to be reckoned with.

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Chaco Canyon National Park is located in northwestern New Mexico. The area is open to the public to learn about the people who lived within the walls of Chaco Canyon thousands of years ago. In 9000 BC, the area was occupied by Paleo Indians and Archaic peoples. It was then occupied by Ancestral Puebloans from 1 AD to 1300 AD. Between 750 and 850 AD, much of the population of the central San Juan Basin moved to the Four Corners area, north of the San Juan River. Over 1.5 million artifacts have been documented from Chaco Canyon. In the middle of the New Mexico desert, Chaco Canyon housed hundreds of prehistoric peoples.

Early archaeologists recognized two types of structures and identified them as “great pitstructures” and “great kivas”. These structures “may represent two ways of organizing ritual, or perhaps even two ethnicities.”

Chaco Canyon was pre-planned rather than annexed; the roads were laid out in straight lines and astronomical orientation would have necessitated a certain amount of planning, skill, and leadership. People lived in the canyon in eleven “great houses”, each one of them big enough to provide homes for an entire village. Inside the great houses, there are approximately 1,133 rooms, and the average size of 1,133 rooms at Chacoan buildings is 11. 97 meters squared.

Chaco Canyon is evidence of a civilization that flourished between the ninth century BC and thirteenth century AD and attained remarkable achievements in architecture, agriculture, social complexity, engineering, astronomy, and economic organization.

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Chief Sagwitch was born in 1822. As a boy, he honed his skills as a hunter and a speaker. He spent time with fur trappers and was well suited to be chief. Sagwitch was already a chief of the Northwestern Shoshone by the age of twenty-five when Mormons settlers came to the Utah territory. Sagwitch met the new leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Brigham Young, and welcomed him and the rest of the Mormons into the area.

Sagwitch became friends with Brigham Young and did what he could to keep the peace between the Shoshone and the Mormons/settlers. Tensions grew and in January of 1863, Colonel Conners of the U.S. Army took his men and attacked the Shoshone who had camped at the Bear River for winter. Chief Sagwitch’s group was among them and was one of the few survivors. Sagwitch sought help for his people from Brigham Young and found aid from the Mormon Church, which Sagwitch later joined in 1875.

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Western settlers longed for a faster and easier way to travel across the West. Emigrants traveling by horseback, wagon, or foot required several months to cross the plains and the Rocky Mountains. Trains made travel faster, safer, and much less physically taxing, but there was no transcontinental railroad that connected the country from east to west in the mid-nineteenth century. Technology and political incentives made it feasible for the country to contemplate a transcontinental railroad.

By the late nineteenth century, the transcontinental railroad came to fruition. The Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroad companies laid hundreds of miles of tracks, but needed a place to connect. On April 8, 1869, Grenville M. Dodge, chief engineer of the Union Pacific, along with Collis Potter Huntington, president of the Central Pacific, met with Congressman Sam Hooper to settle the debate of where the two railroads would meet. Together they concluded on Promontory Summit, “at which place the rails shall meet and connect and form one continuous line.”

Located in Utah, Promontory Summit (also referred to as Promontory Point) is an area of high ground northwest of Salt Lake City. Here, at Promontory Summit, on May 10, 1869, three spikes were driven into the ground to commemorate the completion of the transcontinental railroad. The spikes symbolized different areas of the country coming together, like the different railroads that came together. The most famous spike, the golden spike, was made from California gold, the silver spike from Nevada alloy silver, and the iron spike from a combination of Arizona metals, connecting these Western states permanently in one symbolic tie of the railroad.

A crowd of up to 1,000 people gathered at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869 to witness the historic day when the railroads joined together as one. The Deseret News reported, “A thousand throbbing hearts impulsively beat to the motion of the trains as the front locomotive of each company led on majestically up to the very verge of the narrow break between the lines, where, in a few moments, was to be consummated the nuptial rites uniting the gorgeous east and the imperial west of America, with the indissoluble seal of inter-oceanic commerce.”

Today, Promontory Summit, forever tied to the railroad, houses a Visitor Center and Engine House where people can experience the history of the transcontinental railroad.

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Father Anthony Ravalli, a Jesuit missionary and architect from Italy, designed and led the construction of the Church of the Sacred Heart from 1850–53, and the Coeur D’Alene people provided much of the labor necessary to complete the project. Father De Smet’s later writings contain numerous references to the Sacred Heart mission, and he often stayed there during his travels between missions.

On one occasion in 1863, Father De Smet stayed at the mission for six days and wrote about the changes occurring with the growing presence of white miners and settlers. He referenced a report by a U.S. Army captain that claimed that the only “salvation” for Indians would be “to be removed far, far from [the] presence [of the whites]” and that Indians “can never exist in contact with whites.” Father De Smet himself condemned this suggestion of removal and wrote, “May heaven preserve [the Coeur d’Alene Indians] from contact with the whites!” His advocacy for Indians, however, was predicated mainly on their conversion and faithfulness to Christianity.

The legacy of Pierre De Smet and his Jesuit missions, including Sacred Heart, is a subject of debate in the current postcolonial era. Traditionalist historians and biographers generally portray Father De Smet as a heroic explorer and a savior to the native peoples of western North America, specifically one who sought to understand and honor native culture. However, as theologian George E. Tinker writes, “Any Euroamerican’s understanding of or appreciation for Indian cultures was subject to severe cultural limitations.” Pierre De Smet may have tried to understand Indian culture, but ultimately the Jesuit approach was to quickly “impose European cultural values.” De Smet himself actively sought to use his missions to reorganize Indian civilization into a sedentary society that could better receive Christianity. So while De Smet himself was not directly involved in the removal and extermination of Indians (in fact he spoke against it), the cultural colonization of which he was a part was aimed at eroding Indian identity and culture. The Mission of the Sacred Heart, like other colonialist European or American religious ventures, should be viewed as a tool of western imperialism.

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The Long Walk is to the Navajo what the Trail of Tears is to the Cherokee. Troubled relations between the U.S. and the Navajos brought on a wicked removal in December of 1863. Earlier in the year, the United States government had sent in Christopher “Kit” Carson to remove the Navajos from their homeland of Fort Sumner, New Mexico. He burned their villages, starved them, and took them as slaves until they surrendered in the middle of winter, the worst time to begin a 400+ mile journey from points in Navajo country to Fort Defiance, Arizona and from there to Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

Cold made the difficult journey worse, but the Navajos suffered the most spiritually and mentally because they were uprooted from their homeland. They called their home The Four Sacred Mountains due to the spiritual qualities it possessed for them. Their hardships resulted in the death of around 200 Navajos on the journey. Some died from their conditions. Others were shot for being pregnant, old, or slow. The Navajos were not allowed to bury their dead.

More than 8,000 Navajos made it to Fort Sumner where they experienced continued starvation, slavery, prostitution, and disease at the hands of their enemy. It is estimated that more than 3,000 Navajos died at Fort Sumner by 1868. That spring, General Sherman of the United States of America sent a survey report back to the government and reported only 7,111 Navajo survived at Fort Defiance, and that he was convinced, “that the Navajos [would] never be contented to remain” at any place other than their homeland. On August 28, President Andrew Johnson signed a treaty that allowed the Navajo to return to their home at Fort Defiance.

One Navajo woman said, “When I tell my grandchildren about the Long Walk, they don’t believe me. I tell them that they wouldn’t be as they are today if their ancestors hadn’t gone through the confinement and even died of hunger.” The Navajos are proud of their ancestors for being strong and surviving against the odds. They recognize that this type of horrible event should never happen again.

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Following WWII, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) converted the Bushnell Army Hospital—a multi-million dollar military facility—into a federally operated Indian Boarding School. Nestled up against the Wasatch Mountains in Brigham City, Utah, the Intermountain Indian School (IIS) became home to an annual 2,150 students, ages six to twenty-two, 600 of which spoke no English upon arrival. The IIS quickly became the largest of the remaining nineteen off-reservation boarding schools operated by the BIA in both size and number of students.

As with past models, the IIS emphasized English and other academic and vocational skills and prescribed the age-old practice of assimilating Indians into mainstream America—a type of education for extinction. In 1951, IIS superintendent George Boyce, in hopes of permanently removing Navajo children from their Indigenous cultures and communities, proudly announced that the IIS would approach assimilation of “these backward groups” through “a more informed attack” in order to Americanize the Navajo children that attended the school.

In the fall of 1974, they renamed the school the Intermountain Inter-Tribal School, choosing to enroll students from twenty-six other tribes from across the nation. Because of tribal animosities, riots erupted in February 1975, during which three police officers were injured and several police cars destroyed. Further, operating under conflict of constitutional and federal treaty requirements, the IIS was charged with numerous civil-rights lawsuits that described a number of personal abuses and violations of human rights. On May 17, 1984, the Intermountain Indian School closed its doors, ending over a century of federally-instituted American Indian boarding school programs.

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The Veterans of Indian Wars Memorial, located on the southwest corner of the intersection of 500 West and Center Street in Provo, UT, was constructed by the Sons of the Utah Pioneers and unveiled July 24, 1909. The memorial is dedicated to the original settlers of Provo and residents who fought in Utah's Indian Wars from 1850 to 1868. These wars included the Walker War, the Battle of Provo River, and other conflicts. The northeast plaque lists twenty-eight individuals and thirteen families as original settlers of Provo in 1849. The southeast, southwest, and northwest plaques list 121 veterans of the Indian Wars.

There is a story in circulation that a New England company mass produced stock Civil War memorial statues in 1908 in preparation for the fiftieth anniversary of the war in 1911 and that the statue on top of the Provo Indian Wars Memorial is one of these (a statue of a Union soldier). However, this rumor is untrue. "Victory," the statue that rests atop the memorial, was sculpted by Cyrus Edwin Dallin, renowned sculptor, native of Springville, and creator of The Angel Moroni statue that was placed on the LDS Salt Lake Temple spire.

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