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Sunday, July 27, 2014

Tid-bit of Utah History, Number Two

This is my version of this bit of history.

In the years back then, before the beginning and just after Man descended onto the Western landscape, there was a river discovered running through it. Yes, the Colorado River ran through it, cutting out of the desert and mountains a great gorge with very high cliffs in places that no man had ever been, not counting the thousands of Indians that lived on or near it for thousands of years. But even the Indians had not been in some of the places, being warned by the Great Spirit of the danger to be encountered by anyone venturing into these places.

And so it came to pass that a man named Powell and his eight brave men took off on the Green River from a sacred place called Wyoming to make the first trip through these cataracts and bring forth their reports of the exact nature of the River and the country. Verily, it was in the years of 1869 and '70 and this Green River ran smack dab into the Colorado River and it further came to pass that three of his men became disgusted with all the fol-de-rol and not to mention hunger and near drownings of the exploratory party and made their escape by climbing out of the deep gorge up the sides of the cliffs to level ground high above and looked down into the chasm and laughed and waved goodby.

And it further came to pass that these same three men found an Indian Village up there and hal-looed and yelled and wandered closer, scaring the pee-wadden out of the residents. And the residents did see them and did welcome them into their midst and did promptly pounce upon them and beat them severely around the head, neck, shoulders, torso, legs, and feet of the strangest of strangers until they were all three mortally killed. And the Indians danced and sang around their bonfires at night and consulted the Great Spirit in an effort to find out who these strangest of strangers could be. And nobody, not even the highest of the high, like the likes of Brigham Young and his  high Counsellors, ever heard of these three brave men again. That is, not until another year had passed and everyone had aged more in their complete selves, and it further came to pass further, that this one-armed cliff-climber, this Major Powell, ran into an Indian Chief and became a hear-say witness to the fate of his three men.

It happened and came to pass that these three men had found a Shi-wits Indian camp, and after a couple of moons, or I should say nights, they were massacred. Jacob Hamblin was the interpreter as the Major learned about this travesty. Yes, it was the Jacob Hamblin who also went down into Arizona Territory and encamped with his followers and started a town down there out of nothing, but that's another story.

Ref: Levi Edgar Young's The Founding of Utah and John Wesley Powell's Exploration  of the Colorado River and its Canyons

2 comments:

  1. Nice bit of history, I especially liked, "a sacred place called Wyoming, "nice indeed,

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