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Show streams, “but everyone has stories.” Indeed, Brigham Young University history professor Tom Alexandar thinks the stories are folklore: “They sound pretty fanciful. Most of the gold for the Mormon mint came from California. | Evidence is available from California journals.” Thomas Rhoades himself brought back a large chunk of gold _~ from California in 1849, enough to start the Mormon mint. Although Alexandar doesn’t fully discredit the possibility of gold in the hills, he doesn’t buy into the claims of fabulous wealth. “I believe that there are mines in the Uintas,” he says. But I’d like to see records of the amount of gold taken and where the gold ended up." eo faith. Will Bagley has written several books on-the subject of Utah’s history, and he sees flaws in the tales..“There are all kinds of stories about the lost Spanish mines that don’t track,” Bagley comments. “There might have been Spanish adventurers up here looking for gold, but Spanish presence was illegal.” Mos Spanish explorations required a Catholic figurehead, like Father | Escalante. The priests were often the only people with enough education to - accurately log their travels, which makes any unauthorized and therefore unrecorded expeditions immediately suspect. “Because of Spanish laws, they weren't allowed up here,” Bagley says. “A little speck will make you go crazy. My wife had it bad, she won’t go near it now.” —Rabbit, Tabiona resident. Jeff Johnson, with the Utah State Archives, asserts that the history wrong, particularly the sentiments between the Native Americans and Mormons. “Brigham Young kept saying to feed the Indians,” Johnson says, “but it was hard. First of all they had settled on the place where Indians got their food. And the cultures clashed. In all ways the white people won. Not until More messages fromthe miners after the Blackhawk War [did tensions subside].’ ’ Johnson does, however, © acknowledge that Chief Wakara, known also as Chief Walker, was good to the © Mormons, and was baptized into the 18 | SEPTEMBER 14, 2000| PHOTO BY BILL CONNELL Bit eT ia ELT Oeil ik So. LEE] W. TT “They were all in New Mexico. The guys that came up here came illegally; . they were essentially smugglers.’ This lack of any large official Spanish support made any large Spanish mining : operations impossible, in Bagley’s opinion. He also questions the Rhoades myth—“It’s funny that he delivered the gold, but died broke.”—and questions the supposed gold support for the temple—“They bled the people dry to-get that temple.” Kent Sanders, head of Dream Garder Press, the publisher of many of the books pertaining to gold, brings up this | |