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Show Pioneer Principality Pioneers Divide Work As Settling Begins (EDITOR'S NOTE This Is the second article In serial form of Wallace A. Lee's, "Pangultch, A Pioneer Principality," published with the author's permission). With determination and vigor the pioneers set to work. Following the usual pattern of Mormon settlement, the company divided into working units with specific responsibilities. (Leonard J. Arrington "Great Basins Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900," Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, pp. 45-46.) For example, one group was dispatched to Panguitch Creek to survey and dig a canal called the South Field Ditch, which circled the southern fields of the townsite; another company was sent to plow the soil and plant seeds for the critical first crop. Later, men were instructed to explore some nearby canyons for suitable timber to use in cabin building. Others formed access roads, extracted logs and set up the community sawmill. Still others were assinged to carpentry details, or sent on hunting and fishing expeditions. Coordination among these "cadres" was difficult because there was only one team of oxen for every three families, but somehow progress was made and by May, log cabins began to spring up around the village. (Rogerson, p. 3) The summer was voted to building and farming but unfortunately the first crops did not mature, and Panguitch's harvest was a meager one, as farmer James Paxton recorded in his dairy: "We had hard luck farming; our grain generally got frozen before ripening and our roller mill did not work well. It was simply a short log with a hole in one end into which we put the frozen wheat, and then it pounded it with a huge prestle (sic) stick." (James Mills Paxton, Dairy, Brigham Young University Archives, Provo, Utah, P. 9) The winter of 1864 was cold and bitter, and an unusually heavy snowfall forced the little colony into isolation. With no flour mills closer than 40 miles away in Parowan, the settlers were forced to survive on boiled grain ground from frozen wheat and a scanty supply of beef procured from butchered oxen. Faced with starvation, seven men decided to attempt a crossing of the snow-covered passes of Bear Valley to reach Parowan and re-supply with flour and food. The men left Panguitch with two yoke of oxen and a small wagon, but were quickly forced to abandon it in deep snow and proceed on foot. According to Alma Barney, an early Panguitch pioneer, the snow was so deep that "the only progress that could be made was to lay a quilt down and walk to the end of it, then lay another down, and in this way, they finally reached Parowan." (Alma Barney, " a History of Panguitch, Utah, in Brief, and of the Pioneers Who Helped Settle Panguitch," in Diary of Alma Barney, 1848-1934, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, p. 160. In the spring, when fresh supplies were brought to Panguitch, Barney recorded that "children cried for joy to again taste real bread." During the hunger and privation of the winter months in 1864-65, a board of school trustees was established in Panguitch, with William W. Hammond appointed as chairman. Education was a major concern in most Mormon settlements, and Panguitch was no exception; in the spring of 1865, Hammond had succeeded in building a schoolhouse made of hewn pine logs, about 30 feet long and 20 feet wide. It has a "puncheon," or split log floor, and a fireplace in the northern end that provided not only heat, but also served as a lighting system for evening activities. The school house was dedicated on the first anniversary of the founding of Panguitch, March 16, 1865, and it became the center of the little community; church meetings were held there in addition to regular school classes, and often there were dances, theaters, and concerts. (William Wallace Hammond, Dairy, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah p. 21). James Paxton wrote that "when we got a little molasses to mix with our whole wheat flour, we would have a picnic in our log meeting house. We would: "Trip the light fantastic toe Both young and old, high and low For all of them were equal then In Poverty, the strength of men." (Paxton, pp. 9-10) For a brief time, Panguitch flourished, and the settlers began to enjoy their new homes, but prosperity was short-lived; in the spring of 1865, bands of hostile Indians became a source of constant turmoil. A minor Ute chief, Black Hawk, annoyed with United States Indian policy advocating displacement of tribes from their traditional lands, and anxious to avenge Indian deaths attributed to white men's diseases, led a series of raids on Mormon settlements beginning in the Sanpete area, and eventually spreading as far south as Kanab. Formally called the "Black Hawk War," these raids were responsible for the abandonment of numerous Southern Utah villages during the period 1865-68. (S. Lyman Tyler, "The Indians in Utah Territory," in "Utah's History," ed. Richard D. Poll, et al., Provo, Utah, Brigham Young University Press, 1978, pp. 363-65.) In Panguitch, though the settlers had generally adhered to Brigham Young's counsel that it would be cheapter to feed the Indians than fight them, hostilities became so severe that a fort was erected about six miles north of Panguitch on the east side of the Sevier River, called Fort Sanford, and a company of 25 volunteers was raised. Calling themselves "minutemen," this amateur military force began to defend the settlement. As violence increased, on March 21, 1865, a larger unit was organized under the Iron County Militia by Colonel George A. Smith, with John Lowder appointed Captain. (John Lowder, "Organization of the Panguitch Militia," in Josiah Rogerson Sr., papers, Brigham Young University Archives, Provo, Utah, fol. 9, p. 1.) There were many light skirmishes with the Indians, and on occasion prisoners were taken. Immigrants from Europe, part of the Monmon gathering, some of whom had never before handled a gun, were obligated to gain some quick on-the-spot experience; James Paxton, a poet, farmer and iron worker from England wrote of one such occasion : "We then had a military organization in which I was a lieutenant ... I accordingly pur-ased a pistol . . . Some Indians were taken prisoner. They put them in a log cabin and told me to take care of them, giving me a double barrelled shotgun. In the night, the Indians began pulling out the logs to get out. I stationed myself behind the chimney, resting the barrel of my gun on one corner and raising both hammers to make sure, I took aim: they concluded not to come out, and I was mighty glad of it." (Paxton, p. 11.) Sporadic fighting continued through 1865, and after the harvest of that year, most of the settlers of Panguitch grudgingly left what they had begun and moved to the protection of safe settlements. However, h few stubbornly clung to their property in Panguitch. To do so, according to Josiah Rogerson, "they soon found it necessary to throw up barricades of earth around their cabins and stand guard day and night." (Rogerson, p. 3), By early June 1866, resistance by the remaining citizens gave way to the order of Commander Warren S. Snow, of the Sanpete Military District, to abandon Panguitch and move to Circleville to strengthen the efforts there. (Hammond, p. 21) Three weeks later, Lieutenant General D. H. Wells ordered the evacuation of Circleville, and refugees escaped either to Parowan, Beaver, or the settlements of the Rio Virgin and the Cotton Mission. Some of the settlers returned to Panguitch in the autumn to harvest their crops, then moved quickly on to the security ot the larger settlements. (Ibid) (To be continued) |