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Show FIRST AMERICANS TO ENTER r GREAT SALT LAKE VALLEY; INDIAN MASSACRE OCCURS I Editor Standard 'l he city of Prove and the river and valley of that name In Utah were not named for Etienne Provost, as has been quito generally stated. His name was Provot. The honor of calling attention to the feci that the name has heretofore been misspelled belongs to Mr. Harris, who in his "History of tho ratholic Church in Utah," has a chapter devoted to a sketch of Provot's life, On pace 2fi1 of his history, Dean Harris gives 'he following account: "It may be well to say here that Provot is the correct spelling of the' name and not Provost, which occurs! in all the histories of and literature on Utah, dealing with the fur trading period. In answer to our request to ascertain the date of the death and the correct spelling of the name of the famous guide, we received from Judge Walter B. Douglas of St. Louis this letter- '"St. Louis, Jan. 9. 19091 went to! the court house myself this morning.1 and. after a long search, I found the answer to your question I discovered 'ha' in the record of h administration administra-tion of the estate of Etienne Provot, the name is Provot. not Provost. " 'Searching the flies 0f the Missouri Republican, I came across this obituary obitu-ary notice inserted in the issue for July 4, 1850: Died Yesterdav afternoon , about 4 o clock, Mr. Etienne Provot. j The friends and acquaintances of the I family are invited to attend his fu- neral this afternoon at 4 o'clock, from his residence on ihe eorner of Lorn-I Lorn-I bard and Second streets, to the Catholic Cath-olic burial ground. Early Experience, j The outstanding incident In the life of Provot so far as the history of , Utah is concerned is his experience j with the Indians at, or very near, the i present site of the f itv of Provo. Provot was one of the 100 young I men that General Ashley recruited in 1 1822 at St. Louis for his expedition to the west, in the interests of the Rocky Mountain Fur company. He was with 1 Major Henry's detachment which spent the winters of 1822 and 1823 at jthe junction of the Missouri river and J the ellowstone. From this point Provot was sent at the head of a small party to the southwest. south-west. Chittenden in his history of the American fur trade, claims that Provot and his men discoveied and crossed ihe great South Pass "late in I the fall of 1823." hittenden also says that this party was the first of the Americans to pen- etrate "into the region of the Great Salt Lake," having spent the winters of 1823 and 1824 in Cache valley-Experience valley-Experience With Indians It was in 1S24 that Piovot had his big adventure with the Indians. He and a party of twenty or more had gone south from Cache valley, explor-1 Ing and trapping along the Ogden, Weber We-ber and other mountain streams and had reached a point near the mouth of the Provo river Here his camp was visited by a band of Snake-Utes, about thirty in number, under the leadership of a chief whom the French trapper named Mamais Gauche or ' bad lef hand " The Indians were friendly, very friendly. They were glad to see their white brothers A council was pro-I pro-I posed The white men and Indians sat down in a circle and the pipe of! peace Tas sent around the circle. But the chief was not happv. Things were not going just right. He told Provot' that his wah-kon or protecting spirit was angry because of the presence of iron and proposed that all iron be removed re-moved from the council. 1 1 r- set the example, which his braves' followed, of piling all guns, hatchets and knives at a distance from ihe council fire. But each brave secreted a weapon under his blanket. Massacre Occurs. Provot, to humor the Indians, or dered his men to pile their weapons! alongside those of the Indians, and' ' thus, unarmed, ihey returned to the Council fire. As ihe pipe again went the rounds the chief uttered a signal and his braves sprang up and, drawing their concealed weapons, rushed upon the unarmed trappers It was a cunning and deliberately planned massacre.! The names of the men killed have not! been preserved, but It was said that seventeen of Provot s men lost their lives. Only four beside Provot made' their escape These fled north to the vicinity of Ogden river or Cache val-' lev, where they were reinforced by, new arrivals of Ashley's men They returned later to the scene of the massacre mas-sacre and took such vengeance as I they could, but this particular band of Utes avoided the trappers for many-years. many-years. Early In 1S25 Provot led a parlv east from Utah lake into the Uintah basin, where b appointment, he met General Ashley, who, with a small parly, had descended the Green river to the mouth of the Ashley river. The combined parties returned to I Utah lake and during that ear ex plored the country as far south as Se vier Lake. Provot took a leading part in the various fur-trading expeditions of the succeeding years and as lHte as 1846 was active as a scout and trap-, per. Derm Harris says- "He left a wife and one daughter. His wife was Marl Ma-rl Rnan S?.i11p flit T.ninio Shn wc the daughter of the woman mentioned in 'Griggs' Commerce of the Prairies,' volume 1, page 146." But his name should not We spelled Provost. It Is pronounced the way it is pronounced, of course O A KENNEDY. |
