Health, Indians, Grist Mill

REMINISENCES OF EARLY DAYS IN MANTI
By Mrs. A. B. Sidwell
(Written about 1889)

Chapter IV

Health, Indians, Grist Mill

The general health of the people was good; but in July, Jerome Bradley was stricken with a malignant fever of which on the sixteenth, he died. This estimable young man was betrothed to Miss Mary Shumway. They were united in marriage; but death, stern, relentless, unyielding death! closed his eyes, and they were disunited to await a happier union in a future existence. This was the first deathbed marriage in the valley.

Dr. Richards (whose name was inadvertently omitted in our list) was our first disciple or Esculapius-performing every service without money and without price-something after the manner of Apostle Lyman's extracting teeth during his sojourn at the Pen last winter, the sign over his door reading, "Teeth Extracted with Pleasure, Without Pain, and Without Price!" He explained that the pleasure was his, the pain belonged to the patient, and he performed the operation Free!

On August fifth, 1850, President Young visited Sanpitch for the first time, and gave our valley the more euphonious name of Sanpete (not San Pete as now erroneously written by some) and the settlement itself was christened Manti. His arrival was the occasion for loading and firing our one piece of ordinance, which by the way was a loan from Salt Lake City. The magnetism of his presence always produced like enthusiasm wherever he visited, and meetings and banquets were the order of the day; and if vaulting ambition overleaped itself so far as to overload the cannon in a manner to break the windows in the vicinity of the firing, who cares now? or who, in their excess of joy, cared then? or who can wonder that after so lengthy a period of isolation, this diminutive but vigorous nucleus of civilization should demonstrate its enthusiasm in divers ways and places.

The cannon was shouldered by our young giant, Geo. P. Billings, of whose Herculean strength we loved to boast, and carried up on the summit of the hill, just east of where the Temple now stands, and chained to a large cedar tree; then the firing was successfully continued without further damage to either life or property.

The season advanced, the grain ripened, the stock fattened, and haystacks, of mammoth proportions graced the great public stack yards; and the flight of autumn found the colonists better prepared in many respects to meet the rigors of such a winter as they had already experienced.

School opened in a log house erected for that purpose, and also for Sabbath Services, with surveyor Jesse W. Fox as teacher during the winter months of 1850-51. Mary Whiting became his immediate successor; she occupied that position for some years.

The Indians-Goodyears Story

The Indians still had their encampment near, and the settlers were obliged to witness many heartrending cruelties practiced upon the prisoners and objectionable members of their own tribe. The squaws of the chiefs all wore a round black ring in the center of their foreheads to designate them from the common squaws.

One poor little boy, not more than five years of age, an emaciated motherless captive, with scarcely one thin dirty rag between his tender flesh and the chillil1g frosts of early spring came night after night to our homes, and built his lonely little camp fire of chips hewn from the logs which the settlers had been using. When the earth beneath the fire became sufficiently warm, he would carefully remove the coals and with the patient stoicism of his race, lie down and sleep.

It was apparent to all that he was slowly dying of hunger, cold, and neglect. The children of the whites occasionally divided their scanty morsel with him. But one morning by the lifeless embers of his little fire he lay dead, poor little motherless forsaken one, by this epitaph.

Walker once in solemn conclave with the conflicting passions of his own turbulent soul decided that his mother, a withered wrinkled scrap of a woman, who looked as if the first mountain breeze might annihilate her, had cumbered this earth long enough, and attempted to end her life. But she was a quick wiry plucky little creature, and though well advanced in years, after receiving several severe cuts and bruises at his hands, anyone of which would have ended a common mortal's career, she made good her escape.

She remained hidden in the bulrushes of Sanpitch swamps for a week or more with no known means of sustenance, until she concluded that his wrath had somewhat subsided; she came crawling back to the wickiups and was permitted to drag out a sort of attenuated existence a few years longer.

One incident of barbarity I cannot forbear mentioning. Miles Goodyear, the wealthy rancher, owned a large part of Utah under a grant from the Mexican government, and from him Captain Brown had purchased the northern portion of the territory for the sum of $3,000. He had married a young handsome Ute squaw, whose native grace, beauty, and amiability had won the admiration of all who knew her. By this woman Miles had two children.

After Goodyear's death, which occurred soon after the purchase, his widow married Sampitch, one of Walker's stalwart Indian brothers, and came to Sanpete with the tribe.

Billy Goodyear was a fine manly specimen of a half-breed, but poor Bill! He and his little sister were treated with such brutality by their stepfather, Sampitch, that President Young, with his customary magnanimity sent for the children and treated them as members of his own family, sending them to school and extending to them that kindness and generosity for which he was so noted.

One day Sampitch, in a fit of jealous rage, and with a consuming desire to exterminate something or somebody, vented his unbridled malignity upon his defenseless wife.

My mother Elvira Cox, as she frequently did, since they were old neighbors at Sessions, now Bountiful, happened to pay her a visit next day. She found her lying helpless upon her couch of robes and skins. She returned home for bandages, liniment, etc., went back and washed and dressed her wounds. She had but partially recovered before the band left, but her life was brief. We never saw her again, but occasionally heard from her children.

Andrew Goodyear, their uncle, took Bill with him back to his old homestead in Massachusetts, where the boy received a collegiate course.

While we lived at Sessions, this same Andrew Goodyear, when he was on the eve of moving to pastures new, made my mother a present of a bucket of flour (our diet consisted of hominy and dodger [cornmeal biscut?] straight) and I have many times and quite recently heard mother say her heart was filled with more unalloyed happiness, intense gratitude, and sublime joy at being the recipient of that gift than she could possibly be at the same bucket heaped and piled with shining coins of gold at the present time.

Then and now, behold the ingratitude among this people toward God in the very midst and presence of all his magnificent gifts and blessings. Oh! the selfishness of the human heart! Listen to the grumblings, the murmurs, to the quarreling over every stream of sparkling water flowing freely down the canyons of our magnificent mountains to fertilize and beautify these valleys, the glorious chambers of Zion!

The earlier settler (not earliest) refusing to share this free gift of God with the more recent arrivals of "His elect"-I sometimes wonder if these sticklers for human and pre-existing rights will not soon endeavor to monopolize even the life-giving air we breathe. I blush sometimes at the thoughts and disgrace of being "an old settler."

Let the old settlers rejoice that they "obeyed counsel," for the wisdom of that counsel will yet become apparent. Meanwhile possess your souls in patience. Stand still and see the salvation of God. Make use of the old motto, "Share and share alike."

City and County Organized-First Grist Mill, etc.

In the spring of 1851 President Brigham Young again visited the valley, and on April 30 a high council was organized; Father Morley was the first stake president and his assistants were Titus Billings and Edwin Whiting. The people were now moving upon their "city lots" as fast as possible, and our little burg was transformed from the pupae state into a full fledged city, with Dan Jones,Mayor; Jezreel Shoemaker, Phineas W. Cook, Orville S. Cox and James P. Brown Aldermen; John D. Chase, Edwin Whiting, Abram Washburn, George P. Billings, Isaac Morley Jr., Sam H. Marble, Newman Brown, John Lowry Jr. and Cyrenus Taylor, councilors.

Phineas W. Cook was sent to Manti by Pres. Young during the summer of 1850 to erect a grist mill, two thirds of the means being furnished by President Young and the rest by Father Morley. It was a welcome boon for up to this time all the grinding had been done on a hand mill, a concern resembling a huge coffee mill that was passed from house to house.

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