Collection: Directories and Documents > Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection

About This Item:

Title: The Mormans and the Indians by Beverly Smaby Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection # of Pages: 7 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2024-09-03 23:27:35 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 05:53:17 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 05:53:17

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

Page: of 7  

fishing festivals. The composition of groups was flexible in that families facing scarcity were free to live with more fortunate families until their condition improved.!¢ (Among the Northern Utes and the Northern Shoshonis, these gatherings could be as large as several hundred people. Among the Nevada Shoshonis and the Paiutes, a group of 30 to 40 people was considered large.) Great Basin social organization supported this flexibility in two ways. First of all, authority was delimited by context, that is by task and locale, A person particularly experienced in a project about to be undertaken became its leader. His authority covered only those matters directly re. lated to this project at this time and place.!7 Because authority was de. fined by context, 8roups could congregate or disperse readily as required by local conditions, Secondly, social organization was built on a network of consanguineal kinship ties.18 Such ties bound virtually all members of cach society, since even the most numerous bands were comparatively small. Consanguineal ties could always be depended upon to establish quickly a working relationship between any two people since ties of this sort, in contrast to marriage ties, for example, did not change. This system of social organization could not be depended upon to Support military operations. At least among Paiutes and among unmounted Shoshonis and Utes, people tended to scatter and hide rather than face a foe with weapons. The ideal person in these societies was not the brave defender, but the good provider.20 the mormon ecological system Mormons made explicit the self image which governed their use ol natural resources, According to their beliefs, the world of humanity is scparate from the world of nature; nature, moreover, exists primarily to serve the needs of human beings. Everything in the universe, including nature, will always remain imperfect. One important human task is to make nature more perfect and cause it to produce “instead of thorns and thistles, every useful plant that is good for the food of man and to beautify.” The basic motivation for human activity is “the principle of increase, of exhaltation, of adding to what we already possess.”"21 In addition, the Mormons’ use of natural resources was influenced by thei: religious mandate to gather the believing multitudes into the sparsely endowed Great Basin. The Mormons implemented their self image by system of intensive agriculture, They replaced wild plants and animals with domesticated ones and in this way substantially increased the output per acre over that provided by nature. TVheir ecological system required only a few kinds of natural resources. Although the Mormons did harvest the natural foods of the Great Basin during times of extreme scarcity, this was considered an emergency aie ‘cedure, not at part of the plan for the future. Water and fertile soil ee the resources of primary value in the Mormons’ preferred plan of ar 38 The distribution and Scarcity of these resources affected Mormon ecological techniques. Patterns of settlement, for instance, were in some respects peculiar to the Great Basin. The Mormons had to choose the location for settlements with great care, They needed land which was fertile, near a permanent source of water for irrigation and at a lower elevation than the water Source, so that water could flow down among the crops by gravity. The only area of the Great Basin where these conditions could be met was in the foothills of the various mountain ranges. Accordingly, when the Mormons began in: 1847 to settle what later became the Utah Territory, they congregated primarily in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains, located along the eastern edge of the Great Basin,23 Another characteristic of early Mormon settlement was its nucleated form. The settlers built their houses close to each other in a village and laid out their fields in a cluster around the village. This kind of settlement already had become distinctive of the Mormons during the years of Joseph Smith's leadership. It helped satisfy many social needs such as ecclesiastical control over community life, protection from hostile outsiders and supervision of Cooperative ventures.2* These social needs were even more pressing in Utah than they had been in Illinois, In Utah, community management of geods and labor to build their. economy, This was especially true in regard to the construction, maintenance and regulation of irrigation canals. An individual might divert a small ‘ream onto his crops by himself, but the use of larger rivers required the ooperative effort of many people, Villages were soon established over a large geographical area. Within ‘even years the Mormons had established seventy-five settlements extending from the northeast corner of Great Salt Lake to the southern border of what is now the State of Utah. An obvious reason for this rapid ¢xpansion was the need to absorb the many converts immigrating’ from Eastern United States and Europe. The dispersion also provided some security from agricultural disaster: if crops failed in one area, the Mormons still had crops from others which could be distributed through. ut the population,25 Eastern methods of dealing with natural resources were not suited 'o the arid environment of the Great Basin. Successful farming in arid ountry required a new way of thinking about cultivation; irrigation “as just one part of the solution. Irrigable land was ata premium. Vhus, the Mormons could not provide each family with the 200-acre farms common in humid regions. They were fortunate in that ten to ‘wenty acres Proved to be enough, since each acre of regularly irrigated land could produce better crops in greater quantity than an acre of land watered by inconsistent rainfall. Mormons also had no use for ‘peculation in real estate, Land was granted to anyone who would culti39