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

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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

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GT vate it, even if this meant seizing it from an unproductive owner who had prior claim.?¢ Furthermore, Mormons avoided the conventional Eastern distinction between public and private waters, for water was in even shorter supply than fertile land in the Great Basin. Any stream, whether navigable or not, was potentially useful for irrigation. Therefore, all rights to water were administered by public institutions known as water districts, whose primary function was to apportion water so as to maximize its distribution. In a region with so little water, riparian rights were also unsuitable, First, in order to make the most efficient use of fertile land, owners of ucreage separated from water nevertheless had to have access to it for irrigation. Secondly, since irrigation draws water from a stream, it was impossible to maintain the full and undiminished flow along its course.27 In an age when other American farmers increasingly specialized in one crop, Brigham Young encouraged his followers to practice diversified farming.?® The Mormons were so isolated from other agricultural areas that self-sufficiency was required for survival. Diversification of crops made not only individual families, but the entire Mormon venture, selfsufficient, in that crop failure in one locale could not completely rob the larger Mormon community of a necessary food or raw material. Because fertile soil and water were scarce, the health of Mormon crops and livestock was threatened by competition from native plants and animials. Consequently Mormons found it Necessary to weed out wild animals as well as wild plantlife. John D. Lee tells of one early attempt to deal with such “wasters and destroyers . . . {as] wolves, wildcats, catamounts, Polecats, minks, Bear, Panthers, Eagles, Hawks, owls, crow(s) or ravens & magpies . . .” by organizing a hunting contest. At the end of three months 15,000 wild animals had been shot.2° These agricultural activities were administered by the tightly knit, hierarchical organization which characterizes the Mormon Church even totlay. The General Authorities constitute the uppermost level and include the First Presidency, the Council of Twelve and various other ollices. Subordinate to this central leadership are regional governing bodies known as Stakes, with structures similar to that of the General Authorities. Stakes are further subdivided into local Wards, which form the basic units of the Church and whose average membership is about 60 people3° This organizational structure had assumed its basic outlines during the years in the Midwest under the Prophet Joseph Smith. It also served well in Utah to organize the relatively scarce resources to benefit the mov! people. Especially during the first few decades, when most Utah inhal itants were Mormons, the Church organization directed every conceivable aspect of the Mormon enterprise in the West. Colonization efforts, for instance, were controlled by the General Authorities. They initiated preparatory exploration, chose locations for new settlements and people to pioneer them, and they decided when to disband settlements entirely: organizational level Participated in these efforts and carried some of the . responsibility, but the initiative and the authority always came from the central church leadership. In this way, the Church could insure that resources were distributed equitably throughout the Mormon population and that individual profit did not endanger the Mormon enterprise as a whole, Hierarchical Organization also served as an efficient medium for communication of needs from the bottom and of directives from the top, so the conflict between ecological systems Two ecological systems are in conflict whenever they define mutually exclusive relationships to the same resource, that is, when the implementation of one group's plan for using a resource prevents the other group's plan from functioning. A comparison between the Mormon and Indian ecological systems shows that they were in conflict. As we have seen, they both required settlement in the foothills near key resources The Indian system required freedom to move from site to site to follow changes in nature's production, whereas the Mormon system required "on and wildlife was essential to the Indian way of life, while the Mormons thrived on their absence. Indian hunting and gathering sites re. quired an undiminished flow of water in order to support life adequately and the Mormons needed to draw it off into their fields, served notion also suggests that many aspects of both systems tine give ormons the advantage in the struggle for key resources. a ee we was the impact of sheer numbers. Just prior to the arrival tiwag; Pee in 1847, the estumated Indian population was about nine o the entire Great Basin area. Within a short time, the Mormons i sid ; ‘numbered the Indians, Five years after their first settlement ate the Mormon population was approximately 20,000. By 1869 " had increased to 80,000.22 canna Mormons Occupied their sites year around, they had more Of of their settlements than did the mobile Indians, who appeared ¥ the Indians no longer existed. When the Mormons plowed land for f