Land Problems and the Lead Up to the Utah War
After members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, they almost immediately took steps to colonize other areas of Utah. Weber Valley was settled in 1848; San Pete, Utah, and Tooele in 1849; Pahvant, Juab, Box Elder, and Parowan followed in 1856. Cache Valley was settled a bit after in 1856. The colonization effort was aided by the Perpetual Emigration Fund, which was set up in 1849 to help Latter-day Saint settlers travel to their kingdom in the West.
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Mormon leaders encouraged their congregations to settle and farm the land. Brigham Young, instructed the Latter-day Saints that the land was owned by God, but that it was the responsibility of the members to cultivate the land. Members must “be industrious & take care of it” since “the Lord has given it to us without price.”
Some members viewed this as an opportunity to take as much land as they wanted. This was how Thomas Bullock (a clerk in the Church) viewed the situation: “We have found a place where the land is acknowledged to belong unto the Lord, and the Saints being his people, are entitled to as much as they can plant, take care of, and will sustain their families with food.” The seeming availability of land only encouraged more Mormon settlers to move to the Utah Territory, especially as most Native groups occupied land seasonally, rather than year round.
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Federal officials and Mormons were also in contest over the land in Utah. When
Mormons initially moved into the region, it was owned by Mexico. A year after Mormons had moved into Utah, 1848, the United States confiscated all of the land in the West that was owned by Mexico.
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Although now officially part of the United States as a territory, Mormon settlers acted as if the Church was the only government, leading to problems with federal officials. Mormon members made it clear that they would listen to their Church leaders over federal officials, especially concerning who owned the land. U.S. President Buchanan even weighed in on the land issue in Utah saying, “The land you live upon was purchased by the United States and paid for out of their treasury. The proprietary right and title to it is in them, and not in you.”
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Church distribution and ‘ownership’ of the land in the territory was alarming, because the Church leadership had no legal proof or right to the large amount of land they claimed. Now that the United States owned the land that would become Utah, anyone could buy the land that Church members were now living on. The 1841 Preemption Act allowed any citizen over 21 to buy 160 acres of land for $1.25 an acre. In order for a citizen to claim land under the Preemption Act, the land needed to be surveyed by federal surveyors and Indian claims to land would need to be settled. Federal land surveyors would need to come to Utah.
The officials sent out to survey the land were Captain Howard Stansbury and his second-in-command Lt. John Gunnison. Both were instructed to gauge the loyalty of the Mormon settlers to the US Government. Mormon settlers were reluctant to let their land be surveyed, as they knew it could then be bought by other settlers -- settlers that were possibly not of the same faith as
they. Stansbury was told that the Mormons would “never permit any survey of their country to be made… [and] my life would scarce be safe” if he tried to survey the land. While surveying the land, Gunnison recorded his experiences living among the Mormons, the first such account that had been recorded. In Gunnison’s book he relayed the self-governing, theocratic nature of the LDS society. A theocracy is a form of government where religious leaders rule in the name of their God and religion. Early Utah functioned as a theocracy, with religious leaders filling many government positions like mayors, city councils, and territorial senate. This created conflicts as Church members were obligated to obey their leaders, from both a religious and
governmental standpoint.
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1. See map below for more details. Map courtesy of http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/daily/history/gathering/Colonization_EOM.htm.
2. Kenney, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 3:236.
3. Bullock to Griffith William, 4 January 1848, Millennial Star 8:10, LDS Archives.
4. See map for more details. Map courtesy of nationalatlas.gov
5. President James Buchanan, 6 April 1858.
6. Madsen, Exploring the Great Salt Lake, xviii.
7. Stansbury, Exploration and Survey, 84-86.