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.The churchwould retain ownership of the lands its followers used, while indi-viduals (in good church standing) would serve as stewards of thesmall plots given them. We have found a place, Thomas Bullock,Young s clerk, wrote, where the land is acknowledged to belong tothe Lord, and the Saints, being His people, are entitled to as much asthey can plant, take care of, and will sustain their families with food (qtd.in Bigler 39).The land could not be sold, Young decreed: Noman will be suffered to cut up his lot and sell a part to speculate outof his brethren (qtd.in Bigler 38).Young had come to a region he hoped would be beyond U.S.in-terference, but events were conspiring to disrupt his plans.In January1848, John Augustus Sutter found gold at his mill in California,sparking a rush of travelers straight through Zion.(Ironically, it wasa veteran of the Mormon Battalion, Henry Bigler, who built Sutter smill.) In February, Mexico ceded the Pacific southwest to the UnitedStates in the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.An immediate conse-quence of this latter would be the necessity of establishing a territo- What (We Think) Happened 25rial government.Young was himself appointed governor of what heproposed, that March, be called the State of Deseret. (Deseret is aword from The Book of Mormon signifying the beehive [still onUtah s present-day state seal] and connoting hardworking colonies.)When the United States approved territorial status, the name wouldbe changed to Utah; and the job description of territorial governorwould include the responsibilities of Indian superintendent.But Young busied himself primarily with the work of establish-ing a community similar to the previous Mormon colonies, in whichreligion, commerce, and politics were closely combined in a theo-cratic organization.He also quickly moved to establish way stations,ferries, and other services for the gentile emigrants who were verysoon to follow on the Oregon and California Trails, which roadswould pass very near his new city.The crucial nationalist role ofMormon settlers and officials was that of providing supplies for saleto anyone who needed them in this volatile and intensely mobiletime: Shoshone, emigrants, farmers, miners, federal troops.Thus,one foundation of the Mormon church s vast wealth was theexploitation of one country s Manifest Destiny.The Mormon incursion into Utah had the profoundest impact onthe Northwestern Shoshoni, who lived closest to Salt Lake City andwhose lands straddled the forty-second parallel; Young also devel-oped relationships with the nearby Northern Shoshone, and with theEastern Shoshone, led firmly by the pacifist Washakie, who strove tobe hospitable to the new settlers.Several high-ranking church coun-selors advised Young not to compensate the Shoshone for use of theirresources, but Young replied famously that it was manifestly moreeconomical, and less expensive to feed and clothe, than to fightthem (qtd.in Madsen 29).To assure his continued control of this new western territory,plagued by natives and gold seekers, Young sought to populate,again systematically, the regions north and south of the lake and city,by sending out young adults to spread farms and church wardsacross the vast region.Historians like Madsen congratulate Youngon his requirement that his settlers share their meager resources withthe Shoshone whose lands they were grazing and plowing under.Set-tlers struggled to do so; and the Shoshone struggled to be friendly;but there were inadequate appropriations of funds to meet the needsof the displaced Shoshone.By 1855 Young had populated an arealarger than Texas.Ultimately, there would be no way to reconcile the 26 The Bear River Massacremutually exclusive policies of pacifism and expansion an exclusiv-ity Young doubtless understood only too well, given his own historyas a member of an organization that itself had been displaced.Young s feed-don t-fight-them policy occasionally extended also toa marry-them policy.During a visit by Young to the Fort Lemhi set-tlement, Madsen reports, Young urged the young men there to partnerwith Shoshone women because the marriage tie was the strongest tieof friendship that existed (qtd.in Madsen 76) a policy Young musthave neglected to discuss with Shoshone leaders, since most Shoshonefamilies rejected Mormon advances.Young would later claim toShoshone leaders that the Mormons did not want to take Shoshonewomen.Nonetheless, in the short term, Young s expressed pronativepolicy and the coincidence of such shared lifeways as polygyny andcommunity land practices won him the wary acceptance of Shoshoneleaders, who preferred his policies to those of the federal government.Young was equally contradictory in his positions regarding blackslaves and freemen in Utah.He did not own slaves himself, preferringto hire free blacks to serve as coachmen; he felt, in practical terms,that slavery would prove unprofitable in the long term, and arguedthat his disciples should tend no more land than they could cultivatethemselves.His official position on the matter was neutrality, whichhe hoped would offend neither side of this controversial question
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