Dennis R. Defa Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 The Goshute Indians are part of the larger Shoshonean-speaking Native American groups that live in the Intermountain West. Although no one knows how long the Goshutes had occupied the area where they lived when first contacted by Europeans, a date of 1,000 years ago is most probable as the time when Shoshonean speakers …
Pioneers
Thomas G. Alexander Utah, The Right Place In spite of the fears of some governmental officials that Mormons might plant themselves on the Missouri indefinitely, in December 1846, the Saints began to plan in earnest for their exodus to the Great Basin. Agreeing to send a small pioneer company to establish a settlement, they prepared for the evacuation of the …
Fremont’s Exploration
Thomas G. Alexander Utah, The Right Place By the early 1840s, as immigrants struck out for Oregon and California, Americans contemplated adding both of these regions as United States possessions. Enthusiasts such as Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, his daughter Jessie, and her husband, John C. Fremont, considered an empire on the Pacific as America’s “Manifest Destiny.” Judging themselves agents …
Traders, Trappers, and Mountain Men
Thomas G. Alexander Utah, The Right Place Following the Mexican Revolution in 1821, traders from Spanish and Mexican territory bartered actively in Utah. Following the reconquest of New Mexico and throughout the seventeenth century, New Mexican traders purchased elk, buffalo, beaver, and other skins from the Comanches and Utes. The reports of Rivera and Dominguez and Escalante led to the …
Great Basin
Gary B. Peterson Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 The Great Basin is defined by hydrology and physiography. It is a region of interior drainage bounded prominently on the west by the Sierra Nevada and the Cascade Range and on the east by the middle Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau. Less distinct are its northern boundary with the Columbia Plateau and …