4 Revival, 1885–1886

Resuscitation

Remnants

Few Saints assembled in Bluff’s log schoolhouse for their December conference in 1884. Out of the 245 who were in the Montezuma and Bluff settlements when the year started, only 79 remained. The bishop’s family, along with those of his counselors, were there. William Adams’ and Father John Allan’s families stayed, and so did those of the Barton, Butt, and Decker brothers. The families of Thales Haskell, Hyrum Perkins, Joe Nielson, William Hyde’s first wife, Angeline, and Charles Walton rounded out the entire list of the survivors. The town was much quieter than before. There were fewer than two dozen children under ten; a house with two children in it held more than most. The typical settler was almost twenty-two, about normal for Utah Territory, but unusually old for Bluff. Almost half now lived in polygamous families. About one in seven of the residents still had been born in foreign countries: the town’s remaining children could marvel at William Adams’ Irish lilt or the Allans’ Scottish brogue. Almost all of the Saints born in England had left, however, and the Nielsons were the lone remaining Danes.¹

Bishop Nielson was the presiding authority on the stand as these relatively few ^[145] Saints assembled for their December conference. In the way of good news, Thales Haskell reported that the Indians were causing the settlers less trouble. In fact, they hadn’t raided the stock at all that season.² But as the members of the Bluff Ward left the conference, they saw most of the homes empty, most of the yards and fields untended.

There were two dozen men and older boys to repair the washed-out ditch, less than half the number they had amid the optimism of the previous winter. But as the bishop and others surveyed the wreckage, they found the damage was less than they had expected. Repairs to the ditch would take months of labor, but they could be made by extending the head two more miles upstream. They also hoped to dig the channel two or three feet deeper than needed to allow sediment to settle. When the ditch was nearly full, they could cut open a bank and let the sediment sluice back into the river. The men set to work, hoping once again for fresh settlers to reinforce them. They received encouraging letters from some who had left in the fall that they intended to return once the high snows in the mountains had melted. But many of the others who had left spread discouraging words about the prospects on the San Juan.³

Most importantly, however, the Church was going to help. The General Authorities called a new stake president, Francis Asbury Hammond, to replace Platte Lyman. Those in Bluff hoped President Hammond, from Huntsville in northern Utah, would bring many new settlers when he came. He tried to visit Bluff in December, but ^[146] the high snows did not let him get much closer than the end of the railroad line in Durango.⁴

Stymied by the season from visiting personally, Hammond began corresponding with Bishop Nielson. He fired off a series of questions about prospects and practices in Bluff. He reassured the settlers that there was no longer ambivalence about the mission among the leaders of the Church, who were

determined to strengthen your hands, and hold that mission from going into the hands of our enemies, and it is designed to call from 40 to 50 families to accompany me to settle in that vicinity. . . . I am told by the Presidency and Twelve that “that mission cannot be given up, but must be held and maintained as an important foothold in relation to our labors with our Lamanite brethren.”

President Taylor himself emphasized the importance of the Indians: “‘We cannot afford to desert them for if we do they will lose confidence in us.’”⁵

The bishop wrote at least two buoyant letters to President Hammond, full of possibilities wrapped in his usual enthusiasm. “Our prospects for raising a crop have never been better since we came here.” There had been a lot of rain, the stock was good, and the residents of Bluff expected to have the ditch done by the end of February. There was an “excellent spirit” among the people, kept up by entertainments and theaters put on by the youth associations. Even if reinforcements did not come, Bluff’s citizens felt confident that soon they would have enough by themselves, “for though our field crops have failed us, ‘Utah’s Best Crop’ never has, and some of the sisters have produced three ^[147] full crops in less than five years, which fact removes all doubts or fears about this not being a fruitful country.”⁶

The settlers knew by now that they could not become a completely independent agricultural village. The bishop related that they were contemplating a number of “home industries” that would make them more self-sustaining. They had already shown they could make molasses from sorghum cane. A dairy would be profitable, and the prospects for one looked good. The town needed a sawmill and gristmill, since there were none within a hundred miles. They had about five hundred head of cattle, but they were thinking of exchanging some of these for sheep. Fruit trees would do well if transported correctly.⁷ But the previous years proved they could not grow enough grain for themselves, and if they could not do that, they must depend on trade with Colorado Gentiles to survive. President Hammond urged them to grow corn, beans, and sweet potatoes for the market in Durango. This permanent reliance on outsiders was a blow to the town’s ideal, but the mission itself was more important than the methods. By the spring the settlers could look forward to a vigorous new leader and the promised host of new settlers. The mission, however modified, would survive.

In the meantime, Bluff’s ward members did their best to continue to carry out the full program of the Church with depleted numbers. The Nielson women began to fill in the ranks of leadership in the ward. When the Relief Society held its conference in April, ^[148] Kirsten was on the stand as a counselor to President Jane Walton. Mary and Margaret were working with the Young Women’s Association. Elsie and Julia had stayed in Cedar City with Katrine’s three children, but they prepared to sell the home and reunite the family in Bluff after the next growing season.

Whirlwind

In early May, just as the spring surges began to burst the banks of the ditch, Francis Hammond arrived to reconnoiter. Five dismayed men in his expedition had turned around before they had gotten close to Bluff, but others, including one of Hammond’s sons and two of his sons-in-law, pushed through with him. The new stake president brought news that Church leadership had plans to call as many as seventy more families, from all the stakes of Zion, to strengthen the San Juan Stake.

President Hammond lodged near Bishop Nielson’s house, and soon the two patriarchs exchanged their stories. As they inspected the seven-mile ditch, the bishop and others recited what it had cost to hold this place, and while President Hammond was feasted by almost every family in town, he told the experiences he had packed into his sixty-three years.⁸ His adventurous life, like that of the bishop, had started near the sea. In fact, the ocean drew him away from his father’s tannery on Long Island when he was fourteen, and young Francis circled the globe as a cook, cabin boy, and sailor. But somewhere in the Arctic Ocean, a falling barrel almost broke his back, and the invalid ^[149] was later set ashore in Hawaii. After a surprising recovery, Francis Hammond made his way to San Francisco just in time to meet Mormons from the ship Brooklyn departing overland for Utah. He was quickly converted to their faith and joined the thinning stream of pioneers that trickled past the gold fields at Mormon Island in late 1848. Upon arriving in Utah, he threw himself to work in the Church with the same enthusiasm he had applied to everything. In the next thirty-five years he served three missions, married three wives, and served in a continuous chain of callings, most recently as bishop in Huntsville. During the winter of 1883 and 1884, he and his oldest son Samuel traversed the southwestern states, looking for a good place to establish a large cattle ranch. Not long afterward, Hammond was called, at the age of sixty-two, to relocate his enormous energy and experience to Bluff.⁹

That energy was apparent as soon as President Hammond arrived. He immediately announced that he was impressed with the “most excellent spirit” of the people at Bluff and was “well pleased with the bishop and people of this stake.”¹⁰ Then he launched into perpetual motion. In two weeks he cleared and planted his lot and also sowed some concerns in his mind about the ditch.¹¹ With a half dozen other men, he explored the land to the north for the next two weeks, looking for resources, including “stock, dairy, and farming facilities, timber, water, power, etc. etc.”¹² He found just what ^[150] he was looking for: “saw nothing but a first class country for stock range for summer, and it [is] connected with a good winter range; the whole country is well-watered for stock purposes.”¹³ Elk Mountain looked especially promising, though the Indians they met there “did not like to have any white men intrude upon them.”¹⁴ Neither did the ranchers in the area, and President Hammond felt that the residents of Bluff would have to act swiftly to secure this outstanding range. Establishing a base closer to this pasture would help, and the expedition found good spots for settlements. White Mesa was “a fine place for a city and farms” once the water from nearby creeks could be brought onto it.¹⁵

President Hammond quickly started carrying out his plans. He and a few others almost immediately returned to White Mesa in mid-June to further study raising the water, and they dedicated that site “for the use of the Saints.”¹⁶ A week after they returned, it was time for stake conference, which was also an opportunity to begin wooing the Indians for the cattle lands Hammond’s party had just explored. About a hundred Navajos, Utes, and Paiutes came to feast and receive presents of “bread, coffee, beef, molasses, etc.”¹⁷ Many stayed to hear Bishop Nielson report the progress of the Bluff Ward, then listened to President Hammond expound on his plans for the future. “The Lord had sent us here to do them good and not to steal their land or to take away any of ^[151] their rights but to teach them to work and be honest and live in peace.”¹⁸ Within a few weeks, a Ute chief accepted Bluff’s purchase of the rights to the land from Elk Mountain to the Colorado River.¹⁹ Whether the Utes agreed out of genuine friendship or a wary calculation that Mormons were safer than Gentiles, this agreement was a significant diplomatic victory for the new stake president.

The spirituality of the San Juan Stake was reinvigorated at the same time as its temporal prospects were revived. For the first time the stake president had counselors: William Halls, a resident of Mancos, Colorado, and William Adams. All the stake organizations were staffed at this conference, mostly with Bluff residents. Home missionaries, including Joe Nielson, were called to travel around the stake and exhort the Saints to do their duty. During the conference, Bishop Nielson reviewed the history of the mission. Out of the roughly 150 men who had been called to the San Juan, only about 25 had stuck to it, verifying the words, in the bishop’s view, “Many are called but few are chosen.” But now the future looked bright. Stock raising would be important, but the bishop reminded the Saints they should not be reckless but rather take care “of that which the Lord had made us stewards over.”²⁰

Soon after the conference ended, President Hammond rode the three-hundred-mile circuit around the stake, visiting Burnham, New Mexico, and the new branch in Mancos, Colorado, that Elders Snow, Smith, and Morgan had organized on their way to Bluff the ^[152] previous year. Hammond even finished his initiation in San Juan County by arguing with the Mitchells at McElmo on his way back to Bluff.²¹ Within a week he was en route to Huntsville once more so he could pack up his whole household and return to Bluff by Christmas. In the few stationary days before he departed, President Hammond experimented with tanning goatskins by using the extract of local brush and persuaded the board of the Bluff Co-op to finish financing a gristmill on which he had put down money in Mancos. He also encouraged the board to follow up on the negotiations started with the Indians over Elk Mountain. On the whole the Indians felt “first rate towards us,” Hammond thought, but “they want some ponies for their good will.”²² When President Hammond left in early July, Bluff men were already working on a road to Elk Mountain and preparing to return to White Mesa to dig irrigation ditches up there.

Even away from Bluff, Francis Hammond continued to zestfully boost the region. To counter the negative reports that disgruntled ex-settlers had circulated, he maintained a letter-writing campaign to the Deseret News and other papers that was remarkable for its frequency and optimism. He meticulously kept the public posted on his travels, activities, and the advantages of the San Juan region. One of his reports was so enthusiastic that the editors of the paper tacked on the subtitle, “The San Juan Country Proves to Be a Genuine El Dorado,” something that would never have been inferred from the more measured reports of Platte Lyman.²³ According to Hammond, the place needed hundreds ^[153] more people and had only half the stock it could contain, and Jens Nielson “is a fine old gentleman, a father indeed to his people, and much beloved by the Saints of his ward.” The people themselves were “a first-class lot of Latter-day Saints, fully devoted to their mission.”²⁴ With sufficient reinforcements, they would be “salt to save the country.”²⁵

But Hammond was not satisfied lobbying the public at large. He also tried to influence authorities. He regularly requested money from the Utah legislature, usually for roads to get people into and products out of San Juan County.²⁶ It did not hurt that his nephew, W. W. Riter, had become Speaker of the House. Hammond also peppered the First Presidency of the Church with so many requests for settlers that by January 1886 they reminded him, “It is best not to become too eager, and to run faster than our strength will allow.”²⁷ The stake president tried to get a miller called to Mancos and looked into importing blacksmiths from the Southern States Mission.²⁸ Some of his lobbying was effective. The First Presidency wrote to various stake presidents to recruit settlers and asked Wilford Woodruff, President of the Quorum of the Twelve, to have the Apostles speak with the Saints about the San Juan Mission as they traveled around the stakes of the ^[154] Church.²⁹

President Hammond was everything the people of Bluff could ask for and more. He flung his whole soul into the stake and had the connections and vivacity to move its cause forward. In many ways he was like the bishop, which may have created a problem. Bishop Nielson had previously rallied his ward and accomplished his plans “mostly by the force of his strong personality.”³⁰ And now President Hammond, in his tour de force, was doing the same. The new stake president’s presence in the county was at least as large as it was in the typical Church meeting, in which he always spoke once and sometimes twice, his remarks often extending over an hour.

The bishop and the stake president agreed on the large principles of the Church and its settlement program. But Bishop Nielson had his reservations about some of President Hammond’s particulars, and he drew the line when it came to buying the Mancos Mill. According to President Hammond’s recollections of the meeting in which he proposed the venture, “All seemed to favor the matter except Bishop Nielson.”³¹ The bishop may have thought the investment too risky since the co-op had such limited capital after the floods. He probably disliked the regional approach that came with running a mill in Mancos instead of constructing one in Bluff. Perhaps he resented someone so new taking such decisive action. Whatever the reason, the bishop was unable to persuade a ^[155] majority of the co-op to vote against it, and the deal went through.³²

On the whole, though, as the summer days waned the Saints in Bluff felt blessed. With the short manpower they had it seemed miraculous that they brought in a crop. By the time they assembled for conference in early fall, they celebrated a “bountiful harvest,” making “the people feel quite encouraged.” Their improved log houses and the tracks they continued to beat through the weeds began to look almost like a small village again, and some orchards began to bear fruit. For the first time, the smell of drying peaches competed with that of ripe watermelons in August and September.³³

When President Hammond returned in early December, he brought thirty-two people and five hundred head of cattle with him.³⁴ He had been elected a selectman of the county while he was gone and was soon put on the board of directors for the Mancos grist- and sawmills.³⁵ Even though the number of new settlers was not as high as promised, falling far short of the 134 families that Church leaders had assessed to the various stakes, thirty new settlers meant there would be more hands to work on the ditch and help hold Bluff that winter.^{36 [156]}

Reunion

The Nielsons had particularly strong reasons to rejoice as they approached the end of 1885. A week before Christmas, Jens Peter brought Elsie and Julia, along with Katrine’s three children, back from Cedar City to live in Bluff for good.³⁷ The trip was wet, cold, and rough, but Elsie assured the rest of the company they should be thankful their current struggles were not as difficult as those of “the old handcarters.” She had to be carried across the Dirty Devil River on Jens Peter’s back when she refused to ride a horse, but in the opinion of a fellow traveler, “Sister Nielson stands the rough and heavy roads better than any of us.”³⁸

Katrine’s children had grown considerably since Jens last saw them: Annetta was ten, Uriah was eight, and Freeman six. “Aunt Elsie” was raising them as her own, and Uriah felt she “was the best woman in the world because she . . . let him take a cat to bed with him.”³⁹ Elsie was unpretentious and industrious, soon making herself popular with neighborhood boys by sewing buckskin covers on their baseballs when she was not making gloves or tending her beehives and silkworms.⁴⁰ And during the winter, another son joined the family. Julia married Willard Butt in the St. George Temple, doing San ^[157] Juan County the service of ridding it of its oldest remaining bachelor.⁴¹

More old friends came back as well. The Baileys and Bayleses had already returned from Cedar City, while Sam and Josephine Wood, along with Sam’s new wife Emma, came in with the Nielsons. Bluff’s population had doubled since the year before, when not quite eighty remaining residents hoped they could save the mission. Now, the refreshed ward members spruced up the meetinghouse with a new roof and floor before the December conference and anticipated what was to come.

Cattle Country

Holding Their Own

What came in herds to San Juan County were many more four-legged residents. Before Bluff was founded, the area attracted those who had hoped to make themselves rich off livestock. In 1883, around fifteen thousand head of cattle roamed San Juan County, driven in by cowboys such as Tom Ray, “Spud” Hudson, and Preston Nutter. By 1885, however, bigger money was attracted to such profits, and most of the individual cattlemen had been bought out by larger companies. The Pittsburgh Cattle Company ascended the south slopes of the La Sal Mountains, the Kansas and New Mexico Land and Cattle Company, better known as the Carlisles after the English brothers who financed the operation, occupied the north and east drainages of the Blue Mountains, while the Widow Lacy moved her LC Company cattle onto the range near South Montezuma Creek. The Carlisles alone drove eleven thousand head to market in 1884 and branded fifty-three hundred calves the next ^[158] year.⁴²

The Mormons had recognized the potential of the range around them since they arrived. While traveling from Moab to Bluff in September 1880, Platte Lyman’s brother Marion reported, “The road lies through the finest range for cattle that I have seen for many years.”⁴³ Francis Hammond’s observations in mid-1885 were at least as enthusiastic.⁴⁴ But he also felt they had to act fast to secure this livelihood. Just as the Bluff Saints had been sent to occupy San Juan County in order to hold it against Gentiles, now they were impelled to hold its ranges against gentile cattle. Their mission gave the settlers a strong sense of entitlement. At one point toward the end of his exploring trip the previous summer, President Hammond and those accompanying him paused while traversing the pass between Elk Mountain and the Blues to enjoy the “magnificent view.” Inspired, the group

sang a hymn and prayed and dedicated the park, the mountain, the vales, the water, the grass, the rocks and all the materials in the region round about to the Lord our God, and blessed it in the name of the Lord Jesus for the use and benefit of his saints, [that] they may secure it and hold it forever. It is a very desirable place for stock, and we heard that gentiles have their mind upon it, and [are] preparing to stock it.⁴⁵

In a similar manner, the Saints worried about holding “our range” against Navajo herders, ^[159] who brought their flocks of sheep and goats across the San Juan River, as well as cattle companies and cowboys, alternately called “our enemies,” “outsiders,” and “strangers.”⁴⁶

By the end of 1885 the residents of Bluff had already begun to stock the range themselves. Soon after President Hammond’s five hundred Durhams arrived with him in early December, Jens Nielson’s five hundred cattle came from Cedar City with his transplanted family members.⁴⁷ Others, such as Lemuel Redd and Kumen Jones, made plans to buy more cattle in Utah. President Hammond appealed to his friends and to the Saints in general to come and help them stock up the range to secure it “from falling into the hands of cattle king monopolists.”⁴⁸

Francis Hammond had met the two largest “cattle kings,” Edmund and Harold Carlisle, a few times already, and on the surface their relations were cordial. One of the brothers called on the Mormons’ White Mesa camp in June 1885. Francis Hammond remarked that “He is our friend [and] told me he was making a shelter for one of our brethren who are now hiding up from persecution. May the Lord bless him for his kindness to our people. He seems like a fine, liberal English jolly gentleman.”⁴⁹ The Carlisles returned the compliments, expressing their preference for Mormons as ^[160] neighbors, since they always returned strays.⁵⁰ The “outside” cattle companies employed some of Bluff’s young men, such as Jens Peter Nielson, and provided a closer market than Colorado for Bluff’s trade.⁵¹ But both sides also moved to secure as much of the range as they could hold and perhaps more. Bluff’s White Mesa expedition was trying to establish an advanced outpost against the Carlisles’ expansion, while the “cattle kings” attempted to control “36,000 acres of the best cattle range” by digging small irrigation ditches all along the South Montezuma and claiming 640 acres around each trickle.⁵²

The Mormons in Bluff felt they were moving just in time by the winter of 1885–86, because they were under siege from a number of other parties as well. Just as the Hammond and Nielson herds arrived in December, ten thousand “outside” sheep were set to graze on the Recapture Wash, which the Bluff residents hoped to use as a winter range. Early the next year, the LC Cattle Company turned a few hundred head loose, and even talked of stocking Elk Mountain. A cowboy named Wilson, then a pair named Eliot and Matthews stopped by Bluff, also on their way to scout Elk Mountain. This was especially threatening since the Mormons felt they had bought rights to this area from the Indians and were counting on it as their summer range. As with the cattle companies, the leaders in Bluff were hospitable to these interlopers, providing lodging and guides for them, but at the same time they developed plans to compete against them. It appeared providential when the cowboys’ plans changed. On April 6, 1886, President Hammond reported that ^[161] Elliot and Matthews “did not think very much of the country. We are pleased that they did not.”⁵³

Varmints

The competition continued throughout 1886. Early in the year, the Mormons maintained two armed guards along the eastern rim of White Mesa to be sure they held their ground, though no violence came of it.⁵⁴ The Carlisles, through their half-brother foreman, William E. “Latigo” Gordon, continued to claim and fence large portions of the county themselves. By September the range showed signs of wear from being overstocked. Bluff residents resented further incursions by LC Company cattle and also by tens of thousands of sheep “on what we consider our range” later in the year.⁵⁵ When Lemuel Redd brought in a herd of cattle at the end of 1886 he brought the town’s total to about two thousand head. That was still only a tenth of what the Carlisles ran, but it was enough to occupy important rangeland in the county just in time.⁵⁶

The spring of 1886 also reminded them what kinds of characters outside cattle outfits brought in with them. A pair of “suspicious-looking cowboys” left Bluff without paying for their lodging on Monday, May 31. Soon after, Bill Ball, foreman at the LC ^[162] Cattle Company up Montezuma Canyon about forty-five miles away, came through looking for the same men. He told a similar story: the pair had stayed with his camp during the winter months and had abused his hospitality by making off with a few of his best horses. A posse of at least a half dozen Bluff men went out with Ball after the bandits. A week later they returned without the fugitives but with a tragic story. They had found the thieves at Navajo Springs in Comb Wash and hoped to shout at them to surrender, being ready to shoot if they would not. But Ball wanted to have a better chance to reason with his former guests and divided up the posse to head them off. Mr. Ball, a decent man by all accounts, was instead ambushed and shot, stripped of his spurs and guns, and left to die in the shade of a cedar. He survived a couple more hours then was buried in a sandy grave by the trail.⁵⁷

The Bluff posse felt bad about the killing of a good man like Ball. But they also felt it was suicide to continue pursuing such bloodthirsty men through the “outlaw’s paradise” that surrounded them, especially after James Decker’s horse was shot out from under him. As President Hammond wrote, “We feel to acknowledge the hand of the Lord in the preservation of our brethren.”⁵⁸ Justice in general was an important concept in ^[163] Bluff, but not as important as the welfare of the town itself. Even though a constable resided in Bluff, after the first foray he was willing to let the killers go.⁵⁹ But Ball’s friends felt the loss more personally. Three weeks after the shooting, a posse of about twenty cowboys arrived in Bluff and took Kumen Jones and Amasa Barton as guides to pick up the trail of the murderers. As so often happened, the outlaws got away cleanly, their trail dissolving somewhere into the Utah settlements. Ball was reburied in the Bluff cemetery months later. People in Bluff found a number of cowboys, like Ball, whom they could respect. But they also found quite a few of another stripe.⁶⁰

Town Values

This murder highlighted one of the important advantages the Mormons had in their competition against the Gentiles for the range. Instead of approaching the business as independent capitalists, they entered as a cooperating community. While the cattle companies competed exclusively for profits, the Mormons, while not opposed to financial gain, were primarily hoping to find a way to subsist in the county and fulfill their mission. As Elizabeth Kane put it in her tour through Utah years before, “Their ethics teach them simply to provide each settlement with some industry which shall make it self-supporting.”⁶¹ The farming ideal had failed, and now Bluff’s residents increasingly hoped that livestock would allow them to stay to accomplish their larger purposes. The ^[164] importance of their mission along with their permanent residence in the county gave them their strong sense of entitlement to surrounding lands, even though legally the range was open to anyone.⁶² Furthermore, the Mormons did not have camps, but rather a town. They had families with them and the entire village and Church structure to support them. The cattle companies, on the other hand, had individuals of various calibers coming and going with the seasons. The deeper roots of Bluff gave its people an important advantage in the competition for this marginal land. If Mormons profited, so much the better, but all they had to do to succeed was subsist. Mere subsistence for the cowboys was failure. In a sense the Mormons in Bluff and their cooperative tradition were competing with the cattle companies and their unbridled capitalism.

The danger in all this was that Mormons might throw off their own bridles and become full capitalists themselves.⁶³ Such a conversion would be harmful in at least two ways. First, in a purely practical sense, Mormons competing against Mormons would weaken their collective place in the contest for the range. But more importantly, if they practiced pure individualism, the settlers at Bluff would deny their mission and their faith. The leaders of the town had been raised on Brigham Young’s principles of self-sufficiency, home manufactures, and cooperation as touchstones of fidelity as long as they had been in Utah. If they denied these principles for individual pursuits, they would no ^[165] longer be a united stake securing this corner of Zion. Instead, they would look far too much like the enterprising Gentiles they hoped to displace.

Conflict

It was therefore imperative for Bluff’s cattlemen to cooperate among themselves. Many of them had been involved in cooperative cattle enterprises before. Jens Nielson was president of the Cedar City Cooperative Cattle Company when it was organized in 1875, and Kumen Jones worked for it for three years as well. But it was very difficult to reconcile the members’ interests with the cooperative ideal, and it broke into its component herds in 1883.⁶⁴ This experience led the bishop to move cautiously in putting together a similar undertaking in Bluff. In the last weeks of 1885, various residents formed a cooperative stock company after spirited discussions.⁶⁵ But the names of Jens Nielson and Francis Hammond, probably the two largest stockholders in town, were conspicuously absent from the list of officers, and the venture fell apart within a month when its members could not agree on a constitution.⁶⁶ In the meantime the whole town almost came apart.

It was the ditch again. By the time the ward started planning for it in mid-January, many of the newer settlers had grown skittish about the place. Their land claims were too far from the established ditches to have hopes of getting enough water to grow crops. So ^[166] the older residents offered to divide and redistribute the land to encourage as many as possible to stay and help labor on the ditch. This gesture seemed to be well received.⁶⁷ But a more divisive problem still loomed: the older settlers, who already had built up stock in the ditch through their past labors, wanted to redeem some of that stock to reduce their share of labor this year. The newer settlers resented the prospect of bearing a disproportionate share of the dispiriting burden in the immediate future.

President Hammond was disturbed by the “lack of union in [the] temporal affairs” of the town. In the afternoon meeting on Sunday, January 17, he addressed the issue in his frank, energetic style, thereby making the divisions much worse. As Bishop Nielson listened to his priesthood leader speak, his indignation grew. Hammond dwelled on “Bluff being a hard place to maintain because of the difficulty of securing water.” This much was obvious to anyone who had been there, and these doubts were no greater than those Platte Lyman used to voice. But the bold, entrepreneurial spirit of President Hammond had already developed a program to wean the San Juan Stake off the settlement at Bluff. Many who had come with Hammond had already relocated to Mancos or other places in Colorado, and he himself had property there. Now the stake president said the purpose was to raise enough money to get water onto White Mesa, apparently to relocate the major settlement there. Bluff itself was not vital to President Hammond; it was the overall region that mattered.⁶⁸

That was not how the bishop felt. He and others had invested years of toil in this ^[167] town. They had been told by higher authorities that Bluff could not be abandoned, and they had been promised specific blessings for staying here. It was not hard for President Hammond to see that “my remarks gave offense to the Bishop Bro. Nielson and some others.”⁶⁹ The 7:00 pm meeting became a referendum on the president’s remarks. Hammond himself did not feel well enough to attend, but his views were defended by some of those present and criticized by others. Bluff was again divided.

The question festered for a week. The next Sunday a priesthood meeting was held in the evening. After the assembled group sang “Come All Ye Sons of God,” President Hammond spoke on the duties of the priesthood. Then he warned against the “division liable to spring up in relation to our sentiments as regards Bluff City Ward, its building up and maintenance.” He then emphasized the necessity of unity. All present knew he was right. They had to be united or deny their mission. But united on what? President Hammond felt they should be united in forming a settlement on the White Mesa as a more desirable place to live and a strategic base in securing the range. The bishop and others rose to speak with “great liberty” on the importance of being united in maintaining Bluff.⁷⁰ The discussion continued until after midnight, with both sides weighing in on more particular issues such as ditch credits.

As the tired residents left the schoolhouse that night, a “good feeling prevailed.”⁷¹ Once again, both sides felt better after airing out their grievances and backtracking to ^[168] principles in which they all believed. But this did not resolve everything, because the next morning Bishop Nielson, his counselor Lemuel Redd, as well as William Adams and James Decker called on President Hammond to discuss the “knotty problem” of resolving ditch credits. After further discussions, the older settlers gave in again. They agreed to tax everyone equally for this year’s ditch construction, “without reference to capital stock they have in the ditch.” They would tax all land to be used during the upcoming season at twelve dollars per acre. Since most chose to work off their tax rather than pay cash, this required a solid week’s work per acre of land, though bringing horses and scrapers counted toward the tax as well. This money would not only repair the old ditch, but also pay for construction of a new ditch from Recapture Wash to connect with the main channel. The farmers hoped they could use the less turbulent waters from the Recapture until its level fell too low in the late summer or fall, then switch to whatever water the San Juan had left. By doing this, they anticipated avoiding many of the bank-breaking surges of the San Juan that had occupied so much of their time in the past.⁷²

Even with the immediate finances resolved, the larger issue still remained. President Hammond and Bishop Nielson surveyed the new and old ditches together, but they maintained different opinions on Bluff. At the quarterly stake conference in late March, both men emphasized the importance of cooperation and union, “notwithstanding the efforts of our enemies to the contrary.”⁷³ If Mormons sometimes relieved ^[169] internal tensions by transferring blame to outsiders, they were also quick to condemn themselves for not fully living up to the principles of the gospel.⁷⁴ Their enemies would never triumph if the Saints were pure, and Bishop Nielson as well as President Hammond felt the obligation to keep the commandments as fully as they could. Outwardly, the two men had appeared much more united since the controversy in January. In mid-March, for example, President Hammond had helped Bishop Nielson transport barley at his place, and they often had mixed pleasantly in Bluff’s endless social season.⁷⁵ But each seemed to grow more convinced of his position in the following weeks. The bishop might have felt reassured by a couple of developments. First, the Mancos Mill project he had opposed the previous year lost money from the beginning, and the Bluff Co-op disassociated itself from the mess.⁷⁶ Second, Bluff’s men and boys got water into the ditch for eight dollars an acre, significantly less than they had anticipated.⁷⁷

But President Hammond still could not understand why the bishop and others chose to huddle by this fickle river when there were more promising locations so close. He often referred to the trouble and cost of maintaining an existence by fighting “this ^[170] turgid stream.”⁷⁸ And so he attempted to trump the convictions that Bishop Nielson and others held that Bluff was essential. The main pillar of these feelings seemed to be what President Joseph F. Smith had told the holdouts after their cathartic meetings following the floods in 1884. It just so happened that Joseph F. Smith was an old friend of Francis Hammond’s; they had served together as missionaries in Hawaii in the 1850s. So President Hammond wrote to President Smith soon after the disagreements erupted in January. Since Smith was in Hawaii again, a place less likely to be probed for polygamists by federal marshals, his answer took almost three months to arrive. But it came in early April, and President Hammond read parts of it in church.

President Smith wrote that in 1884 he felt the “Sahara of the San Juan” should be held and the key to holding it was the settlement at Bluff. But he also believed that “in the event of the proper development of the country that Bluff was destined to recede into the shade of better locations, if not eventually abandoned.” It would clearly have to be abandoned if the water could not be controlled. Still, he pointed out, “Sometimes a thing may cost more than it is worth, but having been purchased at that excessive price, it is too valuable to throw away.” President Smith concluded, “My counsel is to hang on to the San Juan Country and if possible make Bluff a ‘stronghold.’ But men need not ruin themselves in a hopeless cause. Bluff will doubtless some day be built up.”⁷⁹ While President Hammond may have hoped the letter would tip the balance of the argument in ^[171] his favor, it was far from conclusive.⁸⁰ The two strong-willed leaders continued to co-exist as well as they could. The bishop would have heartily endorsed the sentiment President Hammond inscribed in his journal the night of Bluff’s sixth Founders’ Day: “May the Lord assist us to yet redeem and make this land lovely.”⁸¹

The county’s water continued to wash out the newest version of their best-laid plans by flooding the Recapture ditch in late March and overwhelming other banks at the end of May, doubling the ditch tax estimate from spring and causing the few men in town to wrestle with it daily through the end of June.⁸² “We have had a good deal of trouble to keep the water out of our ditch all the fore part of the season,” lamented President Hammond in a letter to the Deseret News, “and now, since the river has fallen, we have nearly as much trouble to keep the water in.”⁸³ They tried to construct wing dams at the head of the ditch to bring the water up in late July.⁸⁴ In the end, something of a crop was raised, but it was to the newcomers “a very dear one.”⁸⁵ Seeing these struggles to tame the river for the second time only confirmed in the stake president’s mind the importance of bringing “cheap and permanent water” onto White Mesa as soon as possible. Yet that undertaking was soon abandoned as well. The same low water levels that had bedeviled the ^[172] diggers at Bluff also hurt the chances and increased the expense of getting water onto White Mesa. President Hammond had to conclude when he visited the project in July that it was “too heavy a job for us to carry through for the present.”⁸⁶ But when he continued up to North Montezuma, he found that place promising enough to try to occupy in the near future.

If the Mancos Mill and White Mesa pieces of President Hammond’s regional planning failed, other parts went very well in the spring and summer of 1886. Hammond and a few other Bluff stockmen, though not the bishop, summered their herds on Elk Mountain for the first time. But Jens did have a hand in the cooperative dairy that was started up at Dodge Point near the Blue Mountains. It was operated by Willard and Julia Butt, and it was supplying very good butter and cheese by the Pioneer Day celebrations on July 24. In fact, Mormon efforts in that part of the country went so well in 1886 that outsiders once again charged foul play, claiming that the Mormons had an unfair advantage with the Indians.

Cooperation

Internal relations among the Mormons in 1886 were still not as coordinated as they seemed to outsiders, and in the end it was external pressure at least as much as internal principles that led the stockmen of Bluff to cooperate. In August, the leaders of the ward were still wrangling with the problem of “how to get all our temporal matters organized into a system of cooperation.”⁸⁷ But as winter approached, the rumors and then ^[173] the reality of vast outside sheep and cattle herds occupying nearby ranges alarmed them. For the third straight winter, at least forty thousand sheep, many from a New Mexico interest, and perhaps eight thousand cattle, many from the LC Company, stripped the grass around Bluff.⁸⁸ The town’s leaders were unable to reach any accommodation with those who ran this stock. Their only alternative seemed to be to compete with them economically, but Bluff’s stockowners continued to struggle with how to combine to do this.

Finally, in late November, they found a way. During business meetings after the quarterly stake conference, purchasing sheep and “the securing of our stock ranges etc. w[ere] talked up.”⁸⁹ Those present decided to expand the Bluff Co-op Store into the “San Juan Mercantile, Stock Raising, and Manufacturing Company.” As this title suggested, the new enterprise hoped to increase the size of the old co-op to allow it to undertake more diverse ventures over a larger area. Perhaps President Hammond hoped to imitate the variety of the prototype co-op in Utah, the one started by Lorenzo Snow in Brigham City in the 1870s, not far from Hammond’s Huntsville home.^{90 [174]}

Regardless of whose idea it was, the new San Juan Co-op would continue the dual principles of the old Bluff cooperative: to be a financial embodiment of the Saints’ spiritual commitment to be one with each other in all their affairs. Those who bought shares were investing in the hope of future earnings and also casting a vote for cooperative principles. Not only men but also many of the town’s women and children cast their votes with the dollars they could pull together.⁹¹ Still, the San Juan Company was at least as corporate as it was cooperative. It was a merging of capital, and the dividends were paid to shareholders, not consumers.⁹² Except in the unlikely event that all bought equal shares, some Saints would profit from their joint economic activities more than others. But more immediately, this capitalistic arrangement would put the profits back in the hands of those who would help Bluff compete with outsiders more effectively: the large stockholders. In spite of the inconsistencies, the expansion of the co-op was the common ground the Bluff Saints had sought over the previous year. Bishop Nielson enthusiastically embraced the plan and was elected president of the enterprise in December. When the San Juan Cooperative Company, as it was officially named, became a legal entity on January 1, 1887, the bishop was one of the largest stockholders.⁹³

The co-op swiftly used its increased presence to coordinate Bluff’s business ^[175] ventures. It tried to plan livestock ranges and brought pressure on those with separate businesses, such as Joseph and Amasa Barton, to be united with the rest of the Saints in Bluff.⁹⁴ If everyone came together, the cooperative company would not only fulfill the objectives of the old store but also pay larger dividends and fund new projects. It was a convenient merger of interests: their faith required them to cooperate; their interests also impelled it.

The first project of the new company may have been the one that urged its swift incorporation. The people in Bluff had to do something about the sheep that were devouring their countryside. They had almost bought three thousand of the woolly invaders the previous March but could not agree on the terms.⁹⁵ Now they entered discussions with a Mr. McCallister about buying four thousand of his herd. During a meeting at the bishop’s house on December 28, they closed the business of buying the flock for six thousand dollars. They did not have anything close to that amount in cash, so they bought on credit, most likely through banks in Durango, at “a fair bargain considering all circumstances.”⁹⁶ The buyers would pay no interest if they retired each of the three notes when due on August 1. If they could not, then they would pay 10 percent interest per year thereafter. The sheep were quickly voted into the San Juan Cooperative Company as stock, and their herding would be managed cooperatively.^{97 [176]}

Buying these sheep served at least two purposes. First, the animals were an investment and one that many stockmen were beginning to view as more sound than cattle. Sheep exacted a lower initial expense, brought quicker profits, and could yield both wool and meat, giving more security since it was rare for both markets to plummet at once. Although cattle were more mobile, now that the railroad ran through Durango that was less of a concern.⁹⁸ As the sheep herd increased, profits could be paid to stockholders through the co-op, sometimes in cash, sometimes in merchandise, and sometimes in increased capital stock in the company. Also, these sheep could be ranged in strategic spots, such as west of the Recapture, where the pressure from outside herds was greatest. In all, the deal furthered Bluff’s immediate economic purposes of holding off the outsiders so they could make a living here, while at the same time doing it in a way, similar to the co-op itself, that would unify the Saints in their temporal affairs.⁹⁹

Cattle were another matter. Each individual continued to own and operate his own herd. The various owners tried to coordinate ranges, and Bluff cattlemen generally all sold together. But from time to time, someone would act in a way the others deemed harmful to the common good. Church leaders then had to remonstrate with the offender ^[177] to act in a more cooperative fashion. In this way the Barton brothers were brought back into the fold, and so was Lemuel Redd when he independently negotiated a big contract in Durango in March 1887.¹⁰⁰ This informal discipline generally worked out most of the problems, but the principles of unity and cooperation, as well as the competition on the ranges, pushed them toward a more formal association.

Mixed Blessings

On December 6, 1886, a team and wagon returned from Colorado with a bell for the Bluff meetinghouse. Among other consequences, this event meant that Charles Walton and his bugle could retire as the official heralds of public celebrations. As usual, those who heard the bell peal had mixed feelings on living in its vicinity. In many ways, the people of Bluff defined themselves by who they were not. They were glad they were not Indians, and they hoped to persuade these neighbors to live more as they did. They were certainly glad they were not like the unattached cowboys who worked for the outside cattle companies. The more successful the sheep and cattle herds of Bluff were, the less they would have to put up with these sorts of characters. The members of the Bluff Ward also felt protected from other problems. The remoteness and marginal nature of their farmland limited rivalry for its use. No one in Bluff ever had his town lot or fields jumped by outsiders, as sometimes happened in other locales of the West.¹⁰¹ And except for their occasional spasms, Bluff residents did not generate the same level of jealousy and ^[178] misunderstanding as seemed more common in other wards. In spite of the disagreements in his ward, Bishop Nielson did not have to endure constant “murmuring and complaining” against himself, nor did either of his counselors resign in protest as happened in the Moab Ward to the north. His Bluff Ward, while not perfect, appeared very united by contrast.¹⁰² Lem Redd pointed out another advantage when he spoke in church the first Sunday after the bell came. He had visited the older settlements in Utah, where “he found much derision, . . . and the young growing up in carelessness respecting the gospel.” After such sights he “was glad to be home again.”¹⁰³

But Bluff’s citizens could not help taking notice of other things they were not. By living in their forlorn outpost, their standard of living was much lower than that of their relatives and friends in other towns. Salt Lake City “never looked so beautiful” to President Hammond when he visited after living in Bluff for awhile.¹⁰⁴ Every new development in streetcars, or lighting, or communication was something to marvel at, but from a distance, since not even the railroad was ever going to come to Bluff. The settlers were relegated to a backwater at a time when cities were swiftly starting to become more modern. Bluff’s roads and fences were sometimes in poor repair in the midst of weeds that were, in the summer, taller than the people. Their log homes continued to grow larger and nicer as rooms, flooring, doors, and windows were added onto the original frames. But the dwellings were “a very inferior class of log cabins” to any outside ^[179] eyes.¹⁰⁵ They still had the permissive dirt roofs, and their walls could not entirely stop the potent San Juan wind from blowing in heat or cold, dust, grit, and moisture in their seasons.

The only stone home in Bluff was built by Joseph T. Johnson, who had arrived with Francis Hammond in 1885. With imported lime and shingles, he put together a two-room cottage that was soon bought by President Hammond when Brother Johnson moved away. A wide-eyed Bluff girl once “asked her mother if all the houses in Salt Lake City were as good as President Hammond’s house.”¹⁰⁶ This was the sort of provincialism to which the settlers had been called. Spiritually, Bluff was a good place to make Saints, reckoned by Brigham Young’s traditional standards. Materially, as the folks of Bluff were reminded every time they traveled elsewhere, it was behind the times.

But making a virtue out of necessity was always a part of the San Juan Mission. Bishop Nielson did the best he could when he confronted the health of the town late in the year. People got sick often, and many babies continued to be born. As most people in small towns did, Bluff’s Saints helped each other as well as they could, using a combination of loving care, herbs, traditional cures, and Indian advice. To these homespun methods they added their faith through frequent prayers and priesthood blessings for the sick. In merging traditional cures, pragmatism, and spiritual power, the ^[180] settlers at Bluff resembled their Indian neighbors more than they would care to admit.¹⁰⁷

Sometime in 1886, Sister Haskell, the leading midwife, moved to Colorado. So Bishop Nielson issued a Church calling to Jody Wood, to be the town’s doctor. She and her husband, Samuel Wood, had lived across the street from the Nielsons in Cedar City a few years before. Now she was understandably panicstricken by this medical assignment. “I am as green as a cucumber,” she protested to the bishop, “and I don’t know how babies are born.” But Jens knew her capabilities well. She had a lively personality tempered with the compassion of having lost two of her own children in Cedar City. And furthermore, Samuel Wood had married a second wife, Emma, the year before, meaning that Jody would have help caring for her own children when she had to leave home. So the bishop called her despite her concerns and promised she would be guided by the Lord. Notwithstanding, she sent away for some books then studied and prayed.

Her first delivery came just before the meetinghouse bell arrived. On December 3, Joseph Barton’s wife, Harriett, was about to give birth. Jody asked her husband for a priesthood blessing and then asked the bishop to go with her to the delivery. The baby came out with the cord wrapped around her neck. Jody heard someone tell her what to do, and she saved the baby. “I thought Bishop Nielson had spoken to me,” she recalled, “but when I turned to look at him, he was not in the room. I knew the Lord had blessed ^[181] me, telling me plainly what to do.”¹⁰⁸

It did not take long for “Aunt Jody” to become something of an institution. Bluff’s children started wondering if she brought the babies in her black bag. Bishop Nielson helped with some other deliveries, but his daughter Mary Jones assisted Aunt Jody frequently. “It was Aunt Jody and Aunt Mary to all, with their herbs and hot poultices, etc., together with their old time jokes and funny stories.”¹⁰⁹ Sister Wood’s “jolly, kindly disposition worked psychological wonders among the sick,” Kumen Jones remembered, “likely as much or more than the packs, poultices, or herb teas she used.”¹¹⁰

While Aunt Jody’s bedside manner and unquestioned dedication were admired by everyone, complicated cases still caused serious problems. Francis Hammond later wrote how his daughter-in-law was almost “murdered” and the baby “butchered” because of “the ignorance of those sisters who have acted as midwives,” and how “our sisters are becoming very nervous as the time approached for their confinement.” While he may have been referring to midwives in other towns in the stake as well as in Bluff, and doctors of the time might not have done much better, there were limitations to what Bluff’s medical team could do. When it came time for Aunt Mary herself to give birth, she called in a midwife from Salt Lake City to try to ensure everything went smoothly.^{111 [182]} For all but the most difficult cases, the midwives did well. Aunt Jody certainly did well enough by Bishop Nielson when she delivered two of his grandchildren in two days late in 1886. On December 19, Julia Butt delivered a girl she named after her mother, Elsie May. And the next day, Joe’s wife Ida delivered a boy, Jens Lyman, who in time would start toddling around with Jens’s oldest grandson, Eddie, born the year before.

Christmas in 1886 was not just festive for the enlarged Nielson family but for the whole town as well. As was usually the case with any public event, a committee planned the celebrations. By Christmas Eve the committee members had set up a large tree, decorated with presents on the branches, the first time such a thing was seen in Bluff. President Hammond played the role of Santa Claus and merrily passed out the presents to the town’s children. Then there was a dance for the youth until almost midnight. At two o’clock the next afternoon, two large tables creaked under the food for a public dinner, which fed close to three hundred people, including about a hundred Indians who had been invited for the occasion. In the evening, after “they were stuffed like the turkey,” they held a “grand dance,” and quite a few outside cowboys attended and behaved themselves well. Over the next few days various families and organizations continued to throw parties, dances, and dinners, and the whole week witnessed ball games, horse races, foot races, and whatever other sports and games the revelers could imagine. All these diversions were a welcome break dividing the labors of the past year from those of the ^[183] next.¹¹² Bluff might have been lacking in technology and physical amenities, but its residents were determined to make up for such limitations with their own warmth and merrymaking. For this reason, Christmases were usually a time to remember in Bluff.¹¹³ The whole holiday season rejuvenated the town and prepared its residents to once again confront their “difficulties . . . of no common character.”^{114 [184]}