Sixteen to 18 wagons of Manti-grown grain "passed up the street by the News office," the newspaper reported, proof that Sanpete saints were obeying the biblical injunction to "bring your tithes to my storehouse."
The short article did not expand on what it took for the Manti farmers to establish their area as "Utah's granary" within just a few years of settlement.The story of Manti is, to a degree, the story of Mormon colonization in the 1850s and 1860s. Communities blossomed in key locations throughout the Great Basin. The leaders of the LDS Church intended from the first to fill the basin with Mormon colonies to cement their claim to the region, and they lost no time in organizing groups, many of them still weary from the trek west, to move on to establish those colonies.
One of the basic plans was for a "Mormon Corridor" to the Pacific to facilitate further settlement. LDS settlers were sent early to San Bernardino to establish the corridor's western point and in the first few years, settlements sprang up in Utah County, Nephi, Fillmore, Beaver, Cedar City, Parowan, Santa Clara and Las Vegas. Manti was found to be too far off the usual route to facilitate the corridor, but it was the fifth Utah colony, preceded only by Salt Lake City, Ogden, Bountiful and Provo.
The site was chosen, among other reasons, because Ute Indian Chief Walker had invited Brigham Young to send settlers to "Sanpeetch" to teach his people to farm. Farming, however, was a chafing lifestyle for most Indians, and Walker proved to be a "temperamental host."
In keeping with custom, the prospective colonization of Manti was announced in a general church conference. During fall 1849 meetings, church leaders "called" those who were to go, and the action was sustained by the general church membership.
Under the leadership of Isaac Morley, Seth Taft, Nelson Higgins and Charles Shumway, a band of 224 colonists and 240 cattle set out on Oct. 28 for their new home, skirting the south and west sides of Mount Nebo and heading south down Salt Creek Canyon.
Although winter travel was often difficult, it was common practice for pioneers to journey to a new settlement in the winter so they would be established and ready to plant crops when spring arrived.
Unfortunately for the Manti party, the winter of 1849-50 was severe, the worst in memory, according to area Indians. When the group arrived at what became Temple Hill on Nov. 19, some of the leaders proposed that they keep moving south to Gunnison.
"This is only a long, narrow canyon and not even a jack rabbit could exist on its desert soil," argued Taft.
"This is our God-appointed place and stay I will, though but 10 men remain with me," countered a stubborn Morley, bishop and primary head of the colony. Such differences of opinion among its leaders marked the early history of Manti.
But the rabbits Taft had disparaged proved a godsend for the hungry settlers. A bit of local doggerel was soon professing that: "Rabbits young and rabbits old; Rabbits hot and rabbits cold; Rabbits tender and rabbits tough; Thank the Lord, we've had rabbits enough."
In the end, the party hunkered down on the south side of Temple Hill, digging shallow shelters into the hillside or turning their wagons on end to miserably wait out the winter. Morley chose the Book of Mormon name of Manti for the settlement.
Soon after their arrival, the sick child of "Captain Higgins" died, followed by Theophilus Shomaker, "a young man of sterling qualities whose hearty, cheerful laugh was wafted to listening ears by the chill breezes of a November night."
On the positive side of the ledger, a daughter, Almeda, was born Nov. 22 to Abram and Clarinda Washburn, the first white child born in the valley.
A party was immediately sent back to Salt Lake City for supplies, but it got bogged down on the return trip by snow ranging from 10 to 20 feet deep in Salt Creek Canyon.
Some time in January, an Indian, Tabubow, came into the Manti camp and told the settlers that a white man lay dying in the foothills. He was George Bradley, who had left his companions holed up while he went for help. A rescue party on snowshoes went to their assistance.
Keeping cattle alive through the winter became a serious challenge. Spiteful Indians had burned off swamp grasses that would have fed the animals. The herd was taken two miles south of the camp and it became a daily task for men and boys to shovel snow and create windrows so the cattle could get down to the vegetation. Regardless, the animals began to die.
The carcasses were given to grateful Indians, who couldn't understand why the whites preferred to eat "pish-kick" (biscuits) rather than decimated beef. By spring, only 113 of the cattle were still alive, and it was June before they had been revitalized enough to pull plows.
As welcome as spring was, it brought unexpected new challenges. A "slithering, rattling sound" one evening proved to be an invasion of "great, gaunt, spotted-back" rattlesnakes that were rousing from their winter hibernation in nearby caves and were attracted by the warmth of camp-fires. They "invaded our homes with as little compunction as the plagues of Egypt did the palace of the Pharoah," wrote Adelia Cox Sidwell, who was 8 when the Manti settlers left Salt Lake City.
Men with torches searched out the intruders and in one night killed an estimated 300. Many of the settlers felt it was miraculous that no one was bitten during the strange occupation, which continued for several weeks.
An uneasy relationship with local Indians also kept the Manti settlers on the alert. On one occasion, Walker and 500 to 700 warriors returned from a raid on the Shoshones, set up their wickiups in a semicircle around the small settlement and staged a two-week celebration.
Captive squaws were forced to sing and dance with the heads of family members impaled on poles, Manti historians recalled. The exercise seemed calculated to remind the pioneers that the Indians were a force to be reckoned with.
Over the next few years, Manti took on the amenities of a town. A series of forts was built to protect the small settlement, each one larger and more substantial. The final fort was 3 feet wide at the base and topped out at 12 feet.
During the winter of 1850, George P. Billings built a school/churchhouse of whip-sawed logs. Jesse W. Fox was the first teacher. The Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association published a newspaper that was read from the pulpit. Phineas Cook was sent by Brigham Young to build a gristmill, which was warmly welcomed by settlers who had shared a hand-operated mill.
It was customary in putting together colonies, when possible, to have people from various trades, such as blacksmiths, carpenters, millers, shoemakers, etc., so the community could be self-sufficient.
Manti even had a dentist of sorts, a doctor Richards, who advertised: "Teeth extracted with pleasure, without pain and without price." The pleasure, he said, was his, the pain belonged to the patient and the service was his expected contribution to the community.
In 1853, the small town got a healthy infusion of new blood as a group of Scandinavians, mostly Danes headed by John E. Fors-gren, arrived to speed the colonization of Sanpete County. The county was created by the territorial legislature in 1850. (Ironically, the land was deeded to the state in 1855 - five years after the fact - by Arapeen, a brother of Chief Walker.)
The Scandinavians first tried to establish themselves at Little Denmark (Spring City), but winter conditions were too harsh. They traveled on to the Manti fort, where they camped inside the walls, surviving the winter on frozen potatoes served with bran and "smutty ground wheat." In the spring, pigweed became a dietary mainstay.
A significant event for Manti's settlers was a visit by Brigham Young in August 1850. It was an occasion for firing the town's only cannon, and in their enthusiasm, townsmen overloaded the piece, breaking several windows when it discharged.
An early writer looked on the damage as a small price to pay for the visit of the Mormon leader. George P. Billings, a "young giant," was commissioned to carry the artillery up on Temple Hill, where he chained it to a cedar tree and continued firing.
On this early visit, Young made a significant comment to the Manti settlers, telling them that a temple would one day be built on their hill. On another occasion, he said the site had been selected by Book of Mormon prophet Moroni hundreds of years earlier. In a June 1875 conference, it was determined that it was time to begin construction of the edifice, which was dedicated in May 1888.
Characteristically for its time, the temple was built largely at the expense of the local congregation. An account book showed that two steers, valued at $38.50, were contributed by James Cook; 100 pounds of wheat at $2 by Samuel Ware; 1 bed core worth a dollar by John Grier and $4 in cash by Henry Parsons. Women gave money from their "Sunday eggs." Such donations contributed to the estimated $1 million cost of the temple.
After several years of fighting grasshoppers and working to create an irrigation system, Sanpete's agricultural enterprise began to pay off. By 1859, the tithe of 16 to 18 wagons of grain that journeyed to the bishop's storehouse in Salt Lake City was the fruit of years of honest labor by hard-working settlers who made Sanpete Valley Utah's breadbasket.