The Indians were attacked on the 8th, and took refuge in a log house, whence they were dislodged next day, and driven into the thicket along the Provo River. In this encounter Joseph Higbee was killed, and Alexander Williams, Samuel Kearns, Albert Miles, Jabez Nowland, and two men named Orr and Stevens were wounded.
On the 11th the Indians fled from the thicket to Rock Canon, whither the volunteers pursued them; but failing to find them, the white men proceeded to the west and south sides of Utah Lake, and shot all they could find there.
During the expedition twenty-seven warriors were killed. The women and children threw themselves upon the settlers for protection and support, and were fed and cared for in Salt Lake City until spring. Thus Utah Valley was entirely rid of hostile Indians. Until 1852 there was no further trouble with them of a serious nature;[1] and thus ended the first Indian war of Utah, which like all the others was rather a tame affair. It was the mission of the Mormons to convert the Indians, who were their brethren, and not to kill them.
Later in the year was founded the city of Provo,[2] somewhat to the eastward of Fort Utah, near the western base of the Wasatch Mountains, on a site where timber and pasture were abundant,[3] and where the gradual fall of the Timpanogos affords excellent water-power. In March 1851 it was organized as a stake of Zion. The settlement was pushed forward with the energy characteristic of the settlers. Before the close of 1850 more than twenty dwellings
- ↑ 'I was ordered not to leave that valley until every Indian was out of it.' Wells' Narr., MS., 45-6.
- ↑ At a general conference of the church, held in October 1849, it was ordered that a city he laid out in the Utah Valley, and called Provo. Utah Early Records, MS., 97.
- ↑ A heavy growth of cotton-wood and box elder covered the river bottom, with a large belt of cedar extending some four miles north from the river and about half a mile in width. Bunch grass was very plentiful. Albert Jones, in Utah Sketches, MS., 55.
