a settlement was begun in the spring of 1848 by Peregrine Sessions, the place being called Bountiful. 2
As early as 1841 the country round where the city of Ogden was laid out was held as a Spanish grant by Miles M. Goodyear, who built a fort, consisting of a stockade and a few log houses, near the confluence of the Weber and Ogden rivers. 3 On the 6th of June, 1848, James Brown, of the battalion, coming from California with $5,000, mostly in gold-dust, purchased the tract from Goodyear. 4 As it was one of the most fertile spots in all that region, grain and vegetables being raised in abundance, not only numbers of the brethren from Salt Lake City, but after a while gentiles from the western states, settled there. In August 1850 Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Orson Hyde, and others laid out the city of Ogden, so called from the name of the river. 5 The
president urged the people to move at once to their city lots, and to build for themselves substantial dwellings, a meeting-house, and a school-house, to fence their gardens and plant fruit-trees, so that the place might become a permanent settlement, and the headquarters of the northern portion of the territory. Before the end of the year a log structure was finished, which served for school and meeting house, and soon afterward the settlers commenced to build a wall for protection against the Indians, completing it about three years later at a cost of some $40,000. 6 So rapid was the growth of the town, that in 1851 it was made a stake of Zion, 7 divided into wards, and incorporated by act of legislature. 8
In 1848 Isaac Morley and two hundred others settled in the southern part of the valley of the San Pete 9—particulars to be mentioned hereafter.
In the spring of 1849 a stockade was built and log houses erected by the pioneer settlers of Utah county, numbering about thirty families, 10 near the Timpanogos or Provo River, and below the point where a small creek issuing from it discharges into Lake Utah. To
this settlement was given the name of Fort Utah. Within the space enclosed by the stockade was a mound, the top of which was levelled, and on a platform bulk thereon were mounted several twelve-pounders for the purpose of intimidating the Indians. But the Indians were not to be thus intimidated. In the autumn they began to steal the grain and cattle of the white men, and one of their number being killed while in the act of pilfering, hostilities broke out and the fort was soon in a state of siege.
Indeed, ill feeling on the part of the Indians had begun to show itself the previous year. Vasquez and Bridger wrote to Brigham on the 17th of April, 1849, that the Utes were badly disposed toward Americans, and that chiefs Elk and Walker were urging the Utes to attack the settlements in Utah Valley. The brethren were advised to protect themselves, but if the Indians were friendly, to teach them to raise grain, and "order them to quit stealing." Brigham was persuaded that Bridger was his enemy, and expressed the conviction that he and the other mountaineers were responsible for all the Indian trouble, and that he was watching every movement of the Mormons and reporting to Thomas H. Benton at Washington. 11 Alexander Williams and D. B. Huntington were empowered by the council to trade exclusively with the Indians on behalf of the community.
On the 31st of January, 1850, Isaac Higbee, of Fort Utah, reported at Salt Lake that the Indians of Utah Valley had stolen fifty or sixty head of cattle or horses, threatening further depredations, and asked permission to chastise them, which was granted. General Daniel H. Wells then called for volunteers from the militia, and on the 4th of February Captain George D. Grant started with a company for Utah Fort, followed soon after by Major Andrew Lytle.
[paragraph continues] 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