Oral History Program Dr. David Miller Interviewed by Barbara Paul 04 February 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dr. David Miller Interviewed by Barbara Paul 04 February 1971 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in Special Collections. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Miller, David Dr., an oral history by Barbara Paul, 04 February 1971, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Dr. David Miller. The interview was conducted on February 4th, 1971, by Barbara Paul. Dr. Miller discusses his knowledge of Utah’s discovery and history. BP: Dr. Miller, why do you find Peter Skene Ogden more interesting than other Mountain Men? DM: Well, I don't know that Peter Skene Ogden is any more interesting than other Mountain Men; the reason I like his is because he kept journals. After all, we only find out about these Mountain Men by the journals they kept and by what other people said about them. Peter Skene Ogden came into the area, into Utah, in 1825, keeping a daily journal as he travelled. Also with him was William Kittson, who also kept a daily journal, and by examining these two journals we get the first eye-witness, on-the-spot record and description of any part of Northern Utah written by people in the field with first-hand information. Anything else we know about the Mountain Men has come to us by letters that some of them wrote, for example, Jedediah Smith wrote some letters, as far as we know he didn't keep a complete journal. If he kept a journal, we haven't found all of it and so we have skimpy information about his activities. Jim Bridger didn't write at all; was illiterate. Other Mountain Men, if they wrote, we don't know what they wrote. Provost, for example, was very active in the intermountain west and may have been one of the discoverers of Great Salt Lake. But he didn't write anything, so we don't know where he went. So what I'm saying is that Peter Skene Ogden becomes important because he wrote a record and we can follow his record to see where he actually went. Now, Ogden is also interesting and probably more interesting than any of the others 1 because he was a leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, so-called Snake Country expeditions from 1824 through 1830 and during those years he was the prime English competitor against the Americans who were moving into the whole Oregon country which was so broadly defined; well, it didn't have any Southern boundaries from the English point of view, and as everybody who knows anything at all, knows that the whole area, Oregon Country as it was called, was jointly occupied by Britain and the United States after 1818 and it was generally understood that whoever could get the most trappers into the region would be able to make a positive claim to the whole area, and so you had a "cold fur war" between the United States and Britain for control of this whole vast western country. And the fact that Peter Skene Ogden kept a daily journal of his activities and the fact that he was the leader of the British spearhead into the region makes his journals very, very important because it's only through this journals that we learn any detail at all about the activities of these two competing groups and, of course, details of the major conflict which almost boiled over into a "hot fur war." Actually, by following Peter Skene Ogden's journals we can see where these events occurred. Let me give you a couple of examples: When Ogden came into Utah in 1825, coming southward through Logan, and southward through Hyrum and over the divide into Ogden Valley, which is called Ogden's Hole, actually (he called it New Hole, not having very much imagination). Then he went south onto Weber River and it was there, it was on the Weber River in the vicinity of present-day Mountain Green where the major conflict between the Americans and British occurred during the last week of May, 1825. We have never known where that event occurred until Peter Skene Ogden's journals were published in 1950 in London. That big episode, that fracas, that incident has been 2 guessed all over the country and finally we can pinpoint it because Peter Skene Ogden's journals define and describe and detail the incident. It's this sort of thing that makes Ogden's journals important and valuable. As a matter of fact, his description of the flora and fauna of the area, as well as the Indians of the area give us a lot of information, first-hand information. The first descriptions that we have of the whole region. There's a lot of incidental information in the journals, too. When Ogden came onto Weber River during the last part of May, 1825, he met one man by the name of Provost who was traveling out of Taos in the Spanish villages. This definitely puts Provost out of the group of the Ashley men—William Henry Ashley's men, consisting of Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger, Thomas Fitzpatrick and that whole crowd had come over South Pass in 1824. Until recently a lot of people have believed that Provost was among them. Ogden found that Provost was operating separately, independently, really, out of Taos and was not part of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company at all. It’s this sort of incidental information which also helps make Ogden's journals very important, and of course this makes Ogden important. Ogden came into Utah again in 1828-29 after having discovered the Humboldt River, but his journals for that expedition haven't actually been published yet. I'm doing the editorial work on those right now and they will be published. The dateline for publication is October 1, 1971. All of the material is ready; it has already gone to the printers. I expect to see the galley proofs before the book is finally produced. These journals are published in London by the Hudson's Bay Record Society and they do constitute some of the most significant documentary information available to all historians of the West. Do you want to ask any more questions about that? 3 BP: Yes. What accounts for the delay in actually bringing, forth of this, this information? DM: That's an interesting question. Back in 1909 and 1910, Agnes Laut went to Hudson's Bay offices in London and did a very inadequate job of looking at some of these journals, took excerpts from them, and they were just piecemeal, in my estimation, they were at best interpolations. Agnes Laut just took notes on the journals, left out important statements from them, added her own interpretation here and there, placed things in the wrong chronological order, left out whole days, in fact she left out six weeks of one important journal and just said that there was a blank in the journal. She also maintained that the journals were written on beaver skins. They're not. They're written on regular paper in ink and this paper was supplied by the company because Ogden and his men were expected, in fact they were instructed, to keep a journal. Well, we relied on those piecemeal publications until our own time. The 1824-25 journal, the one which first describes Ogden's first entry into Utah was supposedly lost in the Hudson's Bay offices in London. The officers there say that it wasn't lost, it was there all the time, but Americans who were interested just failed to find it. It's there all right, and it was published in 1950. The others are still in process of being published. Let's see. The 1827-29 journals will be published as volume 28 of that series this year. Now why the delay? The Hudson's Bay Company publishes a volume a year and picks important subjects out of the archives of the company for each year's publications. The company just doesn't want to publish fur trader's journals year after year, so you see, in 1950 we had the first traders' journals, about ten years later the second group of journals, and now in 1971 we'll have the last of Ogden journals. The Ogden journals are just important enough to require a re-evaluation and a rewriting of a good share of the fur 4 trade history dealings with this part of America. In Ogden's 1827-28 journal, for example, he reports the visit to his Snake River camp (and that was in the present Fort Hall Indian Reservation area just west and north of Pocatello, Idaho). He reports the visit there of Rocky Mountain trappers who were also snowbound during that terrific winter. These trappers apologized to Ogden for the treatment he had received at the hands of the Americans when this big fracas occurred on Weber River in 1825. We knew nothing about these apologies and these contacts to follow up with the major American-British conflict for control of the fur trade and of course for control of the whole Oregon country. We didn't know anything about these details until Ogden's journals were examined and brought out. Now, this part of them hasn't been published yet, but it is in the process of being published now. I got interested in this, in Ogden, when I was doing my doctoral dissertation on the history of the Great Salt Lake. I became convinced then that whenever his journals were found and published, that they would prove that Ogden had not really visited the Great Salt Lake from the east side, or that he hadn't even visited the site of Ogden City. And this turned out to be true. So I was interested in Ogden to see just where he went and what he did and it turned out to be, his journals turned out to be, most exciting for those of us involved. What I've done with the journals is take the journals, go into the field, and follow Ogden's trail as he describes the terrain. I spent three summers on the journals that are now being produced, I have produced a complete map showing the daily progress of the expeditions—for these two major expeditions we're involved with now. It has been quite a bit of fun. It's quite exciting actually, and very rewarding. Not in a monetary way. We just get expenses for these things. Hudson's Bay can almost get anybody to do it. They 5 select the people they want to do this sort of thing, knowing that they can get people just for the privilege of writing the introduction, doing the field work and supplying the editorial notes. That's how I got involved in it. By contacting the people at the company offices in London, and they invited me to do this work. I've been in the offices a few times since that time in London. They're very cooperative, easy to work with, pleasant people and we’ve had a very fine relationship up to this point. Is there anything else you want to know about this activity? BP: I was wondering, in view of Utah's controversial history, what are problems facing Utah historians today in ascertaining facts? DM: I don't think the problems in Utah history are any different from those in any other history. There are areas of interest. You see, my interest has been back to the fur trade era. There aren't any problems there, it's just a matter of finding people with an interest and enough energy to go and ferret out the sources and try to write up and describe the materials that we do actually find. I don't see any real conflict or any real problem here. I think the areas that we need to be studying more completely are those of the 20th century and economic developments. Most of Utah history so far has dealt with the early period and I must confess that's where my interest has been farther back with the earliest explorations and discoveries of Utah. But the problems, you say problems, I think the problem is mostly in finding people with enough interest and energy to go to work and find out what happened and write it up. Dr. Leonard Arrington of Utah State University is doing a lot of work in 20th Century America and Utah. He is primarily an economic historian and since statehood, a good share of Utah's development has been of an economic nature. Much of Utah history has been a history of Mormonism in Utah 6 and this is as it should be. After all, the Mormons made a major contribution to the history of Utah and should receive all the credit due. Questions are always asked in these interviews about any conflict between the Mormon Church and historians in trying to find information. I've never been refused anything in the Church offices, anything I've asked for in trying to find information about Utah history. I'm sure Dr. Arrington, who is working on 20th Century America, pretty much, has not had any difficulty in getting materials out of the Church archives. Problems? I think it's as I say, a matter of getting people interested and willing to put forth some energy and do the detailed, sometimes tedious work necessary to gather the facts and present them. BP: What do you think is the future of the Great Salt Lake? DM: Oh, the Great Salt Lake. My wife says I’m married to the Lake. She also thinks I'm married to Peter Skene Ogden. And that isn’t possible you see now in our present day. (Laughter) Well, this puts me on the spot. What do I think is the future of Great Salt Lake? In our own time the Lake will not dry up. It's gone through numerous cycles of rise and fall, depending entirely on the climatic conditions, that is, weather, for any particular year. The Lake at its highest level was about 20 feet deeper than it is now, that is, during historic times when records have been kept. The high point was in 1873, the low point was in 1963. The lake has been coming up a little bit since that time. I don't expect to see it dry up in our time, but if the people insist on diverting all the natural drainage that would naturally go into the lake, diverting it into irrigation and culinary projects, I feel that this will ultimately have some influence on the elevation of the lake and it will become smaller and smaller and in my estimation, less valuable as a lake. Now economically, the Lake contains an estimated 8 billion tons of salt, salt being 7 one of the minerals being extracted. But in our own time other minerals are being identified in the lake brine and various companies are right now developing plants to attempt to extract from the Lake numerous other metals which will have a great deal of value. I'm not sure how successful these ventures will be, but some industrial companies are spending a lot of money expecting to reap big profits from the Lake. Some people think because of that, the Lake might become—might be—one of the greatest natural resources we have from an economic point of view. The Lake has always been interesting to outsiders, tourists, as a possible swimming resort. The future of that is pretty dismal, in my estimation, unless a lot of money can be invested somewhere to develop a real swimming resort, either on the south end of the lake or on one of the islands. Antelope Island is an ideal spot. But this takes a lot of money and a lot of development and I don't see, frankly, I don't see the state of Utah spending enough money to actually develop a resort of significant caliber to attract people. A few years ago, The Great Salt Lake Authority managed through the state of Utah to purchase a couple of thousand acres on the north end of Antelope Island with the intent of developing a big recreation resort on the north end of the island. A road was built from Syracuse out to the island with the notion that this would open up the Lake to a lot of tourists. I'm skeptical about this because I don't think the state of Utah will put enough money into this to really make it attractive at least not in the foreseeable future. My suggestion for the future of the Lake is, as far as recreation and tourist attraction value is concerned, is to follow through with Senator Moss's proposal to make Antelope Island into a national monument. Then the national government would build the road, would build the facilities, would provide scenic observation points, and from the top of 8 Antelope Island a person would get an excellent view of the whole country around, and be able to have explained the whole geology of the Great Basin just from the top of Antelope Island. It'll also be a fine point to see some of the natural wildlife inhabiting the island, since the island is pretty much in its primitive, original state. The government could spend 4 or 5 million dollars developing this. This would bring millions of tourists to Utah. This would eventually pay off big dividends for the state. But there are a lot of people in the state who are afraid of the federal government. They almost look at the government as an enemy. And there's opposition in Utah to creating a national monument out of any part of Great Salt Lake. But unless this is done, I predict that not very much will be done to develop the lake as a recreation area. There have been numerous diking proposals to dike off part of the Lake to make a fresh-water lake. As a matter of fact, the road to Antelope Island creates a semi-fresh water lake south of that road now. Fish are swimming in it, fish as big as a foot long are seen in there all the time now, and this could become a fresh water-salt water combination which would be good for industry and recreation. And that could happen. In fact it is happening. But all of these things require a lot of development, a lot of promotion. The Lucin Cutoff, solid rock and gravel fill across the Lake for the railroad, has tended to dike off the north arm of the Lake west of the Promontory Range and there are only two flumes through that. All the water runs north, none of it runs south, with the result that the salt concentration in the north part of the lake is much greater that it is in the south part. This creates an imbalance and there are some problems associated with that. This is one of the problems of diking. The dikes have to be built or should be built in the right places providing adequate through-flow of water so it can flow both ways and this means that 9 the natural water flowing into the lake has to flow in where it can flow in both directions through the diking areas. But there aren't any dikes yet. The only major dike is the road from Syracuse to the end of Antelope Island and the railroad dike, the Lucin Cutoff. There are problems associated with developing these things and they all cost money. See, the relatively new Lucin Cutoff cost about 50 million dollars. That's a lot of money. That's a railroad, of course, and the railroad and the government were combining forces there. It's expensive to even talk about these tiling’s. Some people have predicted that the lake would dry up completely. It can do. Geologists claim that it has happened in past times, but it certainly isn't going to happen in our time. Anybody who's been out on the Lake realizes that it’s a big body of water. For example, if you travel from Fremont Island by boat to the south end of the Lake, the south end of the Lake to, say, Silver Sands, you’re traveling a distance that is as far as from Long Beach California to Catalina Island. It's a great distance and the water is just as blue and just as pretty and just as clear as it is out on the ocean. So there’s a future here if people can get any imagination and some financial backing to develop it. Well that's enough about the Lake, I guess. Do you have any more questions about it? BP: What about tourism in Utah? Possible advantages and hazards, etc., such as Lake Powell and Park City? DM: I think Utah has as great a tourist potential as any state in the West. It's a little bit unique in some instances. Lake Powell, as you mentioned, is a unique lake. Shall we call it a desert lake? A lake in the desert? This is what it amounts to. It's quite different from Lake Tahoe, for example, which is completely surrounded by mountains and trees, lots of trees and forests. A great resort. Lake Powell is entirely different, a desert area, but 10 the desert has its own beauty and its own attraction, and I think that with three or four more marinas, more facilities for tourists in the area, this can become a significant tourist development. Flaming Gorge is in the same category, although most of that is in Wyoming. Almost all of Lake Powell is in Utah, although the dam, the Glen Canyon Dam, is in Arizona. There are some scenic attractions in Lake Powell. The Rainbow Bridge, for example, is one of those interesting things. Just the lake itself, for skiing, fishing and boating is very attractive. The Hole-In-The-Rock and the Crossing of The Fathers are two important spots on the lake and both now are partially covered with water, but two of the largest bays on the lake are at the Crossing of The Fathers and Hole-In-The-Rock and people interested in history (and most people are, whether they admit it or not) like to stop and examine the area and see the scenery around these two historic spots. Other than that, our mountain scenery, our mountain area other than lakes, is a very attractive thing for tourists. The desert itself is attractive for tourists. I mean the desert without any lakes involved. The Mormon culture in Utah, the Temple Square is a major attraction and can be developed and is being developed. Mining: Bingham Canyon with the Kennecott pit is a great attraction. The committees to develop Utah's historic sites are designating numerous places now to be put on a state or national register of significant historic places and within a few years they should turn into attractive areas to attract more and more tourists. I think Utah really has some unique scenery, exceptional fishing and hunting and these things would and should bring more and more people to Utah if properly advertised and promoted. I think there's a real future here. 11 BP: Is there any possibility that these might open up new avenues for historians, with a greater awareness of the public in coming out here? DM: Oh possibly so. Some areas that haven't been explored yet. The whole development of the mining business has just been touched a little bit. Just the history of recreation in Utah. The History of Indians in Utah is a thing that has hardly been written. People don't know anything about the Indians. The anthropologists know about the Indians, but tourists are attracted to the Indians, you know, and yet most people don't know very much about them. We know that they all get killed in the television programs, (laughter) but we really don't know much about them. We're trying here in the University to write some true histories of Indians; we have Indians working in our department here helping us transcribe tapes. We have a tremendous Indian oral history program going here and that's an area that needs to be continued. The uranium history has not quite been written either. The big boom in uranium development during the 1950's far exceeded anything associated with the Gold Rush in California back there 100 years earlier. That has not really been written up properly. There are still a lot of areas for study. Economics and some politics, too. The military activities, by that I mean installations, the development of missiles and bases, army bases and navy bases and supply depots, air bases, all these things in Utah's economy and history, too, for that matter. I don't know where we should go from there. BP: What is your opinion of oral history recordings such as this? DM: I don't know how valuable it is, but I certainly think that, maybe not this particular interview, but interviewing important people who have had an important part in developing various industries, our political leaders, our church leaders, I think this has 12 real value because too many people do not keep a diary. Too many people will not write an article, but you pin them down this way, you get them to talk you get two things: you get their voices recorded, if this is worth anything, and it usually is, and also you get opinions and experiences recorded which you don't get in any other way. We have a program for example, of interviewing all of the governors (who are alive and there aren't very many) present and past, also church leaders. Our oral Indian program is giving us a chance to let the Indians tell their own story. We have 100 volumes now of Indian testimony that has been recorded through oral interviews and are now being transcribed. The people who are working in our office now are transcribing these tapes, putting them on paper. So we think the tapes and the transcriptions together make quite an interesting record. Last summer we conducted a mammoth oral history of the uranium industry on the Colorado Plateau. We had the largest oral program going last summer of any program in the United States. We're just transcribing it also. We think that to talk to the people who were involved in these various developments, who won't, wouldn't, take time to do their own recording, their own writing, has a lot of value. What wouldn't you give, for example, to have a tape recording of Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address? See, just the voice. And in the Indians, of course, we get some music, we get language. A lot of these tapes are recorded in the original tongue, and we have to translate them, but we do have the language for linguistic purposes. This is quite important. We have a blind Navaho boy out there now who is transcribing some of the Navaho language tapes. He's educated, speaks good English, understands the languages and he’s just transcribing from Navaho to English, translating as he goes along. His translation, of course, will have to be checked with others to make sure 13 people agree that he's saying what they're saying, but this is all quite valuable. I think the oral program has a future. BP: Is there a problem of funding? DM: Yes, there's always a problem for funds, for anything, and history doesn't have as easy a time as science as you very well know. Science-oriented administrations have a difficult time seeing the real value in the cultural aspects of American civilization. Yes, we have trouble. So far we've been able to get enough money for tapes and so far we have some funds to help, do the transcribing but we've had most of this come from private sources. The University doesn't put up much of this. They supply the building, of course, and the office space, and we buy the equipment out of private funds; we pay the workers here out of private funds that we have managed to have donated to us for these projects. It isn't easy. Money is scarce. BP: What areas do you think would be helpful in providing funds? DM: Well, in areas, the various foundations and government agencies are the sources. You can raise $1,000 here and there from local citizens, but that's not enough to do anything great. You need to tap such places as the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the various government agencies, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, for example, are interested in that. The mining companies have helped a little bit. We've received a substantial grant from Union Carbide, for example. Union Carbide was one of the most active companies in the uranium business and still is. We got the company to make us a substantial donation for the purpose of transcribing tapes. It's this sort of thing that we're going to have to rely on. It's an uphill job. It's discouraging. And you have to have a lot of enthusiasm and drive and you have to be able to convert people to the notion, and 14 our biggest job is trying to convert people even on our own campus. You're going to have the same thing of course, at Weber. Although you do have maybe a less scientificoriented administration up there than we have here, and just becoming or have become a four-year institution, I think Weber can deal with itself much better probably in these areas than we can here. We've already had the cards pretty well stacked against us, as it were. BP: Thank you very much, Dr. David Miller. 15