Oral History Program Roy Lambert Interviewed by J.D. Silvester 06 February 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Roy Lambert Interviewed by J.D. Silvester 06 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: Lambert, Roy, an oral history by J.D. Silvester, 06 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 Roy Lambert. The interview was conducted on February 6, 1971, in Kamas, Utah, by J.D. Silvester. Lambert discusses his experiences with American Indians in Kamas, Utah, as well as the wildlife population in the area. "Roy Lambert has lived in Kamas, Utah for most of his 83 years. He has experienced much which has been a part of Utah's history. He has been a man of the outdoors and especially of the mountains above Kamas. His book, "High Uintah Hi" is about these mountains and it shows part of his own personality as he describes them. Unfortunately, there is not enough of his history incorporated in his book, therefore, I have chosen him to interview." —J.D. Silvester RL: Well, when the pioneers first came to this valley in '61 there were practically no deer in this country at that time but the elk were here and shortly after that, the elk seemed to gather together to go north and they went right down through the streets of Coalville, it being settled a little before Kamas Valley, about 400 head of elk seemed to move right out of the country and probably Trent to the Yellowstone country. And then the deer filtered in and by the 80’s there was quite a lot of deer in this country. And then the White River Utes came into the country up in the Soap Stone Basin and stood off… and all fall about 400 in number, killing deer for their hides and hind quarters. It seems as though that discouraged the deer and the deer didn't appear again until about 1910 and from then on they increased up until about '30 we had a lot of deer in this country and 1 now the hunters have thinned them dorm till we don't have many of them anymore. The elk come back occasionally and the last several years there have been elk hunters here but it seems as though this winter they haven’t shown up. Occasionally a moose comes in that's been run on the north slope of the Uintah Mountains having been planted there... I don't know maybe you better shut it down now. JS: Okay, uh, how do you think the First and Game are controlling the hunters going in and harvesting; do you think this, rather than a large population and then dying off, if the hunters harvest the deer at a more even rate do you think that this is better than before? RL: We are presented with a rather peculiar situation in this part of the valley and part of the mountains because we don't have much winter range for the deer. We have unlimited sunnier range and hard winters will surely get then if they accumulate to a large number. Though we’re strictly against some of those fall hunts, and right now we're against the doe hunt because they're getting thinned down to quite a ways, but still we realize we have a very narrow winter range and we uh there is always danger in being overstocked and lose a lot in a bad winter. JS: Going into the Uintah’s I've noticed a complete cutoff of the timber up towards, uh, what is that lake now? Buckley or… RL: Buckeye? JS: Buckeye. How they cut it all off. What do you think of this type of harvesting of the timber? RL: Well, I'm not a forester and I haven't studied it a lot but it seems as though it looks very barren, I know that, and it will come back more altogether in one crop and just what their 2 program is, is something I'm not acquainted with. I might state that in the early days the tie choppers were in this country along at the same time they were in the north slope of the Uintah’s. ‘Course they floated the timber out in the rivers. JS: Now tie chopper is.... What is that? RL: They chopped railroad ties. And they chopped them winter and summer. And there’s stumps up in the mountains that are from four to six feet high showing that they cut them in the winter when the snow was deep. But on the south slope of the Uintah’s they didn't do that because of it being so far from the railroad. On the west end of the north slope they're quite accessible to the railroad and, big companies, Union Timber Company, I believe it was, came in and set up at Evanston and Blacks Fork and Smiths Fork and that's practically all lodge pole out there and what it's adapted to is small timber and so they did a lot of tie chopping. They made the tie and they tied it with an axe, a broad axe, cut 'em down and they logged them up then slabbed them with broad axe. I had the pleasure of seeing them do it and they handed me the broad axe and I even made one in a few minutes and for some reason or another he thought I ought to stay there and work for wages. Ha... I didn't do it. In fact I was on the school board at this time; we were out establishing a school up in Black's Fork at that time up from Mountain View country and they had a school there for seven years just for the tie choppers; it being in Summit County; South Summit District of Summit County. JS: How old were you at this time cutting those timbers? Well, how old are you now? RL: Uh, I'll be 83 in April. JS: And you've lived in Kamas Valley…? 3 RL: I've lived in Kamas continually, I'm the oldest native born citizen of Kamas. There's others that have come in that are older than I and there's one or two outside that were born here that are older. But I'm the oldest probably have, with the exception of one, have the longest continuous residence in Kamas of anybody. JS: Hm. I've noticed some empty stores downtown, probably this is because the people can drive out to Salt Lake or has it been a decrease in population? RL: The population doesn’t change very much in Kamas. You had it right in the first place. We used to have one store here, about two stores in the entire valley and of course now they drive to Heber and to Coalville and to Salt Lake and it makes it kind of hard on business men here in town. JS: Uh huh. Were there any professional fur trappers in the Valley at any time? Since you lived here, I know prior… RL: Yeah, well my father and all of them in those days when, that was before my time, and there were a lot of foxes here… and beavers… had quite a business catching fox and beaver and of course the fur trappers did come here and stop but we not having big streams in the country, the beaver were not so plentiful in this locality as they were in places like the Bear River out by Evanston and those countries like that. JS: Uh, huh. RL: Small streams here. JS: I've noticed Utah has just opened trapping in 1958 for people other than the Fish and Game people themselves. Do you feel now that the beaver or any other fur bearing animal, do you feel the population is as great as it was before? Or is it still quite limited? 4 RL: It's quite limited but it's increasing in the last few years because of the poor price on beaver skins and then the marten, they seemed to come in cycles. Oh, ten to twenty years ago there were quite a lot of marten up here and now there are very few of those left. Course they fed pretty well on rabbits and wild chickens and chickens are practically all gone and even the willow grouse. So that controlled the marten but the rabbits control the lynx and wild cats. JS: Where do they trap beaver around? RL: Well, up Beaver Creek and up Provo River, Beaver Creek course got its name from that and up the Provo up by Soap Stone. Soap Stone locality was very fruitful for training at one time. JS: I notice this year they don't allow trapping beaver in Ashley National Forrest now. Why would this be do you suppose? RL: I'm not acquainted with that situation but I suppose it’s because they are getting scarce. JS: Okay. Then you first came to the Valley, or were aware, I suppose there were quite a few Indians around weren't there? RL: Indians would come here in the summer time. We’ve had no account where an Indian lived here in the winter. There are two caves… only two caves in the surrounding… adjacent to the valley and there is no evidence that they ever occupied those two caves or anybody lived there before the white man came; and he came the first of 1858 and then the settlers came permanently in 1861. But there's evidence they came here for maybe centuries. That two or three particular camps, and fished and hunted and prepared their skins and gathered berries and seeds and left their artifacts around in 5 different places. One was right in the center of Kamas on Beaver Creek, the other camp was on the west side of the mouth of Indian Hollow and where they find their skinning knives and arrowheads, spear heads and so forth. And at one time the buffalo came here they figure in search of salt and I myself have picked up their horns, the black horns of the buffalo that were probably shed, oh, scores of years before the pioneers came here. JS: To your knowledge then, you don't know of any Spanish artifacts this far north? RL: No I don't ...not that you could classify as Spanish. JS: What do you think of all these people going up into the mountains in the summertime? Do you think that someday the fountains will be ... the wilderness or nature will be the thing of the past or do you look forward to more and more roads and people going into your mountains? RL: Yes...it seems as though that's what is in the future with the exception of the part that they've set aside as the wilderness area and they've tried to create another big area up there… a wilderness area, but the water situation put a damper on it because they were afraid it would interfere with the building more dams with the water and right now there is a move to make larger reservoirs down lower and probably turn those loose up in there for wildlife and fish as they are. We don't know how they are progressing right now. JS: The Indians that were in this valley were Ute Indians, weren’t they? RL: Yes, they were. JS: And they left artifacts? 6 RL: Uh, huh. Probably some Shoshone came in from the north but they were principally Ute Indians from the southeast of Kamas and West. And they left many artifacts through the country and Paul Beard who deceased in Coalville made a very large collection and arranged them very beautifully and he gathered quite a few from Kamas Valley and all over and it’s one of the best collections, as I understand it, in the country. Whether he has any Spanish artifacts or work I do not know. JS: Snake Indians are Shoshone too, aren't they? RL: Well they're right close to them. I guess they are. JS: Did you have any Indian friends when you were younger? Wild Indians? RL: No I… I remember Indians coming here in Kamas begging from house to house and asking for brower… it was flour they made of course, they called it brower. My father was on some, the Indians at one time used to come in here and steal horses from the settlers; and there were two trails. One trail came up the Provo River and split and went over Wolf Creek way; the other went up the Weber and around over to Fort Bridger and clear around to Rush Creek and where Flaming Gorge is now located. And on two different occasions my father went with other people, he being only about 17 years old at this time, to overtake the Indians that had the stolen horses and both times they returned with rest of the horses. One time they got them at Rush Creek the other time clear out to Cliff Mountains and they had some Indian guides with them, one by the name of Yank who was a young Indian and he was uh… now you'll have to shut that down a minute. This Indian Yank was my father's age and he went with him to the Blue Cliff Mountains and back and the older Indian's name was Shugoose that was with them. And at one time Yank came in here in the springtime over the crusted snow from 7 over Wolf Creek way and stayed all the rest of the winter and at that time father taught him considerable English and he questioned him about why he on their return trip, with their horses from Blue Cliff Mountain, why they acted so peculiar at one time and they planned to kill them. JS: Okay, the Indians were going to kill the white men? RL: Yes, Shugoose went up on the hill to look for wild horse tracks but he didn't go very far and Dixon who was with a man named Dixon, my father’s brother-in-law, who gave him the horses, decided to back a ways, see if he could see any Indians following him and while they were both gone my father left with the young Indian Yank, and all at once Yank said, "Build me a shade." Father said, ""Build yourself a shade." So he did and father built himself a shade and a little later why Yank went into a grove where there is a spring and hollered for father to come on down and father figured there was something wrong so he came in from the other direction on him and father took his gun with him down and the Indian stood there with his gun pointing toward the trail he expected him to come down. So there they sat stationary for some time and finally Dixon rode in and he was older and said, "What’s the matter with you fellows?" And they says, "Oh, find any horses, find any horse tracks, see any Indians coming?" Change the subject right now and when the old Indian came down off the hill, he hadn't been gone over two or three hundred yards from the camp all that time waiting for the right time to, seems as though to kill both the white people and take the horses. They've been very trusty all before and ever after but at that particular time they got this notion in their minds and that's how it turned out. 8 JS: Now this was because the Blackhawk War. What were the causes of the Blackhawk War? RL: Well, of course the Indians didn't like the white men coming in and taking command of their country and tried… {End of transcript} 9