Goshute - History

History

The Goshute are an indigenous peoples of the Great Basin, and their traditional territory extends from the Great Salt Lake to the Steptoe Range in Nevada, and south to Simpson Springs. Within this area, the Goshutes were concentrated in three areas: Deep Creek Valley near Ibapah on the Utah-Nevada border, Simpson’s Springs farther southeast, and the Skull and Tooele Valleys.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Navajo and Ute slave raiders preyed upon the Goshute. They obtained horses in the late 19th centuries, after the neighboring tribes. It was not until the journal of Jedediah Smith gives the first written description of the Goshute, made while Smith returned from a trip to California on his way to Bear Lake. For the next two decades white contact with the Goshutes remained sporadic and insignificant. Only after the arrival of the Mormons in 1847 did the Goshutes come into continual and prolonged contact with whites. Soon 49ers and later wagon trains of emigrant groups continually passed through their territory on the way west to California. Mormons moved into the Tooele Valley by 1855 and were wintering stock in Rush Valley. The Mormons established communities at Tooele, Grantsville, and Ibapah, all important sites to the Goshutes. Domestic livestock from these sources represented an important source of competition for the Goshutes food resources. In the fragile environment of the Great Basin desert, the animals would eat the plants and grass which they relied upon for seeds and fiber and they drank a great deal of water, always in short supply. Goshutes began to kill their livestock and threaten settlers, in a vain attempt to force the whites off of their homelands.

Contact increased when the military established Camp Floyd at Fairfield, later the Pony Express and Butterfield Overland Mail set up stations along the Central Overland Route between Fairfield, Simpson Springs, Fish Springs, and Deep Creek. Soon after telegraph lines were strung along that route. Ranchers and farmers moved into the region, like the stations, taking the best lands available with water and forage, significant water and resource sites for the Goshutes in the otherwise barren land.