Page:History of Utah.djvu/364



meiit first known as Battle Creek, and afterward called Pleasant Grove. It was here that the first engage- ment with the natives occurred. Captain Scott with a band of thirty or forty men started south in pursuit of Indians who had stolen fourteen horses from Orr's herd, on Wilson Creek, in Utah Valley, and several cattle from Tooele Valley. The band was found en- camped on a creek in the midst of willows and dense brushwood in a deep ravine. After a desultory fight of three or four hours, four Indians were killed, but none of the settlers. As was their custom, the women and children of the slain followed the victorious party to their camp.^^

In the neighborhood of Pleasant Grove were good farming land, good range for stock, and water-power, inducements which quickly attracted emigrants, and caused the place to thrive rapidly. In 1853 the pres- ent site was laid out,'^'' and to this spot were transferred, on July 24th of that year, the efl:ects of the commu- nity, then numbering seventy-five families.

Between Lehi and Pleasant Grove the village of American Fork was founded in 1850, on a site where were farming and grazing land of fair quality, a little timber, springs of fresh water, and a stream that could be easily diverted for purposes of irrigation. ^^

About twenty miles south of Provo the settlement of Payson was laid out on the banks of the Peteetneet Creek ;^^ a few miles to the north-east of Payson was founded a village named Palmyra, containing, at the close of 1 852, fifty families; and in 1851, on Salt Creek,

'^TUsl. B. Young, MS., 1849, 24-5; John Brown, in Utah Sketches, MS., 30. The first Indian trouble was a little skirmish between some sheep-herders and Indians. Wells' Narr., MS., 43.

^^ By George A. Smith and Ezra T. Benson.

^' The site was laid out by George A. Smith, assisted by L. E. Harrington, Arza Adams, Stephen Chipraan, William GreeuM^ood, and Stephen Mott. A. J. Stewart was the surveyor. The first house was built by Adams and Chip- man in 1850; the first grist-mill by Adams in 1851; and the first store was opened by Thomas McKenzie in the same year. L. E. Harrington, in Utah Sketches, MS., 121.

■■'^ The first settlers were James Pace, Andrew Jackson Stewart, and John C. Searle. Joseph S. Tanner, in Utah Sketches, MS., 3.