Comments on: Guest Post: A Response to the Salt Lake Tribune on Utah’s Dixie and Slave Culture

By: Amy T

Amy T — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 23:00:29 +0000

I am following up on a couple of interesting leads since I had a bit of free time today to work on this project.

There was definitely one black settler in Washington County during the period of the Cotton Mission. I was astounded to see who it was — I got pretty emotional when I saw her name — but I will not say anything more about that until I figure out more about her story. She would have moved to St. George after slavery was ended in the Territories, so she wouldn’t have been a slave in “Dixie.”

There is also a rumor that there may have been an additional former slave in the area during this time, but I haven’t seen any proof that he was ever in Utah, and another story seems to indicate that he may never have left the South, so I will continue to track down that lead as well.

I will update the post as necessary once I track down the details of these two stories.

By: Grant

Grant — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 04:16:15 +0000

Thanks, Amy, for this great piece. I have ancestors from Utah’s Dixie in the Byram Lee Bybee and Ira and William Kelsy Rice families. I have a Bybee ancestor who died and is buried in Grafton. Ira Rice died after exposure in a flood on the Muddy and is buried in Washington.

Any cousins out there?

By: Paul Reeve

Paul Reeve — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 17:43:56 +0000

#17, Polly, Thanks for the clarification.

By: Polly Aird

Polly Aird — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 04:18:01 +0000

#16. Paul, I’m not defending the article. I agree that Amy is right in the article’s presentation of the fallacy of the lonely fact. I think she’s done a fine job.

By: Paul Reeve

Paul Reeve — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 04:00:05 +0000

#13, Polly, It is not just the title of the Trib article, but the article itself that does imply that the name “Dixie” was tied to the Confederacy and that sympathy for the Confederacy was a general sentiment of the population. Your defense of Hicks, as I read it, bolsters Amy’s position and solidifies her point. If the one actual settler that the article quotes is not representative of the general population, then why does the article imply that he is? It is the fallacy of the lonely fact, as David Hackett Fischer calls it. As I read it, Amy’s post is in response to the Trib article not in response to Hicks, a point she makes clear in her first sentence, and reinforces throughout her post.

By: Polly Aird

Polly Aird — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 22:38:41 +0000

Amy, I take exception that Hicks was writing for entertainment and might be compared to Mark Twain or Artemus Ward. I don’t think that is fair to him. He did not write for money and he did not exaggerate or make up his experiences. This is the first time (in “Playing with Shadows,” 2012) that his autobiography has been published. Hicks wrote it between 1878 and 1880 when he was in his forties based on journals he had kept. The autobiography as published is 116 pages long. In that I found one error (p. 137 where he got the date off by one year). I have 305 footnotes giving further detail on persons and events he describes. He is amazingly accurate in what he says.

That said, Hicks had a gift for language and wrote with vigor. He was outspoken and was a keen observer of human nature, especially of people’s foibles. But at the same time, he never hesitated to point out when people had done a kindness. He was insightful and did not hesitate to express his own opinion. All this makes for a wonderful read and gives a view of pioneer life and events in especially turbulent times among the Mormons that is hard to equal.

By: Amy T

Amy T — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:20:41 +0000

I think that one thing that was lost in the Tribune article is that Hicks was writing for entertainment value. (Except when he wasn't.) He says that Covington, a former schoolteacher, could "scarcely read or write." (Hit him where it hurts.) Hicks really was funny and perceptive. Is it fair to say that there's a bit of Mark Twain or Artemus Ward about him? And, this response was not directed toward any person named or quoted in the article. It was really directed toward the general impression the article gave, and that came from a variety of things including the headline. (Poor headline writers. It can be a thankless job. My great-grandpa was a headline writer at the Tribune.)

By: Polly Aird

Polly Aird — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 07:29:24 +0000

Well researched article, Amy. It’s good to have the fuller picture. The title to Brian Maffly’s Trib article was probably written by someone else. George A. Hicks in his autobiography emphasized how tough life was on the Cotton Mission and his accounts of Covington and Collins were one anecdote. He did say that Covington “was a strong Rebel sympathizer and rejoiced when ever he heard of a Southern victory” (“Playing with Shadows,” p. 172). He does not imply that it was a general sentiment of the population in Washington City. And Hicks never implies that the name “Dixie” was anything more than the nickname of southern Utah.

By: Amy T

Amy T — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 01:42:21 +0000

Oh, how funny. I forgot about that, too! Thanks for adding it. That’s an 1857 map drawn by A. K. Johnston from an atlas of North and Central America. If you can’t read the text, it says:

The Great Basin is elevated above the sea between 4000 & 5000 ft; it is surrounded by lofty mountains, and is believed to be filled with rivers and lakes which have no communication with the sea, deserts and oases which have never been explored, and savage tribes which no traveller has seen or described. “Fremont’s Report.”

In larger print, you can see the words Pah Utahs (Paiutes) and then the beginning of the word Washington. The settlements discussed in this post, Santa Clara, Washington City, and St. George, were all around the area of the “s” in “Washington.”

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 01:10:18 +0000

Ohmigosh! Until reading Amy’s #10, I forgot that she had sent a wonderful map as part of this post!

I’ve added it now, and hopefully its presence on the main page will catch the eye of those who have already read the post.

Sorry, Amy.