Native Americans and Early Explorers  Pre 1845

The Ancestral Puebloans lived in the present-day Four Corners area where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona meet. They lived in flat-roofed homes of stone or clay called pueblos.

At about the same time that the Ancestral Puebloans were living in the Plateau region, another group was spreading throughout the dry valleys and mountains in the Great Basin. Historians call this culture the Fremont people. They learned and borrowed ideas from the Ancestral Puebloans and traded with them.

Utah's historic tribes include the Utes, Shoshones, Navajo, Paiutes, and Goshutes. They are spiritual people who emphasized the importance of the natural world. It was these tribes whom European explorers, Christian missionaries, trappers, and settlers first encountered.

Navajo is a Spanish word meaning "people who farm in the valley." The Navajo lived in the dry region of southern Utah, northern Arizona, and northern New Mexico. They adapted to the harsh desert climate by irrigating their crops. Irrigation allowed them to grow corn, beans, and squash. It is believed that they learned to farm from the earlier Puebloan people. After the Spanish arrived, the Navajo raised sheep and horses. Wool from their sheep was used to make yarn, and yarn was dyed with colors from plants.

Spanish explorers and Catholic priests were the first Europeans to visit the region that we now call Utah. The interaction between the first European explorers and Native Americans is often referred to as "the Great Encounter." One of the first European groups to interact with Native Americans in Utah was led by two Catholic priests sent by the Spanish government. Father Atanasio Dominguez and Father Silvestre Vélez de Escalante kept detailed notes of their journey through Utah led by two Native guides. These notes are some of the earliest written records describing Utah's Native people.

Since the early 1500s, Spain had claimed territory in North America and the Caribbean. Known as "New Spain," this included the modern nation of Mexico, part of Central America, Florida, and much of the western portion of what eventually became the United States, including California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. Beginning in the late 1700s, that Spanish Empire fell to revolutionaries--an independence movement originating in Mexico City. In 1821, Mexican insurgents proclaimed this area as the independent empire of Mexico.

In the early 1800s, the demand for fur brought trappers to the West. Those who left the Great Plains to trap in the mountains became known as "mountain men." 

As fur trading continued to grow, Mexican traders searched for a safe, reliable route between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the shipping port in Los Angeles, California. Deep canyons in the Colorado Plateau region were difficult to cross, and Native American groups in the Southwest opposed European expansion into their tribal lands. Because of these challenges, a path--known as the Old Spanish Trail--developed through Utah. This path gave people a way to move goods between Santa Fe and Los Angeles without crossing dangerous territory in Arizona. Archaeologists have found artifacts along the trail that indicate Archaic and Fremont Indians used this stretch of trail long before the Europeans did. By 1840, American settlers had entered the Southwest and much of the trading on the Old Spanish Trail ended.

John Fremont led five expeditions into the West. One of his greatest accomplishments was exploring the West and providing reports and maps. His readable reports seem to have influenced the Mormons' decision to settle in the Salt Lake Valley.