Heber City Cemetery monument honors Timpanogos chiefs legacy of peace – Park Record

Descendants of Timpanogos Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah and Latter-day Saint pioneer Joseph Stacy Murdock gathered at the Heber City Cemetery on Saturday to honor a moment of peace that occurred amid the violent conflict between Latter-day Saints and Indigenous tribes during the Black Hawk War that lasted from 1865 to 1872.

In 1867, Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah’s son, Tom Tabby, died. Many written histories attribute his death to a hunting accident, but Timpanogos Tribal Councilman Perry Murdock told a different story.

“He grew up right in the middle of war,” he said. “Our oral history said he was killed.”

Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah brought the body of his son on horseback to Heber City and asked Joseph Stacy Murdock, the former bodyguard of Prophet Joseph Smith and the bishop of Heber City, to bury him. Tom Tabby received a Latter-day Saint service, then was honored through Timpanogos customs by slaughtering his favorite pony and burning its body on a pyre.

Tom Tabby now rests in the Heber City Cemetery under a tree that was planted around the same time he died.

The Latter-day Saint heritage organization, Sons of Utah Pioneers, installed a monument there in 1988. The organization, along with local nonprofit Wasatch Community Foundation, led the effort to replace the dilapidated monument.

Tom Tabby’s burial occurred the same year that Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah and Joseph Stacy Murdock negotiated a peace treaty in Heber City, which had been established eight years prior on land that had served as the Timpanogos’ hunting ground.

“On August 19, 1867, Chief Tabby and several hundred of his people entered the town of Heber City,” said Alice Hicken, a local historian and direct descendant of Joseph Stacy Murdock. “After a day of feasting and talking, Joseph Stacy Murdock, Chief Tabby and his other chiefs met in an upstairs room in Joseph’s house, where a peace pipe was smoked and a treaty of friendship was signed.”

Hicken described Joseph Stacy Murdock as “always a friend to the Indians,” adding that his own patriarchal blessing — a spiritual blessing that provides life guidance for Latter-day Saints — stated that Hicken would “be a means of restoring peace between the Mormons and the Indians.”

Joseph Stacy Murdock had 32 children and six wives, including a Timpanogos woman named Pernetta, Perry’s ancestor. 

“It’s passed down through oral history on my side of the family … (that Pernetta and her father would) frequently come in and camp by them with Tabby and everybody, there on that lawn next to the Murdock house,” Perry said. “We were told they would come and camp there and keep people up all night. They were happy to rejoice and visit. They felt like they had a little bit of peace and a little bit of relief from running, from battle, from war.”

Although there may have been some friendship as a result of the marriage, Perry clarified that it was likely a political move to protect the local Timpanogos people from persecution. 

“The story is that they worked her pretty hard. I know she escaped a few times, and they took her back,” he said.

Pernetta was in her early teens when she married Joseph Stacy Murdock. She died in her 40s.

While Joseph Stacy Murdock’s progeny can be found throughout the Heber Valley and beyond, Perry explained that most of Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah’s family was “slaughtered.”

One of his sons, Leo Pritchett, was born after the Black Hawk War and died at the age of 75 in 1956. Roosevelt resident Stephanie Montes Christensen, who attended the ceremony, is his great-granddaughter. She wasn’t aware of her family history until she was an adult, when she became more involved with the Timpanogos Nation as her brother-in-law and husband served on the tribal council.

Christensen was the only descendant of Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah’s to attend the ceremony, which came as a surprise to her.

“I didn’t know I was going to be the only one standing up there,” she said. “But I guess it was OK, because I am who I am.”

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Family members unveiling the new headstone for Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah&#8217;s son, Tom Tabby.

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Today, about 900 are enrolled with the Timpanogos Nation, many of whom live on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation. While many of the reservation’s residents are members of the Ute Indian Tribe, the Timpanogos are a band of the Shoshone people. The Timpanogos Nation estimates that its population numbered approximately 70,000 before Latter-day Saint pioneers colonized Utah.

Latter-day Saints arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Two years later, settlers expanded to the Utah Valley by establishing Fort Utah on Timpanogos land in modern-day Provo.

Conflicts between the two groups rose in frequency in January 1850, after three settlers shot and killed a Timpanogos man they believed stole a shirt. By the end of the month, the church’s president at the time, Brigham Young, called for the extermination order of male Timpanogos, which was put into effect through Special Orders No. 1 and 2. 

The order led to the Fort Utah Massacre the next month. Latter-day Saint militiamen killed an estimated 100 Timpanogos people living along the Provo River and decapitated many of the bodies, which were discovered by a group including Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah, according to historian Jared Farmer’s book “On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians and the American Landscape.”

Despite the atrocities committed against his people, Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah was a lifelong advocate for peace.

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Councilman Perry Murdock and other members of the Timpanogos Nation are calling for the formal recession of the extermination order the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints placed on their people.

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For Perry, honoring Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah’s “terrible,” grief-stricken life represents a chance for Utahns of all ancestries to face the atrocities of the past and unite in remedying them.

The Timpanogos Nation is calling for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Gov. Spencer Cox to formally rescind and apologize for the extermination order, the same way the Missouri government rescinded the 1838 extermination order placed on Latter-day Saints in 1976.

“That gave them relief, gave everybody closure, gave everybody a chance to move on, but they will not do that to us,” Perry said. “Just escaping an extermination order themselves, (they) came out here and then placed one on our people.”

Perry said he is consistently approached at events like the monument unveiling by people who want to learn more about the Timpanogos people.

“Why haven’t you heard about us throughout history? Because we were supposed to be exterminated,” he said. “Our ancestors, I think, are crying out. There’s wrong doings that need straightened up. And I think that’s why events like this pop up.”

Learn more about the Timpanogos Nation at timpanogostribe.com. A petition to rescind the Timpanogos extermination order can be signed at tinyurl.com/2s48jt6t. 

The Wasatch Community Foundation is also fundraising to build a statue of Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah on the roundabout near the city columbarium. The $50,000 project has received about $20,000 in donations, which can be made at ourwcf.app.neoncrm.com/forms/arts.

Source – Indonesia News