9. RAMAH, MISSIONARY OUTPOST

Mormon society in 1880 was based wholly on agriculture. Work was considered a divine blessing and the promise in Isaiah that “the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose” was taken seriously as a duty to be fulfilled; it was a divine command. Agriculture in the Rocky Mountains existed only when it was possible to construct reservoirs to catch the melting snow and floodwaters and irrigate from them. By 1875 there was no productive land left in Utah to settle on, and an expansion of the borders to handle the flood of immigrants to Zion was necessary.

Brigham Young envisioned a Great Basin Empire. Neighboring Arizona beckoned, but the rugged canyonlands of the Colorado Plateau and the precipitous walls and treacherous waters of the Colorado River made passage in that direction all but impossible. No one who traveled that route ever forgot it. Wilford Woodruff declared that

“After crossing over the great Colorado River at Lee’s Ferry and crossing the hog’s back, which seemed to be the most difficult and dangerous road for loaded teams to pass over that I ever saw, I indulged in the thought and hope that not many years would pass before a suspension wire bridge would span that river.”

In late 1875 James S. Brown had been dispatched to Moenkopi, Arizona, to head up missionary work among the Indians; his was the task of consolidating the gains which Jacob Hamblin had made with the Hopis and of extending the hand of peace to the Navajos. Ernest Tietjen and others accompanying Brown arrived in Moenkopi in December.

Perhaps Brigham sensed that his end was near, for early in January, perhaps even before Brown could report, he asked the Twelve Apostles to meet with the various bishops and call 200 colonists to settle on the Little Colorado River, not far from Moenkopi, in the vicinity of what is now Winslow, Arizona. By the 22nd of that month the calls had been made and Lot Smith selected as a leader.¹ If the colonists felt to complain about being uprooted, Brigham’s stern philosophy had always been:

“If the Saints could realize things as they are when they are called to pass through trials … they would acknowledge them to be the greatest blessings that could be bestowed upon them.”²

Arizona was known to be a very tough mission, but those who were called responded willingly, and some even volunteered.

Brigham was determined that this second mission to Arizona would not fail. Accordingly, he instructed the colonists that he wanted no “babyism” on this venture and that they would not find “ready cooked pigs and turkeys”, but

“you will find a hard, rugged road to travel, and if you expect to have clothing you must make it. We want men that can fit themselves out. We would not give much for those that need others to fit them out.”³

Another Church leader had declared that

“If there be deserts in Arizona, thank God for the deserts … When … we extend our borders we must not expect to find a land of orange and lemon groves, a land where walnut trees and timber abound; where bees are wild and turkeys can be had for the shooting … good countries are not for us. The worst places in the land we can probably get, and we must develop them. If we were to find a good country, how long would it be before the wicked would want it and seek to deprive us of it?”⁴

Brigham knew how discouraged colonists could get, and to one leader headed in that direction, he said: “Take men with big families and little means so they will be too poor to come back.” To the Arizona colonists themselves, his advice was to “sell everything you have so that you will have no ties to come back to.”

Four colonies with about fifty persons in each were established on the Little Colorado River: Sunset, Obed, Brigham City, and Joseph City. Mormon colonies were well planned. Leaders were appointed and the essential tradesmen were selected in advance. An experienced midwife was set apart for her task. Joseph City alone survived, but it is Sunset that we are interested in here. The site of the colony was “Sunset Crossing”, the place where the stage coach route from Albuquerque to Prescott crossed the Little Colorado River. Lot Smith presided. He had been chosen for the position because he was a man with an iron will; Brigham knew that if anyone in the Church would stick it out it would be Lot Smith. Along with his fierce temper, fearless nature, and long red beard he had little tolerance for any viewpoint other than his own. His idea of success consisted of continual sacrifice: plowing every cent back into the company.

One man, not noted for complaining, wrote that

“We have no board of directors, consequently our whole business is run just in accordance with the whims and caprices of one man—living is unnecessarily poor and niggardly—our houses are very uncomfortable with little or no hopes for better—every energy is bent in gathering around us large herds of horses and cattle, but if a sister wants a little thread, sheeting, buttons, etc., to use in her family, she is told there is none or if she gets it, it comes frequently with a lecture on economy and this many times not clothed in the choicest language. There is a coarse rough style of reproving faults great or small that is very cutting. Such expressions as fool, idiot, mullet head etc. for very trifling faults, are not calculated to beget that feeling of love and confidence …”⁵

The settlers at Sunset lived in the “United Order”, a cooperative arrangement instituted by Young to combat a serious economic depression. They owned all things in common; upon entering the colony they turned over their property to the Order and shared in its success. They ate at one long (55 foot) table, and they farmed and ranched cooperatively. While Brigham Young had recommended eating together, not all church leaders agreed; Erastus Snow quipped that it was no more necessary that they all eat at one table than it was that they all sleep together in the same bed. The four settlements became a way station for the Mormon expansion into Arizona. By December 1876, they had reached out and claimed the site of Woodruff when the former occupants gave up their claim. In 1878 several Mormon families moved into the Silver Creek area, forming the Forest Dale and Cluff settlements.

A colonist who left his mission was considered an emphatic disgrace. One person who endured that censure was William Flake. He saw that they would never succeed on those wind-blown sandy flats, and he sought out a more agreeable location on Silver Creek. He formed a large settlement in 1878 at what is now Snowflake when he left Sunset and purchased Stinson’s ranch for $12,000. The payment was made in cattle which Stinson moved to Pleasant Valley. Those cattle soon became the prize which led to the Pleasant Valley War. When Erastus Snow, in charge of colonization in the Southwest, found Flake at the new settlement, he approved heartily and the settlement was named Snowflake.

In 1879 the Mormons purchased much of the land around St. Johns for $19,000, most of it in cattle. In the same year the Mormons acquired scattered ranches in Round Valley that developed into the colonies of Eagar, Nutrioso, Alpine, and Luna. We have seen how these settlers joined in working on the railroad in 1880 and 1881. Back at Sunset, after an existence of six years, a serious quarrel was brewing, both because of the inflexibility of Smith’s leadership and the harshness of the environment.

Sam Young recalled that after the Apache scare of 1880, Ernest Tietjen had “moved back to their lonely home in Savoia.” Jenson says that “All left except Ernest Albert Tietjen which practically ended that place as a settlement.”⁶ For himself, Ernest would not have minded, but to have his family grow up without the benefits of the Church organization was a matter of considerable concern.

The Savoia settlement was only a missionary outpost; it had never been seriously considered for colonization because of the lack of water for farming on a large scale. Ernest knew that if he were to draw colonists to Savoia, he must provide water. He now considered the possibilities in the great painted sandstone cliffs, perhaps 200 feet high, through which the flood waters at Savoia flowed into a larger and longer valley. With his Mormon background in irrigation, he envisioned the prospects for a reservoir at the base of the cliffs: perhaps fifty families could be sustained there.

Ernest went into action quickly. He wrote that

“My brother Joe had come with us and an Indian called Sam and myself started the Ramah Dam and also built the first house in Ramah and planted the first trees there which we had brought from Santaquin, Utah.”⁷

These were the earliest beginnings. Samuel Young says that in 1880

“Mr. Tietjen with the aid of twenty Navajos (so I have been told) whom he had hired, began work with shovels on the reservoir dam. They worked on the dam with shovels until the distance they had to throw the dirt became so great they could not go on with the work. Then Mr. Tietjen, with a scraper he had made from pieces he had gathered from the dump pile at Fort Wingate, and one yoke of oxen, and alone, continued with the work for a while.”

Ernest later remarked in Church that

“that little dam … that had cost him two or three months labor had done more preaching than all the talk that had been done since he came out here … and that we ought to preach by example to the Lamanite around us by securing some machinery such as threshing machine and gristmill.”⁸

Young wrote further that Ernest

“built a house with hewn logs on the site where Ramah now stands. This was the first house built in the Ramah town site, and it was the best house in looks and quality in the country, and moved one of his families into the house … Before the people from Sunset moved to Ramah the reservoir dam must have been fully twelve feet high.”

This house, now owned by Alden Lambson, was where Emma C. lived. Living alone with his growing family was a situation in which Ernest was very uncomfortable; his family needed the association of Church members. He had, no doubt, communicated the need for settlers to both Jesse N. Smith, president of the Eastern Arizona Stake and to Lot Smith, president of the Little Colorado Stake. In 1882 there was an explosion at Sunset. Lot would tolerate no further dissension. Ernest Tietjen, lone colonist at Savoia, had been asking for reinforcements and Lot now sent John Bloomfield, Peter Nielson, Samuel Garn, Aser Pipkin, and J.K.P Pipkin there as missionaries to the Lamanites; they began to arrive in June. Frihoff Nielson, writing from Sunset, worried about the fact that “a very unsettled feeling pervades the community. The 5 bre. were believed to be called out of spite by Lot Smith.”

Samuel E. Lewis was also called to Savoia from Round Valley on the Fourth of July, 1882. He was on his way to a celebration, but in his diligence to obey he turned back and started loading up and arrived in Savoia before any of the others. We have told his story previously. In a letter to Andrew Jenson, he wrote that Ammon Tenney had resigned as president of the Indian Mission in the spring of 1881 and that

“Brother Ernest A. Tietjen succeeded Ammon M. Tenney as president of the Indian Mission, and Apostle Brigham Young had general oversight of affairs and came quite often to ‘round us up’.”

The new arrivals were soon joined by additional dissatisfied colonists from Sunset: Hyrum Judd, J.R. McNeill, J.B. Ashcroft, and W. Bond. The next year Frihoff Nielson joined the seccesion. With more than half the colonists moving to Savoia, the Sunset colony broke up. Telling, who studied the situation carefully, remarked that

“There is … overwhelming evidence to indicate that Savoia was to be a missionary headquarters for work among the Lamanites who lived in that country. This would explain the bleeding of Sunset for the sake of Savoia … this was the opinion held by the original settlers of 1882 about the purpose of Savoia.”⁹

 If Lot Smith was glad to be rid of these colonists, Ernest was equally glad to have them, and made three trips to Sunset to help the families move.¹⁰ According to Annie Bond Burke, some came as far as Guam (the station nearest Ft. Wingate) by train and were taken by wagon to Savoia. They stayed in wagons the first winter and moved into cabins the next spring. They placed “factory” a white muslin, almost like cheesecloth, over the windows and hung quilts for the doors.

The Danish immigrant, Peter Nielson, seems to have been the first to arrive. From his journal we learn that on the 10th of June he “arrived at Tigen’s place at Savau about sundown and found Bro. Carpender her. Bro. Tietjen … came home little after sundown ab meet us kindly.” Two days later he “went with Bro. Tietjen and saw the country and the reservories in Savoy Canion wher Bro. L.T. Coans and J. Harris live. The ofred us to plant … anything lse we want on the land ther or forrest in Savarito Canon.” The next day was spent in planting in Savoietta Canyon. On the 17th, after “a long talk with the brethren about maters concerning us here, … drad [drawed] up a agreement about the water in the resivoir and the work performed on the dams.” On the 21st “We went to Savoir Canyon with Bro. Tietjen and Hardy for to see about finishing the dam. Tietjen to finish the dam 5 feet higher and make a wash ditch for $300 which was very high—over 50 cents a cubic yard.” The price proved to be too steep for the thrifty Nielson, and on the 30th he “contracted with E.A. Tietjen, L.T. Coans and Hardy to finish the Savoia Dam for $280.”

There were three dams, or reservoirs, involved here. Just before the abandonment of Savoia, the stake president said that the attempt to build a reservoir there had been unsuccessful. The Tenney family had settled near the head of Savoietta Canyon and perhaps made the beginnings of a dam there. When Nielson arrived, the Tenneys were gone and the Harris and Coans families lived in the Savoietta Canyon. Nielson obtained a farm in Savoietta canyon and contracted with Ernest to do a substantial amount of work on that dam. Ernest seems to have been living there also, as his daughter, Lydia, was born there the next month. This was a smaller reservoir: it broke several times and was repaired by one man. Nevertheless, the construction of a dam large enough to irrigate several farms was no small task, and Ernest devoted a considerable amount of time to it. His first family lived in the canyon until 1884.

Andrew Jenson, assistant Church Historian, writing from Ramah in 1894, gives this history:

“The commencement of the present settlement of Ramah was made in 1882 when a number of brethren with families arrived from Sunset and Brigham City on the Little Colorado River at the time that these settlements were broken up. Among the first settlers of Ramah were Peter Nielsen, John Bloomfield, Aser Pipken, James K.P. Pipken, James B. Ashcroft, Samuel Garn, Hyrum J. Judd and Wm. K. Bond, all of whom had families, were called by Church authorities from Sunset to settle at Navajo in New Mexico, and thus became the founders of the present Ramah which however was called Navajo in the beginning. Also James Ried McNiel and family arrived from Sunset and Samuel E. Lewis from Alpine, Apache Co. Arizona. The people from Sunset arrived at Savoya August 4, 1882, having traveled with teams all the way from their former locations on the Colorado.

“They brought most of the necessary things along with them needed for the founding of the new settlement. Brother Samuel Edward Lewis arrived a few days ahead of the company. On their arrival some of the families moved into the houses which had been built by the former missionaries or settlers, while some continued to live in their tents. On the 6th of Aug. 1882, bishop David K. Udall and Andrew S. Gibbons of St. Johns visited Savoya Valley and held a meeting with the Saints there in Bro. Tietjen’s house, on which occasion Ernest A> Tietjen was appointed to take charge as the Presiding Elder over the prospective settlement. Elder Samuel Garn, John Bloomfield, Hyrum J. Judd and James K.P. Pipken were chosen as teachers and Peter Nielson was chosen as the Superintendent of the Sunday School which was to commence. On the next day (Aug 7, 82) most of the brethren who intended to settle in the valley went down to a point below the present reservoir which had previously been located by Bro. Tietjen and standing on the ruins of the old Indian pueblo, which afterwards became the public square of Ramah, the brethren decided to build a town on that site and make the same their future home and to call it Navajo. All voted unanimously for the proposition. Immediately after that meeting, the brethren commenced making improvements. About half a dozen houses were built that fall on the present townsite of Ramah, which was surveyed by the settlers themselves. Later in 1882, Ira Hatch was called from Sunset to settle with the Saints in the new town of Navajo. Together with a few others he arrived at Navajo in the fall of 1882. During the winter of 1882–83 more than half of the people on the new townsite and those who had located temporarily at Savoya moved down as fast as they could get their houses built. All the meetings and Sunday Schools sessions held that winter were held in Samuel Garn’s House.

“In the spring of 1883, farming operations were commenced at Navajo, but the small grain was mostly destroyed by rust before it matured. In the early part of 1883, much work was done on the reservoir, which has since then been improved, the dam being raised higher and higher year after year and has never washed away. In 1883, also, the Saints built a meeting house, a log building 28 x 18 ft, which served for all public purposes, including schools and socials for quite a number of years afterwards. At a special meeting held at Navajo April 8, 1883, the Saints there were organized as a ward, Ernst A. Tietjen being nominated and sustained as Bishop of the place. This was done on the occasion of a visit to Navajo by apostles Brigham Young and Heber J. Grant and Pres. Jesse N. Smith.”¹¹

The Historical Record comments that Ernest was chosen as Bishop because he was “deeply interested in the Lamanites”. A year later, the local historian wrote that “We can say but little of the Navajo Ward, except that the Saints there are located among the Navajo Indians and are doing much good as Indian Missionaries. Bp. Tietjen takes great delight in his labors.”

After a trip to Sunset, Peter Nielson records that on the 7th of August “We appointed a committee to serve [survey] the ditch. Held meeting and organized the Savara [Savoia] Eregation Co. with Garn Pres., E.A. Tietjen Vice Pres., Nielson, Harris and Coans directors, McNeill Sec.” By the 23rd of December, having met their housing needs, Nielson says, “Ira Hatch and J.P. Bloomfield was appointed a committee to lay out the fence and rid [write] what a lawful fence should be and to examine the fence together with the owner’s certificate. A committee of 3 was appointed to serve water ditch and lay out a field of ten acreas lots from 100–160 acres.”

The organization made Ernest the first Mormon Bishop in New Mexico. (His old missionary companion, Luther Burnham, presiding at Fruitland, was ordained a bishop in September, the second Bishop in New Mexico). Josiah Emer Ashcroft was selected as head of the Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association and Emma W. Nielson was the Young Women’s counterpart.¹² The Church historian writes “when the settlers of Navajo in 1886 applied for a post office, the department would not grant the name of Navajo, as a post office with that name already existed in New Mexico; hence Ramah, A Book of Mormon name, was adopted.” The name was suggested by Brigham Young Jr.; it referred to a hill in which the history of the early Americans was buried. The name was also a Biblical one, meaning a high or exalted place.

At the meeting electing officers for the Savoia Irrigation Company, it was decided that the city blocks would be thirty six rods square and divided into eight lots on the east and west with barns to be set back from the street. John Bloomfield, who had built on the lot just east of the Indian ruin, planted the row of Poplar trees, seen in Ramah today, which he brought from Sunset in five gallon buckets.

Frihoff Nielson, Peter’s son, kept a diary faithfully for most of his life.¹³ He wrote little in the way of commentary but much about commonplace events such as chores, his newspaper, speakers at church, and haircuts. Nielson and Tietjen became lifelong friends and business partners, hence their daily lives were quite similar, so much so that what Frihoff was doing was about what Ernest was doing. We soon learn from his journal that pioneer life provided plenty of work for everyone in the family.

First and always, there was milking. This involved feeding the cows morning and night and hunting them every evening, a task that might take minutes or hours. After the milking, the milk had to be cared for: strained and put in a cool place in the cellar or perhaps in a screened window on the north side of the house or in a cool well or stream if one was available. There was no problem in keeping the milk cool during the winter; in the summer, feed sacks were dipped in water and draped around the milk crocks or bottles. After the milk had set a day or so, the cream had to be skimmed off the top and made into butter which found a ready market at Ft. Wingate. Thus there was constant churning to occupy the time in the evening when there was not light enough to work outside. Any excess milk was made into cheese, a process well understood by Ernest and his wives.

There was also a constant market at the Fort for chickens and eggs. Butter sold for 35 cents a pound, eggs brought 34 cents a dozen and a chicken sold for 56 cents. McNeill had a little store in which he exchanged eggs and butter for groceries and took them twice a week to Wingate. Children sometimes exchanged an egg for a bit of candy. Chickens required constant feeding and watering and eggs had to be gathered daily. A constant vigilance had to be maintained to keep skunks and coyotes from getting the chickens. At the market place it was necessary to buy rice, sugar, vinegar, bacon, raisins, brooms, wool cards, and soda. These items were in short supply in the Tietjen home.

To satisfy the yearning of his children for sweets—a yearning that sometimes verged on tears—Ernest

“planted some sugar cain, and during the summer while the cain was growing he made a rude molasses mill so he could work this cain up and make molasses out of the juce of the cain. This mill was made by taking two … peaces of a large pole, about ten inches in diamater and two feet long. He bored a hole through each of these blocks and in these holes he put a large rod. To keep the … rollers … from splitting, he took four iron bands of the right size off from the hubs of an old wagon and put a band on each end of the rollers. He then took two large posts and bored two holes in each post so as to fit, in distance apart, the rods in the rollers. The posts were set firmly in the ground. He put the rollers in place in the posts. The end of one of these rods he bent so he could use that bolt for a crank to turn the rollers. The rollers [were] placed near enough to gather so that they would not quite touch each other, then the stalks of cain would be run … between the rollers and the juce in the cain would be pressed out. While pressing the juice out of the cane, Ernest would turn the rollers and one of the children would put the cain, one stalk at the time, into the mill … The juice would be caught by a peace of tin that was placed under the rollers and run into a bucket which was set under the tin. The juice was then put into a kettle and placed over a slow burning fire and boiled untill the juice was cooked and brought to a suitable thickness, and then it would be put away and called good molasses, and sure enough it was good, and they were the only ones in the town that had any of this good cain molasses.”¹⁴

The family depended almost totally on what they could raise for their livelihood. Starting in March, there was plowing and seeding of wheat—the most important crop of all—to be done. In April, onions, radishes, lettuce, sage, pepper grass, cabbage, salsify, parsley, peas, carrots, beets, rutabagas, and potatoes were planted. Currant bushes, gooseberries, and strawberries were set out. In mid-May, there was corn to plant, another very important staple. Finally, there was popcorn and melons. For the horses and cattle, oats were a vital crop. These crops had to be irrigated, and this required not only the initial system of ditches, but a thorough cleaning and repair of the ditches every spring. Irrigation of the fields was a major and very time consuming task; once the water was in the ditches, each person “on the ditch” took his turn, even if it was at midnight or on the Sabbath. Irrigation was followed by constant weeding and picking bugs and worms off the plants.

Annie Bond Burke remembered that when her family came from Sunset

“they were given 25 lbs of flour, 5 lbs of sugar, and 5 lbs of grease to live on that first winter in Savoia. They gave them an old cow and a yoke of oxen when they left Sunset. The old cow gave a quart of milk a day and no cream! We used red roots and pig weeds and greasewood and sourdock for greens, seasoned with salt and pepper and vinegar. We gathered sego lily bulbs and cooked them in milk gravy.”¹⁵

In July the harvest began with the haying. This required that the hay first be cut, then raked into long rows. After a few days of drying, the hay was loaded onto wagons and stacked so that damage from water would be minimized. Baling hay came much later. There was oat hay, wild grass hay, and lucerne (alfalfa) to be gathered in. In August the task of digging potatoes began; this was very important because potatoes were a cash crop. This was followed by the threshing of peas and beans and the harvesting of the corn, a very busy time. At that time, canning was practically unknown. Root vegetables were stored in sand in the cellars.

Grain had to be first cut, then shocked, then threshed. At first, both Indians and white men drove horses around and around a flagstone threshing floor and let the animal hooves separate the grain from the chaff. Ernest, according to Telling, was “still urging the Saints to acquire such machinery as a threshing machine and a gristmill.” Peter Nielson bought a threshing machine and Ernest himself put up a gristmill in Ramah which was powered by his horse Pick. According to Minnie Clawson it produced graham flour. He moved it to Savoietta Canyon in 1888 where it “long ground flour beside the pond that lay at the junction of the Savoietta and Dry Fork Canyons”.

This seemed acceptable for grinding cereal, but to make a good flour, the grain seems to have been taken to St. Johns or Isleta. When the grain was ground at home, the “graham” required sifting to separate the “shorts” and “screenings” from the edible part of the grain, a job reserved for the long evenings. Some of the settlers had not seen times as hard as Ernest had seen, and in a sermon in 1884 he “found fault with too much grain being left in the field during harvest and no anxiety manifested to save or get hold of any grain.” Frugal as he was, he sometimes had to borrow grain from Nielson to get through the winter.

This very frugality explains Ernest’s serious feelings about a joke his son Joe played on him one Halloween. Ernest had a jet-black pony. Joe and his friends took flour and rubbed it into the pony’s hair until he was a mouse-grey in color. Next morning Bishop Tietjen found the pony in his feed lot and tried repeatedly to drive the “stray” away, but the pony had been a pet and would be back in a matter of minutes. In exasperation the bishop tried to set his dog on the horse, but the dog would do nothing. At this the youngsters were “losing it”. The bishop was furious when he discovered what they had done: “Wasteful, wasteful, wasteful!”, he yelled. He even talked of having Joe confess his wrongdoing in church. Inasmuch as that would have involved a recital of his own antics, he thought better of it.¹⁶

Of course before any of the work of ploughing or harvesting could be done, yokes of oxen or teams of horses had to fed and harnessed. A lot of time could be and was wasted in hunting these animals when they were needed; managing them was not trivial and could certainly be dangerous. There are numerous accounts of people falling out of wagons and being run over; Frihoff Nielson describes two instances in which he was nearly killed. Joe Tietjen did some bit of the ploughing and freighting before the family moved to Bluewater and before he was in his teens.

There was a great deal of building to be done. The home had to be built, corrals and sheds for cattle, horses, and hay had to be erected; a granary and a coop for the chickens had to be constructed. Fences had to be built around the crops to keep the cattle and horses out. These were pole fences at first, and required that poles be cut, peeled, and hauled.

About the time Ernest moved to Ramah, a Mr. Pace, from Utah, was passing through and made arrangements with Ernest to buy some sheep for him. Ernest bought 1500 head of sheep and took care of them for a year or two until Pace called for them.¹⁷

All of this was everyday work. Much time also had to be devoted to larger projects such as the construction of the reservoirs and meeting houses. Both the Savoietta and the Ramah Reservoirs washed out several times and had to be repaired. The teams with scrapers would scoop up a load of dirt and pass over a bridge. Underneath the bridge another team and wagon waited. As the first team passed over the bridge, it dumped the load of dirt which fell through wide cracks in the center of the bridge into the wagon below. When the wagon got to its destination, the floorboards could be twisted to dump the dirt. These teams made circle after circle, day after day. The Tietjen family began the construction of both the Ramah and Bluewater Dams, a really immense undertaking.

Closer to home, there were problems in keeping the garden watered in Savoietta Canyon where Emma O. lived. S.C. Young described the ingenuity that had to be exercised to get the job done:

“To get water for the house and the animals that were used on the farm, Ernest had dug an open well in the bottom of the draw … about one hundred yards from the house. This well was about ten feet deep and four feet across … he built a tower and put a windmill over the well so that it would pump water out of the well to irrigate the garden with. This windmill was built stationary, that is, it would not turn to the different directions of the wind. [It] … was built by setting four posts in the ground in the bottom of the well so that they were at one side of the center of the well … A heavy pole was placed across the frame at the top of the posts, to be used as an axel. On one end of this axel a wheel windmill was built … At the opasate end of the axel … a handle was atached at the top of the frame. This handle … was attached to an … axel lower down … At one end of the second axel was the frame of a wheel … one the rim of this second wheel was a number of tin cans nailed to the rim … When the wind turned … it would … turn the wheel with the tin cans [which] would be filled with water and carried to the top of the wheel … [and] emptied into a flume which would carry the water a few feet to a ditch which would take the water to the garden. By the aid of this tin can pump, the family was able to grow a garden which covered an acre or more of land.”

A never-ending chore was getting firewood. This was “snaked” out of the woods with a rope by a man on horseback. Intentionally or not, it usually fell the lot of the women to chop the wood for cooking, and an endless supply was required. It could easily take an hour for the cook stove to get hot enough to bake if the woman was lucky enough to have a stove; many homes had only a fireplace. Washing took even longer (all day). The equipment was a tub, a “rub board” and very harsh home-made soap. Water was frequently heated outside in the tubs. Ironing required keeping the stove burning all day long to heat the flat irons which lasted about five minutes each time. While housekeeping was a full-time job, the women also did much of the milking, irrigating, feeding the animals, and gathering eggs. When necessary, they harnessed the horses and traveled.

When there was time to spare, there were always stables and chicken pens to clean; the manure was hauled onto the fields. There was broken harness or machinery to be repaired or tools to be sharpened. The adage that “Idle hands are the workshop of the devil” was repeated endlessly for the children’s benefit. In the evenings the only light would be from a braided cloth “bitch”, one end of which was placed in melted tallow, but by this dim, smoking light, or by the light of a coal-oil lamp, the women sewed and quilted or carded wool and spun it into yarn. By it the men read the Deseret News, the Contributor, and the Juvenile if these could be afforded. In 1886 Ernest was urging from the pulpit that the people “take the papers and read them that we may know what is going on in the world.” and “strongly urged the young to read the papers and histories both sacred and profane.”¹⁸

There were unmentionable annoyances such as lice and bedbugs. Lice were picked up from casual contact with other humans, and quite a few on the frontier had them. It was an awful job to get rid of them. The infected person had to bathe, then have his head doused with kerosene. Bedbugs were believed to be brought in by birds nesting in the eaves or with infected bedding. As long as there were cracks in the floors and walls to hide in, it seemed impossible to shake them. Once there, they came out at night and bit sleeping people, leaving red, mosquito-like bites. Whitewashing the room with lime did help.

A dreadful plague was the seven year “itch”. The only way to get rid of it was to boil all the bedding and clothing several nights in succession and rub each person’s affected areas nightly with a malodorous salve containing a lot of sulfur. Homes were frequently fumigated with burning sulfur to kill all unwanted pests. Certain diseases were extremely serious. Blood poisoning was greatly feared; it resulted from any cut or wound and could be fatal if not treated in time by soaking the wound in hot water. Pneumonia, without antibiotics, proved fatal perhaps half the time. Appendicitis caused many deaths in the absence of a doctor to perform surgery. Many, many women died in childbirth. Typhoid, smallpox, and diptheria took an awful toll. Strong smelling assefidity sacks were sometimes worn around the neck to ward off diseases. It was an advantage, however, to live in an isolated place.

An important event occurred in 1883. One night Emma C. dreamed that an Indian girl came to her house to borrow a tub and that Ernest married this girl. A few days after she had told the dream to Ernest, Ira Hatch’s daughter, Amanda, a half-Indian, came to borrow a tub from Emma C. Emma was so impressed by this that she talked to Ernest again. He told her then if she felt so strongly that this was right, to go “fix it up with her.”¹⁹ Emma went and talked to the girl and her parents and obtained their consent. Again Ernest had little or nothing to do with arranging the marriage, but he soon learned to love Amanda deeply. Shortly afterwards, Ernest went with her to Salt Lake City and they were married on the first of November.²⁰ Amanda was known as the peacemaker between the wives. She taught them many things she had learned as an Indian, particularly how to find edible plants in the winter when food was scarce.

At least part of the winter the children attended school. The five Tietjen children had to walk from their home in Savoietta Canyon into Ramah, a distance of three miles. We will read in their stories that they were frequently frozen and sometimes terrified before they got there. Shoes were so scarce that the Tietjen children carried them until they got to school, then put them on. Their school teachers were Frihoff Nielson, Margaret Ashcroft, Phebe McNiel, Jean Harley, and Segne Biorkman.

At first, school was held in Garn’s house. We know that they studied from Reed’s Word Lessons and Barnes’ Language Lessons.²¹ Slates were used instead of pencils and each child brought his own bench.²² Sam Young wrote,

“The town tried to maintain a school for three months each year. As no help was given to them by the county or state, they had to carry the expences of the school themselves. To meet these expences a fee was charged, by the month, for each pupil attending the school. At times this fee ran as high as three dollars a month. This tells us that only ten pupils were attending school.

“The men hauled the wood that was burned in the large fireplace, in keeping the house warm for Sunday schools and meeting and the day school. The teacher would have the larger boys attending the school chop the wood and the girls would sweep the floor and keep the house tidy.” Minnie Clawson remembered that the girls helped Phebe McNeill tend her baby while she taught. Annie Bond recalled that the Tietjen children had only parched corn for their lunch.

Ernest Tietjen was the Bishop of Ramah until November 14, 1886 when he was released “that he might be more at liberty to labor among the Lamanites.” As Bishop, he had spoken in Church nearly every Sunday, and there was some thought that he had been released because of his severity. He was stern.²³ He was annoyed at those who came to meetings late or left early. That same year “he strongly reprimanded those who came to meetinghouse and whispered and otherwise annoyed those who wished to worship God.” Perhaps in response to criticism, “Tietjen said in his labors to reform the ward he had been actuated by a feeling of good for the people. He did not expect to lighten in his work—if people were offended, they must expect to be brought up to the law. You must not blame us, but blame the law.”²⁴

A definite contributor to Ernest’s gravity was the campaign against polygamy. The history of this practice is too long and too complicated to take up in detail here. Seven Supreme Court decisions resulted from it: three favoring the Mormon side and four against them. The last decision was disastrous, for under it polygamists were disfranchised and declared ineligible for jury service or public office. All offices in Utah Territory were declared vacant and a five man Utah Commission was appointed to supervise registration of voters and to conduct elections. They interpreted the Act to mean that persons professing belief in polygamy as a religious principle, i.e. all Mormons, were disfranchised. After the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Rudger Clawson, one of the twelve apostles, in 1884, an intensive manhunt called “The Raid” was launched to find polygamists.

Polygamy was difficult to prove in court because the Church would not make its marriage records public, but the Supreme Court pointed out the weaknesses in the law and the law found an easier way: it provided that “unlawful cohabitation” (living in the same house together without being married) was punishable by a fine of up to $300 and six months in jail. As redefined by the courts, unlawful cohabitation finally came to mean a refusal to deny the existence of a charged plural marriage tie.

Some judges, looking for a way to hand down stiffer sentences, found that a man could be indicted once for each week he had lived with his plural wife. In this way, a 92 year sentence could be built up. Another judge found that a man could be indicted once for each fraction of a day the man cohabited with his wife. This could amount to a sentence of 646 years.

As a result of the law, there were over a thousand convictions for unlawful cohabitation and most of the Church leaders in every Mormon community were in hiding or “underground”. A large number of the General Authorities (Heber J. Grant, Francis M. Lyman, Moses Thatcher, Brigham Young Jr., John W. Young, George W. Teasdale, Erastus Snow, and Wilford Woodruff) came to the Little Colorado settlements to hide. John Taylor, President of the Church, died in hiding and his successor, Wilford Woodruff, gave himself up and spent six months in prison. Still, the Church would not yield on the issue of polygamy. Finally, in 1887, the Edmunds-Tucker Act was enacted to crush the Church out of existence. It dissolved the Church as a corporation and took over its assets in excess of $50,000. The Church funds were to be turned over to the public schools. It also took away the right of women to vote in Utah, disinherited children of polygamous marriages, and required a test oath before holding public office.

Newspapers of that day were usually highly biased and strongly worded, but in Mormonism they found plenty of grist for the mill. In nearby St. Johns, Arizona, the violently anti-Mormon newspaper, the Apache Chief, was doing its best to whip the public into a frenzy against the Mormons: “Brigham Young Jr., one of the twelve great whoremongers of the Mormon Church, is in town …” Quoting U.S. Court Commissioner George McCarter, the newspaper continued:

“How did Missouri and Illinois get rid of the Mormons? By the use of the shot gun and rope. Apache County can rid herself of them also. In a year from now the Mormons will have the power here and Gentiles had better leave. Don’t let them get it. Desperate diseases need desperate remedies. The Mormon disease is a desperate one and the rope and the shotgun is the only cure … No Mormon should be allowed to cast a vote. He has no rights and should be allowed none. Down with them. Grind out their very existence.” [July 18,1884]

The Senator from Illinois was scarcely less bitter; the Albuquerque Morning Journal reported his speech on the Senate floor:

“Every phase of the Mormon ministry was marred by some foul deed … The system was founded on fraud … It is at war with good government and society … Opposed to every principle of Republicanism … They are bringing into this country every year a thousand paupers whom they teach to hate the United States Government … They trample under foot all the laws of the United States … We don’t desire war but if this Mormon question is not settled soon, it will end in war …” [January 12, 1884]

Seven prominent Mormons in the St. Johns area, including David K. Udall, Ammon Tenney, and William J. Flake, were indicted for polygamy. Three were sentenced to four years imprisonment in Detroit and fined $500. Two others got off with six months in Yuma and $500 by pleading guilty. In Ramah, Peter Nielson and John Bloomfield left for Mexico in February, 1885, with a portion of their families rather than face charges in a court where they could expect no mercy.

Frihoff Nielson, Emer Ashcroft, Will Bond, and Ernest Tietjen were never indicted, for what reasons we do not know. There was one occasion when a deputy marshall came to Ramah hunting polygamists. Emma C. wrote in a letter that

“The time it was polygamy trouble and the rumor that the officers were coming up above our reservoir to get all the polygamists. Then the Indian Chief, Gosepina, he was an old man, he said to me, ‘Take you a little bedding and come up to my hogan and it’s about a mile and a half.’ He takes a little bedding on his horse and I take my children and went to his good wife. Did not come any officers so we went home the next morning.”

Ernest was angry when he found out she had run. He said the law against polygamy had been made after he had married his wives and his only duty now was to support them properly.²⁵ On one occasion, a deputy marshall encountered Frihoff Nielson with both wives in one wagon. He held his gun on Frihoff and told the two women they were free to leave him. He was greatly surprised when they refused to be freed.

On another occasion a sheriff appeared in town and began asking leading questions. Immediately the word was spread and the children, who knew too much, were hustled off to the cornfields and instructed not to show their faces for the rest of the day. Worried men disappeared into the hills. The stranger stayed and stayed and it was not until the next day that the townspeople knew how much he had enjoyed himself. He was their own Joe Bond in disguise!²⁶

Something of Ernest’s resourcefulness is revealed in the following story. In 1887 Ernest received word from his father that the Temple at Manti had been completed and asked him to come to Santaquin to be “sealed” to his parents and to perform additional temple ordinances for the family. Since the sealing would unite him with his family in the hereafter, Ernest wanted very much to go, but did not have the means. In the early summer of 1888 he started out to walk the entire way with two small sacks for food and clothing. He had less than one dollar, but his heart was full of faith. He learned that a neighbor was driving to Ft. Wingate and rode with him. Just beyond the fort they found a group of wagons going to the San Juan River. The caravan welcomed his services as he knew the road and could drive a team. In Fruitland he contacted his old missionary companion, Luther Burnham, who let him have six boards which were 1x12’s. With these, Ernest built a small boat and drifted ninety miles downriver to Bluff City, Utah, baling water out of the leaking craft with a tin pail. He spent the next two nights at Indian camps with old friends.

At Bluff City he found his friend, Brigham Young Jr., going all the way, but loaded to the hilt. Ernest devised a plan in his need. He went to the bishop and bought on credit his best make of Winchester rifle. This he traded to an Indian for a good horse. He packed the horse with Young’s bedding and rode with Young in the buckboard. Before departing, he sold the boat to the store for some groceries. When the load on the buckboard reached its destination, Ernest traded the horse for a steer which was to be delivered to the bishop in Bluff City in payment for the gun. In this way he reached his destination. In Salt Lake City he felt bad because he was so ragged. There he met Brigham’s brother, John W. Young, who still owed him $700 for work on the railroad. While Young was not able to pay him, he did give him a good used suit of clothes and a watch on the debt.

Once Ernest completed his Temple work, he again set out on foot for Ramah. Word reached him of a large outfit, passing by some thirty miles distant, on their way to Arizona. Learning that Ernest was acquainted with the road and with many Indians, the wagonmaster provided him passage at once for his services in driving a team. In this way they made their way to Snowflake, Arizona, and the man gave him a ten dollar gold piece. Ernest attended conference in Snowflake. Teams had been provided to take the Church Authorities to St. Johns, so Ernest rode with them. At St. Johns there were visitors from Ramah, and Ernest rode home with them. Ernest had been gone for four months on this remarkable journey, and to his joy he found his family well and in good spirits.²⁷

In 1888 Ernest was totally devastated by the death of his and Amanda’s little daughter, Sarah. He recorded in his journal that “She was light complected and had rosy cheeks. While plowing in the lot [in Ramah] I saw Sarah coming acrost the plowed land, hopping and running. She was so buteful and I said to myself, if anything should ever hapen to her, I don’t believe I could stand it. She came up, telling me her mother had dinner ready. Taking my hand, she chatted to me as we walked back to the house.”

On the evening of May 2, 1888, the Mayday dance was being held a block down the street from Amanda’s home. Since everything was quiet and peaceful, she stepped out to look in on the dance for a moment. A spark from the fireplace ignited some quilting scraps near the fireplace. Not many minutes later her heart nearly failed her when someone outside saw the blaze from her burning cabin. Ernest wrote in his journal,

“I was reading my paper at Emma O’s place, just a short distance form Amanda’s, when I heard someone cry ‘FIRE!’ I ran out, only to sie Amanda’s place all afire and Sarah in it. I wanted to run in to get Sarah, but 3 men held me back. They formed a chane line with buckets; they passed the buckets of water in that way from one to the other until they had put out the fire … She was burned just a small spot on her forehead, but the smoke had strangled her to death. This was my greatest trial, for oh, how I love this little girl. Amanda, it seamed, could not get over this great shock and on December 30, 1894, she died.”

Perhaps it was Amanda’s Indian heritage that led to her death. She is said to have died of consumption (tuberculosis) after a long illness. While many died of it in those days, American Indians were particularly vulnerable; they had not acquired a resistance to the disease.

If the shock of losing her daughter was not enough for Amanda, one more event was to shake the foundations of the family. That event involved the tempestuous misfortunes of the Pipkin family. In October 1884, John Pipkin was found by his father after several days of searching, an apparent suicide. Ten men preached at his funeral and “all spoke upon the grievous crime John Pipkin had committed in taking his own life.” There were a few who suspected, however, that John was the victim of foul play rather than a suicide. In 1887, J.K.P. Pipkin was disfellowshipped for defrauding the postoffice at Savoia. In the 1890s, Dan (Red) Pipkin joined Bronco Bill’s gang and was involved in a number of train robberies and holdups. In 1902 Emmet Pipkin, working at the Box-S ranch, had borrowed money to buy wool. While there, he was robbed and murdered. None of these misfortunes, however, came so close to the Tietjen family circle or surpassed in tragedy (in purest Shakespeare tradition) the conflict with the Lewis family.

Vira Lewis was married to J.K.P Pipkin who was much older than she. She had been in love with his son, John Pipkin, before the marriage and after it both she and the son were, according to Nielson, “excommunicated for adultery.” Vira said her husband abused her and threatened her life, so she decided to leave him. She took her son from the ranch near Savoia without her husband’s knowledge and left Ramah with her younger brother, Joseph Lewis, 21 years of age. As soon as her husband discovered the fact, he set out in pursuit in company with Joe Hatch. Joe Hatch was the son of Ira Hatch and a brother of Amanda Hatch who had married Ernest Tietjen in 1883. Ira Hatch was married to a sister of Pipkin, hence Joe was a nephew of Pipkin’s by marriage. An older brother of Vira’s, S.E. Lewis, noticed the pursuing party and got Ernest Tietjen and Will Bond to accompany him in pursuit of the pursuers. The date was Sunday, October 26, 1890.

Near the Arizona line the first party camped for the night. In the falling darkness they realized they were being followed and Joe Lewis hid in a gully with his rifle. Just after darkness the third party arrived and dismounted. Bond called out to Joe Lewis. The latter, thinking help had arrived, stood up and was shot fatally. As the latest arrivals were walking, they heard a voice from the darkness: “Halt, drop your guns and put up your hands!” Complying with the command, a shot was fired at them and Mr. Lewis’ horse, which had a white spot in its forehead, fell dead. The flash revealed Pipkin and Hatch lying flat on the ground a few feet away. Another shot was fired at Tietjen. At this, Lewis drew his pistol and returned the shot and Tietjen dived for his pistol and started shooting. Bond’s pistol would not fire and he could not get his Winchester loose from the saddle. One of Hatch’s shots hit the stirrup of Tietjen’s horse, Pick, then lodged in the animal’s side. Pipkin and Hatch then ran for their horses with shots being fired after them.

“Brother Lewis ran to where they had heard the scream and found his brother, Joseph, lying fatally wounded only two rods from the wagon, camped in the wash, in which were his mother and sister. Brother Tietjen immediately followed, but Brother Bond had not been seen or heard during the shooting.”

During the battle, Bond thought all was lost and went to St. Johns for help. Tietjen and Lewis returned with the body to Ramah and as people were gathering for the funeral, news was received that the trigger-happy sheriff from St. Johns had taken his posse into the Zuni Mountains to look for Joe Hatch and had shot and killed his brother, Ira Starns Hatch, by mistake.²⁸

For months afterward the families in Ramah were at such enmity with each other that the opposing sides wore guns constantly, even to church. Ernest’s wife, Amanda, was a sister of Joe Hatch, and Joe Tietjen was very close to Louis Kirk, a stepchild of Ira Hatch. Ernest had been profoundly grateful for Ira’s presence in Ramah as a missionary. Ira, of course, defended his son, and for this both he and his son were disfellowshipped, unjustly in Ira’s case. One man, much younger than Ira, took it upon himself to give the old man a thrashing despite his crippled arm. One day Amanda saw her brother Joe and crossed the field to ask him why he wanted to kill her husband. Of grief and sorrow there seemed no end. With some bitterness, Ira Hatch and his family moved to Fruitland as did the Pipkin family.

On a lighter note, a couple of stories here will illustrate Ernest’s character. A road or “dugway” had been built around the edge of the cliffs at the Ramah Dam, and it was just above the water line (sometimes under it). S.C. Young says,

“One bad windy day Ernest was passing along this narrow dugway. A sharp point of the bluff seemed to protect a small peace of the water from the strong wind, and a flock of mallard ducks … had taken shelter from the wind in this spot of still water. As Ernest came around this sharp point of the bluff …, suddenly, upon this flock of ducks, [it] frightened them and [they] rose in the air to fly away, [and] this brought them into the wind belt just as a sharp gush of wind was passing. The ducks were caught by this sharp gush of wind and several of them were thrown against the bluff with such force that they were stuned and fell to the ground. Ernest jumped out of his wagon and gathered up ten of those lovely ducks. Why, he thought, we can have ducks for several days. Then he thought, Moses told the people to only gather enough food, Manna, to last one day, why should I be so selfish and want more? One of these ducks will make a meal for a family, and I have three families, [so] three ducks will do us for one day. So seven ducks were turned loose. In these three families Ernst had fifteen large, fast-growing, husky, healthy, hungry children. In all there were nineteen persons in his family, and only three ducks for all of them. Do you think three ducks would make a full meal for them?”²⁹

It would surprise Latter-day Saints of today that even wholesome, well-supervised dancing did not enjoy complete approval in the 1880’s despite the fact that the Mormons had danced their way across the plains. Apostle Erastus Snow complained that “we are nearly as bad as the Indians are about our dancing; where we have exercise, we do not need so much dancing.” Counselor Ira Hatch “said … there is a time to dance and time to let it alone. The ones to dance were those who attended meetings.” Again in 1884 “Tietjen … was opposed to surprise dances—it was not in accordance with the teachings we receive from headquarters.” Apostle John Henry Smith in Conference in St. Johns “spoke in strongest terms against round dancing. He said it should be put down among the Latter-day Saints” and President Gibbons enumerated the consequences: “sed their had been at least 20 young ladies run of and married vilens on acont of being to easey with men.”

The question of how to dance was still a problem in 1888 when the High Council passed a resolution “forbidding round dances and excessive swinging or having parties at private houses except social gatherings by families in the proper way.” By 1900 there was a gradual retreat: “If the young was determined on round dances to allow it, but rather we would not do it”; by then the Bowery Hug was what constituted “improper conduct.” The dances were definitely Church functions, and Bishop “Tietjen spoke upon dancing, said it was restricted in the different settlements and where any person wished to dance, he must go to the Bishop and get his consent”. Space was limited, and this problem was handled by numbering off the young men and only the odd numbers could dance the first set, the even numbers the next set, etc. The control exercised by the bishop was also used to force young people to confess publicly when they had gone astray: they could not dance until they did so.³⁰

With this explanation, we can appreciate another story told by Sam Young. In 1883 Emma O’s family moved into Ramah. Bishop Tietjen had a large dog “which had the habit of running out into the street after everything: a person walking by or anything that passed the place.” One day Sam Johnstun,

“while riding a young untamed horse which had the name of being a mean bucker, rode by the bishop’s place, and the dog, true to habit, run out into the street and bit the horse on the hind leg. The horse, not being used to this kind of treatment, began to buck”.

It was all Sam could do to keep his seat. When his horse had calmed down, Sam went home and got a pistol and rode by the bishop’s place again. As expected, the dog dashed into the street after the horse and Sam shot at him, wounding him in the side. The sound of the shot give Sam another opportunity to use all his skill in the saddle, but again he “rode him to the finish.”

In time the dog recovered, but

“the bishop apointed two faithful brethern to act as special ward teachers and take a labor of love with Sam and convince him of the evil of his way in shooting the dog.”

In three weeks Sam apeared before the Sunday afternoon meeting, as required, to make a public confession. Those who did not confess were not allowed to dance. Sam, in his confession said:

“Brethren and sisters, you know I am here to ask your forgiveness for shooting the bishop’s dog; if you will forgive me for missing him this time I will try to do better next time!”

This brought the house down, but

“he had said it wrong and the bishop would not accept of it, so the ward teachers had to continue their labor with Sam and have him come before the people again and say it right.”

After sufficient deprivation of his privileges, “Sam said it right.” The Bishop himself later apologized:

“Last summer I rebuked Bro. Johnstun in public and I wish it understood that it was in haste and that I made a mistake in the matter and in what I said afterward.”³¹

Of course life was not all work and no play. A lot of plays were presented to the townspeople and some of the people became rather good actors. Annie Bond Burke recalled that in one play

“I was supposed to pick up a live mouse which they had caught down at the granary. I didn’t know he would bite, and I threw him down so hard I killed him. In another play I had a pistol and I was supposed to pretend I was shooting Gene Lambson. Without my knowing it, they loaded the gun with blanks, and when it went off, Gene fell over. I thought I had killed him!”

In time the controls on dancing, even round dancing, were relaxed. Bonfires in the streets were frequent and Mrs. Burke said that “Will O’Fallon could play the harmonica and we learned to waltz right here in the street. There was a panther that came around sometimes, though, and when we heard him scream, we would all scamper home.” One night at a dance at the schoolhouse the bell began to ring. This caused some excitement, and everyone ran outside to see who was ringing the bell, but no one was there. This happened several times; in the darkness no one could see a wire strung from the bell to the flagpole then across to the Bond House; inside the house two little boys were watching the scene with delight. Ice skating and sledding were popular. If no sleigh was available, a horse-drawn cowhide would do as well. Candy pulls always attracted a crowd of young people.

The Mormons were somewhat like the Puritans and the Amish in their isolationist tendencies. They felt that the only way to preserve their standards was to keep strictly to themselves. For example, “Counselor S.E. Lewis said The young should not go among the outsiders for employment. Those who stay at home and do their duty would be prospered.” Bishop Tietjen “said the teachers had been instructed to teach the people not to trade with those who had come among us” and John Bloomfield “spoke of what our enemies were trying to do, of the people of Zion following the fashions of the world … said we must do one thing or another.” Nielson felt that “we should treat those who come among us with civility but not court their company for evil communications corrupt good manners.”³² Nevertheless, Ernest and many others were forced to get work outside the community.

Another problem the Saints confronted constantly was horseracing in the streets and along with it, gambling on the outcome. The problem was compounded when Indians were involved, for feelings were bound to result which would interfere with the missionary work. In this, Joe Tietjen was more than an innocent bystander. The Indians, however, needed no encouragement for either racing or gambling. Clyde Kluckhohn found gambling to be comparatively rare among the Ramah Navajos and attributed it to Ernest’s influence on Jose Pino.³³ Bishop Tietjen in 1883 “told the young men not to run races and bet with the Lamanites.” and in 1884 “Counselor S.E. Lewis … condemned gambling in every form, he knew there was some of it done among the young and they should be taught to leave it alone.” In 1886 “Tietjen denounced horse racing in the streets; it was not safe.” Later that same year “Bp. McNeill said the first thing to be done was of a grievous nature. One of the brethren had been overtaken in a fault and it was required of him to make public acknowledgement. Bro. James Hatch said when he was at Zuni he gambled on a horse race. Knew it was wrong. Was sorry he had done so and asked the forgiveness of the Saints. He was unanimously forgiven.”³⁴

In 1889, also, Ernest’s work among the Navajos was sharply curtailed. His recent journey across the Navajo Reservation had apparently hit a sore spot with the agent. Under Grant’s Peace Policy there had been a marriage of Church and State with the Presbyterian Church having official sanction as the agency to deal with the Indians in New Mexico. S.C. Young writes,

“In 1888 or 1889 the Indian agent from Fort Defiance and an army officer from Fort Wingate, they were riding in an army carriage drawn by a government team of mules and driven by an orderly, … came to Ramah to see brother Tietjen, who had been set apart as president of the Navajo Indian mission in 1885 by Brigham Young Jr., assisted by Heber J. Grant. The agent gave brother Tietjen orders for him and all of his associates to keep off from the Indian reservation, and to stop their missionary work among the Indians and to leave all the Indians alone.

“Brother Tietjen contended that the man’s authority as an Indian agent for the government was limited to the reservation and that he had no authority over the Indians who lived off from the reservation, and they had a lively argument. The government Indian agent held out that should any of them, brother Tietjen or his fellow Indian missionarys, come on the reservation, he, the Indian agent, would procede to have them put off the reservation. Soon after this took place, Brigham Young Jr., while passing by, called at Ramah and while talking with brother Tietjen about what the Indian agent had done, and after thinking it over, brother Young said ‘Well, if they have ordered us to keep off from the reservation, that is what we will have to do.’ After that, but little missionary work was done among the Navajo Indians, and the little missionary work that was done was confined to the Indians who were living near Ramah.”³⁵

If our date is correct, this was Agent Patterson, and he himself was “thrown off” the Reservation. In the Annual Report for 1889, General Carr, commander of Ft. Wingate, offered this explanation:

“At that time there was great dissatisfaction with the agent of the Navajos and Moquis … One day Manuelito, a noted chief living on the eastern border of the Navajo Reservation, came to the post and asked for an interview with me. He stated that the principal chief Ganado Mucho and himself had determined to remove the agent and put him on a railroad train. He stated that he had visited the agency and asked the agent why he was not removed; that he had told him he was a thief, that he had stolen the money furnished for irrigating their lands, that he had lied to him about furnishing him a harness and repairing his wagon etc., and that the agent had put him in the guard house … I told him they had better not be hasty; that the Great Father had sent out his inspectors to inquire into the complaints against the agent … that the Great Father was very busy with the great council, having to sit up sometimes till 2 o’clock at night examining papers etc., and that he would no doubt attend to the business as soon as he could get time. Manuelito answered ‘My brother, I think you are my friend, and I will take your advice.’ … Since then the agent has been replaced by Mr. C.E. Vandever, who is very popular both with the Navajos and the neighboring citizens.”

Although Emma O. had taken Amanda’s children to raise as her own, Amanda’s death had hurt Ernest very deeply; still the storm would not let up. Exactly a month after Amanda’s death, Emma C.’s four-year-old boy, Ammoran, died, making this the fourth child she had lost in succession. He died of spinal meningitis, a serious illness even in our day. All of Emma C’s nursing skill could not save him, and she felt worse when some said he had died because she over-doctored him.³⁶

After this battle with grief, Ernest longed to start life anew. According to Clifford Young, a grandson, Ernest related to him that on one of Brigham Young Jr’s visits to Ramah,

“he invited Ernest Albert, his old friend, to go with him over into the Bluewater Valley … Ernest Albert accepted the invitation … and they traveled to the Bluewater Valley.

“After they had entered the Valley, they went out to about the center of the Valley and stopped the buggy and they got out and looked through the sage brush. I understand that the sage brush grew very well and was almost as high as a man. As they looked through the brush and sifted through the soil, Brigham Jr. stood up and said to Ernest Albert: “This is a choice land, and the Lord wants his people to have it. He has saved it for them. Here in this land the time will come when there will be Lamanite wards and stakes, a Lamanite educational center, and a Lamanite temple … [He] then counseled Ernest Albert to go back to Ramah, sell all of his possessions and move his three families and get others to come to the Bluewater Valley. Now this was about 1890.”³⁷

This is partly verified by a letter written by Emma C., from which we quote:

“[I went] with my husband in a buckboard and horses to see the country and they found a good place we call Bluewater. At that time it was only a cow man’s house and a shed and house of the railroad there, so the Apostle Brigham Young told my husband E.A. Tietjen he wanted him to get that place for a home for the Latter Day Saints and he did it as he always did.”

Perhaps the reference was to the February, 1889, visit of Brigham Jr. From the previous chapter we recall that Ernest had seen the site at Bluewater while rounding up the 7HL cattle for the Box-S ranch and had been impressed with it, particularly the beautiful alfalfa field. Allen Nielson also indicates that Emer Ashcroft had purchased many of the cattle when the Sunset United Order broke up and that he learned of the abandonment of the 7HL Cattle Company and took his cattle to their corrals at Bluewater to work and brand. The canyon where these corrals were located is today named Ashcroft Canyon. In any case, we find from Nielson’s journal that within a month of Amanda’s death, Ernest was discussing with Nielson a move to Bluewater.

This discussion led to Nielson writing a letter to Latta about the place at Bluewater. Nielson records that on February 7, 1894, he received a letter from J.M. Latta, offering the 7HL ranch at Bluewater for sale, and that he spent most of the next day “with E.A. Tietjen talking about [the] Bluewater place.” Ernest was acquainted with Latta through the subcontracting of ties for the railroad in 1880. A price of $3000 for all the Latta property (including the stock and brand) at Bluewater was agreed upon, but neither Tietjen nor Nielson had that much capital. They were, however, well acquainted with the trader at Fort Wingate, W.F. McLaughlin, and with the commanding officer, General Carr, for whom Ernest had worked as a cowboy, as a fence builder, and as a dam builder (along with Frihoff).

This led to an introduction to John Van Doren who was there looking after the interests of his son-in-law, John Norton. Van Doren had experience with forming irrigation companies in California. After many discussions and a visit to the site with McLaughlin on March 4, 1894, an agreement was made to purchase the property jointly. We do not know how the finances were arranged, but the pair went to Ft. Wingate to sign the notes, and probably McLaughlin loaned them the money. Tietjen and Nielson were meeting every few days to discuss the details and prospects. On April 12th the group drew up a partnership and sent by Clark Carr to get approval, probably from Santa Fe, to incorporate. The Articles of Incorporation of the Bluewater Land and Irrigation Company listed John H. Norton, W.F.McLaughlin, E.A.Tietjen, F.G.Nielson and John S. Van Doren as directors with a capital stock of $100,000, but were not recorded until September 20th. A new colony had been born.³⁸

 

Zuni (Edward S. Curtis/ Library of Congress)		Ojo Pescado (Fish Springs)
Street Scene in Zuni		Emma C.’s Home in Ramah [click for more Tietjen photos]
The Ramah Dam Washes Out		Rebuilding the Ramah Dam
Gallup		Ft. Wingate
Grant’s Camp		First Church in Bluewater [click for more detailed version]
Celebrating with Indian Friends at Ramah		First Garage in Bluewater