Remembering American Indian population of 1847 is important, Elder Marlin K. Jensen says

SALT LAKE CITY — Departing from typical Pioneer Day themes, the LDS Church historian and recorder spoke of Utah's 1847 American Indian population in his address Saturday at the traditional Days of '47 Sunrise Service in the Salt Lake Tabernacle.

Elder Marlin K. Jensen borrowed a phrase from late radio newscaster Paul Harvey, saying he would give the "rest of the story" pertaining to the coming of the Mormon pioneers to the Salt Lake Valley, a story he said "is seldom given adequate prominence."

"When the pioneers arrived here, there was already a substantial Indian civilization and culture existing," said Elder Jensen, a member of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The pioneers no more "discovered" the Great Basin than Christopher Columbus "discovered" America, he said.

Elder Jensen cited this July 31, 1847, journal entry from Mormon pioneer William Clayton: "(The Shoshone) appear to be displeased because we have traded with the Utahs, and (the Shoshone) say that they own this land and the Utahs have come over the line."

"The truth of the matter is that the Mormon pioneers had 'come over the line' as well," Elder Jensen noted. "Perhaps only Brigham Young, with his prophetic gifts, could have foreseen at that time that the tiny trickle of pioneers who were then coming into the Great Basin would one day, in just a few years, grow into a mighty stream of immigrants."

Some 20,000 American Indians lived in the area now encompassed by Utah's boundaries, he said, including the Shoshone to the north, the Goshute to the west, the Ute in the central and eastern regions, the Paiute in the southwest and the Navajo in the southeast.

"Though often seasonally on the move to gather food, hunt and fish, Indians regarded the land to be religiously sacred and were strongly attached to it," Elder Jensen said. "The land and its bounty were critical to their existence."

Unfortunately, useful land was scarce, he said.

"From the day the 1847 pioneers first put their plows in the ground, settlement for them would mean displacement for the Indians," Elder Jensen said.

But the Mormons themselves were a displaced people, he said, referring to religious persecution that had driven them from Missouri to Illinois and ultimately to the West.

"Part of the appeal of the Great Basin as a place of settlement was its isolation and promise of refuge," he said.

Religious doctrine giving the American Indians a distinctive place in Mormon theology encouraged the pioneers to view them in a favorable light, Elder Jensen said, citing Book of Mormon teachings that American Indians were a branch of the House of Israel. According to LDS teachings, neither group would be able to fulfill its destiny without the other, he said.