Pioneers of 1847 Monument – Salt Lake City, Utah

 

Co-location and Monument of Upliftment Frameworks. Explore definitions here.

Introduction 

The Pioneers of 1847 monument was an idea fostered by Mauli Junior Bonner and Tamu Smith and brought to fruition by Stephanie and Roger Hunt. It was created to permanently acknowledge the contributions and achievements of early African American settlers in Utah. The monument is located in This Is The Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City, Utah. 

Section 1: Background 

On January 6th, 1828, Green Flake was born enslaved on the Jordan Flake Plantation in Anson County, North Carolina. He was taken from his parents at ten years old and given to James and Agnes Flake. James Flake assigned Green to travel with Brigham Young to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, allowing him to meet Oscar (Crosby) Smith and Hark (Lay) Wales, two more enslaved men. On July 22nd, all three men arrived as part of the advance group, assigned with the task of constructing houses and cultivating land in preparation for their enslavers’ arrival in the next year. Some belated remembrances suggest that Green drove the first Latter-day Saint wagon into the valley. That party camped near present-day 1700 South and 500 East on the night of July 22nd. They then moved north to somewhere between present-day 300 and 400 South, Main, and State streets, where they diverted water for agricultural purposes. Green was already planting crops by the time Brigham Young arrived on July 24 (Kiser 2014). Green and his future brother-in-laws, Oscar Smith and Hark Wales, are celebrated as the first Black pioneers to enter the Salt Lake Valley. 

Jane Elizabeth Manning James was born into a free Black family in Wilton, Connecticut, during 1822. Although slavery was rare in Connecticut well before it was abolished under state law in 1848, conditions were difficult for the state’s Black inhabitants. To exist and live as an African American was still to live under extremely discriminatory conditions. Jane worked as a live-in servant from childhood and was one of few in her family to learn how to read and write. She showed resilience against a prevalence of hardships and a passion for a fuller religious experience later in life. In her final years, she joined the Church in 1841 and was active in the faith until her death in Utah in 1908 (Goldburg & Anderson 2016). 

Section 2: The Pioneers of 1847 Monument  

This monument was chosen as a case for investigation as the monument tells the relatively unheard of story of Black pioneers in the mountain west that is also generally untold in the U.S. education system. The site’s approach to addressing this topic was successful. The process of co-location —the act of adding additional monuments to temper the meaning and significance of the original monument— completely refigured the physical and metaphysical space of This Is The Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City. 

It is clear that the proactive approach of co-location initiated reconciliation so that the scars of traumatic history were in the process of being addressed by the Salt Lake City community. The Pioneers of 1847 Monument is proof of mobilization and reconciliation between Black and white pioneer descendants. This is The Place Heritage Park (n.d.a) describes the monument as a “place of learning, reflection, and healing.”

2.1. This is This Place Heritage Park

This Is The Place Heritage Park is a Utah State Park managed by This Is The Place Foundation, a nonprofit organization. The park celebrates the history of the area, beginning with the 1847 arrival of pioneers. According to Mormon tradition, the center of the park is the spot where Mormon leader Brigham Young exclaimed to a carriage-mate, “It is enough. This is the right place” (This Is The Place Heritage Park n.d.b.). The Park was created to “honor the memory of the pioneers, Native Americans, and all who were part of the story which created the great state of Utah. The history depicted by interpreters in Heritage Village teaches visitors about the past and challenges them to find and strengthen their connections to their own family roots” (ibid.). The Heritage Village is akin to a smaller-scale version of Colonial Williamsburg. It includes sites such as the Brigham Young Farmhouse, Ottinger-Little Hall, the Mary Fielding Smith Home, a Native American Village, and a Telegraph Office. It also includes several sites of pioneer activities such as the B.F. Johnson Saddlery, a Blacksmith shop, a Tinsmith shop, the Deseret News Print Shop, the Dinwoody Pottery Shop, and the Snelgrove Boot Shop. Interpreters are placed at points throughout the park to demonstrate various crafts and share stories in a living-history model. The Pioneer Center, opened in 2021, uses multimedia displays to tell the story of the arrival and colonization of the area by Mormon leaders. It was designed to complement the This Is The Place Monument. 

The This Is the Place Monument is a 60 foot tall structure that “memorializes, in bronze sculptures, the Mormon pioneers as well as the traders, trappers, explorers and others who were instrumental in the development of the West” (Smith-Mansfield 1994). It replaced a smaller structure dedicated in the spot in 1921. It was created by Mahonri M. Young, grandson of Brigham Young, who was selected by a state commission to design the monument in 1937. Bas-relief sculptures on the base of the monument depict the wagon trail of pioneers arriving at the mouth of Emancipation Canyon. Notably, Green Flake, Oscar Smith, Hark Wales, and Jane Manning James are not depicted in the wagon trail or anywhere on the structure. 

The area of This Is The Place Heritage Park has been cared for as a historic place for over a century, since the first This Is The Place monument was dedicated in 1921. In 1998, the state of Utah officially recognized the historic value of the land by designating it a Utah State Park. The extent to which the historical narrative and interpretation of the Heritage Village and within the Pioneer Center honors “all who were part of the story which created the great state of Utah” (This is The Place Heritage Park n.d.b.) is outside the scope of this case study. However, the addition of the Pioneers of 1847 Monument to the Park grounds is without a doubt a step toward expansion of the historical narrative. Mauli Junior Bonner described the monument as “a missing piece” of the story of Mormon migration to the area (Taylor 2022). 

This expansion seems to have been welcome, as the Chairman of the board of This Is The Place Park, Ellis Ivory, was enthusiastically involved in the Pioneers of 1847 monument project (Taylor 2022). In addition, President M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints presided over the dedication of the monument and spoke to his belief in the importance of telling the stories of all those who “blazed the trail” for the Mormon migration (ibid.). 

Section 3: Framework – Co-location

As mentioned earlier, the Pioneers of 1847 Monument permanently altered the physical and metaphysical space of This is the Place Heritage Park by co-existing with a multitude of statues honoring white pioneers. This can be understood on another level when we view these statues as embodying the intersectionality, a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989), of Salt Lake City through its early settlers. The Pioneers of 1847 Monument was intentionally chosen as a title void of gender, race, and class descriptions. The name was pitched by Mauli Junior Bonner and Tamu Smith with purposeful vagueness to remove the likelihood that a visitor could guess what story the monument would tell. Bonner and Smith had both recently taken part in directing and producing films about Utah’s Black pioneers (Taylor 2022).  Regarding the name, Bonner stated, “What I did not want is to have ‘the Black pioneers,’ ‘the African-American pioneers’ – when we say ‘pioneers,’ we shouldn’t just think of white men and some white women, but we should think of all of us” (Taylor 2022). 

The creation of the monument was funded by private donations and the sculptures were produced by the Hunt Sculpture Studio. No state funds were utilized. The monument was unveiled on the 175th anniversary of Utah’s Pioneer Day in 2022. Individuals from both white and African American communities were present and in full celebration. 

Reconciliation was and is a long, active, and on-going process dependent on the consistency of maintaining meaningful relationships and the collaboration of community group leaders from several stakeholder groups including the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints M. Russell Ballard, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, and Ogden, Utah, NAACP Branch President Betty Sawyer. Reconciliation in the context of recognizing the diverse composition of early Utah pioneers requires sharing the narrative of Utah’s early settler history and redistributing curatorial power to include the stories of women and Black people.  

Based on limited observations, the Pioneers of 1847 Monument in the Salt Lake City valley has been well-received. During the site visit, there was a bouquet of flowers at the base of each statue in the series. Furthermore, the Pioneers of 1847 Monument was undoubtedly the most visited site in This is the Place Heritage Park on opening weekend. Any resistance to the monumental addition has not been reported or observed. 

In 2022, Mauli Junior Bonner shared, “I hope that even though we’re talking about some difficult parts of our history, sensitive parts, that we can still look to one another and lift each other up. I hope that this monument will be a place of peace for so many generations to come” (Taylor 2022). Tamu Smith and Mauli Junior Bonner’s activism and initiative, culminating in the installment of the Pioneers of 1847 Monument, continues to reconfigure all spaces of This is The Place Heritage Park and Utah’s Pioneer Day in Salt Lake City. Discussion of pioneers, parades, and events held in one of Salt Lake City’s major parks now permanently co-exists with discussion of the contributions of early African American men and women to the Salt Lake City valley.  

Section 4: Conclusion

This Is The Place Heritage Park is located in an area that has long been considered a space for honoring early Mormon pioneers. After establishment as a state park in 1998, the Park’s historical narrative became officially state-sanctioned. 

Utah citizens Mauli Junior Bonner and Tamu Smith identified a missing piece in the narrative. The history of Black pioneers in the mountain west and specifically the stories of Green Flake, Oscar Smith, Hark Wales, and Jane Manning James were not being told. Despite being key figures in the early Mormon settlement of the area, they had been left out of the Park’s monument landscape. 

The expansion of the historical narrative to tell a more complete and accurate story of early Mormon settlement in Utah was welcomed and supported by the board of This Is The Place Heritage Park, Utah Governor Spencer Cox, and President M. Russell Ballard of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. There was no reported pushback from these leaders. Betty Sawyer, President of the Ogden, Utah, NAACP Branch also demonstrated support for the Pioneers of 1847 monument project. 

Working together, meaningful collaboration was achieved and the movement toward reconciliation was begun. This Is The Place Heritage Park tells a more accurate story of early Mormon settlement in the area. If Green Flake, Oscar Smith, Hark Wales, and Jane Manning James are not mentioned in their history books, children will still learn about their meaningful contributions to Utah history.

Reconciliation efforts can continue by beginning to consider what reconciliation with Utah’s Native communities would entail. The Park includes a Native American Village section. Unless created in collaboration and consultation with the relevant Native groups, depictions of Native history often perpetuates stereotypes and negatively impacts perceptions of Native communities in the present. Considering representation of the area’s first peoples at This Is The Place Heritage Park would be an important step toward a truly representative Utah state history. 

References 

Baker, Bethany. 2022. “History of Black Mormon pioneers now commemorated with new migration monument.” Salt Lake City Tribune. October 11, 2022. YouTube Video. https://youtu.be/QFj9xdAiClg?feature=shared. 

Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 1989: Iss. 1, Article 8. http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8

Denison, Angie. 2022. “New monument at This is the Place Heritage Park honors Black pioneers,” KSL TV5 – NBC News. July 18, 2022. https://ksltv.com/499518/new-monument-at-this-is-the-place-heritage-park-honors-black-pioneers/. 

Goldberg, James and Veronica J. Anderson. 2018. “Autobiography of Jane Elizabeth Manning James,” BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 57: Iss. 4, Article 8. 

Fox, William. 1966. Patrick Edward Connor Father of “Utah” Mining. Theses and Dissertations. 4693. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/4693. 

Krees, Nathan. 2022. “What does the Pioneers Monument say about Utahns in 2022?” Blog Post. July 25, 2022. https://nathankrees.com/what-does-the-pioneers-of-1847-monument-say-about-utahns-in-2022/. 

Madsen, B. D. 1990. Glory hunter: A biography of Patrick Edward Connor. University of Utah Press. 

Musa, Amanda, 2022. “Utah’s Black pioneers in the Mormon migration were honored with a monument.” CNN News. July 22, 2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/22/us/utah-black-pioneers-monument-reaj/index.html.  

National Park Service. N.d. “This is the Place Heritage Park.” Accessed December 9, 2024. https://www.nps.gov/places/this-is-the-place-heritage-park.htm. 

Smith-Mansfield, Tricia. 1994. “This Is The Place Monument.” Utah History Encyclopedia. https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/t/THIS_IS_THE_PLACE_MONUMENT.shtml. 

Taylor, Scott. 2022. “The stories behind the new Pioneers of 1847 monument honoring Black pioneers.” Church News.  July 22, 2022. https://www.thechurchnews.com/2022/7/22/23278589/the-story-behind-the-new-pioneers-of-1847-monument-honoring-black-pioneers/.  

This is the Place Heritage Park. n.d.a. “Pioneers of 1847 Monument.” Accessed December 9, 2024.https://www.thisistheplace.org/general-info/pioneers-of-1847-monument/. 

—n.d.b. “About: This Is The Place Heritage Park.” Accessed December 9, 2024. https://www.thisistheplace.org/about/.