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INDIAN SUMMERS     
     A Memoir of Fort Duchesne 1925-1935     

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GRANDMA ROSE DANIELS

Gene and I were taking turns pushing each other in the big swing that had a wooden seat wide enough for both of to sit on. The swing was hung from a high branch of a tree in the children’s playground. Elmer, Halley and Leroy were waxing the wooden slide with bread wrappers. From the top of the slide Elmer yelled, "There she is. She’s coming through the gate."

Click photo for full image
    Grandma Rose Daniels was a very old woman, nearly a hundred years old, and she looked it. Her face was deeply creased, and her toothless mouth was drawn in. She stood only about five feet tall, because she was stooped with age. About once a week, she came to spend a day with her daughter, Mentora, who worked at the hotel. She rode into the Fort alone, mounted on her great grey stallion, and seated on a beaded blanket instead of a saddle. She wore a sun bonnet, and a long full skirt tucked into her knee-high moccasins. She held the reins loosely in her gloved hands. Her gloves had huge beaded gauntlets, and she wore several strings of beads that hung down over her long-sleeved blouse. In her saddle bags, she carried flowers and vegetables from her garden. She greeted everyone she passed with a nod or a wave. Everyone at the Fort was her friend.
    When she saw us, Grandma’s wrinkled face broke into a grin. We raced toward the hitching post by the hotel, each hoping to be the first to greet Grandma Daniels. Only Elmer was her grandson, but everyone called her Grandma, and we loved her for she had been a grandmother to each one of us. She handed the reins to Elmer, who had been first to reach the hitching post. Slipping off her horse she turned and asked with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, "Have you been good children?"
    "Oh yes, yes," we shouted, crowding around her. One by one she gathered her parcels, finding something for each of us to carry. Like children following the Pied Piper, we trooped across the road and up the sidewalk to the hotel porch, where we deposited her flowers, vegetables, and packages. Grandma walked slowly for she was very old, but she did not limp. When she was seated in her rocking chair, she reached for one of the bags and drew from it a huge round cookie with a big flat raisin pressed into the top. She repeated the gesture of drawing a cookie from her bag until we each had one. As she handed each child a cookie, she asked what we had been doing since her last visit. We reported whatever had been most exciting in the week past, and thanked her for our cookie. When the greetings were over we withdrew, leaving Grandma with her family.
    When I first remember Grandma, she was already nearly ninety years of age. Though frail, she bore herself proudly. She spoke excellent English, having attended public school before coming to Fort Duchesne. My family knew her quite well. The Alfalfa Seed Experimental Farm was just across the river from her ranch, so my father had known her since the farm was established. Her daughters, Ethel and Mentora, were my mother’s close friends. They lived at Fort Duchesne, and their children, Grandma’s real grandchildren, were my classmates in the school at the Fort.
    My earliest memory of Grandma was the day Aunt Phoebe took me, and her daughter, Gene, to visit Grandma’s ranch. We walked on the trail which followed along the river for a mile or so. Crossing the highway, we turned into a tree-lined lane, which led to her small frame house. I was astonished to see growing ‘round Grandma’s door an exact replica of the rambling yellow rose I so admired on Aunt Phoebe’s porch.
    "Why, it’s just like yours," I exclaimed, reaching out to touch a cluster of heavily scented yellow roses.
    "Of course," Aunt Phoebe replied. "It was Grandma who gave me a cutting when we first came to live at Fort Duchesne."
    Grandma waited in her doorway, holding the screen open for us. "Come in, I’ve been waiting for you and I’ve made some cold lemonade." She picked up a glass pitcher, and poured the lemonade into tall glasses. It was so welcome after our long walk. When we were seated she said, "I know you would like some of my chocolate cake." She lifted the cover from a glass plate, revealing a gorgeous cake covered with swirls of chocolate frosting. She cut generous pieces, putting them on china plates and handed one to each of us. Gene and I sat at the table eating our cake, while she and Aunt Phoebe settled in a pair of rocking chairs to visit.
    Grandma’s house was cool and spotlessly clean. The pine floor was scrubbed and shining. We were seated at a small table, covered with a white cloth and a centerpiece of fresh flowers. When we had finished our "tea," Grandma led us on a tour through her garden. There, we wandered among hollyhocks, asters, lilies, and daisies which were planted in rows like her vegetables. Growing along the border of the lane, were her famous roses, which Aunt Phoebe claimed were the most beautiful in the valley. Grandma Daniels had a reputation as a fine horticulturist. She won many prizes at the County Fair for her flowers. She was proud of her flowers, and shared them generously with Indians and Whites.

Everyone who knew Grandma was in awe of her, partly because she was so old, and partly because she was a living legend. I heard her story many times. Grandma was not born a Ute. She was born on the Navaho reservation, living near what was known as Lee’s Ferry.

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The 38th Infantry Band from Salt Lake City. Click for full image   

When Rose was about five years of age, she and her cousin were tending sheep in a box canyon on the Navaho reservation. It was near evening, and they were leading the sheep down the canyon toward home for the night. As they walked along, Rose said she heard a strange noise which she mistook for a flock of wild geese. Suddenly, they were surrounded by a group of men on horses. The girls began to run, but the warriors caught them and tied them to a tree, leaving them tied to the tree all night.
    Next morning, that same band of White River Utes returned with many scalps hanging from their belts. They untied the girls, and took the girls away with them on their horses. Grandma Daniels never saw the Navaho reservation, nor any of her family again. Her captors took her to Colorado, where she lived as a slave with the White River Utes for two or three years. She tried to run away whenever she got the chance, but she was always recaptured and returned to the Ute camp.
    Eventually, she was taken into the Uintah Basin, and sold to the Uintah Band of Utes. Chief Tabby took her into his household, where she lived for another two or three years, caring for his wife who was ill and disabled. When she died, Chief Tabby asked Rose whether she preferred to continue to live with the Indians, or go to live with the Whites. She said she preferred to go to the Whites, so she was taken to Fort Bridger, Wyoming. There, she was sold to Mr. Aaron Daniels, who was living at Fort Bridger with his wife and two daughters. Aaron Daniels was a member of the L.D.S. Church. His father had arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, with the first pioneers. Aaron and his first wife, Caroline, had been called to settle Utah Valley near where Provo was located. When gold was discovered in California, Aaron wanted to go to the gold fields, but Caroline did not want to leave the body of the Church. When she refused to go, Aaron married Harriett Nixon as his second wife, leaving Caroline and her children in Provo.
    Aaron was a rancher, trapper, and prospector. He started up a ranch up the Uintah Mountains. Daniels Creek and Daniels Canyon are named for Aaron Daniels. He trapped in the canyon, and later found a gold mine. When he was told he had to give 10 percent of the gold to the L.D.S. Church as tithing he refused to do it, and apostatized from the church. He was working at Fort Bridger, as a scout and guide, when he acquired Rose to help his second wife, Harriett, and her two children.
    Harriett accepted Rose into the family as a daughter and sister. After some time, they returned to Utah, living at Wanship for several years. Harriett left Aaron because of his heavy drinking. He went to live in Wyoming, and Rose was sent to Provo to live with Caroline.
    Caroline was a cultured lady, who accepted Rose as her own. She taught her homemaking, cooking, cleaning, weaving, spin ning, and sewing, all the skills necessary to make a comfortable pioneer home. Rose attended the Provo public schools with the rest of the Daniels children. After several years Caroline divorced Aaron, and in 1886 she married Abraham Owen Smoot. After the divorce, Rose was sent back to Aaron Daniels.
    He took Rose with him to the Black Hills in South Dakota on a gold mining expedition. After a year they were driven from the area by the Sioux. They returned to the Tintic Mining District where Aaron worked as a miner, but moved from there to Ashley (now Vernal) in the Uintah Basin. When Rose was eighteen years old, she and Aaron were married at Blue Mountain, by Captain Pardon Dodds, acting Indian Agent. They made their home in Jensen, where their two sons, Hal Albert and Walter, were born.
    The Uintah and Uncompahgre Reservations were consolidated at Fort Duchesne as the Uintah and Ouray Reservation. Congress passed an act in 1897, giving individual allotments of land to heads of Indian families. Captain Elisha W. Davis, Acting Agent at Fort Duchesne, helped Rose, who had been adopted by the Utes, apply for her portion. She was given one hundred and sixty acres on the Whiterocks Reservation, north of Fort Duchesne along the Uinta River.
    Rose and Aaron cleared the land, and established a fine ranch where they grew a variety of fruits and vegetables. They raised chickens, horses, cows, pigs, and other animals. Two girls, Ethel and Mentora, were born to them making a family of four children. In 1896, eight years after they established the ranch, Aaron died. This left Rose to care for the children, and keep the ranch producing. He was buried on the ranch in a plot of ground east of the house and above the river.
    Rose continued to live on the ranch. She set to work to make the land productive despite the blasting winds, grasshoppers and drought. She developed her own method of irrigating by lifting the water directly out of the river, and guiding it down the furrows of the garden. Year after year, she planted her vegetable garden, saving the best seeds in little jars. She experimented with many plants, trying many new varieties. She grew prizewinning vegetables and fruits on her farm. She successfully developed a lima bean that thrived in the short dry season of eastern Utah.
    As the years went by, she cared for her home and children, making sure they had schooling until they all married and had children of their own. Rose lived alone in her little home, which was filled with articles of her own handwork, including the fine beadwork for which she was recognized. She took care of her horse, her four children, and her plants. She lived a long and busy life devoted to the care of others. She was the mother and grandmother of four children, twenty-five grandchildren, many great-grandchildren and all those children born to others that she cared for.

    Mama, LeRoy, Virginia. Click for full image

Rose died July 4, 1943. Funeral services were held in the LaPoint Ward Chapel of the Mormon Church, with Bishop George Hacking presiding. She was buried next to her husband in the family plot at the ranch. The inscription on her tombstone reads: "Rose Daniels  1840-1943"
    Everyone loved this small, brown Indian woman with the sparkling eyes known as "Grandma Daniels." She was a familiar sight on her old grey horse that plodded slowly, and made no sound in the soft sand of the Indian trail that wound along the river’s edge shaded by the large willow and cottonwoods.

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