10 OF SWORDS

Joshua Baird
Sep 17, 2023
9 min read

Updated: Sep 30

"1850: Extermination & Expulsion of the Timpanogos"

THE TRADITIONAL TAROT

KEY IDEAS: Betrayal, Bitterness, Collapse, Crisis, Dead end, Deep wounds, Exhaustion, Failure, Loss, Painful endings, Ruin, Victimization. REVERSED: Healing, Improvement, Lessons learned, Recovery, Regeneration, Resisting an inevitable end, Survival.

ALTERNATIVE NAME: "The Lord of Ruin"

THE BIDDY TAROT: "The Ten of Swords marks a painful yet inevitable ending. For example, a relationship may come to an abrupt end, your job may be cut, or a contract is broken. It is as if this ending has come out of the blue and rocked your world. You could have never expected it, but now it has happened, cutting to the core and leaving you feeling as if the world has crumbled in around you. You are grieving the pain of this shocking loss and wonder if you will ever love or find work or trust again....When the Ten of Swords appears in a Tarot reading, you may be the victim of another person’s betrayal or deceit. You feel as if you have been stabbed in the back and are reeling from someone else’s actions....The pain inflicted runs deep not because what they have done is hurtful, but because you know deep down that this marks the end of your relationship as you know it with them. Along with feeling the pain, you may grieve the loss of the relationship....In that way, the Ten of Swords is about letting go and accepting your current circumstances. You no longer resist change but allow it to happen, even if it causes initial pain and hurt to you." [1]

THE LABYRINTHOS TAROT: "The Ten of Swords indicates a major disaster of some sort. It shows that a certain force of extreme magnitude has come to hit you in your life - one that you may have not foreseen. There is a sense of betrayal that is indicated here, for the character is stabbed in the back. This seems to be a reminder that despite how much we try, we cannot control everything - there are things that are beyond our ability to change. Here, this situation is unavoidable....The tale of the suit of swords is a powerful metaphor, one that ends in tragedy. The swords are a symbol of the intellect, of intelligence and logic, and yet we find the final culmination of this suit a complete and total defeat of the spirit. We must realize that the swords are a weapon that can have immense potential for destruction or for good. The story as it unfolds from the ace to the ten is one where an untrained individual uses this weapon for faulty reasons - makes many mistakes, and then spends an entire lifetime attempting to run away from the power that he misused." [2]

ATTRIBUTIONS & ASSOCIATIONS

ALCHEMICAL: Mutable air

ASTROLOGICAL: Sun in Gemini

SEASON: Spring

GEMSTONE: Clear quartz

ANSWER: No

THE MORMON TAROT

GO AND KILL THEM: "Brigham Young sent Wells to lead the army with the expanded mission "not to leave the valley until every Indian was out"...."I say go [and] kill them. . . . let the women and children live if they behave themselves. . . . We have no peace until the men [are] killed off—never treat the Indian as your equal." —Brigham Young

DO THE WORK UP CLEAN: "Take no hostile Indians as prisoners" and "let none escape but do the work up clean". —General Wells

PEACE OR EXTERMINATION: "If the Indians sue for peace, grant it to them, according to your discretion and judgment in the case. If they continue hostile pursue them until you use them up – Let it be peace with them or extermination." —Brigham Young

GENOCIDE: "Article II...In the present [Geneva] Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." [5]

INVASION & A FALSE OATH TO THE SUN GOD: "On March 10, 1849, Brigham Young assigned 30 families to settle Utah Valley, with John S. Higbee as president and translator Dimick B. Huntington and Isaac Higbee as counselors. They headed towards Timpanogos territory with 30 families or 150 people. It is likely that the settlers arrived on April 1 and began construction of the fort on April 3. The Timpanogos viewed this as an invasion of their territory and sacred land. As the settlers came in, they were actively blocked by a group of Timpanogos led by An-kar-tewets with warnings that trespassing would be met with death and destruction. D. Robert Carter suggests that An-kar-tewets was probably demanding a tribute for the travels of the caravan through their territory. Later, a Timpanogos chief met with Huntington, possibly Black Elk. Huntington said that the settlement would be beneficial for the Timpanogos. The chief consented to let the Mormons settle there after Huntington rose his hand and swore by the sun god that they would not try to drive the Timpanogos off their lands or take away their rights."

THE FORT: "Fort Utah (also known as Fort Provo) was the original white settlement at Provo, Utah, United States, and was established March 12, 1849....Several log houses were erected, surrounded by a 14-foot (4.3 m) palisade 20 by 40 rods in size (330 by 165 feet [101 by 50 m]) with gates in the east and west ends, and a middle deck for the cannon. The surrounding land was divided into 58, 5-acre (2 ha) lots."

RELATIONS ARE DISSOLVED: "Relations between the two groups started familiarly, with Mormons and Timpanogos fishing and gambling together. Brigham Young disapproved of their familiarity with one another and advised Huntington and Alexander Williams to be the sole traders. Parley P. Pratt visited and made rules against gambling with the Timpanogos and against shooting near the fort."

THE TIMPONOGOS BEGIN TO STARVE: "The fort was built on the sacred grounds for the annual fish festival and very close to the main Timpanogos village on the Provo River. The settlers fenced off pastures. Their cattle would eat and trample the seeds and berries that were an important part of the Timpanogos diet. They used gill nets to catch fish, which didn't leave any fish for the Timpanogos to eat. With the traditional sources of food gone, they soon experienced massive starvation. The settlers also brought measles, which was foreign to the Timpanogos, and they began dying in large numbers."

TIMPANOGOS KILLED AT BATTLE CREEK: "Around February 1849, Dimick B. Huntington spoke with Timpanogos leader Little Chief about some of the settlers' missing cattle. Little Chief said that Roman Nose and Blue Shirt were great thieves who had decided to live off of the settlers' cattle all winter. Little Chief said that the Mormons should kill these renegades, perhaps out of fear that his tribe would be blamed and killed for the missing cattle. Captain John Scott took fifty men into Utah Valley to put a "final end" to the "depredations." On March 3, 1849, Scott's men made their way down the Provo river and asked Little Chief and his camp about where the renegades were. Little Chief's tribe was understandably worried about the fifty armed men, and Little Chief agreed to show Scott where the renegades were. Little Chief's two sons guided Scott's men to the renegade's camp near Battle Creek Canyon. Scott's men surrounded the camp, which consisted of several men and their families. The Timpanogos refused to talk and opened fire on the company, even though they were considerably weaker. Scott's men dropped rocks on the renegades in the creek, which caused the women and children to surrender. Pareyarts and Opecarry (aka Stick-in-the-Head), leaders of local Timpanogos tribes, watched the settlers "relentlessly shoot down" the remaining Timpanogos. This contributed to their later mistrust of the settlers during the events preceding the Battle at Fort Utah."

IMAGE: Fort Utah on the Timpanogas River

STANSBURY APPROVES EXTERMINATION: "In 1850, he advised Brigham Young on the extermination of the Timpanogos, which he said "could not but meet my entire approval" and gave supplies for the Battle at Fort Utah." [4]

IMAGE: Daniel Hammer Wells, husband to Emmaline Blanche Wells, Lieutenant General of the Nauvoo Legion, LDS Apostle, dedicated the St. George Temple, First president of the Manti Temple, SLC Mayor and drafted Special Order # 2 to exterminate the Timpanogus along with the Bishop of Fort Utah, the First Presidency & Quorum of the 12 Apostles.

AN APOSTOLIC CAMPAIGN OF EXTERMINATION & EXPULSION: On January 31, 1850, Isaac Higbee, who had replaced John Higbee as bishop of Fort Utah, met with Governor Brigham Young, militia leader General Daniel H. Wells and the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to petition Young for a war order. He stated that all the occupants of Fort Utah were in agreement that they should go to war. Apostles Parley P. Pratt and Willard Richards argued for the killing of the Timpanogos, since losing Fort Utah would cut off communication to the southern Utah colonies. Young was also concerned that losing Fort Utah would disrupt his plans to settle other fertile valleys and have a route to California. He ordered an extermination campaign against the Timpanogos, with orders to kill all the Timpanogos men, but to spare the women and children if they behaved. General Wells drafted the extermination order as Special Order No. 2 and sent them to Captain George D. Grant. In his letter, he told Grant "Take no hostile Indians as prisoners" and "let none escape but do the work up clean".

IMAGE: Kyhv Peak's former name of Squaw Peak was reportedly derived from Big Elk's wife who died there trying to escape the Mormon militia.

IMAGE: Drawing of Timpanogos leader Pareyarts (Old Elk) and his wife.

MURDERS IN ROCK CANYON: "Brigham Young sent Wells to lead the army with the expanded mission "not to leave the valley until every Indian was out." On February 11, Wells split the army into two. One contingent, under Captain Grant's command, followed the trail of some Timpanogos who had fled up Rock Canyon; Black Hawk helped the militia to track the fleeing Timpanogos. They set up camp at the mouth of the canyon, where they took 23 prisoners and found about a dozen dead bodies, including the body of Pareyarts. Further up the canyon, they found more tepees and killed more Timpanogos and took more prisoners. Some of the prisoners were later executed. Ope-carry, Patsowet, and their families: six women and seven children, managed to flee over the mountains using snowshoes they made in the canyon. According to Edward Tullidge, Pareyarts's young, beautiful, and intelligent wife was found dead in Rock Canyon. One account says that one of the Timpanogos women killed herself by falling from a precipice. It is possible that the woman was Pareyarts's wife, and local legends say that Squaw Peak was named for her."

BETRAYAL, TERRORISM & MURDER: "Lieutenant Gunnison of the Stansbury Expedition reported that the Mormons promised to be friendly to the Timpanogos men. They held them prisoner overnight; but then in the morning lined up the Timpanogos men to be executed in front of their families. Some attempted to flee across the frozen lake, but the Mormons ran after them on horseback and shot them. At least eleven Timpanogos men were killed; one account reports as many as twenty. The family members were then taken captive....Later in the day on February 14, the Nauvoo Legion spotted five more Timpanogos men on horseback, and killed three of them. On February 15, they killed three more Timpanogos men on the Peteetneet river, probably members of Chief Peteetneet's tribe. On February 17, they killed another Timpanogos person in Rock Canyon. In total, one militia man and an estimated 102 Timpanogos were killed."

IMAGE: Utah Indian prisoners under the common platform in Fort Utah.

DECAPITATION & DECIMATION OF THE TIMPANOGOS: "A government surgeon, James Blake, went to the execution site and cut off the Timpanogos' heads for later examination. Captain Howard Stansbury wanted the heads for "future scientific study" and planned to take them to Washington. Around 50 decapitated Timpanogos heads were gathered. They were supposed to be shipped to Salt Lake, but they were held up to be displayed in front of the prisoners at Fort Utah as a warning. The prisoners, including those who sought shelter in the fort before the war, were left in the cold under the fort's cannon, some of whom were dying from exposure. William Potter, who was upset at the condition, petitioned for blankets for the prisoners, which were eventually given. More than forty prisoners, mostly women and children, were taken and placed with Mormon families "as servants" in Salt Lake City "for the purpose of weaning them from their savage pursuits, and bringing them up in the habits of civilized and Christian life". It did not go as planned, as many died and most escaped to live with other Ute bands, especially in the spring. News of the enslavement reached the US Government, and became one of the first priorities of Edward Cooper after he was appointed as Indian Agent of Utah later that year."

THE EXECUTION OF CHIEF PETEETNEET: "Chief Peteetneet, Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah and Chief Grospean discovered the decapitated bodies and asked Fort Utah about the bodies. Patsowet returned to the Salt Lake area and killed livestock belonging to Mormons in retaliation for the violence done to his tribe and threatened to kill Walkara's animals. Patsowet was then arrested and put on trial for the murder of the Mormon militiaman killed at Fort Utah. Patsowet was convicted and executed."