FEATURE — The history of early Utah is usually told through the lives of men whose exploits seem larger than life.
But there were others, often unknown and unheralded women, who bore the brunt of carving out homes on the ragged edge of the frontier.
Their lives are examples of grit and resilience.
This is the story of one such woman, one whose life was further complicated by being caught between two cultures.
Sarah Maraboots Hatch, daughter of a Navajo father and Paiute mother, with her son Joseph, circa 1871, location not specified | Photo courtesy of Memories in FamilySearch.org, St. George News
Maraboots was born in 1843 near Jacob Lake on the Kaibab Plateau to a Navajo father, Tanigoots, and a Kaibab Paiute mother, Unka Poetes. From her father, Maraboots was taught that the Diné passed through three worlds before emerging into this one.
She learned of the four directions, the four seasons, the first four clans and the four colors associated with the four sacred mountains. From her mother, she was taught that supernatural power is present in all living things, as well the sun, moon, stars and wind.
From both parents, Maraboots learned that singing shamans could ease suffering and ward off evil forces.
Although it meant little to the family, men thousands of miles away in Mexico City considered the land on which they lived to be part of Mexico.
That is until 1848, when men thousands of miles to the east declared their home now to be part of the United States. Changes first appeared in 1851, when the Army built Fort Defiance on what was prime Navajo grazing land to the south, an act that caused intense fighting between soldiers and warriors.
But it was an event closer to home that turned Maraboots life upside down when, in 1855 her mother died. A short time later her father made a fateful decision that changed the course of her life.
When Maraboots was still a child, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had fled troubles of their own in the American heartland and emigrated to the Great Basin.
By the early 1850s they were creating settlements close to her home. Unlike other pioneers who saw Indians as a threat to be eliminated, Latter-day Saints believed they were part of the House of Israel who should be brought back into the fold and taught to farm.
To that end, in 1854 LDS President Brigham Young sent Jacob Hamblin, Andrew Gibbons, Ira Hatch, Dudley Leavitt and others to establish an Indian Mission on the banks of the Santa Clara River.
Ira Hatch in a photo taken in 1873, the year his wife, Sarah, died, location not specified | Photo courtesy of FamilySearch.org, St. George News
Ira Hatch was a young convert from New York who embraced his calling. Within a year of his arrival, he set out for the Kaibab Plateau to preach to the Native Americans there. Among those he met was a recently widowed tribal elder named Tanigoots.
For reasons lost to time, Tanigoots offered to trade his 12-year-old daughter Maraboots for a horse and a gun. Hatch agreed to the trade and returned to Fort Clara where Andrew and Rizpah Gibbons, a young couple with children of their own, agreed to take her into their family. They called her Sarah.
During the four years she lived with the Gibbons, Sarah learned to speak their language and adapt to their way of life. She learned that Mormons sang songs to their creator, had their own shamans who healed the sick, and worshiped a bearded man whom they believed had been sacrificed for their sins.
Throughout this time, her adoptive father, together with Jacob Hamblin, Ira Hatch, and other Indian missionaries traveled throughout Southern Utah and Northern Arizona sharing their religion with the Paiutes, Hopis and Navajos, to mixed results.
In the fall of 1859, the Indian missionaries traveled to Salt Lake City to tell Brigham Young of their labors. While there, Ira Hatch married 17-year-old Amanda Pace of Bountiful. Brigham Young encouraged the Indian missionaries to also take Indian wives to help with their work.
Upon returning to Santa Clara two weeks later, Ira took 16-year-old Sarah as a plural wife. Polygamy was not unknown among the Native Americans of the time, nor was marriage at a tender age. But with her marriage to Ira Hatch, Sarah lost whatever vestiges of childhood remained and added to the complications of her cross-cultural existence.
The following year, Hatch, Hamblin, Gibbons and others left Fort Clara for a third visit to the Hopi people of Moenkopi, near present day Tuba City. Sarah joined them, as did a new Indian missionary, 18-year-old George A. Smith Jr., son of LDS Apostle George A. Smith.
George A. Smith Jr. in a photo taken in 1860, shortly before he was killed on his way to a mission to the Hopis, Navajos and Paiutes of Northern Arizona | Photo courtesy of Memories in FamilySearch.org, St. George News
As the missionaries approached Moenkopi, they encountered a group of Navajo men returning to their homes in Northern Arizona. According to later accounts, they recognized Sarah as the daughter of Tanigoots and tried to take her from the missionaries.
In response, Ira Hatch struck one of them on the face with his quirt, drawing blood. The angry Navajos backed off for the moment but continued to harass the Mormons as they continued their journey.
Two days later, young Smith found that his horse had wandered away and he rode off to find it. When he was out of sight of the camp the Navajos seized their chance and shot him. Hearing the shot, his companions rushed to find him mortally wounded.
After hastily burying him, they headed back to Fort Clara, traveling through the night from fear of further bloodshed. The missionaries believed it was only due to the Navajos’ recognizing Sarah as one of their own that spared further killing.
What Sarah thought of the confrontation can only be imagined, but it likely brought into stark relief the reality of being caught between two cultures. Upon their return to Fort Clara, Ira learned that his other wife, Amanda, and her newborn son, had died while they were away.
Life for Sarah and Ira was hard, and soon to get harder. In fall 1861, they realized that Sarah was pregnant but their happiness was cut short when early in the new year torrential rains turned the normally placid Santa Clara River into a raging torrent that destroyed everything in its path.
That included their home and everyone else’s that were living at Fort Clara. They narrowly escaped with their lives. That spring, their circumstances brightened with the birth of a baby boy they named Ira.
But whatever comforts they may have enjoyed were short-lived as Ira was sent further south to preach to the Moapa Indians on the Muddy River in Southern Nevada.
The blended family of Ira Hatch and Nancy Kirk, likely taken near the time of their wedding in 1882. The four younger children are Nancy’s by an earlier marriage, the four older children are from Sarah Maraboots, location not specified | Photo courtesy Memories in FamilySearch.org, St. George News
While living there, Sarah gave birth to three more children: a son James, a daughter Amanda, and a son, Joseph.
Ira and Sarah made their final move in 1870 when Brigham Young sent colonists to Kane County to settle Kanab.
The Hatchs joined Jacob Hamblin and others to preach to the nearby Paiute, Hopi and Navajo. Ira built a red adobe home there, which provided some relief from the stifling summer heat but which did little to relieve their isolation.
But it was a good move for Sarah, as she was now closer to friends and family among the nearby Kaibab Paiutes.
In the summer of 1872, Sarah gave birth to their fifth child, a daughter they named for her mother. It was a hard delivery which left Sarah in poor health.
With Ira gone much of the time with his missionary work, Sarah and the baby moved to Panguitch to be with Ira’s sister, Rhoana, whose husband, James Henrie, operated the sawmill there.
But Sarah’s health declined and she died in the spring of 1873. Baby Sarah, not yet a year old, died three months later. They are buried in the Panguitch cemetery.
Navajo leaders Barboncita, Manuelito and an unknown man, near the time of the death of George A. Smith Jr., date and location not specified | Photo courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian Institution, St. George News
Ira was left to raise their four children by himself until ten years later, in 1882, when he married Nancy Kirk, a widow with four children of her own.
Finally, during the height of the polygamy raids of the time, Ira joined Jacob Hamblin in fleeing Utah to start over in New Mexico where he lived out the rest of his years.
He died in 1909 in Fruitland, New Mexico. His and Sarah Maraboots legacy is still honored by their large posterity in the American Southwest.
Editor’s note: Sources for this article were Memories of Ira Hatch, Sarah Maraboots Dyson, Jacob Hamblin, and George A. Smith Jr. found on FamilySearch.org.
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