walking a line - ben sang

One of the most interesting anomalies about Ephraim, for me, is that there are two cemeteries. The main one is called Ephraim Park Cemetery, is large, well-groomed, and displays Scandinavian flags at its entrance onto Main Street. The other cemetery is called Ephraim Pioneer Cemetery, a less-well-kept cemetery with many ancient and toppled gravestones, located about two miles north of the main cemetery, only accessible through a frontage road.

On October 17, 1865, after tensions had risen for years between the Native American Ute tribe and Mormon settlers who had taken their land, a young and bold chief, Black Hawk, gathered together a band of warriors and, after stealing thousands of cattle and horses, carried out one of the more violent attacks of what would become known as the Black Hawk War and killed 7 settlers (five men, one of their wives, and a 17-year-old girl) in Cottonwood Canyon and in the fields at its mouth. They also came across a 2-year-old boy in the fields but left him unharmed.

Although I have been unable to dig up any evidence to verify stories, several Ephraim locals have told me that the reason for Ephraim's two cemeteries and for the Ephraim Pioneer Cemetery being located several miles out of town was that because Mormon settlers were bringing the 7 bodies of the killed settlers back to Ephraim to bury, but had to quickly return to battle the Utes, they hastily buried them all in one grave outside of town and it ended up becoming an official cemetery until Ephraim Park Cemetery was established years later. This local legend explaining the positioning can't be defended through any of my internet research, but the mass grave does exist in Ephraim Pioneer Cemetery.

I have always struggled with historic racial conflicts like these for two main reasons: The first is that the White Man is the perpetrator of many of these issues. I struggle to know that some of my ancestors would have caused something like this but at the same time I feel no real guilt because I live my own life out in a way that treats all as equal, regardless of cultural practices, race, sexual orientation, etc. The second reason I have issues is that these conflicts always boil down to the differences between two different lifestyles and their competition for dominance. Neither is bad or wrong.

In this case, both sides played the aggressor as well as the harmed throughout different stages of their conflicts. I want to be able to empathize with both sides and memorialize their existence as well as meditate on their differences that lead to conflict that could have possibly been avoided altogether. To do this I drew a burdened line between Ephraim Park Cemetery and Ephraim Pioneer Cemetery, noting their different locations and their uncomfortable and unfortunate cause.

I equipped myself with a backpacking pack and filled it completely with the heaviest things I could find that would fit well (in this case: encyclopedias), in an attempt to mimic carrying the weight of a small person. I then carried the pack the distance from the Ephraim Park Cemetery and the Ephraim Pioneer Cemetery, concluding at the mass grave erected in honor of the seven settlers that had been killed. At this site I found medium-sized stones and made a circle around the large gravestone, a custom that certain Utes practiced around the gravesites of their own kinmen that had died.