The Walker War

The war took its name from Wakara — Walker, to the settlers — the Ute leader whose horsemen ruled the Old Spanish Trail. Wakara had invited the Mormons into the Sanpete valleys in 1849. But as their farms and herds swallowed Ute hunting grounds, and a territorial law ended the slave trade his power rested on, the welcome curdled into war. Fighting flared through 1853, then ended not by treaty but by parley: in May 1854 Brigham Young rode south to Wakara's camp with gifts, and they made a peace that held until his death the next year.

What the plaque says

You are a fool for fighting your best friends, for we are the best and the only friends that you have in the world" wrote Brigham Young to the Ute Indian Chief Walkara in 1853, after the latter had engaged the settlers of Utah in their first major Indian war. Angered because the whites had put an end to the Indian slave trade in the territory and had encroached upon their lands, the redmen found a pretext for beginning hostilities at Springville, July 17, 1853, when an Indian, while beating his squaw, was killed by a white man. The following day, Alexander Keele, a guard at Payson, was shot by Indians and the war was on. The policy of the white defenders was one of vigilant watch and limited offensive warfare. However before Governor Brigham Young led a peace mission into Walkara's camp in May 1854 that ended the conflict, 20 whites had been killed including the U.S. Government surveyor Captain John W. Gunnison, who was massacred with 7 of his men near the present site of Hinckley, Utah.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Payson Lakes — 9.0 mi
  Three alpine lakes in the pines, twelve miles up Payson Canyon
• Nebo Loop Summit — 13 mi
  The byway's 9,300-foot high point, with Utah Valley spread out below
• Thistle Landslide — 13 mi
  The ruins of a town destroyed by a massive landslide in 1983
• Mount Nebo — 15 mi
  At 11,928 feet, the highest and southernmost peak in the Wasatch Range

More markers nearby

• Payson City Hall — 0.5 mi
• Payson's Pioneer Industries — 0.5 mi
• Keele Monument — 0.6 mi
• Our Pioneers — 0.7 mi