Beautiful Yard Award

Congratulations to this month’s winners of the Syracuse Beautiful Yard Awards! Code Enforcement has been busy contacting nominees and recognizing outstanding residents for their efforts in beautifying our community.

Do you have a beautiful yard or know someone who does?

Have you gone above and beyond to beautify and improve your yard? Or have you noticed a home with exceptional landscaping? Nominate a beautiful yard by scanning the QR code or visiting tinyurl.com/Beautiful-Yard-Award today.

BY SABRINA LEE

Long before the pioneers crossed the plains and decided that “This is the place,” indigenous peoples had made Utah their home. They moved with the seasons, never really making permanent villages as they followed the sources of food. Traces of where they lived, hunted, played, and died are found all through Davis and Weber County. Above Farmington, on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, is a historic marker for the grave of a Goshute/ Shoshone woman and her daughter.

In May of 1861, Deseret News reported the following:

"On Saturday last, a young squaw, daughter of Little Soldier, died in his camp near Point of the Mountain, between G. S. L. and Lehi. The body was taken north for internment on some creek or in some ravine in the vicinity of Farmington. The funeral party passed through this city that evening, with the body wrapped in a blanket, and lashed on a pony, together with some provisions and other things that were to be deposited with the body of the deceased. A fine young pony was also taken to be killed by strangulation at the place of internment."

In 1989, a boy scout troop, the U.S. Forest Service, the Utah Statewide Archeological Society, and the Shoshone

Nation worked together to restore the grave site. For generations the site had been vandalized. Artifacts, and even some of the skeletal remains, had been taken. It is believed that the site had been a burial area for multiple indigenous people. With the consultation of the Bureau of Land Management, the scout troops spread concrete over open gravesites and then replaced the stones that had been scattered about. Present at the re-dedication of the burial site was the great-granddaughter of Chief Little Soldier, Florence Garcia. She retold the oral history of the gravesite to Deseret News in July of 1989. The Shoshone oral tradition is that the grave site is that of the daughter of Chief Little Soldier. She was cursed by the tribal medicine man that she would die in childbirth for refusing to marry him. She instead married a warrior. She died in childbirth, just as the medicine man had said she would. She was buried with a pony and the live baby. Later, Chief Little Soldier had the medicine man killed. Efforts like this, to restore and preserve indigenous artifacts and sacred sites, are an important part of historical preservation. Had no efforts been made, this site could have just been left to disappear. And maybe even the story that Florence was handed down orally, and no doubt handed down to her children, could have been lost forever. Now, 34 years after the preservation effort, the gravesite and story of Chief Little Soldier's daughter has been shared and visited by a countless number of people, and preserved for the future, never to again be forgotten. For more information on the Northwestern Band of Shoshone please visit nwbshosone.com.

Turning Back The Clock