Ira Hatch
Ira Hatch, his personal and family background, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre
Ira Hatch
1835-1909
Biographical Sketch
A native of rural Cattaraugus County in southwest New York, Ira Hatch and his parents' family moved to western Illinois, then frontier Utah, where Hatch pioneered and acted as Indian interpret in southern Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. Hatch was an American frontiersman and Indian interpreter.
Early Life in New York
Hatch was born in Farmerville, Cattaraugus County, New York, the son of Ira Stearns Hatch and Welthea Bradford. Members of the Hatch family joined the Mormons as early as 1832. In the early 1840s, they joined the large Mormon settlement in Hancock County in western Illinois.
Immigration to Utah
In 1849, the family immigrated to Utah, settling initially in northern Utah.
Indian Interpreter in the Southern Indian Mission
In late 1853, Ira Hatch was called to serve in the Southern Indian Mission. Early in 1854, he departed for southern Utah. After arriving at Fort Harmony, he was in a small group who made a brief trip to the Indians living around Panguitch Lake. In 1855, he helped found Fort Clara on the Santa Clara stream in southwestern Utah. During these years they made occasional visits to Cedar City and Fort Harmony for supplies.
Hatch spent many years in service as an Indian missionary/interpreter under the leadership of Jacob Hamblin. Over the years, Hatch learned to speak many Native American languages and dialects.
In the Iron Military District: Private Ira Hatch, Company H, John D. Lee's 4th Battalion
In 1857, the Iron Military District consisted of four battalions led by regimental commander Col. William H. Dame. The platoons and companies in the first battalion drew on men in and around Parowan. (It had no involvement at Mountain Meadows.) Major Isaac Haight commanded the 2nd Battalion whose personnel in its many platoons and two companies came from Cedar City and outer-lying communities to the north such as Fort Johnson. Major John Higbee headed the 3rd Battalion whose many platoons and two companies were drawn from Cedar City and outer-lying communities to the southwest such as Fort Hamilton. Major John D. Lee of Fort Harmony headed the 4th Battalion whose platoons and companies drew on its militia personnel from Fort Harmony, the Southerners at the newly-founded settlement in Washington, the Indian interpreters at Fort Clara, and the new settlers at Pinto.
In 1857, 22-year-old Ira Hatch was a private in one the militia platoons attached to Company H in Major John D. Lee's 4th Battalion in the Iron Military District. See A Basic Account for a full description of the massacre.
During the massacre at Mountain Meadows, it is not clear that Hatch was on the scene although he may have been. Rather, Hatch's alleged involvement was in leading a band of Indians to track down several emigrants who reportedly escaped the fusilade at the Meadows and were fleeing across the Nevada desert toward southern California. In Rocky Mountain Saints, published by T.B.H. Stenhouse in 1873, Hatch is alleged to have tracked several escaping emigrants and to have played some role in killing them.
Explorations in Nevada
In late 1857 and 1858, while helping Mormon settlers return from southern California to Utah, Hatch explored along the Muddy River in (modern-day) southern Nevada. Hatch and Dudley Leavitt met a band of Iyats who proved to be hostile. When they threatened to kill Hatch and Leavitt, Hatch requested the privilege of praying to the Great Spirit to softened their hearts. Ultimately, they released Hatch and Leavitt unharmed and they returned to Fort Clara in southern Utah. Several years later, Mormon settlers moved into the region explored by Hatch, Dudley Leavitt and others to found the settlements of St. Thomas, St. Joseph and Overton on the Muddy River.
In spring 1858, while Hatch was still in Nevada, he encountered Thomas L. Kane, the negotiator bound for Utah with the intent of resolving the differences which had precipitated the Utah War the previous year. Hatch rendered some assistance to Kane in his passage. Later, Kane arrived safely in Great Salt Lake City and by summer 1858, he was successful in defusing the armed confrontation between the federal government and the Mormons in Utah Territory.
A Frequent Member of Jacob Hamblin's Expeditions to the Hopi Mesas
In 1858, Hatch and many others joined Jacob Hamblin's first expedition across Navajo lands to the Hopi mesas in northeastern Arizona. At the end of the 1862 expedition, when Hamblin and the expedition returned north to Utah, Hatch was one of three interpreters left behind to become better acquainted with Hopi ways.
Over his career, Hatch accompanied Hamblin on a variety of other expeditions or diplomatic missions into Arizona.
Family Life
By 1859, Hatch had married Amanda (Mandy) Melvina Pace (1842-1861). She died before reaching the age of 20 and there were no children from this marriage.
In the same year, he also married Sarah (Marahboots) Dyson (1843-1873). According to Juanita Books, she was the daughter of the noted Navajo headman Spaneshanks and a Paiute woman. Sarah had been raised in the household of Andrew Gibbons, a fellow Indian interpreter.
The place of birth of their children reflect their frequent moves during the 1860s and 1870s, back and forth several times between southern Utan and southern Nevada and finally to Kanab in Kane County, Utah. Their children were:
- Ira Stearn, May 8, 1862, St. George, Washington, Utah;
- James Henry, August 18, 1864, Meadow Valley, Lincoln, Nevada;
- Amanda Mariah, June 25, 1867, St. George, Washington, Utah;
- Joseph Wilford, January 9, 1870, Panaca, Lincoln, Nevada; and
- Sarah Rhoana, August 16, 1872, Kanab, Kane, Utah.
The Black Hawk War
In 1865, hostilities and depredations by Ute raiders under the leadership of Ute headman Black Hawk led to the largest of the Mormon-Indian wars, the Black Hawk War. It was probably in this period that the Paiute headman Minerro led raids on livestock in Santa Clara and Gunlock in southern Utah. Hatch was part of an ad hoc company from these settlements who rode through the Paiute encampment several miles north of Gunlock and killed Minerro to stop the depredations.
In 1866, at the behest of Mormon leader Erastus Snow, Hatch led a group who visited the Shivwits and Kaibab bands of Paiutes to maintain peaceful relations. In spring 1867, Jacob Hamblin, Hatch, Jesse W. Crosby and James Andrus led Erastus Snow on an exploration of a 45-mile stretch of the Colorado River above its confluence with the Virgin River. They headed south from St. George across the Arizona Strip and descended Grand Wash to the Colorado. There Snow and Hatch headed northwest to the Mormon settlement of St. Thomas on the Muddy River. Hamblin and his companions pitched into the Colorado in a small skiff and ran a previously unrun stretch of the river to its confluence with the Virgin. Then heading upstream on the Virgin, they rejoined Snow and Hatch. After visiting Mormon settlers on the Muddy, they returned to St. George.
By 1868, hostilities between Utes and Mormons had largely ended. However, Navajos continued crossing the Colorado River to raid Mormon settlements in southern Utah. In 1870, Jacob Hamblin rode to Ft. Defiance, New Mexico, where he negotiated a peace treaty with Barboneito, one of the leading headmen of the Navajos.
The following year, Erastus Snow, with Ira Hatch as his interpreter, continued these negotiations in Kanab with a group of Navajos led by Ketchene. However, there continued to be unrest and depredations until a final settlement was reached in 1872.
Among the Original Mormon Colonists in Arizona
Hatch had accompanied Jacob Hamblin on several journeys to Arizona in the 1860s. In the winter of 1872-73, Hatch and other were with Hamblin again in the Arizona Exploring Company to reconnoiter the Little Colorado River, Rio Verde and the San Francisco Mountains. Beginning in the late 1870s, Hatch accompanied Mormon colonizers as they moved from Utah into Arizona, moving upstream on the Little Colorado River in search of suitable locations to settle. Hatch later worked with Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, and other tribes in Arizona and New Mexico.
Marriage to Nancy Julia Pipkin Kirk
In 1882, he married Nancy Julia Pipkin Kirk (1842-1922) of Hardin County, Tennessee, the daughter of Aser Pipkin and Margaret Foster. Twice widowed, Nancy and her children had accompanied her family west to a Mormon colony where she met Ira Hatch. Hatch became the father figure to Nancy's young children and she would bear Hatch two more children.
Final Move to New Mexico
In later years, Hatch and his family pushed eastward to Ramah, McKinley County, in northwest New Mexico. In April 1883, Jesse N. Smith noted that Hatch was made a counselor to the bishop in Navajo (later Ramah) in western New Mexico. In May 1886, Smith noted that Ira Hatch was one of 15 assigned as Indian missionaries in the region encompassing eastern Arizona and western New Mexico. When Smith and other church officials visited Ramah in September of that year, Smith noted that they enjoyed the hospitality of Ira Hatch and others during their stay.
Eventually, Hatch and his family moved farther north to San Juan County at the extreme northwest corner of New Mexico where it intersects Arizona, Utah and Colorado in the Four Corners area. Hatch remained there for the rest of his life.
Final Years
Ira Hatch died in 1909 at Fruitland, San Juan County, New Mexico and was buried there.
Juanita Brooks offered a summation of Ira Hatch's life work: "Always he lived on the frontier, moving as he was called to places where tact in Indian relations was needed." (Brooks, Journal of the Southern Indian Mission, 21-22, fn. 22.)
References
Alder and Brooks, A History of Washington County, 132; Aird, Bagley and Nichols, Playing With Shadows, 268; Bagley, Blood of the Prophets, 34, 142, 160-69,183-84, 219; Bigler and Bagley, Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives, 36, 39, 111, 147, 149-50, 155, 240, 242, 258, 468; Bradley, A History of Kane County, 67; Bradshaw, ed., Under Dixie Sun: A History of Washington County, 25, 30, 36, 62, 130, 132, 146, 214, 220; Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, 98-99, 117, 130-32, 136, 142, 231; Brooks, On the Ragged Edge: The Life and Times of Dudley Leavitt, 79-80; Brooks, ed., Journal of the Southern Indian Mission, 2, 6, 21, 21 fn. 22 (biographical sketch), 22, 28, 38, 67, 76, 78, 82, 83, 86, 93; Campbell, Establishing Zion, Carter, Heart Throbs of the West, 10:456; Daughters of Utah Pioneers, Enduring Legacy, 12:389-90; Esshom, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, 924; Fielding, ed., The Tribune Reports of the Trails of John D. Lee, 32; Jenson, Encyclopedic History of the Latter-day Saints, 554 (Muddy Mission), 572 (Nevada), 776 (Santa Clara Ward); Knack, Boundaries Between: The Southern Paiutes, 70; Krenkel, ed., Life and Times of Joseph Fish, 62; Larson, I Was Called to Dixie, 10, 23, 38, 44, 161; Larson, Diary of Charles Lowell Walker, 268; Larson, Erastus Snow, 315, 396, 442; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 270; Lee Trial transcripts; Moorman and Sessions, Camp Floyd and the Mormons, 34, 140; New.FamilySearch.org; Novak, House of Mourning, 144; Peterson, Take Up Your Mission, 6-7, 202; Reeve, Making Space on the Western Frontier, 38, 50, 67, 88, 108; Robinson, ed., History of Kane County, 3, 14, 17, 32, 39, 59, 60, 67, 72, 224; Smith, ed., Journal of Jesse N. Smith, 271, 326, 329; Solomon, Joseph Knight, 89, 100, 104, 128; Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: Jenson and Morris Collections, 14; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, 223-25, Appendix C, 258; Whitaker, History of Santa Clara, Utah, 81-115.
For full bibliographic information see Bibliography.
External Links
For further information on Ira Hatch, see:
- http://mountainmeadowsmassacre.org/appendices/appendix-c-the-militiamen
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Hatch
- http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=17832459
- Nancy Julia Pipkin Hatch: http://www.pipkinusa.org/nancyjulia.txt
Further information and confirmation needed. Please contact editor@1857ironcountymilitia.com.
