ABOUT THIS BOOK

In this remarkable and deeply felt book, Virginia Kerns uncovers the singular and forgotten life of a young Indian woman who was captured in 1847 in what was then Mexican territory. Sold to a settler, a son-in-law of Brigham Young, the woman spent the next thirty years as a servant to Young’s family. Sally, as they called her, lived in the shadows, largely unseen. She was later remembered as a “wild” woman made “tame” who happily shed her past to enter a new and better life in civilization.

Drawing from a broad range of primary sources, Kerns retrieves Sally from obscurity and reconstructs her complex life before, during, and after captivity. This true story from the American past resonates deeply in the current moment, attentive as it is to killing epidemics and racial injustices. In telling Sally’s story, Kerns presents a new narrative of the American West.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Virginia Kerns is a writer, teacher, and professor emerita of anthropology at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. She is the author of three previous books, including the award-winning Scenes from the High Desert: Julian Steward’s Life and Theory.

REVIEWS

“Sally’s story is an important one, and Kerns does it justice with her beautifully crafted book.”—Mormon Studies Review

“An intriguing sociocultural look at Utah’s early settler-colonizers and the Lion House’s complex polygamous world. . . . Kerns takes her readers on a journey of discovery to find the real Sally.”—Utah Historical Quarterly

“A haunting story of displacement and resilience. . . . Kerns argues persuasively that many of Sally’s qualities, such as industriousness and sharing—attributed by settlers to their 'civilizing' influence—were products of her Pahvant upbringing.”—Journal of Mormon History

“Kerns deserves kudos for what she has accomplished here: a beautifully written, thought-provoking history of settler colonialism in Utah Territory, personalized through the multiple perspectives she gleans from a host of personal narratives.”—Dialogue

“Virginia Kerns’ textured and detailed account leaves broader judgments, and a whole lot of food for thought—maybe even the material for a novel—to the reader.”—Nova Religio

“Captivity narratives usually focus on how white women were captured by Indians. Virginia Kerns turns this narrative on its head and conveys how a Pahvant Ute woman was enslaved in a Mormon community and compelled to spend her life away from her natal community. Superbly contextualized in the history of Utah, Kerns demonstrates how Mormon social, economic, and political life affected the life of a truly fascinating woman.”—Nancy J. Parezo, professor emerita, American Indian Studies, University of Arizona

“Like so many indigenous women, Sally never had the opportunity to tell her own story. Virginia Kerns meticulously pieced together Sally’s fascinating and engaging story from countless primary sources and gives voice to a nearly forgotten life. This book explores Mormon Utah and the dramatic dislocations and hardships of nineteenth-century American colonization of the West from a new perspective.”—Kelley Hays-Gilpin, professor, Northern Arizona University, and Edward Bridge Danson Chair of Anthropology at the Museum of Northern Arizona

“A remarkable glimpse of an important time in Utah history from an unusual and undervalued perspective.”—James F. O’Connell, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, University of Utah

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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