Utah Macabre: Rock Canyon

On February 11, 1850, a contingent of the Nauvoo Legion under the command of Captain George D. Grant was pursuing a group of Timpanogos Utes that had fled into Rock Canyon just east of the Utah Valley after a brutal battle had killed 8-10 of their tribe beginning a few days earlier on the 8th.  There, not too far up, they found the native people they had been chasing, several of them lying dead from wounds sustained in the battle, in addition to sickness and exposure in the frigid winter air.  Among the bodies was the Utah Valley Timpanogos chief, Old Elk, sometimes called Big Elk.  Old Elk, who had been sick with measles and had been physically forced out of a Mormon home a couple weeks earlier after asking for medicines, likely died of illness while retreating with the sick and wounded to the canyon.  One among the militia, a notorious frontiersman and enforcer of sorts for the early Mormons called William "Wild Bill" Hickman,  recognized the chief and drew out a large knife which he used to carve the head from the body.  Hickman then took the blanket from the body which had offered its owner little comfort in his last living hours and used it to wrap the bloody severed head, which he then set upon a rock to retrieve after they had finished rounding up the surviving natives from the canyon.  Old Elk's head was later displayed hanging from the eaves of one of the houses in Fort Utah until the flesh rotted from it.  More survivors of the battle were discovered further up the canyon.  Some were spared.

The following is a transcript of the bulk of an interview I had with Bethany Cuthbert, a West Valley, Utah resident who used to live in Springville, about 7 miles from Rock Canyon:
Rock Canyon has always been a very popular hiking spot, and I know a lot of people like to rock climbing there, although I understand there has been at least a few accidents over the years.  But I was the Webelos scout leader in my church ward at the time, which was about 2002 or 2003, and I was thinking it might be a good spot to take my scouts hiking, I guess.  That morning, instead of jogging around the neighborhood, I went hiking in the canyon to see if it would be okay for the boys, and besides that, the leaves were starting to turn, and I like to see them.  Anyways, it was a beautiful morning, but also cold.  Like, not unreasonably cold, but cold, like in a way that sort of jars you awake and feels fresh.  There was maybe one or two other people in the canyon that early, and I know people say you shouldn't hike alone, especially if you're a woman, but I did have pepper spray and being so close to the city, my old flip phone had service.  My husband at the time was working on his bachelor's degree and had a particularly early accounting & finance class.  Anyways, I'd only made my way up the trail about 10 or 15 minutes, making decent time, and I start hearing this thumping sound.  You know how some of those canyons with the high rock walls can be pretty echo-y?  At first, I thought it was something like that, like someone rock climbing or something that was just bouncing off the walls and making it sound close.  It would start quiet, but then it would get loud, but then go quiet again.  It kept going though, you know, "thump...thump...thump."  Then, like, it got faster, like "thump-thump...thump-thump...thump-thump," and I realized it was the sound of a heartbeat!  It was right about then that I was passing close by one of the bigger rocks sticking out near the mouth of the canyon, and I started to feel real hot, like I'd suddenly jumped into a fever, or you know that feeling when you've been caught in a lie, and you get the prickly feelings at the back of your mouth and the sides of your tongue feel like they're curling up.  I don't know, maybe that's not universal, but do you know what I mean?  I just felt really, really nervous, like maybe I was sick or something.  But then I noticed a shape on top of this boulder.  It seems silly, but my first thought is that it looked like fruit punch, that is, until it seemed like there was more of it and it was beginning to drip over the sides of the rock.  It wasn't clearly flowing from there, but it was coming from somewhere and running down the sides in long drips, and I realized it must be blood.  If I hadn't felt so nervous I might have looked around to see someone had gotten hurt, but looking back on it, I can't even remember what I was actually thinking.  I started to another shape on top of the blood, but it didn't seem solid, like it was flickering in and out of some dimension, trying to determine which side it belonged on.  There were voices.  I know, like, it sounds funny to say you hear voices, but I guess none of this makes sense anyway.  Anyways, these voices sounded like shouts, you know, with fullness and command of speaking loudly, but the volume was more like a whisper.  They said things like, "Come out! Come out!" and "I still see 'em! Pass me some powder, now!"  Weird things, like, you know, what? [laughs]  Then the shape on the rock starts to looked more defined, and it looks like a head, but it's still flickering, like an image trying to come up on an old TV.  I started to feel really nauseous and tried to reach out and touch it, just to make sure it was actually there, but it was like I couldn't move my hand close enough to do it.  It was like standing on a high-up diving board and trying to make yourself jump off, but it's just not happening.  Then, the head really came into view, with all the blood dripping down the rock around it, but it was only clear for a few seconds, but I can also remember so clearly still.  It's eyes were open, but only like half-open, and glazed, you know?  And the mouth was open a crack, so I could see the teeth a little bit, and they were yellowish.  I could tell the head was a Native American, and it was pale but with that sort of skin tone, still.  He had long hair and a small mustache, with blotchy skin.  The expression on the face was so sickening, I turned and ran the other way.  I didn't end up taking the scouts hiking there.