In 1847, soon after Latter-Day Saints settled in Utah, a battered and bloody young Pavant Ute woman was traded to the family of Brigham Young for a rifle. Given the name Sally Kanosh, she lived the next 30 years as a servant in the household of the LDS leader.
In a new book, the anthropologist Virginia Kerns retrieves Sally from obscurity and reconstructs her life before, during and after her captivity. Before she was “civilized,” Sally had a Pavant Ute name — she had a life, a language and a people who called this place home. To white settlers, though, the place and the people were wild and they needed to be tamed. Kerns joins us today at 11 a.m. to talk about this tension between wild and tame, and about Sally Kanosh, a woman pulled between worlds.
Virginia Kerns book is Sally in Three Worlds: An Indian Captive in the House of Brigham Young. [Indie Bound|BookShop|Amazon]
