Draft Brood Mare

Before settlement by members of the LDS Church, the Shoshone, Ute, and Paiute had dwelt in the Salt Lake Valley for thousands of years. At the time of Salt Lake City's founding, the valley was within the territory of the Northwestern Shoshone; however, occupation was seasonal, near streams emptying from canyons into the Salt Lake Valley. One local Shoshone tribe, the Western Goshute tribe, referred to the Great Salt Lake as Pi'a-pa, meaning "big water", or Ti'tsa-pa, meaning "bad water". The land was treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone was ever recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States. The first American explorer in the Salt Lake area was probably Jim Bridger in 1825, although others had been in Utah earlier, some as far north as the nearby Utah Valley (the 1776 Dominguez-Escalante expedition were undoubtedly aware of Salt Lake Valley's existence).