"Wild Greeks," the Americans called them. But like many other immigrants coming through Ellis Island at the turn of the 20th century, the Greeks were a misunderstood people. Greek immigrants came to the United States to earn money for their families back home and intended to return later to establish their own economic livelihood in Greece. After suffering from centuries of poverty and hearing stories of earning high wages in America, thousands of young Greek men migrated to the United States. Upon their arrival, Greeks were encouraged to work out West where the mines and railroads could use their hands. However, they were met with racism, loneliness, and unfair treatment at the hands of their fellow countrymen. The story of the Greeks in Utah is an unwitting permanent settlement that has added a rich cultural history to the state.

The Turks ruled the Balkans for more than 400 years. During those centuries, they stripped Greece of its lands, forest, minerals, and metals, subjugating the Greeks to wars, reprisals, and plague. The Ottoman Empire suppressed the Greek Orthodox Church and forbad teaching the Greek language. Each generation suffered from illiteracy. When the Greeks won their independence in the 19th century, they sought to restore their culture and economy. Greece's economy was dependent upon the currant crop, which the country exported to France. France's currants were infested with a disease, and the country could not use their own currants to make wine for a generation. When France's currant crop recovered in the early 1900s, Greece's economy collapsed. Greece began to look over the Atlantic for recovering its economy. The Greek government encouraged emigration to America with the expectation that the men would work, send money back home to their families, and then return.

As Greek men pondered the idea of earning money for their impoverished families, providing a dowry for their sisters so they could marry well, and establishing their own economic security, Greek emigrants were writing home stories about the money they were making and including pictures of them in their American clothes. Former Greek labor agents advertised in Greek newspapers. Steamship agents traveled the country, telling exaggerated stories in the Greek coffeehouses of Greeks obtaining easy wealth in America. The enticing stories and the desperate poverty inspired many families to pool money and send a family member to America.

Between 1906 and 1914, a yearly average of 31,000 Greek boys and men came to America. Historian Helen Z. Papanikolas writes, "Entire villages were left with only women, children, and a few old men" (108). Some Greeks came west when they found it difficult to find work in the east. In Utah, all work for Greek immigrants was coordinated by padrone (patron) Leonidas G. Skliris, "Czar of the Greeks." Skliris, a leading Greek labor agent in the West, found work for immigrants at Utah Copper Company, Western Pacific Railroad, Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, and the coal mines in Carbon County. Papanikolas says,

[Skliris] had contacts with labor agents in Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, and California. With a telegram or telephone call, he could have any number of men traveling wherever he designated. Not until they arrived at the appointed place did the men know what they would be doing, and often they found they were to be used as strikebreakers. (116)

Men waited in coffeehouses for months for work. Skliris demanded a fee from the immigrants seeking work, as well as a monthly sum afterwards. Skliris' bleeding of the Greeks led them to rise up against the padrone system in the Great Bingham Strike of 1912.

Those working in the mines lived in shacks and boardinghouses, divided according to nationality. The men were astounded by what they found in America. "It was not as they had heard in their village coffeehouses," Papanikolas explains. "The loneliness of the prairies and deserts was hard for them. They had come from a gregarious people..." (110-1). Men particularly missed their fellow women, the glue of their culture who took care of washing, cooking, and illnesses, as well as the specialty cooking for religious holidays.

Salt Lake City was the center for Greek immigrants in Utah. "Greek Town" was located on Second South, between Second West and Fifth West. Coffeehouses, restaurants, saloons, candy stores, two Greek newspapers, and stores selling Greek food made up the region. The coffeehouses were the backbone of the Greek culture in Utah. There the men waited for work, played cards and discussed politics.

By 1912, Greek culture in Utah began to shift, as more young men were staying in Utah and sending for brides from their homeland. National figures show that 40% of the Greeks were coming home with money for their sisters' dowries as planned. But 60% of Greeks in America were staying with the intent of leaving the mines and section gangs after saving enough money to enter their own businesses. They planned on going home a few years later with more money for their families and their own economic security. However, as life lacked the smallest comforts, a few men began to take out citizenship papers and to marry. It was taking them longer than they expected to fulfill their familial duties. Waiting to marry until returning to Greece seemed unrealistic.

Many of those men who sought marriage asked their families to choose a bride for them from their home villages. The women came because their families could not provide dowries. Greek women were scarce in the United States, and often the dowry process was reversed as the groom extended favors to the bride's family. With the growing numbers of Greek women in Utah's population, the Greek community became more stable and increasingly observed their native customs and religious traditions.

In addition to community stability, Greek immigrants in Utah established economic security as they began leaving the mines in the early 1920s. Many of them established shops, and some became sheepmen or butchers. Greek immigrants also aided in helping their homeland's economy by sending money to their relatives. The peak amount of money from Greek immigrants to their families flowed over the Atlantic in 1921, at $121 million. These funds strengthened the Greek drachma and changed the balance of trade in Greece, enabling "entire districts of peasants to free themselves from crippling mortgages. The standard of living was raised dramatically" (158), as Papanikolas explains.

Although Greek immigrants' presence in Utah had spurred racist sentiments from the moment they arrived, racism in Utah peaked with the presence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Following a national movement against "foreign influence," Catholicism, and what they considered moral depravity, the Klan rose to power in legitimate elections, most notably in the Midwest. The Klan's objectives were to reinforce and protect ideas of character established by white Protestants, home and family from immoral influence, and traditional gender roles. Klansmen were from all economic classes. In their brief appearance in Utah, between 1922 and 1924, they intimidated immigrants by burning crosses on the Oquirrh foothills and in Helper, Utah. Klan members also threatened immigrant businesses. Greeks banded with other immigrants in Helper against the Klan and established their own displays of resistance.

Racism notwithstanding, World War I and World War II forced Greek immigrants to stay in the United States. By World War II, Greeks in Utah had established schools for their children, and although they had rarely attended Americanization classes of the late 1910s, Americanization happened in small ways-the presence of Christmas trees in their homes, pews in their churches when they traditionally stood through service, and using English more often. By the end of World War II, Americans softened their feelings concerning Greeks in their country. After Italy invaded Greece, Americans saw Greece push Mussolini's forces to the sea and fight against the Nazis. At the end of the war, for various reasons, America gave economic aid to Greece, and the United States' relationship with Greece altered American perceptions of Greek immigrants.

Although the Greeks who originally came to the United States did not intend to stay, those who stayed established a unique culture-a culture that resonated their Greek roots but was also transformed by their experience in the United States. Leaving their impoverished native country for economic security, Greek men encountered hardship in Utah's mines and racism from Utah's people. Yet they fought to retain their identity and their rights as workers. The presence of women stabilized the community and gave them strength as a people. And over time, "Wild Greeks" was an epithet of the past.

Helen Zeese Papanikolas (1917-2004) was a prolific historian and writer. She left a lasting mark on Utah historiography, pioneering a new perspective on the people of Utah by covering immigrant history. Her work opened up the field of Utah history, as she told stories other than the dominant Mormon pioneer stories. Papanikolas helped flesh out the vibrant immigrant culture that made up Utah's community.

Helen was born to Greek immigrants George and Emily Zeese in Cameron, a small Carbon County mining town. Her experience growing up among other children of first and second generation Greek immigrants informed her writings in later years. Her family moved to Salt Lake City while Papanikolas was still a teenager, and she finished her schooling at East High School in the 1930s. In Salt Lake she became connected with the Greek community. She attended the University of Utah where she was editor of student literary magazine, graduating from the university in 1939 with honors.

After college, Helen worked for two years as a medical technologist in Salt Lake County Hospital. She married Nick Papanikolas in 1941, and the couple had two children, son Zeese and daughter Thalia.

Papanikolas wrote ethnic history for over fifty years. She wrote numerous articles for the and other academic journals, and she is the author of seven books, both fiction and non-fiction, exploring topics such as "Ethnicity in Mormondom," growing up in a land dominated by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and experiences of women in Utah's coal-mining communities. Papanikolas edited (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1976) for the nation's bicentennial. She served as a consultant for two national educational television series, "Greeks in America" and "The Western Coal Miner," both series funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Papanikolas won the Utah Fiction Prize in 2000 for her novel, (Athens: Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1999).

Papanikolas contributed widely to the community and state's historical organizations. She was a member of the State Board of History (1973-1985), founded and served as president of the Peoples of Utah Institute (1977), and she served on the Advisory Board of Editors (1969-1973). She received many awards during her life. Papanikolas became a fellow of the Utah State Historical Society in 1975, the highest honor provided by that organization, and was awarded the Brotherhood Award from the Utah Chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews in 1978. In 1984, Papanikolas was the principal commencement speaker at the University of Utah, where she received an honorary doctorate in humane letters.

A dedicated historian and community contributor, Papanikolas provided scholarships to minorities and mentored other historians. As Philip Notarianni said at her passing, "She was really the first person who began to tell the story of the southern and eastern Europeans who came to Utah.... Being a child of Greek immigrant parents, she had an intense desire to let others know that the history of Utah was much more diverse and involved people of all backgrounds."