I: BACKGROUND (continued) Utah and the Arizona Strip: Ethnographic and Historical Background The Impact of Latter-day Saint Colonization on the Southern Paiute Historian Leonard Arrington compared the early Latter-day Saints with this country's first colonists, the Puritans, whose religious dogma carried over into secular life. Arrington wrote,
Brigham Young likened the process of teaching Indians the ways of white men and leading them toward Latter-day Saint conversion to the process of irrigation. Young stated, "[We must] cut channels" for water to run in "and gradually lead it where we want it to go.... Just so we must do with this people... by degrees we will control them." [61] With regard to contact between the white settlers and native peoples, Utah historian Charles S. Peterson observed:
Peterson refers to the strong cultural and religious overtones of Latter-day Saint colonization efforts: [63]
During the four decades of colonization that spanned from 1850 to 1890, Latter-day Saints established some 450 farm villages and towns. Even before the last watered lands in Utah were ferreted out during the 1870s and 1880s, the Saints extended their colonizing efforts to the neighboring states of Nevada, California, Idaho, Colorado, and Arizona. These settlements were a highly effective means of expanding the Church's area of the influence and economic power. By the 1890s, Latter-day Saint colonies were established as far as Canada and Mexico as a direct response to the U.S. government's crackdown on polygamists that began in 1885. Several members of the Edwin D. Woolley, Jr., family recorded their recollections about Pipe Spring and the local Kaibab Paiute in the late 19th century. [65] Their observations included the following:
The narrative described the manner in which "wick-i-ups" were made by the Paiute, the use of various plants (particularly the squawbush), and various aspects of their material culture. "Clothing was scanty beyond belief," consisting of an apron made of strips of coyote and rabbit hide. Robes of rabbit skin were worn in winter. The pine nut "could be called the staff of life of these people... It became their first article of commerce when the white man invaded their land." [67] While the writer expressed admiration for the ability of the Paiute to survive in a harsh environment, it was obvious these Indians were viewed as extremely "lowly" in terms of cultural and social development. [68] This "backwardness" he attributed to the rigors of their way of life. "They were always hungry." Some would argue that they had not always been hungry but that the deprivation witnessed by the Woolleys and their Latter-day Saint neighbors just prior to the turn of the century was caused by the indigenous people's loss of access to important resources. The impacts on native flora and fauna that accompanied Mormon settlement along Kanab Creek and other nearby locations, such as Short Creek, Pipe Spring, and Moccasin Spring, were disastrous, resulting in the loss to the Kaibab Paiute of their traditional means of subsistence. This in turn led to a rapid decline in population. [69] Stoffle and Evans cite starvation, rather than war or disease, as the primary cause of Indian deaths during the decade following the first arrival of Mormon settlers. From an estimated pre-contact population of 1,175, the Kaibab Paiute were reduced to 207 by 1873, representing an 82 percent decline in their numbers. [70] Although relations stabilized between Latter-day Saints and the Kaibab Paiute during the following three decades, the Indians found themselves in a desperate plight. The immediate effects of colonization were apparent early on. Angus M. Woodbury, born in 1886 in St. George, Utah, of Latter-day Saint immigrant parents, wrote in A History of Southern Utah and its National Parks:
The Latter-day Saint's religion and charity proved to be woefully insufficient compensation for the Kaibab Paiute loss of traditional lands and other resources essential to their way of life. In the 1860s, the federal government began establishing agencies (reservations) for Utah's native population. The Uintah Ute were attached to an Indian agency established in northeastern Utah in 1868. In an 1873 special commission report, John W. Powell and G. W. Ingalls recommended that the Kaibab Paiute also be placed under federal jurisdiction so that they might at least have food to eat and accessible farmland. No action was taken. In 1880 Jacob Hamblin wrote Powell, then director of the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of Ethnology,
President Ulysses S. Grant issued the order establishing a reservation in 1872 on the Upper Muddy River in Nevada. Few but the Moapa Paiute went there. Powell responded with the recommendation that the Kaibab Paiute, now consisting of about 40 families according to Hamblin, move to the Uintah or the Muddy Valley reservations, so that they might obtain federal assistance. It is hardly surprising that the Kaibab Paiute shunned resettlement at the Uintah Reservation, given the history of Ute slave raiding among them. In the late 1880s, a federal appropriation was obtained to remove the Shivwits Paiute from their land on the Arizona Strip to a reservation on the Santa Clara River, just west of St. George. No evidence indicates that any Kaibab Paiute were able or willing to relocate to these reservations, choosing to remain instead on their traditional lands. As native subsistence became increasingly precarious, many Kaibab Paiute moved into closer proximity to the Latter-day Saint settlements of Kanab, Fredonia, and Moccasin, while others sought out wilderness refuge away from Euroamerican settlements, such as Kanab Creek Canyon. Stoffle and Evans point out that the situation the Kaibab Paiute found themselves in was, in a number of ways, atypical of the post-conquest experience of most other native peoples in the region:
Not until the early 20th century would the federal government take action to alleviate the dire circumstances of the Kaibab Paiute.
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