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Show 58 Nuwuvi: A Southern Paiute History valleys and across desert oases. The bottoms of these canyons and small green valleys were the prime fertile lands which the Nuwuvi used for their farms. Some of these wagon trains were quite large. Jefferson Hunt's train, for example, contained four hundred persons, one thousand head of cattle, and 107 wagons." It is doubtful that they passed without leaving in their wake extensive damage to the Indian farms. It seemed to the Nuwuvi that the large Spanish Trail trading caravans had merely been replaced by equally destructive emigrant trains. Even the small packing companies, with the utmost disregard for the "uncivilized" Indians, chose to camp at every opportunity in the midst of the Nuwuvi vegetable fields in order to provide feed for their stock. On the 5th of November, Henry W. Bigler, in the company of the Flake-Rich party, reported that they "made about 15 miles and camped in an Indian cornfield." On the 7th he said, "We packed up and to the cornfield intending to lay by and let our animals rest and eat fodder." 6 Neither did the emigrants hesitate to show their own warlike and hostile tendencies when it came to competition over a camping site. On one occasion a group of Indians camping near a dry creek were fired at and chased away by a group of whites who desired their campsite.7 By 1849 the Nuwuvi had learned the advisability of caution from the slave raids of the Spanish and the quick-to-shoot attitude of Americans like Kit Carson. They carefully avoided meeting the newcomers, which was for the best. As the campsite incident shows, those Nuwuvi who encountered the travelers usually didn't fare too well. On the Santa Clara, a Nuwuvi was shot for stealing oxen.8 Howard Egan's company, which was the last wagon train to cross the area in 1849, took to shooting at every Nuwuvi they saw.9 The result for all of these companies was that they had very little actual contact with the Nuwuvi, although they saw many recent signs of occupation. The Nuwuvi left quickly when the whites approached. One party "found an Indian lodge pot on boiling, all their effects in and about the lodge, the Indians having fled." 10 These emigrants left frequent accounts of the numerous Indian farms that lined Santa Clara Valley, Beaver Dam Wash, Muddy River Valley and other places. Henry Bigler recorded on November 5th that "we saw some wheat straws lying about, beans, sunflowers, |
