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Show 64 Nuwuvi: A Southern Paiute History sion of Pedro Leon were apparently made indentured servants. According to Garland Hurt, an Indian agent for the Utah Territory, "The Indian children, by order of court, [were] placed in the hands of the whites, as apprentices, for a term of years, according to their respective ages.. . ." 34 The residents of Utah also feared the slave trade would create a Ute-Mexican alliance in opposition to them. Another act accompanied the one allowing indentured servitude. It stated that any trader who assembled or caused to be assembled "any number of Indians within the neighborhood or immediate vicinity of any white settlement" would be considered to be breaking the peace.35 The stir that Utah's prohibition of slave trading caused in New Mexico suggests that it was quite a business. The entire front page of the El Siglo Diez y Nueve, a New Mexican newspaper, was devoted to the subject in opposition to Governor Young's action.36 The trial of Pedro Leon and the passage of the "Act for the Relief of Indian Prisoners and Slaves" did not, as the Utahns had hoped, completely discourage Mexican slave traders. The business was apparently too firmly established and profitable to both Utes and Mexican traders to be given up easily. In the spring of 1853, New Mexicans again entered Utah territory for the purpose of slave trading. They were led by a man named Dr. Bowman. After being asked to leave, Bowman refused, saying that the Indians would protect him.37 From the different accounts of this incident, it is difficult to piece together a consistent description of what occurred. Daniel Jones, for instance, states that the Mexicans soon left peacefully after "Bowman got into some trouble with the Indians by deceiving them in some of their promised trades, and he was ambushed and killed by them." Jones also remarked that, although he did not believe it, "it was rumored the Mormons had killed him [Bowman]."38 Other accounts, among them Brigham Young's, suggest that the Mexicans had not left quite so peacefully. Also, Edward F. Beale, as he was traveling on the Spanish Trail during the same time, met some of the Mexicans near the Colorado, traveling back to New Mexico. Beale's diarist wrote that the Mexicans reported that "they had been badly treated by the Mormons at the Vegas de Santa Clara, [Mountain Meadows] .... They warned us to be on our guard." 39 |
