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Show Shivwits In the twenty years between the early 1870's and 1891, the Nuwuvi who had lived in present-day Washington County in southwestern Utah all but disappeared. In 1873 J. W. Powell and G. W. Ingalls reported 528 Nuwuvi living in Utah. Many of these Indians lived under the influence of Taugu, a headman who lived at Cedar City. However, Nuwuvi were still spread throughout Southern Utah, and there were many groups who were not under Taugu's influence.1 Before white settlement, a large number of Nuwuvi had been concentrated in the southwestern part of Utah along the Santa Clara River and the central section of the Virgin River. This area had received the brunt of the massive "Dixie" settlement drive of the Mormons in the 1860's and early 1870's. By the 1870's the Indians in this area were fighting a losing battle trying to survive under the pressure of white settlement. The problem became even more difficult after gold and silver were discovered in the area, and more whites came to work in the mines of Silver Reef and other places. As has been pointed out, the Nuwuvi were forced to adapt in various ways to the arrival of white settlements. It was impossible for most of them to maintain traditional modes of living on traditional homelands. The process of change was more rapid in the 1870's and 1880's. Nuwuvi could choose either to move further away from the white frontier into areas like the Arizona strip, to try to fight the whites by raiding, or to become more dependent on the white settlements by serving as a labor supply. Some Nuwuvi did move south and east toward the Colorado and west into the Nevada desert to join bands already there, but most areas had a very limited capacity to support inhabitants. Any newcomers could stretch them beyond that capacity. Others did try to fight the whites, usually by joining Navajo raiding parties during the 1870's, but the Nuwuvi had never liked war and were not particularly successful at it, especially considering their relatively small numbers. They also were not very comfortable with the 109 |