| OCR Text |
Show Cedar City The Kumoits or Wahn-kwits, now known as the Cedar Indians, once claimed as their homeland Cedar Canyon and all the valley into which Coal Creek flowed.1 The history of how this land was lost has been told in the chapters concerning early relations with the United States and the Mormons, As the town of Cedar gradually expanded, the land of the Cedar Nuwuvi was reduced finally to a small tract of land on Coal Creek near the foothills and almost at the mouth of Cedar Canyon. Here the Nuwuvi had a small village and lived in tepees and kanees. They also farmed, though on a much smaller scale than when their farms lined the banks of the creek.2 The Cedar Nuwuvi were largely ignored by the government. The Mormon Church in many ways played the role usually assumed by the BIA with its agency-reservation system. The Cedar Nuwuvi were supposedly under the agency at Moapa when it was established, but no aid was given to them. After Moapa's size was reduced in 1875, the agent there no longer supervised the Utah Nuwuvi. After Shiv-wits and Kaibab Reservations were established nearer to Cedar City, there is no indication that the government representatives there tried to supervise the Cedar Indians too. The Cedar Nuwuvi were unsupervised until 1916 when an agency was organized at Goshute. The agent's reports indicate that Cedar was under his jurisdiction. Considering the distance from Goshute to Cedar, it is not surprising that little mention is made of the Cedar Indians. In 1917 the superintendent at Goshute did report that "lands on which the Indians live at Cedar City have been set aside by the Mormon Church and the town of Cedar. A very small area." The agent also remarked that "there are a number of children here [at Goshute], and [they] are well cared for, but I noticed at Indian Peaks there were no infants - all dying in infancy, the same at Kanosh and Cedar City and other small places." During the years of 1917 and 1918 there was a flu epidemic which may have caused the high mortality rate noticed by the Goshute agent. He reported that many Indian Peaks people had died and stressed the need for a physician 128 |
