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Show The Old Spanish Trail and the Slave Trade 39 After Yount and Wolfskill, pack trains over the Old Spanish Trail were a yearly occurrence until 1848. Unfortunately, no diaries of the annual merchant caravans have been found, making it difficult to assess the impact of this practice on the Nuwuvi. The trail went down the Santa Clara River and through present-day Moapa, both of which were Nuwuvi farming areas. The annual caravans camped at the Muddy River or at Las Vegas for several days and at the headwaters of the Santa Clara in Mountain Meadows for several weeks.10 It is difficult to imagine that these annual caravans would not have had a serious effect on the farming operations and gathering activities of the Nuwuvi. The Nuwuvi moved their farms and modified their gathering patterns to accommodate the annual caravans. Later accounts indicate that the Nuwuvi exacted compensation for the loss of food supplies by waylaying stray cattle. But concerted opposition never occurred because the Nuwuvi communities were relatively small, and it was wiser to avoid the caravans. The two decades during which the pack trains traversed the Spanish Trail severely disrupted farming, but there were still Nuwuvi farms on the Santa Clara and the Muddy Rivers in the 1850's. Apparently farming operations in some areas were suspended for a time and resumed after the annual caravans ceased. The horse raids along the Old Spanish Trail during the early 1830's had an effect on the Nuwuvi similar to that of the annual caravans. New Mexican and American traders, Utes and other Indian people made horse raids on the herds of missions and ranches in California and drove them to New Mexico over the Old Spanish Trail.11 Pegleg Smith and Wakara, a Ute who was also heavily involved in the slave trade, were major horse raiders, sometimes driving as many as a thousand head of horses over the Old Spanish Trail. Such raids lasted up until Wakara died in 1855.12 Those involved in horse thievery also seized and traded for Nuwuvi slaves as they drove their stolen stock along the trail. The Spanish Trail, running as it did from Nuwuvi spring to Nuwuvi spring in the Nevada desert, disrupted gathering patterns, necessitating new means of making a livelihood. Though the references are few and the tribal affiliation often uncertain, discontented Nuwuvi participated in the horse raids. At least Judge Benjamin |