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Show The Old Spanish Trail and the Slave Trade 41 from ten to fifteen years sold for $50 to $100.19 If these figures are accurate, then Indian slaves increased in value after 1841 for ten years later in 1851 they reportedly sold for $100 to $200. Though the Nuwuvi weapons of defense were limited to bows and arrows designed for hunting, for they were a peaceable people, they did make attempts to defend themselves and to discourage travel through their country. The Nuwuvi would gather around the camps of travelers at night and let fly a volley of arrows at the travelers' horses and mules, mortally wounding and disabling some which would be left behind when the caravan moved on.20 These Nuwuvi attacks were also a response to shortages in food supplies caused by the caravans and other assorted marauders in Nuwuvi lands. That the Utes and Navajos had prior and more extensive contact with the Spanish and Mexicans also put the Nuwuvi at an extreme disadvantage. The Utes, whose culture before Spanish contact was much like that of the Nuwuvi, learned to ride horses and use guns from closer contact with the New Mexican settlements. Although some Nuwuvi eventually adopted these tools, their environment and relative isolation insured that most of them still used bows and traveled by foot. Because of the nature of their lands, traveling and living in small groups was necessary. Banding together for mutual protection would have been difficult and would have disrupted their lifestyle. In 1844 a military party led by Captain John C. Fremont passed over the Old Spanish Trail. Fremont's journal is an important document in Nuwuvi history because it provides clues as to what was occurring during the important period of 1830 - 1850. Fremont's writings also are probably the best documentation of the Nuwuvi reaction to the establishment of a roadway through their country. Fremont and his party of 39 men reached the California end of the Spanish Trail on April 20, 1844. He remarked that, luckily for his party, the annual Santa Fe Caravan had not yet made its passage, for "a drove of several thousand horses and mules would have entirely swept away the scanty grass at the watering places, and we should have been obliged to leave the road to obtain subsistence for our animals." 21 Such damage to the plant life along the trail must have caused great privation and anger among the Nuwuvi. Nuwuvi opposition to the traveling in their country was made apparent to Fremont all along the route. |