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Show The Old Spanish Trail and the Slave Trade 45 managed to kill close to one hundred Northern Paiutes in three crossings of Northern Nevada. The Nuwuvi could not have known this, but he soon showed his nature to them firsthand. Walker had gone ahead of the annual caravan in order to catch Fremont. He and eight others succeeded, but not without killing two Nuwuvi on the way.36 Whether it was Walker or the Nuwuvi who initiated hostilities is not clear. Perhaps Fremont's party created a wake of hostility or perhaps the Nuwuvi were resisting all of the intrusions into their country. Fremont left Nuwuvi territory without mentioning further contact with its people. Guided by Walker, he went on to Ute country. He met Wakara and his band of Utes who were on their way to the Spanish Trail to take tribute from the California caravan.37 Such meetings between the caravan and Wakara's band were a regular, yearly occurrence and included slave trading as well as horse trading. Fremont's report suggests that the Nuwuvi, though cautious in their defense, were actively hostile to the traffic along the Spanish Trail. Their reaction to travelers was determined in part by the conduct of the persons in passage. Then too, Fremont's party was not, as the Nuwuvi on the Muddy River pointed out, very large, only about forty men. The caravans often were much larger, and the Nuwuvi prudently avoided direct confrontation with them, limiting their activities to shooting stray horses. In the late 1840's, Kit Carson was a dispatch bearer over the Old Spanish Trail. In 1847 he had trouble with the Nuwuvi at the Muddy River. He encountered about 300 Indians who wished to enter his camp. He insisted that they leave and fired at them when they wouldn't. One Nuwuvi was killed, and the others withdrew.38 As was evidenced on Fremont's 1844 expedition, Carson had a fiery temper and was given to hastily avenging real or imagined insults. That Carson had no other problems along the trail suggests the Moapits were more openly hostile toward Anglo-Americans than other Nuwuvi communities. This tendency was repeated throughout the Spanish Trail era.39 Traveling east across the Spanish Trail in 1848, Carson was accompanied by Lieutenant George D. Brewerton. Brewerton wrote that they began to see Nuwuvi shortly after leaving the Amargosa River.40 Carson noticed Nuwuvi observing them from the bluffs |