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Show The Old Spanish Trail and the Slave Trade 47 endurance and knowledge of the country.45 After this saddening display of inhumanity, the party saw no more Nuwuvi. After 1848, large Mexican trader caravans on the Old Spanish Trail dwindled to an end. This traffic was replaced by some emigrant and gold rush travel through Nuwuvi country. Orville C. Pratt made a journey over the Old Spanish Trail. His journey was made during a transitional period in Nuwuvi history, after the cessation of the annual caravans and prior to the Mormon occupation. Thus his journal provides a basis for making inferences about both the effects of the caravan traffic and the Mormon takeover of Nuwuvi territory. On orders of the War Department, Pratt left Santa Fe in August of 1848 with a company of sixteen men. In September, he arrived at the Sevier River. Traveling ten miles from there, he wrote that he was entering the region occupied by the Nuwuvi who, he had heard, commonly stole or shot at animals belonging to passing whites.46 On September 30, Pratt first met the native people. The party camped at a spring in Bear Valley just west of the Sevier River. There they "saw and caught two Pah-Eutahs." Pratt soon discovered that these Nuwuvi were more worried about Spaniards than Americans because of "the frequency with which they catch and carry off these poor Pah-Eutahs, and use them as slaves." iT Traveling along the trail, Pratt reached the Parowan Valley where his party camped with eight Nuwuvi along a creek for the night.48 Further down the trail in Cedar Valley the party camped on what was probably Coal Creek. Pratt wrote that "This valley is full of Pah-Utahs - and from what I have seen it seems the most desirable part of Mexico or California for agricultural purposes."49 Both Cedar and Parowan Valleys would, as he foresaw, soon be occupied by whites. The Pratt party next camped at the Vegas of Santa Clara (Mountain Meadows where the Spanish caravans recuperated) for a few days. After recuperating, they "left the Vegas of Santa Clara at daylight and made a march of 30 miles to the Paiute Cornfields [above the site of Gunlock] on the Santa Clara River. Camped at an early hour and found very fair grazing." 50 He commented that the Nuwuvi there were said to be the worst on the route. He bought some corn from them and gave them some presents. The next day, Oct. 7, Pratt frequently saw cornfields along the river as his party |