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Show The Coming of the Mormons The year 1849 was important for the Nuwuvi. The vanguard of Mormon (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) emigration had entered Salt Lake Valley to the north in 1847. The Mormons were to have a profound effect on the Nuwuvi because they were the first to settle on their land. The Nuwuvi had surely heard of these new residents of the Great Basin from their relatives and sometimes enemies, the Utes. Certainly Wakara, on one of his annual excursions through Nuwuvi country either to visit the Navajo or to raid Southern California must have mentioned the newcomers during his trading sessions with the Nuwuvi. He must have told them how these people were different, because they had come to stay. At first, Wakara was well pleased with this idea, for it gave him a source of trade far closer to home than the old Spanish settlements of Santa Fe and California. The Mormons also had sought to distinguish themselves from other Americans who had bad relations with the Indians by showing that they came to settle peacefully. What is more, the Mormons had a special interest in the Indians whom they called "Lamanites" and of whose ancient history they claimed to have a record. Soon all the aboriginal peoples of the Great Basin, particularly the Utes, learned that where economic and cultural competition was concerned, religious sympathy was overlooked. In 1849, however, the Utes thought they had little to fear from the Mormons. They were encouraging their occupation of the neutral Salt Lake Valley. It was an area claimed exclusively by no tribe and served as an effective boundary with the Shoshone to the north. The Nuwuvi's first word of the Mormons was cautiously optimistic, although they were more suspicious than the Utes. The Nuwuvi had never been powerful or mobile enough to develop an effective trading relationship with any of the surrounding white settlements. During the last years of the Spanish Trail trade, increasing hostility had developed between the white travelers and the Nuwuvi. The traffic passing through their country combined with 56 |