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Show The Coming of the Mormons 57 the slave trade had a very bad effect on their lives. The prospect of the Utes having a closer market only discouraged the Nuwuvi as they looked at their rapidly diminishing female and child population. The California gold rush migration began in 1849. A few "forty-niners" chose to use the southern route over the Old Spanish Trail. Several of these were Mormons. The Nuwuvi had little chance to get to know them and little reason to believe they were different from other hostile whites who had visited their country. Nevertheless, this was the Nuwuvi's first encounter with the people who would become so important in their lives. Fremont's account of his 1844 exploration was widely read and became a popular guide for the "forty-niners." His expedition had lost one member to the Nuwuvi. The emigrants in 1849 apparently drew the conclusion from him or from somewhere else that the Nuwuvi were warlike people. As Walter Van Dyke, who traveled with the Pomeroy wagon train that year, later put it, "These Indians are the Paiutes, described by Fremont in his report of exploration of 1843-44 as causing him considerable trouble on his return by the same route." x Another traveler commented, "We were now just in the edge of the Paiute country and they are said to be a warlike race." 2 Whatever the reason, the forty-niners, man for man, seemed to think that the Nuwuvi country was some of the most dangerous territory they would have to cross. They believed this even though they themselves had little trouble with the Nuwuvi. Another traveler, James S. Brown, wrote: "So far as we were concerned, although it was known that the Indians were very hostile, they gave us no trouble." 3 There were occasional lost horses and oxen which the Nuwuvi killed, but very few actions which would justify the descriptions "warlike," "savage," "marauding," and "very hostile." The only serious incident happened when one man left his party. He was robbed and released by the Nuwuvi.4 This was a serious enough act in the desert. Yet, although the opportunity obviously had been present, the Nuwuvi had neither injured nor murdered the man as the emigrants seemed to expect. The man found a party of white travelers with apparently little difficulty. Nevertheless, the "forty-niners" not only assumed that the Nuwuvi were hostile, but continually gave them reason to be so. The wagon trains in many places had to move down narrow canyons and |