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Show The Coming of the Mormons 65 From the differing accounts of the numbers, intentions and activities of the Mexicans, it is only possible to get a general idea about what was happening. What is apparent is that Mexican traders were in the territory, and that a group of Utes, probably in the Sanpete Valley, were desirous of trading people to the Mexicans. What seems to have been centrally at issue to the authorities of Utah Territory was not so much the slave trade, but the fact that the Mexicans were trading arms and ammunition to the Utes. The Utes, all accounts agree, were ripe for rebellion, as the whites were encroaching on their land as well as prohibiting a profitable business. The hostilities known as "Walker's War" would begin during the coming summer. The Mexicans told the Utes that "The Mormons had not given them sufficient compensation for their lands, that the Mormon stock should be as free to them as the game upon the mountains and that the measure prohibiting sale of children was an outrage." 40 Preservation of the slave trade may well have been the motive for the Mexicans' inciting the Utes to rise up in arms. But Brigham Young's actions suggest that abolition of the slave trade was a motive secondary to the fear that war with the native inhabitants was in the making and that the Mexicans were fueling it. On April 23, 1853, Governor Young issued a proclamation and subsequently took measures, which, from all appearances, ended Mexican involvement in the slave trade. The proclamation declared that it had been made known to him that Mexicans were stirring up the Indians and furnishing them with arms and ammunition. In reaction, it ordered that thirty men proceed south to warn the inhabitants and "to arrest and keep in custody every strolling Mexican party, . . . and other suspicious persons or parties that they may encounter. . . ." 41 Brigham Young then journeyed to Manti, followed by the militia whose purpose was to intimidate the Indians as well as to pick up "strolling Mexicans." Upon arriving in Manti, Young "found the Indians much bent on trading children to the Mexicans." 42 If the Mormons would pay as high a price as the Mexicans in guns and ammunition, though, the Indians would trade the children to them. Young refused this offer, but promised to provide them with sufficient guns and ammunition for the purpose of hunting. |
