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Show The Uneasy Peace 89 massacred the entire group when they tried to escape, sparing only some small children.73 Other Nuwuvi were helping Jacob Hamblin guard the southern settlements from Navajo raids in the late sixties and early seventies.74 Despite this aid, on at least one occasion the whites took out their frustration against Navajo raids by murdering a group of innocent Nuwuvi. On January 8, 1866, Dr. J. M. Whitmore and Robert Mclntyre were killed by Navajos. The Mormon militia apparently knew that the Navajos were responsible. However, when they found a group of Nuwuvi nearby in possession of the dead men's clothing (which had probably been taken from the bodies), they killed seven of them.75 By 1869, Nuwuvi lifestyle had been disrupted. The Nuwuvi farmlands along the southern Utah streams and to some extent in Nevada had been occupied by new settlers. The Mormons were busily exhorting newly baptized Indians to "begin" farming. The Nuwuvi in Nevada still were farming at Moapa and had small gardens at places like Cottonwood and Indian Springs, but many had been forced to become even more dependent on their skills of gathering food from the meager desert. Others had become little more than paupers who were dependent on the Mormon communities for support. Still others had retreated to the hills, from which they made periodic raids on the stock and crops of the settlers. The Nuwuvi, though, had never been a warlike tribe and were not well organized enough to offer any effective resistance to more powerful groups. By 1869, many were destitute and in need of aid. That year the government finally made a commitment to provide aid and protection by appointing the first local agent for the Nuwuvi. |