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Show 112 Nuwuvi: A Southern Paiute History of the work and help on the ditch and dam, and keep your horses off our land. If your horses get on our crops, you must pay the damage, like other Mormons. If our horses, or cattle, destroy your crops, we must pay the damage. We all feel kindly to you Indians, and we will do you all the good we can. But we have to work hard to get our bread and clothing and teams to work our land; our wives have to work hard; our children have to work hard, and we have no time to work for you, only what you cannot do. You Indians want a heap of land and have no team nor plows, nor tools, to work with; nor seed to plant. You want us Mormons to do all this for you. We have not time, we must work for our own children. You must do as we do, - take a little land, do a heap of work, and raise more grain. Now, Moqueak, what I say, I mean, and you need not trouble me anymore, for more land. I know better what is good for you than you do for yourself.3 It is not known what happened to this ten acres provided for the Indians. Apparently though, the land was still being used during the 1880's, for in 1888 the St. George Mormon leadership reported that "We have paid brethren for plowing on the Indian farms." 4 Although there were some Indians remaining, most of the young and able-bodied continued to move out of the area in search of means of survival. The church appropriated an annual sum through the farms to support the local Indians, but it was based on the idea that the young Nuwuvi were leaving and the old were unable to support themselves. It also failed to consider that many of the Indians still lived in the mountains and came down to the farms only seasonally. When a bad year occurred, more than the normal number crowded onto the farms. Eventually the local leaders had to ask for more help from the Mormon Church. The Church had normally provided an annual appropriation of $400 for provisions, clothing, and blankets. In one year when cold and snow drove large numbers of Nuwuvi out of the mountains and increased sickness among them, an appropriation of $600 to $700 had to be asked for.5 This farm must have been closed after the establishment of Shivwits, for there is no record of its existence after the 1880's. The Indians who were moved to the Santa Clara Valley in 1891 were not local Indians, however. They were Shivwits Nuwuvi whose original homeland was in Arizona around the Shivwits Plateau. They |
