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Show an INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN INDIAN HISTORY W E S H A L L R E M A I N : U TA H I N D I A N C U R R I C U L U M G U I D E 96 children. It is likely that the party continued for three days. Interestingly, most of the food at the celebration was probably Indian food provided by the Wampano-ags. Ultimately, this isolated celebration could not mask the growing conflicts between the Wampanoags and the English. Cultural differences created a gulf between the groups. Indians, for example, could not understand why Europeans did not bathe regu-larly or why they blew their noses into handker-chiefs that they then kept. In addition to these small misunderstandings, Tisquantum may have delib-erately discredited Massasoit in the eyes of the colonists in an attempt to usurp Massasoit's power and social standing for himself. Most importantly, the growing number of English settlers tipped the balance of power against the Wampanoags. By the late 1640s the English were no longer content with allowing the Indians to remain independent. They erected a series of "pray-ing towns" meant to keep the Indians under close surveillance and to force the Indians to convert to Christianity and adopt sedentary lifestyles. As an added benefit to the English, the "praying towns" restricted Indians to a fixed area, freeing up more Indian lands for colonial settlement. For their part, the Wampanoags had little interest in adopting European ways. They considered their relationship with the English a political partnership, and praying towns seemed like a threat to their authority. It was in this context that Metacom, Massasoit's son, came to power. Known to the English as King Philip, Metacom considered war with the English inevitable if the Wampanoags were to preserve their way of life. Allied with several other local sa-chems, he mounted a rebellion against the English from 1675 to 1676 in which at least a thousand English colonists and almost three thousand Indi-ans (a quarter of the Indian population of southern New England) died. The English victory in this bloody war marked the end of Indian power in New England. Those who did not die or flee were confined to reservations and relegated to the lowest ranks of colonial society. Though separated by time and space, the story of contact between Utah's Indians and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints parallels the New England story in many ways. Many Utah tribes saw LDS settlers, at least initially, as potentially valuable allies and trading partners. The Utes and Shoshones sought to acquire firearms from Mormons to use against their enemies, including each other. The Southern Paiutes invited the Mormons to settle because they saw the settlers as a potential buffer against Ute slave raids and hoped to gain access to Euro-American material goods. The Goshutes, too, were friendly to LDS settlers, even as first Utes and then Mormons began to overrun traditional Goshute lands. Another important parallel stems from the fact that both the settlement of New England and the settlement of Utah were driven by religious impulses. Like the Puritans, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were interested in Indians as potential converts, though they experienced varying degrees of success in their attempts to convert Utah's Indians. Finally, like the Wampanoags, Utah's indigenous people could not have predicted the sheer numbers of Mormon settlers that would pour into the Great Basin during the last half of the nineteenth century. Tribes that initially welcomed the Mormons soon found themselves fighting over resources and lands. (For a more extensive look at the history of contact in Utah, see the lesson plans "Rethinking First Contact" and "Rethinking Manifest Destiny.") |