PIPE SPRING Cultures at a Crossroads: An Administrative History

Utah and the Arizona Strip: Ethnographic and Historical Background

Spanish and Euroamerican Exploration and Contact

The time period from 1776 to 1847 is marked by early Spanish and later Euroamerican contact with the Southern Paiute through their exploration and economic activities in the area. The 1776 expedition led by two Franciscan priests, Francisco A. Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante, through northern parts of the Southern Paiute territory provided the first historical references to the native peoples. The explorers were attempting to find a northern route that would connect Santa Fe with Monterey, California. [10] On the return to Santa Fe, the Spanish expedition crossed the Arizona Strip. [11] On the Pilar River (now called Ash Creek) near its junction with the Virgin River 25 miles below Zion Canyon, Escalante noted the Indians' cultivation of corn in irrigated fields located on small flats along the river bank, thus documenting Southern Paiute agricultural practices. While the expedition failed to accomplish its mission, it gained much knowledge of the Great Basin region. It was later followed by excursions into the region by fur trappers, including Jedediah Smith (1826) and William Wolfskill and Ewing Young (1830). The 1849 California gold rush brought large numbers of prospectors and others traveling through Southern Paiute territory.

Prior to the arrival of the Latter-day Saints in 1847, Southern Paiute bands were impacted by the slave trade, a topic discussed by Isabel T. Kelly and Catherine S. Fowler in their chapter on the Southern Paiute in Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 11, Great Basin. [12] By the early 17th century, Spanish colonies in what are now northern New Mexico and southern California had institutionalized slavery and other forms of servitude. [13] Ute and Navajo slave raiders preyed on Southern Paiute bands. Spanish expeditions and American trappers repeated this pattern. Women and children were the most sought after as captives. One Indian agent noted that prior to 1860, scarcely one-half of the Paiute children escaped slavery, and that a large majority of those that did were males. One history of Utah refers to the trade:

In historic times the Ute carried on an extensive slave traffic. Children were obtained by barter or by force from poorer bands of Paiutes and exchanged with the Navahos [sic] and Mexicans to the south for blankets and other articles. Certain Paiute bands were almost depopulated by this traffic. [14]

The Kaibab Paiute maintain a memory of these raids by the Ute and Navajo. Feelings of enmity harbored by the Kaibab Paiute toward these tribal groups is often explained today by reference to such past raiding activity. [15] Some documentation suggests that Southern Paiute bands responded to the threat of enslavement by retreating from heavily traveled areas, particularly the Old Spanish Trail that opened as a commercial route in the 1830s. (This 1,200 mile rugged path was charted to link the old established settlements in New Mexico with the fledgling Spanish colony of Los Angeles, California. The New Mexicans carried westward serapes, blankets, knives, guns, hardware items, and cloth bought in the Santa Fe trade. [16]) At the same time, the slave trade may have forced abandonment of ecologically favorable areas, inhibiting the expansion of horticultural activities among the Southern Paiute, while increasing their dependence on hunting and gathering as a way of life.

In their study, Kaibab Paiute History, The Early Years, anthropologists Richard W. Stoffle and Michael J. Evans calculated the pre-1492 population estimate for the Kaibab Paiute to be at least 5,500. By the mid-1800s, Stoffle and Evans estimated the Kaibab Paiute population to have declined to about 1,175. [17] Although Spain's colonizing activities never reached the Southern Paiute territory, Stoffle and Evans attribute Indian population decline to the effects of diseases (in particular, smallpox and measles) which the Spanish introduced into native populations in Mexico and the Southwest between 1520 and 1846.