Making Space on the Western Frontier: Mormons, Miners, and Southern Paiutes

4. "Listen Not to a Stranger"

63 4 “Listen Not to a Stranger” The federal government’s attempts to draw lines of separation notwithstanding, the new political borders proved little more than strokes on official maps. Mormons, miners, and Southern Paiutes continued to mix with each other, their paths intersecting in time and space, but against a geographic backdrop of their own making. Even though Mormons and Paiutes were given no meaningful voice in border politics, they assumed spirited roles in shaping the western frontier. They were not merely victims of oppressive state power but aggressive wielders of power themselves. They actively guarded their differing worldviews but at the same time modified them to fashion new universes for themselves, miners included. Mormons, miners, and Paiutes carved a unique intercultural space where they met to labor, trade, proselyte, fight, kill, and die. The rules of engagement shifted rapidly and varied with nearly every contact, but generally cultural borders designed to keep outside tendencies in check shaped the interchanges. Over time, these three disparate communities spent tremendous energy attempting to defend their differing notions of geographic, economic, political, and spiritual space. Beginning with the Paiutes, the next three chapters seek to understand the subtleties of those defenses, how each group viewed the others, and the inconsistency that characterized the interaction. As the historian Richard White observes, once westerners left the boundaries of their communities, they “entered a different social and moral universe, and they acted differently toward those they met there. They rarely applied to outsiders the relatively generous standards of mutuality that applied 64 making space on the western frontier within the community.”1 Mormons, miners, and Paiutes were no different . Occasionally episodes of intercultural respect punctuated their dealings, but distrust frequently held sway. The exchanges between the three groups not only teach fundamental lessons about the ability of people to coexist amid diversity but also highlight shifting relationships of power on a local level. They further illustrate the difficulty that these three communities had at being good neighbors, especially to peoples with drastically different values. The Paiute portion of the story is one of desperation and survival. Confronted with a rapidly changing world, the Paiutes defended their space with a variety of strategies, including plunder, accommodation, and withdrawal. Over time they remained remarkably resilient, although increasingly marginalized. They refused to bow to governmental pressure designed to move them onto a single reservation but instead clung with rugged determination to their god-given ground. Nevertheless, by the early twentieth century they found themselves placed upon a sprinkling of reserves scattered across their traditional homeland. Long the victims of Spanish, New Mexican, and Ute slave traders, “the Southern Paiutes were a harassed people leading disrupted lives when they first met Anglo-Americans.” Hoping to create a buffer against long-standing enemies, the Paiutes actually invited Mormons to settle in their area in the 1850s. Not only would the Mormons provide a barrier to slave raiders, they would also offer access to technology and knowledge that had long been used against the Paiutes.2 This strategy worked for a time, but the 1860s brought a flood tide of Mormons and miners into Paiute lands, forcing the Paiutes to find new ways to adapt. Over the next forty years they searched for solutions to the new stresses that Anglo settlement created. Mormons and miners occupied Paiute traditional springs and garden plots, they killed Paiute game animals, and their cattle depleted the tribe’s seed resources. The Paiutes were only loosely organized as a tribe and presented no unified front against the Anglo incursion. The basics of Paiute daily life took place within small family bands, with the band leader serving as moral guide and director of hunting and gathering activities. Some headmen enjoyed more influence than others, but by the 1860s a chief’s prestige was primarily a function of his ability to forge ties to the Anglo power structure. Mormon authorities, for example, regarded Tut-se-gav-its, the leader of the Santa Clara band, as “head chief” among the Paiutes, a role he filled until his death in 1871. After that, government agents viewed Taú-gu as chief of the Paiute “alliance.” He was leader of the Cedar band and the same man whom Mormons called Coal Creek John.3 Other Paiute headmen included Chief Beaverats of the Beaver band; “Old Kanarra” near Parowan; Tsoog in the upper Virgin River Valley; Amos near Virgin City; Moqueak...