CHAPTER 9
NATIVE AMERICAN INFLUENCE IN RECENT TIMES When Spanish traders and American and British fur trappers came to the Colorado Plateau and Great Basin in the nineteenth century, the people now known as the Southern Paiutes occupied a vast area west of the Colorado River, extending from Fish Lake and the Sevier River on the north to the Mohave Desert on the south. Within this broad area were many small family bands of Paiutes. After whites took over their lands, they were forced to congregate in larger groups, until there came to be approximately nineteen bands, or "sutsing." Among the bands were the "Paruguns;' who lived along Clear Creek, and the "Kumoits," who lived in Cedar Valley. 1 The Iron Mission settlers called them "Piedes," and they are known today as the Cedar Paiutes. There was another band to the west living at the foot of Indian Peak in Beaver County, but through the years most of the Indian Peak Paiutes moved to Cedar City. After Dominguez and Escalante's contact with the Cedar band in 1776, the Spanish Trail passed through the core of the Paiute homeland bringing Spanish travelers and slave traders. By the early 1800s, Indian slave trade was well established, with the submissive Paiutes a 155
