Episode 126: The Walker War, part one

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:07)
Last episode, we covered the Indian slave trade in Utah. We tried to make episodes light when possible. That one, definitely not light. Import, however.
And part of that is the idea that when the Mormons get here, it's this big empty basin. No, of course not. There are thousands of people involved in a robust economy of trading, and it's largely fueled by humans trafficking humans into the New Mexico slave trade.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:35)
And this is important because it's going to fuel the next few episodes of the podcast. So the Mormons get into the Grand Basin and they disrupt the slave trade.
And that sounds noble, yeah? But the problem with nobility is there's always heavy nobility. And the shadow side of this so-called nobility of stopping the slave trade means that youth families began starving. So as the youth starved because they depended on this economy, those underneath their resources suffered even more. So the Paiutes, the Goshutes, the Shoshone were also affected as their largest training partners.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:13)
And another part of this is all of the tribes then get displaced and are moved to lands largely without access to water because of course the Mormons want the land that has access to water. So that means that land is now largely unfarmable.
The tribal numbers were reduced so drastically that by 1880, Jacob Hamblin told John Wesley Powell that quote, There is nothing left for them to depend on but big or star.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:40)
Hi, this is Lindsay Hansen Park.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:42)
And this is Bryan Buchanan.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:44)
Bringing you the story of Mormonism from the shadow of the Everlasting Hills straight out of Zion, this isn't your grandpa's Mormon history.

**Bryan Buchanan** (2:11)
This is the tale of Mormon saints and sinners from our roots until present day.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:16)
Gird your loins, lock your hearts, and pay your tithing, because we're bringing you the story of Mormonism in all its paradisiacal glory.

**Bryan Buchanan** (2:24)
It's the Sunstone History Podcast.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:47)
Early Spanish explorers estimated that at the crest of the 19th century, there were over 10,000 southern pilots alone. That's as much as the FLDS when they were at their height.
For as many people that live in Stansbury Park or North Lomond now, if you're from Utah, 10,000 people are a lot of people. From the first day of Mormon arrival, it took only 25 years for that number to reduce by 90 percent.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:13)
Let that number sink in for a minute. That means an under generation, 9,000 people from the Southern Pine Band died.
What do we call it when things like this happen? That's genocide, and that's just one tribe.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:30)
Let's talk about the Goshute for a second because I think that they are rad. Mormons and other settlers would claim this tribe was the lowest of the low. The Goshutes had the term digger Indians applied to them because they were seeing digging bugs out of the earth to eat.
We know that the Mormons wanting crickets in spite of their many nutritional benefits. No, Mormons will eat cottage cheese encased in jello mold, but not bugs.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:56)
It is funny that Mormons would express a food chain me when they...

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (4:00)
It's blocking the cell.

**Bryan Buchanan** (4:01)
Oh, getting gross, gross stints.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (4:03)
I'm still so mad. They could have eaten so many crickets and grasshoppers.

**Bryan Buchanan** (4:07)
So let me tell you how close this podcast is to my heart. When I am in Yellowstone National Park, I'm thinking of this podcast.
So we went there. This is definitely not my choice, just to make things clear. But we're at Grand Prismatic Pool, which truly is a wonder of nature. And we were talking with the kids about these thermophiles, right? The bacteria that are what create the color. And they live there because they have adapted to the conditions that are given them.
These bacteria aren't bad or weird. They're incredible. They've managed to take unbelievably difficult circumstances and thrive there. And I think that's what's going on with the Goshutes is they were in a societal position, not all of their own making. And they managed to thrive in those conditions that were basically handed to them.
Now, here's what historian Dennis Defa says, Like the other related Shoshonean groups and Paian peoples who lived in the Great Basin, the Goshutes had an effective understanding of growing cycles, variations in climate and animal distribution patterns. They lived in the most desolate part of what is now the western portion of Utah and eastern portion of the Nevada. And because of this, their culture has long been recognized as the simplest of any to be found in the Great Basin. In Aboriginal times, they lived at a minimum subsistence level with no economic surplus on which a more elaborate socio-political structure can be built.