Nevada’s Desert Highway of Human Bondage
Great Basin National Park in Nevada looks peaceful today, but for twenty years it sat along America’s most brutal slave trade route.
The Old Spanish Trail connected Santa Fe to Los Angeles starting in 1829, cutting right through Ute territory.
Chief Walkara turned the trail into his personal highway for human trafficking, raiding Paiute and Goshute villages to capture women and children.
He sold teenage girls for $200 each in Santa Fe markets, even though slavery was illegal there. Desperate families sometimes traded their own children to raiders for horses they could eat.
This dark chapter of the American West played out right where visitors now camp and hike.
Spanish traders started buying Native American captives back in the 1700s
Around 1740, Spanish settlers in New Mexico began trading with Ute tribes, swapping horses and goods for furs and people.
Utes saw a money-making chance and started attacking weaker Paiute and Goshute groups to grab women and children.
Spanish missions and Mexican towns needed Native workers, creating a ready market for captives even though laws banned slavery. This ugly business turned the Great Basin into a hunting ground for easy victims to sell.
The Old Spanish Trail turned into a human trafficking highway
In 1829, Antonio Armijo opened the 1,120-mile Old Spanish Trail linking Santa Fe to Los Angeles, cutting right through Paiute and Goshute lands.
The path quickly became the main route for moving stolen horses, goods, and people between areas. Ute leaders grew bold and started charging caravans to cross their territory.
This new trail made it much easier to move captives from the Great Basin to New Mexico markets.
Chief Walkara ran a slave-trading empire from the Great Basin
In the 1830s, Ute war chief Walkara teamed up with mountain men “Pegleg” Smith and James Beckwourth to build a huge raiding operation.
His warriors attacked California horse ranches and Great Basin tribes, stealing thousands of horses in single raids. People called him the “Hawk of the Mountains” because of his fighting skills.
Walkara kept some captives as workers while selling others to Mexican traders for big money.
Human captives fetched high prices in the slave markets
During the 1830s-1840s, teenage Paiute girls sold for $200 in Santa Fe markets, while boys brought $150. Captives worked in New Mexican mines, farms, and homes without freedom or pay.
The trade stayed strong even though Santa Fe banned slavery in 1812 and California in 1824. Officials ignored the law because many powerful people made money from the business.
Starving families sometimes sold their own children to survive
Paiute and Goshute families facing starvation in the 1840s sometimes sold their own children to Ute raiders. They got old horses in trade, which they killed and ate to stay alive.
One Paiute elder said they could make more children but had nothing else to trade for horses and guns they needed. Mormon settlers later met families still hurt from making such awful choices.
Mormons tried to stop the slave trade but got pulled in
In July 1847, 143 Mormon pioneers arrived in Salt Lake Valley and first opposed the slave trade. They tried to block deals between Ute raiders and Mexican traders.
But Walkara played tough, threatening to kill captive children unless Mormons bought them.
Mormon leaders soon started viewing these purchases as “rescue” efforts to save Native children from worse fates, drawing them into the very system they wanted to end.
Brigham Young told his followers to buy Native children
In the 1850s, Mormon leader Brigham Young told his followers to “buy up the Lamanite children as fast as they could” to keep them from being enslaved elsewhere. Apostle George A.
Smith gave out “talking papers” that pushed trading for “Piede children. ” Young claimed purchased children would become “free” with rights equal to other races.
Mormon families took in Native children as servants, farm workers, and sometimes as adopted family.
Utah made Native American slavery legal while calling it something else
In 1852, Utah’s territorial legislature passed a law called the “Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners. ” This law allowed up to 20 years of forced labor for purchased Native children.
Owners had to provide some education and clothing, and let working children attend school three months each year. Utah’s law was actually worse than New Mexico’s, which limited servitude to 10 years.
Hundreds of Native children lived as servants in Mormon homes
By 1857, over 400 Native children lived in Mormon households, forced to work for their “owners. ” The constant raiding destroyed Paiute and Goshute communities throughout the Great Basin.
Utah’s Indian superintendent warned that vulnerable tribes might face “complete extinction” by 1860.
The slave trade became key to the economy connecting New Mexico, Utah Territory, and California, ruining countless lives.
Relations between Mormons and Utes fell apart over the slave trade
Mormon-Ute relations broke down during the Walker War of 1853-1854, partly because of fights over land and trading practices.
Federal troops started showing up more often in the Great Basin and Southwest, making raiding operations riskier.
The Civil War gave the government a chance to crack down harder on all forms of slavery in the territories. Growing tensions between Mormon settlers and federal authorities made enforcement complicated.
Congress finally ended the Great Basin slave trade in 1862
A federal law banning slavery in all U. S. territories officially stopped the Great Basin slave trade in 1862.
The human cost was staggering: about 20,000 Native Americans lived in the Great Basin before Mormon colonization, but their population dropped by 86% by 1890.
Many surviving Paiute and Goshute families remained traumatized and pushed off their traditional lands.
Today, Great Basin National Park includes areas where countless families were torn apart by slave raiders just a few generations ago.
Visiting Great Basin National Park, Nevada
Great Basin National Park at 100 Great Basin National Park in Baker, Nevada has no entrance fee and connects to the Old Spanish Trail’s dark history.
The Great Basin Visitor Center opens 8am to 5pm during summer.
You can tour Lehman Caves daily from 8am to 5pm, but you need tickets costing $5-15 for adults and $2-8 for kids 5-15. Book cave tours 30 days ahead through recreation.gov since they fill up fast.
This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.
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