History of slavery in Utah
Mexican trading parties would often travel the Old Spanish Trail, which went through modern day Utah, and buy Indian slaves to sell in the neighboring territory of Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico or other places in Alta California.
Slavery had been made illegal in Santa Fe de Nuevo México in 1812 and in Alta California Territory in 1824, but lax enforcement and high profits kept it going.
[3] In addition, Mexican laws allowed for an aggressive debt bondage in the form of the peonage system.
[citation needed] Shortly after the Mormon pioneers arrived in Salt Lake Valley, they began expanding into Indian territory, which often resulted in conflict.
[4][page needed] In the winter of 1849–1850, after expanding into Parowan, Mormons attacked a group of Indians, killing around 25 men and taking the women and children as slaves.
[5]: 274 News of the enslavement reached the US government, who appointed Edward Cooper as Indian agent in September 1850.
[8][9] In 1851, Apostle George A. Smith gave Chief Peteetneet and Walkara talking papers that certified "it is my desire that they should be treated as friends, and as they wish to Trade horses, Buckskins and Piede children, we hope them success and prosperity and good bargain.
"[10] In May 1851 Brigham Young met with settlers in the Parawon region and encouraged them to "buy up the Lamanite children as fast as they could" so as to "educate them, and teach them the gospel.
[citation needed] In November 1851, Don Pedro León Luján, a New Mexican slave trader who had been operating in Utah with a New Mexico license, asked Young as the newly appointed governor of Utah for a license to trade with the Indians, including slaves.
He and his party were caught in Manti and charged with violating the Nonintercourse Act, which prohibited trading with the Indians without a valid license.
In his book, Forty Years Among the Indians, Daniel Jones wrote, "[s]everal of us were present when he took one of these children by the heels and dashed its brains out on the hard ground, after which he threw the body towards us, telling us we had no hearts, or we would have bought it and saved its life.
[5] Historians Sarah Barringer Gordon and Kevin Waite have identified that over half of the Indian "adoptees" died by their early 20s.
[22][23] In January 1852, Brigham Young, then Territorial Governor of Utah, addressed the Joint Session of the Legislature and advocated for slavery.
