Southern Paiute: The People of the Fremont River Valley
Near Torrey, Utah
Before Mormon pioneers arrived in the Fremont River valley, the Southern Paiute people had lived in this canyon country for generations. The Paiute were not random wanderers. Their movements followed the land's rhythms: seeds and roots gathered from the valley bottoms in summer, pine nuts harvested in the uplands each autumn, game tracked across a territory they knew with precision.
They were extraordinarily skilled at drawing a living from high desert country that outsiders would have called uninhabitable. The Fremont River valley and the surrounding canyon lands formed part of the traditional territory of Southern Paiute bands. They maintained trails through the red rock country that later became routes for Mormon settlers and eventually for tourists.
When the first Mormon settlers entered the region around what would become Capitol Reef in the eighteen eighties, some accounts say they reached an understanding with local Paiute people about settling there. The nature of any such agreement, between people with very different understandings of land ownership, is poorly documented. The Paiute presence in the Fremont River valley predates the Mormon settlement by centuries.
The canyon walls and red mesas that visitors admire today are the same ones that framed a Paiute world long before the first wagon rolled through Wayne County.
