I knew, vaguely and in the back of my mind, that Utah was a slave territory before the Civil War. It’s one of bits of trivia I trot out from time to time to serve as a reminder that I’m a history nerd. Not that anyone really cares.
Not that it matters to Civil War buffs, either. Utah wasn’t part of the Confederacy. The early Mormons were realists. They cooperated with the Union, all the while just being glad the Gentiles back East were too busy fighting each other to come after the Mormons again.
Recently, I was doing to some research on Joseph Pueblo and Wilford Pueblo, two Indian children who were enumerated on the 1850 census of Utah in the household of my ancestor Stephen Luce.
Until I delved into the question, I more or less fell in with the idea they were Stephen’s children or step-children by an unknown Shoshone wife. This, or maybe another idea floating around Luce descendants that they were Indians (probably genizaros, or de-tribalized Indians) picked up by the Mormon Battalion at Pueblo, Colorado and sent by John Luce to his brother Stephen in Salt Lake.*
After doing some poking around myself, I suggested the Pueblo boys were children of a Mountain Man named Purbelow, who had a run-in with the 1849-50 Parley Pratt expedition to southern Utah (Swanstrom, Apr. 7, 2020).
I’m at a standstill with that theory but the problem of their identity continues to fascinate me. We now know (2021), based on DNA testing, the boys were not Stephen Luce’s children.
I’ve played with the idea their mother might have been Margaret, the Shoshone wife of Bill Hickman, a Luce associate. Margaret could have been the widow of Mountain Man Purbelow. Hickman married Margaret in 1855. She was 35 and had been a servant in the household of Brigham Young. There are no records or traditions that connect Margaret to any other Shoshone. Her presence at a peace conference in 1856 helped Hickman make peace with some Shoshone under Chief Washakie at Ft. Bridger. If she had personal connections the fact would have been important and would likely have been stated. Instead, she was probably just one of the Indian slaves redeemed by the Mormons from Ute or Mexican traders.
I don’t see a way to pursue my theory about Margaret but it seems less likely as I learn more. Although her age is about right, I seem to have underestimated the number of Indians purchased by the Mormons. If Margaret was a slave, she wasn’t so unique as to suppose she and not some other Indian woman was mother of the Pueblo boys.
Another thought is the kids themselves were Indian slaves. The timing here is interesting. In Utah the 1850 census was delayed. It has a record date of April 1, 1851 and was completed by July 1851. Thus, we can be relatively sure the Pueblos were in the Luce household by July 1851 at the latest.
This is the period when Mormon authorities were developing a response to the Indian slave trade. Traders would buy Indian children to sell in New Mexico. The Mormons hoped to put an end to the practice. Jones says Brigham Young was advising Mormon families as early as the Spring of 1851 to buy up Indian children, educate them, and teach them the gospel (Jones, 52). This is exactly when we find the Pueblo children in the Stephen Luce household.
Later the same year, in October 1851, Mormon authorities at Manti arrested eight Spanish traders from New Mexico and charged them with illegally trading with the Indians. The traders were led by Don Pedro León Luján. They had (allegedly) traded with the Utes for nine slaves—one woman and eight children. The court ordered the captives released, but placed them in Mormon homes. See United States V. Don Pedro Leon Lujan et al.: 1851-52.
One of the problems of prosecuting Luján was slavery was not illegal in Utah. Under the Compromise of 1850 the people of Utah were allowed to decide whether Utah would be free or slave territory, but had not yet done so. In order to deal with the ambiguous status of the Luján captives, Utah passed two laws. First, Act in Relation to Service, on February 4, 1852, which legalized slavery in Utah. Then a month later, Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners, on March 7, 1852, which created indentured servitude for up to 20 years for Indians.
Luján complained that the Mormons themselves had done exactly what they convicted him of doing. The slaves he intended to sell in New Mexico had been confiscated by the Mormons and sold to Mormon families.
One of the provisions of the two slave acts is that a register was supposed to be maintained at the county level. According to the Utah State Archives, the registers are known to have existed but it’s not known whether they survived and if so, where they are located (Personal communication, June 10, 2021).
- Sondra Jones, Trial of Don Pedro León Luján : the Attack against Indian Slavery and Mexican Traders in Utah (1999).
- Act in Relation to Service. Utah Territory Slave Code, 1852.
- Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves. Acts, Resolutions, and Memorials Passed at the … Annual, and Special Sessions, of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah. Brigham H. Young, Printers. 1866. pp. 87–88..
* The idea John Luce was with the Mormon Battalion at Pueblo is — let’s say, odd. John Luce was part of the Standing Guard for the 1847 Brigham Young Company. He did not serve in the Mormon Battalion. This problem, of course, does not mean the Pueblo boys did not come to Salt Lake with the 1847 sick detachment from Pueblo but if so, it does not account for the Luce connection.
