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4 <br />By 1150 A.D. the Anasazi had largely abandoned the area in what <br />is now Utah, eastern Nevada and northern Arizona. They were replaced <br />or displaced by Numic-speaking peop]es (Paiute and Shoshoni) from <br />southern Ca]ifornia or northern Mexico (Fowler and Fowler 1971}. <br />Southern Paiutes inhabited the Arizona Strip and the high plateaus. <br />They practiced some horticulture but it was a minor supplement to <br />hunting (fish, small game, birds, deer, antelope and sheep) and <br />gathering (roots, seeds and berries}(Steward 1938). The Paiutes <br />moved about their territory with the seasons, occasionally spending <br />the summers hunting and fishing in the mountains but returning to the <br />valleys to tend crops intermittently. In the fall they gathered pi non <br />pine nuts in the foothills and usually spent the winters in the valleys <br />(Woodbury 1950). The Paiutes called the Virgin River "Pah-rush" <br />("water that tastes like salt") and "Pah-cuss" or "Pahroos" ("dirty, <br />turbulent stream")(Leigh 1961). <br />By the 1700's'Spain had established territories in what is today <br />New Mexico and along the Pacific Coast near Monterey. To find a supply <br />route to connect these settlements and to explore the intervening <br />territory in hopes of establishing new Indian missions, two Spanish <br />explorers, Franciscan Fathers Dominguez and Escalante, set out from <br />Santa Fe on July 29, 7776. They crossed through western Colorado to <br />Utah Lake in Utah. The harsh winter conditions of the Great Basin <br />forced them to forsake their goals and return southward to Santa Fe. <br />On October 12, they crossed from the Great Basin into the Colorado River <br />basin near where Cedar City stands today. Crossing the Mountain <br />