I’m always tense when I think of the state Legislature in session. All the arguing over bills, trying to decide what to do about our current economic problems — but mainly it’s the idea of playing the blame game.

I admit, sometimes there is a clear and marked reason for a problem or mistake made, but sometimes the problem lies in the confusion of opposing viewpoints and the stubbornness of two parties to see the other’s side.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Tooele County’s first settlers, the Goshutes, and their way of life. But that way of life changed when Mormons started to settle and build in the Tooele Valley. The conflicts that arose between the Goshutes and their new neighbors seem to have resulted from the vast cultural differences existing between the two factions and the fact that the natural resources of Tooele Valley were limited.

However, many of the depredations for which the Goshutes were blamed, like cattle rustling, appear to have been committed by other American Indians. And many thefts were actually committed without malice, though few of the pioneers had any idea of how different the Goshutes concept of property ownership was from their own.

The Goshutes regarded the land and all of its resources as the property of everyone — not in the sense of communal ownership, but in the sense of no ownership at all. Until the Indians learned otherwise, livestock running loose on the range was looked upon the same as any other wild big game animal — available to whoever bagged it.

The Goshutes by no means were the only offenders of cultural misunderstanding.

If the pioneers had a better understanding of the Goshute way of life, they would have realized that the seed of the native grasses in the valley served the American Indians the same way the pioneers’ own grains did. But as the Tooele Valley’s white population increased, so did the number of livestock, which reduced the native grasses — the Goshutes staple food supply. The settlers’ agricultural practices decreased the native vegetation even further.

Brigham Young advised Utah settlers that it was cheaper to feed the Indians than to fight them. But this advice from their prophet and president was difficult for the Tooele settlers to comply with because it was just about all they could do to feed themselves.

In describing the hardships of early pioneer life in Tooele, P.H. Corbett wrote in his book “Jacob Hamblin the Peace Maker” that “the people were hard put to find sufficient food to keep body and soul together.”

When other food was exhausted, the Tooele Settlers staved off starvation by digging and eating the same roots and bulbs as the neighboring Goshutes, who had often gone hungry even when they had had the entire valley to themselves. Now, with the newcomers competing directly with them for what little food there was, the Goshutes found themselves on the very brink of starvation.

It is to the credit of these greatly mismatched neighbors that their differences were restricted to small, intermittent skirmishes rather than the open warfare that broke out elsewhere across the West. The remarkable restraint exercised on both sides is noteworthy especially in view of the fact that each group had adequate cause to take action against the other.

Natalie Tripp: ntripp@tooeletranscript.com