Lost Worlds of 1863. W. Dirk Raat

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СКАЧАТЬ On the way, the soldiers surrounded a Tubatulabal village near Keysville and killed 35 to 40 Indian men. On the return trip, the troops marched About 1,000 Paiutes to the Tejon Reserve, bringing 300 to the fort, which had been closed in 1861 … . Neither the Indian agent nor the military provided enough food to sustain the captives.

      Office of Indian Affairs, San Francisco, July 11, 1864¹

      You would make war upon the whites [taibo’s]. I ask you to pause and reflect. The white men are like the stars over your heads. You have wrongs, great wrongs, that rise up like the mountains before you; but can you, from the mountain tops reach and blot out those stars … . What hope is there for the Pah-Ute? From where is to come your guns, your powder, your lead, your dried meat to live upon, and hay to feed your ponies while you carry on this war. Your enemies have all of these things, more than they can use. They will come like the sand in a whirlwind and drive you from your homes.

      Numaga (Young Winnemucca), Pyramid Lake Paiute, Indian Leader and Speaker, April 1860²

      This time he [Wovoka, Mason Valley, Nevada, Paiute and Initiator of Ghost Dance movement in 1887] hadn’t left his body to follow the shamans’ path under the earth or into the shadowy realm of animistic powers and magic; instead, he visited a monotheistic Heaven and spoke to a very Methodist-sounding God with strong Mormon leanings.

      Gunard Solberg, Tales of Wovoka ³

      The early 1860s was a time of turmoil and conflict for the Paiute peoples of Owens Valley east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, as well as the Northern Paiutes of the Pyramid Lake region in what was then Utah Territory and present-day western Nevada. Even in eastern Nevada where the Overland Stage Company ran from Salt Lake City to the Schell Creek Mountains (immediately east of present-day Eli, Nevada), a distance of 225 miles, an eight-month war took place between the cousins of the Northern Paiutes, the Goshutes, and the white intruders. At least 16 whites were killed, and over 50 Goshutes died before peace was achieved in October 1863.⁴

      These incidents and conflicts were followed by events that eventually led to the disintegration of the Paiute homeland and, of course, the Paiute sense of family and identity. The so-called Keyesville Massacre of 1863 resulted in the death of at least 35 Indians,⁵ including many Paiutes, and that event was followed by the removal of nearly a thousand Owens Valley Paiutes to Fort Tejon and the region of southern California. There many would succumb to measles and other “European” diseases.

      The Pyramid Lake War of 1860 was followed by the Mud Lake Massacre of March 1865 when old men and women, as well as children and little babies, were burnt alive, including one of Chief Winnemucca’s wives, Tuboitony.⁶ The disintegration of the Pyramid Lake Reservation led these Northern Paiutes to wander from federal reservation to federal reservation, from army camp to army camp—first at Camp McDermit in northern Nevada, then the Malheur Reservation in Oregon, and after the Bannock War of 1878, to the Yakama Reservation beyond the Columbia River in Washington. The latter was a forced march that became, for the Paiutes, their own “Trail of Tears.”

      After the Dawes Act of 1887 the Paiutes were to be given 160 acres on an individual basis for parcels of marginal land. Many received nothing, and instead they were forced to form small ghettos adjacent to white communities in hopes of doing odd and dirty jobs the white man or woman would not do. It is not surprising then that the ancient Ghost Dance Religion would be revived in hopes of restoring the traditional Paiute values of homeland, family, community, and identity—a heaven on earth that would exclude the white outsider.

      Numa and Numa Folkways

Historically the Paiutes consisted of three related groups of indigenous peoples in the Great Basin: the Northern Paiutes of western Idaho, eastern Oregon, northeastern California, and most of Nevada (an area of over 70,000 square miles); the Owens Valley Paiutes in the arid basin between the eastern slopes of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains and the western faces of the Inyo and White Mountains; and the Southern Paiutes of southern Nevada and southern Utah, northern Arizona, and southeastern California. The Owens River runs approximately 180 miles north to south through the Owens Valley. The word “Paiute” has been interpreted to mean “Water Ute,” but the term the people use for themselves is usually Numa, meaning “the people.” However, some northern Paiutes, such as the Pyramid Lake Paiutes and a scattering of Owens Valley inhabitants, prefer Numu (also Neh-muh), while Southern Paiutes call themselves Nuwuvi, both terms also meaning “the people.”⁷

      Demographic estimates vary depending on the source, but a general approximation for the late 1850s would be about 6,000 Northern Paiutes in western Nevada and 1,000 Owens Valley Indians. By 1980 the figure would be 5,123 Northern Paiutes throughout California, Nevada, and Oregon, and about 1,900 Owens Valley Paiutes. Only about half of that latter number still live in the valley, the rest having moved to Los Angeles and elsewhere.⁸

      The Paiutes linguistically belong to the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan family of languages. Although the language of the Northern Paiute is similar to that of the southern branch, the Southern Paiutes speak the Colorado River Numic language, which is more closely related to Numic groups other than the Northern Paiutes. The Numu of Owens Valley speaks Mono, a language closely related to that of the Northern Paiute even if many “northerners” claim that they cannot understand the speech of “southerners.”⁹ Many Paiutes speak dialects similar to those spoken by the Shoshone. Historically there were approximately 21 Northern Paiute bands, with two or more other enclaves in contiguous areas of California.¹⁰ The Owens Valley group consisted of six distinctive tribal groups, while the Southern Paiute traditionally had between 16 to 31 subgroups or bands.¹¹

The Northern Paiutes and the Owens Valley segment developed cultures and societies well adapted to the harsh realities of a desert environment. Generally speaking, the Owens Valley environment was favorable to that prevailing elsewhere in the Great Basin, allowing the Owens Valley Paiute to develop a semi-settled life unknown in other parts of Numu territory. Depending on the season, most northern Numic speakers occupied a specific camping place centering on either a foraging range or a lake or wetland that provided fish and/or waterfowl—although dependence on fishing and communal duck hunting was virtually unknown among the villagers of Owens Valley. Pronghorn antelope, mountain sheep, deer, and rabbits were the objects of communal hunts, while piñon nuts would be gathered in the mountains. The Paiutes traded pine nuts and salt for acorns and acorn flour from the California tribes. Grass seeds and edible roots supplied nutrients in the meadows and marshes.¹²

      Owens Valley Paiute housing took a variety of forms. Most Paiutes had a “mountain house” that was a high altitude structure (above 6000 feet) used during fall and winter consisting of two upright posts with side beams sloped from the ground in the shape of a tent. The roof was made of pine boughs. The winter “valley house” was larger in diameter, 15 to 20 feet, built around a 2-foot deep pit with tules and earth covering the outside. Summer houses were simple semicircular brush windbreaks, not unlike the general Great Basin wikiup. The most durable structure was the sweathouse or communal assembly lodge, a semi-subterranean house that could be as much as 25 feet in diameter. It was used as a men’s house or dormitory, a community meeting house, a sweathouse, and a ceremonial center. The erection of a sweathouse was supervised by the group’s headman, who also nominally owned and maintained the structure.¹³

      Like their eastern cousins, the Western Shoshone of southern Nevada—individuals, nuclear, and extended families—moved freely between communities and tribelets, which, again like the Shoshone, named their subgroups after food sources. For example, the Kuyui Pah (Pyramid Lake) Paiutes were known as Kuyuidokado or Cui-Ui Ticutta (kuyui eaters). The kuyui (or cui-ui) is a bottom feeder sucker ancient to, and found only in, Pyramid Lake and sacred to the Numu. Likewise, the Carson City Paiutes were known as “tule СКАЧАТЬ