1
10
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https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/fde931ad916766a8a6280b406f0ea4b8.jpg
140bfc5a294e5d755c48768903665e4b
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Title
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Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
James Hedrick
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Janey Bryan and Shasta Blackeye-Adair
Location
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Great Basin College (Elko, NV)
Transcription
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Transcription in progress
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MP4
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01:01:56
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Janey Blackeye-Bryan and Shasta Blackeye-Adair - Oral history (07/31/2017)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history interview with Janey Blackeye-Bryan and Shasta Blackeye-Adair, Western Shoshones from Duckwater, NV, on 07/31/2017.
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Janey Blackeye-Bryan and Shasta Blackeye-Adair presented a lecture to the Shoshone Community Language Initiative (SCLI) program at Great Basin College over the heritage of the Western Shoshone. They begin their presentation by going over women and men’s right of passages in regards to Western Shoshones. They talk about the traditions that they had to practice growing up which included hunting, dating, and so on. They also give us a view into the language and how it refers to the culture. Moreover, they give us an insight into their personal histories growing up in Duckwater, NV.<br /> <br />Presented at the 2017 Shoshone Community Language Initiative summer youth program (SCLI 17).</p>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://cdnapi.kaltura.com/p/2096981/sp/209698100/embedIframeJs/uiconf_id/39808892/partner_id/2096981?autoembed=true&entry_id=0_nomfkgyt&playerId=kaltura_player_1502209988&cache_st=1502209988&width=560&height=395&flashvars[streamerType]=auto"></script>
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Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 065
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07/31/2017 [31 July 2017]; 2017 July 31
Contributor
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James Hedrick [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017.
Consent form on file (administrator access only): http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/items/show/405
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
MP4
Language
A language of the resource
English; Shoshoni
Community
Crossroads
Duckwater Reservation
GBIA
history
hunting
rights of passage
Shoshone
Story
traditions
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/8d2eb93328d1dfd9d888e1f2d8d77606.jpg
df14ae09ae5353c3a9ef4593f2376495
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
James Hedrick
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Elizabeth "Liz" Dann
Location
The location of the interview
Great Basin College (Elko, NV)
Transcription
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Transcription in progress
Original Format
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MP4
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01:40:17
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Elizabeth "Liz" Dann - Oral history (07/18/2017)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history interview with Elizabeth "Liz" Dann, Western Shoshone from Crescent Valley, NV, on 07/18/2017
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Elizabeth “Liz” Dann addresses students at the Shoshone Community Language Initiative (SCLI) program at Great Basin College. She starts her presentation by offering a prayer, and then speaks about the importance of our traditions. She also speaks about giving her grandson an eagle feather, medicine bag, and other items while he was in the war. She also gives advice to the women about women, especially during ceremonies. Her daughter Sandy Dann speaks about her experience with the Sundance and what it consist of. Liz then speaks about making cradle boards, preparing hides, and tells some of the traditional Shoshone stories.<br /> <br />Presented at the 2017 Shoshone Community Language Initiative summer youth program (SCLI 17).</p>
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<p><a title="Elizabeth Liz Dann 2017 Oral History video in separate page" href="http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/5gdrn" target="_blank" rel="noopener">View Oral History in separate page if above player not working</a><br />Transcript pending</p>
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 063
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
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07/18/2017 [18 July 2017]; 2017 July 18
Contributor
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James Hedrick [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK
Rights
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Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017.
Consent form on file (administrator access only): http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/items/show/401
Format
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MP4
Language
A language of the resource
English; Shoshoni
Community
Crossroads
folktale
GBIA
hunting
Shoshone
Story
sundance
traditional ceremony
traditional foods
traditions
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/a6d92c28c92a49eb8e30a86a312703f4.jpg
cf26af8a34cece4a6f3e0705f0cbfb14
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
James Hedrick
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Shawn L. Collins
Location
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Great Basin College (Elko, NV)
Transcription
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Transcription in progress
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MP4
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01:31:51
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Shawn L. Collins - Oral history (07/12/2017)
Subject
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Oral History Interview with Shawn L. Collins, Western Shoshone from South Fork, NV, on 07/12/2017
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Shawn L. Collins addresses students at the Shoshone Community Language Initiative (SCLI) program at Great Basin College. Shawn L. Collins is a Western Shoshone from the South Fork area. He tells some of the stories of the Shoshone, about traditions such as tanning and hunting, and he also speaks about how the Western Shoshone viewed and interacted with the world. He elaborates about whirlwinds, old animals (no longer exist), and water babies. He gives an overall explanatory talk about the heritage and traditions of the Western Shoshones. He also warns the younger generation not to brag because it’s against the traditional Shoshone lifeway.<br /> <br />Presented at the 2017 Shoshone Community Language Initiative summer youth program (SCLI 17).</p>
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<a title="Shawn Collins Oral History video in spearate page" href="http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/el3ic" target="_blank" rel="noopener">View Oral History video in separate page if above player not working</a><br />Transcription pending
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 061
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07/12/2017 [12 July 2017]; 2017 July 12
Contributor
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James Hedrick [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017.
Consent form on file (administrator access only): http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/items/show/397
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
MP4
Language
A language of the resource
English; some Shoshoni
Community
Crossroads
folktale
GBIA
hunting
Shoshone
Story
sun dance
sundance
traditions
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/fd1c78b1af0f668a4a5e8b0e4544283b.jpg
2ec11c23b9237c5d336c815cb990b554
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/e34fcae3740194b994ff8ad125af279e.pdf
2b6c2466fcce8f38c0a324f81a4b24e4
PDF Text
Text
Florence
Steele
&
Lee
Moon
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
015
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
December
6,
2006
Ibapah,
NV
Great
Basin
College
•
Great
Basin
Indian
Archives
1500
College
Parkway
Elko,
Nevada
89801
hBp://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/
775.738.8493
Produced
in
partnership
with
Barrick
Gold
of
North
America
�GBIA 015
Interviewee: Florence Steele and Lee Moon
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: December 6, 2006
C:
What do you guys recall about the Goshute Reservation—when it was first established,
and how did it come about?
M:
Let me go way back. When they first put the Indians on the land here, okay? This has
been passed down from generation to generation. The Indians were first put here on this
earth. This tribe here, Shoshone Tribe, neighbors, the Ute Tribe towards the east, some
more Shoshones up north, Southern Paiutes down south, and other tribes way up and all
kind of around them. They always using Coyote as a character in [__inaudible at 2:18__].
He was a—well, and his brother, had a big pot of all the different tribes in there. Told his
brother Coyote, don’t look in there, they’re not ready yet. Take them over there. The
Coyote was curious all the time. He got curious, and looked in there. And all the tribes
scattered out.
S:
He—a nice-looking girl came over here, on this, kind of. He was looking for Coyote’s
brother. He had a name—“white”-something. Tosapitte. He was looking for him. And
she couldn’t find him. And then that Coyote, Itsappe, when he—she asked him about
this, the person she was looking for. And he said, “I’ve never heard of that name. Not in
my life. I’m the only one who lives around here. I’m the only one.” So. So she said, “I
guess you will do. You will have to mind me. We’re going a long ways from here. I want
you to mind me, what I say. You listen to me.” So, and they left. They left, and they
walked for long ways. And she kept telling him, “Don’t go running around.” You know
how a kid is; you know, they run around, and come back, and run. And that what he was
doing. So, they came to a big water, edge of the water. And she told him, “We’re going to
go across this water. They said it was like a land. There was nothing you could see. As
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far as you could see, there was water. So he kept running around on the edge of that
ocean, or whatever it was—sea. So, she told him, “Let’s rest here for a while. And then
we’ll go. We have to cross this water.” And he asked her, “How we going to cross this
water?” She said, “You will know, but we’ll see tomorrow after we’re rested.” And they
got up, and he made—her hand like this, and when she made a sign like this, and the
water came to this way. Yeah, it came splashing this way, and this way. And there was a
path where you could—she told him, “You run. You run fast as you can. And when you
run, don’t look back. That water’s going to close. The road you just passed, it’s going to
close right behind you. And you just keep right on running, don’t stop until you get to the
edge of the water. There’ll be no more road. That road’s going to be closed.” And so
that’s what he did. He was so tired once he got to the edge of the other side of the water.
And that is why that lady told him, “You get rested. Don’t be running around. You’ll
need your strength.” And he didn’t listen. That’s why he was very, very tired when he got
to the edge of the water, because he was just running and running and running. And when
they got to the edge of the water, she wasn’t there. And he said, “What am I going to do
now?” He didn’t know what to do. He kept running around the edge of that water. “Shall
I go this way, or shall I go this way?” But he didn’t know the land. And pretty soon, the
lady came over, and came flying across the ocean as a duck. And she landed right by him,
and it was that lady. She came over as a duck, she came flying. But Coyote didn’t know
that. So they walked and walked. They walked, and they came to this little hut. And there
was an old lady, when he got in there. She was weaving a basket, and the Coyote asked
the lady, the girl, what the lady was doing, the old woman. And she wouldn’t tell him. So
he just watch. And the the lady—the girl go away somewhere, but she didn’t know
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where. In the evening, she will come back. And she told Coyote, “You can go ahead and
go out, but don’t stray too far. You come back, or you gonna get lost. You come right
back to this camp.” And he did. He was so curious why that lady was weaving a basket.
The basket was getting bigger and bigger. And she—the young lady told the Coyote, she
said, “You should go over and go see what the lady is doing. She will tell you what to
do.” And she said, she told him, “You spend the night here with me, tonight. You’re not
going back to her. You’re going to stay here with me.” And that night, the old lady told
him, “You’re going to sleep with me.” And Coyote didn’t want to, because she was kind
of old, and he’d rather go for the young one. But he stayed anyway, and they were in bed,
and she told him to—you know, to—“Go ahead and have sex with me.” And Coyote
wouldn’t do it. And I guess towards morning, he decided, “What is she up to, anyway?”
And he did what he was asked, and then he went back. He went back to the young girl.
And that young girl asked him, “What did you do?” And he told her. “Is that why she
asked me to go over there and stay at her camp?” And she said, “Yes.” And she said,
“You’re going to be doing that for several nights. You’ll be going over to her hut. And
she’ll still”—she was a weaving a basket, making bigger and bigger. And that old lady
told him, “You’re going to try it. You’re going to do it with the young girl this time.”
And he did. They stayed together that night, and when they were making their love, he
wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t do anything with her. She was too small, he couldn’t do
anything. So he gave up on her. And he tried for a few nights. And he said, “What shall I
do with her?” He said, “I can’t do anything with her. She’s too small.” And soon, he
killed an antelope. And I don’t know if she saved the backbone or she saved the neck part
of the bone. And when they were together, he went after that piece of bone he saved. He
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came back with it, and then stuck that into the young girl. And the young girl cried and
screamed so loud, her breath went out of her. And he took that bone out of her, and he did
that to her. He made love to her. This time, he got her. And she was still unconscious.
And the next night, she was all right. So, he slept with her for I don’t know how many
nights. And then, that old lady told the young lady, “I think we’re ready. We’re ready,”
she said. “Now, you tell that guy, whoever he is, that he’s going to take this basket across
the water, and take it on the other side of the water, ocean. So the young lady told the
Coyote what the old lady asked of him. And he said, “Am I going to walk over that
water?” “No,” the young lady told him. “You’re going to go through just like the way
you did, but this time, you’re not going to run. You’re going to walk with this on your
back.” He wondered how he’s going to get that on his back, because that basket was big!
But anyway, that lady did the same thing to the water like she did before. And she told
him, “You’re going to go walk through this water road.” And he did, to the edge of the
water. But that girl was already at the other side. And she helped him pull the basket to
the edge of the water. And when he looked back, there was no road. There was just water.
Except when the water came back together, said it just splashed real big, like that. Like it
was standing into Heaven, and it came back and settled again. And this scared the
Coyote. So she told him to “Take this basket, and take it to a certain place—but don’t
fool around with that basket. Just keep on carrying it on your back until you get there.”
But Coyote was curious. It got heavier and heavier. And he said, “What did she put in
this basket? She was weaving and weaving, and it got bigger. And then they wanted to
have sex with me. Why?” He said, “I’m going to look in there.” He took the lid off, and
when he did that, he said that the—something pushed the lid. And he tried his best to put
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the lid back, but something was forcing the lid back. There was people coming out of that
basket. Coming—they were going this way, and this way. Trying his best to hold the lid
back, but lot of them came out. And finally, he put the lid back on. But he would hear
people in there then. At first he didn’t hear anything. That’s when he got curious and
looked in there. There were people in there. Then he stood there for a while. And them
people were—they were not all the same. They were all different people. And he named
all the Indians now that are living in this United States. He said, “You’re going to be
there, and you’re going to be called So-and-So.” All those tribes, he named them all.
“That’s where you’re going to stay. You stay, you’ll be doing this and that.” And then he
took the basket again. He traveled for a long time, until he got very very tired and
couldn’t go on anymore. So he said, “We’ll let the other people take the lid off and see
how many is in there. Who’s all in there?” And he did take the lid off. They said there
was not that many people in that basket. But they went here and there, but not too many.
And so he named them, too, the kind of people they were going to be. And the names.
And I guess that’s it. Those two duck ladies put those people in that basket. That was the
Ducks’ and the Coyote’s children in that basket. And then they told him to take it to—
must’ve been United States! [Laughter]
C:
So, was the Goshute tribal members in there?
S:
Yeah, the Goshutes, there were Goshute.
M:
He was carrying the basket. He wasn’t supposed to look in there.
S:
Yeah.
M:
Because—and he was told it wasn’t ready!
S:
Not to look in there.
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M:
Take the lid off yet, it wasn’t time.
S:
And see, if it was—his brother, that young girl was looking for, he wouldn’t have looked
in there. But, this Coyote did, because he was not the other guy.
C:
Uh-huh. Was his brother the Wolf?
S:
Yes, uh-huh. Pia Isa. He’s the one that she was looking for.
M:
The Wolf.
S:
Mmhm. And the Coyote said that, “There’s no one by that name. I’m the only one person
that lives around here.” [Laughter]
M:
That’s why everybody leave. Because it wasn’t the time to take the lid off and let them
out. That’s why other Indians aren’t like the white people. Them scientists, they know
everything. They’re real smart. Maybe that’s why the Indians are like that now. Because
they weren’t ready when they were let out. Other words, we would have been like them.
All those scientists, they know everything now. Our Indian people would have been like
that if they was ready when they take the lid off. But it wasn’t time. I think that’s what
happened. That’s why Indians are the way they are now; because we weren’t ready!
S:
It’s the Coyote’s fault! [Laughter]
C:
So the Coyote was a trickster. He didn’t listen, huh?
S:
No. And we had a old guy by the name of Commodore. Indian. Used to live with us. He
was blind, and very old. And he said, “It’s been told that that basket and the lid is
somewhere down there.” He said, “There is a hill that formed around it. It turned into a
rock. There’s a water coming out of it.” He said it’s still there.
C:
Where at?
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S:
He didn’t know. He said it just down south. But he didn’t know—he don’t know the
place, but it has been told that that basket is down south from here. And he said there’s
got a hill behind it, and it turned into a rock. And the lid is still by it. I know he said that
the spring water coming out of it. But he didn’t know where.
C:
What is Goshute—“Goshute,” is that an English word, or is that a Indian word, or what
does that mean?
M:
Kusiotta.
S:
Kosiutta.
M:
Like a “Goshute,” ash paint.
S:
There’s a water down here at the lane, and there’s a two big ditches. The one is coming
this way, and one is coming this end, and they all go together alongside of the road. And
in that one creek, there’s an, it’s always kind of gray. Like, when you would make a paste
out of a flour, you dump that into the water, and then it’ll be flowing white. That’s how it
is, that water. Always gray. Because there’s a—somewhere, underneath that water,
there’s a form of white rock. It’s somewhere down here. He said he’s seen it. Where they
used to get that powder, and they paint their faces with it. War paints.
M:
Aippin.
S:
Aippin. Aippin. And that kind of rock is underneath that water. That’s where it’s always
flowing, and kind of grayish color.
M:
Aippinpah.
S:
Aippinpah, uh-huh.
C:
Aippinpah, uh-huh.
S:
Because that powder is called “aippin.” And water is “pah.”
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C:
So, what is the aippin used for?
S:
That’s what they use it for. To paint war paints, paint their faces. It comes off easy, just
like a powder. Off of that rock. That’s why they called it that. Kosiutta.
C:
So is there other stories about the Goshute Tribe here, or culture, or customs, or games
that you guys played as far as, you know, tribal activities, or cultural activities?
M:
Basically, it’s probably the same as the Shoshones and neighbors. Indians like to gamble.
Handgame, and race—footrace, you know, that.
C:
Did you have any famous runners that you could remember that were a racer or ran for
the tribe?
S:
No. But my aunt used to tell me that all these Goshutes, there was, when they form like a,
they were dancing in the fall? She said “We never used to tell everybody around then.
There was enough Indians to do the powwow themselves. There was a lot of Goshutes
here.” There was no other tribe among us. And she said, they went away somewhere.
They were—the food was getting scarce. They have to go far away, and some of these
people that live outside, they’ll get into fights because of the food. They have to drive
them back. And she say “I don’t know what happened after that.” Said it was told from
time to time, but that’s what she heard.
C:
What kind of food was here at the time? Was there—what type of animals—?
S:
Ooh. Oh, there was, I guess, deer and rabbits, and all that were kind of getting scarce
because there was a lot of people. And seeds and berries. And that’s when they started
roaming out, because of the food, was scarce.
C:
So, like, with the rabbits, and the deer, what did they use? Did they use any of their hides,
or hair, for—?
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S:
Yes, they did.
M:
They used everything, even the bones in needles and things like that. They didn’t waste
any of it.
C:
What were some of the things or tools they made from it?
M:
From the bones?
S:
There are certain bones in the deer that they use.
C:
And what did they make with it?
S:
Oh, anything! They make a needle out of it. Then, the deer—it goes from the back of the
deer—is it the tendon, or what is it? And they used that for thread. They’d dry it up, and
they use it for thread. Because it started from here, and it runs clear down to the back.
[Goshute at 27:57] Tukuintt’an entaampo.
C:
Ah. Like, the tendon.
S:
The tendon, yes. That’s what they used for—and then, to scrape the hair from the hide,
they use the shoulder bone. They use the shoulder bone. This part of the leg, I think, or—
it’s kind of sharp. They use that to scrape the hair from the hide. And use the brain, and
spread it on the hide until it’s dry, and it’ll soften it.
C:
What did they use to scrape the hair off the hide?
S:
That’s what I said, they used the deer bone. Certain part of the bone. Shoulder blade and
the leg, leg bone.
C:
And how long does that take to do that?
S:
To do what?
C:
To scrape the hair off the hide.
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S:
It depends on how they have to [Goshute at 29:27] ossoittai. If they don’t soften it the
first time, then they put more brains on it. Then they have to do it the same thing all over
again.
C:
What are some of the crafts that the Goshute Tribe is known for? Make baskets, or—?
S:
Make baskets.
M:
Willows.
S:
Out of willows. And some of those small—I don’t know what it’s called. But mostly, I
think it was out of a willows.
C:
How about for, like, medicine? What did the tribe use for medicine before healthcare
came about, in regards to antibiotics and the stuff that we use nowadays?
M:
I’ve forgotten lot of things that I was taught when I was a boy. At that time, you don’t
listen. Now you wish you would’ve listened! Yeah, there’s some herbs there that could be
used for certain illness and all that. And I have forgotten even what—the names, even. I
guess they’re still there, I guess.
S:
I think that totsa is another one. I don’t know what they use it for. Whatever you call the
totsa. You got some in Elko, up in the hills, [__inaudible at 31:18__].
M:
You know totsa?
C:
Yeah, uh-huh.
M:
And that’s up on Adobe Summit last year.
C:
Does it grow on the ground? You dig it out? Or how do you get it?
S:
Yeah, it’s like a potato. They were in the ground. Most of them were small. Some of
them real big. To dig it out, you really had to use a stick or what was available.
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C:
So as far as the Goshute reservation here, what can you guys share with us today about
what goes on here? What do people do nowadays for—?
S:
Now? Well, there used to be ranchers, but now they’re gone. The people that used to own
these lands, they’re all gone. The young ones just don’t care to take care of them.
C:
How big is the reservation? How big is the Goshute reservation?
M:
You’ll have to ask; I’ve forgotten just how many acres. How many acres is the Goshute
reservation?
U1:
Hundred and eighteen thousand.
C:
Hundred and eighteen thousand acres? Uh-huh. What does—do you have elk here? Deer,
antelope? I seen antelope today, coming in.
M:
Elk?
C:
I didn’t see elk, but I seen antelope coming in today. So is elk native to this—
M:
No, it was transplanted here in 1988, I believe. Done pretty good here. It multiplied pretty
fast.
C:
So is it that tribal members use the elk, do they hunt the elk to eat the meat, and do they
work with the hide of the elk like they do the deer? Or is it harder to work with?
S:
It’s harder to work with, I heard. I guess they have to cut it in two to work it. Unless you
take it to the tannery.
C:
How about for wild turkeys? Do you guys raise wild turkeys here?
M:
Yeah. They was also transplanted here not too long ago. Maybe ten years back.
C:
Oh. How they doing?
M:
I don’t know how many there is now.
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S:
I’ve seen some here and there, through the summer. I just think they do survive the
winter, because I’ve seen little chicks. So far, there was seven of them little chicks, over
in Spring Creek. Rabbits. And cottontails.
C:
Does anybody still make the rabbit blankets out here?
S:
[Laughter] I don’t think so!
C:
No?
S:
My mom used to make it. We do that, lot of the rabbit hide, to make a blanket.
C:
Did you help her when she made those?
S:
No, I didn’t, I just watched her. [Laughter] And she made it wide enough for a single bed,
and cover it with a blanket. Or she used a Levi’s like this and cover it, make cover for it.
C:
Do you remember how she put them together? Did she sew them together, or twist them
together, or how did—
S:
She made the—because, the way she made it, it was kind of a web. And she put a, she’ll
tie a stick about this long [indicates a stick roughly 10-12” long], so she could twist
that—tie it to the end of the hide, I think. She stretched the hides, they’re about this wide
[indicates a few inches in width], and then she start twirling the stick, and it make a rope
out of that hide. And she made a big line of the hide, and then make a ball out of it. And
then, when she gets ready, then she’ll tie them together with the old rags, just tie them
together this far apart, I think. [Indicates a space of 2-3 inches] They were all this far
apart, both ways. And keep on tying it, until she think it’s big enough for blanket.
C:
Were they pretty warm?
S:
Yeah, they were pretty warm!
C:
How do you use the pinenuts? Is there anything special made with pinenuts?
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S:
They just cook and eat it, and then they make a gravy out of it.
C:
And how’s the gravy made?
S:
Well, they smash the—they cook the pinenuts, and they smash the shells, and make sure
you don’t break most of the nuts in there. And then you grind them up with charcoal. I
guess, long time ago, they use that winnowing basket. You could put the nuts in there,
and then put charcoal on top of it, and then start. There’s a, you know, certain way to
shake it so the charcoal don’t touch the willow basket—winnowing basket. And you
better do it quickly, too! Fast. That just to dry up the pinenuts, so it’ll—it’s a better to
have it dry, and then they, whatever they have that those—ground rock and put the nuts
on them and start the—
M:
Grind.
S:
Grinding. Oh, what do they call that? A tusu. Those little rocks. And then poto, the round
thing. Round, flat rock about this [indicates a rock a few inches thick]. That’s to make
gravy out of it.
M:
And it took a lot of skill to make a pinenut gravy.
S:
Yeah.
M:
Just had to have everything just right. Otherwise, gravy wouldn’t come out right.
S:
Or they’ll make a stew out of it, like you would a beans? You have to cook it for a long
time. And it’s kind of gray, the nuts. And you boil it, and then pour the first one out, and
then just boil it with the second water. And you put dry meat in there. I guess some
people will dry deers—the ears—and they put that in there. And make pinenut stew.
M:
You can bake in ground.
S:
Probably can do a bake like the beans. [Laughter]
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C:
Does the Senior Program here cook any of the Native foods for you guys?
S:
No. They don’t know anything about Indian food. [Laughter]
M:
Wild onions, probably, that the people still use around here.
S:
Yeah.
M:
There’s potatoes.
S:
Yeah, they still have wild carrots up in them canyons, and wild potatoes. They’re not big,
though. They’re, potatoes are about this big, though. [Indicates about an inch.]
C:
So when’s the best time to harvest those?
S:
In the—the potatoes, you see them in the spring, in the late spring. You start digging
them before the leaves are drying up, because they dry up fast. Before the carrots. The
carrots you dig around the end of summer, when they’re about this tall. [Indicates roughly
knee height.] And they have a clusters of white flowers.
C:
Of what? Of white flowers?
S:
White flowers, yeah. A cluster of them. That’s how you can tell where they’re growing.
And they grow deep—about that deep [indicates somewhere between 8-12 inches]
M:
Going back to the pinenuts, the people long time ago knew when the pinenuts was ready
by the rabbit brush. It will turn real bright orange or yellow if they’re ready.
S:
Yeah, they’ll watch that. They watch for it real closely. You call it rabbit brush—they
call it, what was it? What is it?
M:
Sipappin.
S:
Yeah, sipappin! Tapashii [43:15].
M:
And the, how do you say that?
S:
Yeah!
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M:
Wild rose.
S:
Yeah, well, it’s the berries that were—
M:
Had red berries. They get real ripe at about same time pinenuts are ready.
S:
Ready to pick.
C:
So the berries of the wild roses. Are they used for anything?
S:
Mm, I don’t think so. Never heard of anything.
C:
So is there any ceremony that the tribal members do before picking the pinenuts, or
how’s that go?
M:
Long time ago—when was the last time they had, like in those mountains? And pinenut
dancing in the fall days, I think. In them days, when I was going there.
S:
I think so.
C:
So how, what kind of dance do they do for the Pinenut Dance?
S:
Do round dance.
C:
The round dance?
S:
The round dance, yes.
M:
Circle dance.
S:
Circle dance.
M:
This, and then Bear Dance come. And the Southern Paiutes, they come over here—
S:
I think they come from the Ute, the Bear Dancing.
M:
They had the Bear Dance songs that they—the Goshutes only had the circle dance songs.
S:
Yeah.
C:
Why do they call it the “Bear Dance?”
M:
I don’t—
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S:
It came from the Ute. That’s where it came from.
C:
Did they—
M:
I guess it—
S:
I heard here and there that the Utes say that they have a Bear Dance in the spring. That’s
when the bears come out of their den, or wherever they were staying all winter. And they
go, they have a trees that grow on the mountain, I guess, and I guess they’re laying in the
den for so long, their hair start coming off, and I guess it itches. That’s when the bears
start rubbing their body on that tree, and I guess it makes a sound. A certain sound. So
they have this Bear Dance, they have an old tub, and they put those—they have a stick
about this long [about two feet], about this wide [an inch and a half in diameter]. And
they did, they put notches in there. I don’t know how many notches in there. And they
rubbed that when they started singing the Bear Dance songs. Maybe that’s how it sound
like when the bears are rubbing their skin onto that trees. Makes a sound. That’s why they
dance to that music. They have a song for it, too. But not over here, that’s what I’ve
heard, that’s what I’ve been told. Come from the Utes, out that way. Oh—there’s another
thing that Indians used to eat during the summer—when the chokecherries are red. And
they’ll take a lot of chokecherries, and they kind of squish it, and they make patties out of
it. That’s going to be the winter food, and that’s how they dry the chokecherries. Make
patties out of it.
C:
Okay. Well, I want to thank you both for sharing today, these stories and the creation
story. And this will be preserved. And once again, I want to say thank you to both of you.
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
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Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
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GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
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2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Florence Steele & Lee Moon
Location
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Ibapah, NV [Goshute Reservation]
Original Format
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DVD and VOB format
Duration
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00:48:07
Transcription
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http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/544
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Florence Steele & Lee Moon - Oral history (12/06/2006)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral History interview with Florence Steele & Lee Moon, Goshute from Ibapah, NV (Goshute Reservation), on 12/06/2006
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Florence Steele and Lee Moon are Goshute from the Goshute Reservation. Florence and Lee start their oral history by telling the creation story of Coyote, and how Coyote brought over the Native Americans to the North American continent. They also refer to the Goshute as Gosciuta (Go-see-oot-ta) which roughly translates to ash paint which in extension refers to the aivee (white chert) in the water. They also speak a little about the traditional foods and that were hunted and gathered. Florence also speaks about how her mother made rabbit blankets. They end their story by speaking about the Bear Dance and how it came from the Utes and why the Utes performed the dance and songs as they did.</p>
Video pending <br /> <a title="Florence Steele and Lee Moon Oral History Transcript" href="/omeka/files/original/e34fcae3740194b994ff8ad125af279e.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read Florence Steel and Lee Moon Oral History Transcript [pdf file]</a>
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archives
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 015
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
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12/06/2006 [06 December 2006]; 2006 December 06
Contributor
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Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America
Rights
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Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017.
Consent form on file (administrator access only): http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/545 http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/items/show/361
Language
A language of the resource
English; some Goshute
Bear dance
Community
Crossroads
folktale
gathering
GBIA
Goshute
Goshute Reservation
hunting
Ibapah
Story
traditional food
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PDF Text
Text
Beverly
Brazzanovich
&
Harold
Miller
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
010
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
October
12,
2006
Reno,
NV
Great
Basin
College
•
Great
Basin
Indian
Archives
1500
College
Parkway
Elko,
Nevada
89801
hBp://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/
775.738.8493
Produced
in
partnership
with
Barrick
Gold
of
North
America
�GBIA 010
Interviewee: Beverly Brazzanovich and Harold Miller
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: October 12, 2006
M:
My name is Harold Miller. My Indian name is Pattsinokwah [0:46]. I am from the
Walker River reservation, Schurz, Nevada. And I was born in Mason Valley, at a little
town off the railroad track there in Mason Valley. They call it Nordyke. And that’s where
that old man used to perform these Ghost Dancing songs. And we used to play around his
house when we was up there, when we was children. I think there’s only two of us left
now that remember him, when we used to see all of his rituals that we seen when we was
childrens up there. And that’s how I become to get acquainted with a lot of things like
this. And he had taught me lot of things that we boys supposed to do. And he’s kind of a
silly guy. He jokes about a lot of things. But sometime, he talk about something that, you
know, that’s real serious, and he’d bawl us out. And his wife was same way. But he was a
real good as a ritual artifact leader. Doing lot of things in our neighborhood in Mason
Valley. And people probably know him, because his name was Wovoka. Wovoka, means
in Paiute, is, he was all tied up with a rope all the way around his waist. Next morning,
there was pieces of ropes laying around all over. And that’s what they call him, by that
name: “Wovoka.” He wovoka that rope. Tekuppe wovoka [2:20]. And that’s how we got
to know him pretty good. And when I left there, right around about that first part of the
Depression, around 19—well, the Depression was around 1900—and my dad came after
me. When he used to work on the ranches. He was kind of a cowboy guy. And he used to
break horses for the ranchers when you’d—no machine—wagon, or something to pull
teams for those ranchers. And so, when he got enrollment in Schurz on a ranch, with his
mom and his dad, and he moved back into Schurz, and then from there, he went to
Stewart. And he met my mom over there. And they graduated—them days, they used to
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graduate from high school at ninth grade. When you finished ninth grade, you graduated
from high school. So they both graduated from there, and later on they was schoolmate
sweethearts, and after a while they got married. Then, mom, she stayed around here, and
took working in the ranches, doing a lot of the ranch work. Picking potato, and picking
onions, and doing lot of household chores on ranches. And they stayed there on the
ranches. Lot of Indians used to live at the ranches, and they’d do lot of work for the
ranches. Did everything free. And I think the wages was, about two and a half, or
something like that, a month. And that was lot of money for those people, to be working
for wages like that. And since then, that time, when I was first born—I was born 1927,
and I grew up with my moo’a [4:07] and my tokko [4:08], my grandfather and
grandmother, mother’s side. And on my other side, my grandmother, father’s side, he
stayed in Schurz, and I’d go back and forth. We didn’t have no transportation, anything.
And we used to travel by foot from here to Smith Valley, or Schurz, or wherever. But
there was certain places where we’d camp. That’s where we’d go around to make our
rounds, to live one place to the other. We traveled by foot. And I never forgot that. And
when I was about eight years old, I had to go to school. And all I did was speak Paiute
language, and learning my culture with my grandparents. And then, when I did go to
school in Schurz, this whole place was got rounded up and went school. And they keep
day school for the government in Schurz. And they haul us in the little tiny dog catcher’s
wagon, got screen all the way around. That was the kind of bus we had. And either that,
or you hitchhike a ride to school, from lower part of reservation to upper part of
reservation. And in the school, everybody talked Paiute. But we had lot of Shoshones on
our reservation, because Depression time was hard times, and lot of Indian people come
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to Schurz, because they was making the Band, and then they moved the reservation from
the reservation here out to where the reservation is now. And from there, we went to
school, and we all talked Paiute and Shoshone. And when they made Yomba Reservation,
all those Shoshones got moved over to Yomba Reservation, Reese River Valley. So all
our Shoshone friends disappeared. And sometime, we used to go up and visit them
horseback. And come together, and put on a little powwow sort of thing. I remember they
had powwows getting out over there at Reese River. But they don’t, they had lot of
Shoshones working there, because there was lot of irrigation canals, and moving the
fence lines, and everything, around Schurz. And that’s how come I got to be pretty well
acquainted with my culture and my native-speaking language. And now, at this time, I’m
disabled. I fell down last December 26th, when I fell off of my porch, on a snow porch.
And I hit the ground with my knee and elbow, and I ruptured my back. Three of my
vertebraes are cracked now. And up to then, I was teaching native language at the high
school day care and Head Start in Pyramid Lake, Nevada. And I worked for Reno-Sparks
Colony, as a native teacher in culture and language. And from there, I transported to
Pyramid Lake, and I was employed there for about two and a half years, until I was hurt.
And I’d like to go back, but I don’t think I can go back to work anymore, teaching the
language. So, what I am doing with this gentleman here, we’re trying to get together our
little programs to talk about our language and our history. And that’s how come I’m here
today, that I was chosen to be with this gentleman, who takes these pictures about our
culture, of our peoples, our way of life. And also, my caretaker here, Beverly
Brazzanovich. Maybe she can tell you her part of—her age, and where she was born, and
all of that. Go ahead, Beverly.
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B:
Well, my name is Beverly Brazzanovich. I’m a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute
Tribe. And I have a long history of, my grandfather came from Secret Valley, north of
Susanville, Honey Lake. And he was Pit River. And my grandmother was a member of
the Pyramid Lake Tribe. And at that time, our family was—our clans, they call them—we
were the Kammentekkates [8:32], the rabbit-eaters. Mainly, in our ancestries, they were
like nomads. They traveled a great circle in Secret Valley, into, like, Alturas, and to Fort
Bidwell, or Cedarville, and back into Long Valley, and into Leadville, and into Granite.
And that was a big circle, and back into Smoke Creek. Then that lead to Honey Lake, and
they also, at the end [__inaudible at 9:00__] at Pyramid Lake. And when my
grandmother and my grandfather met, they were like nomads, and traveled that route.
And so I had a long teaching, as I was partly raised by my grandparents. And we went,
we lived on a ranch, which was a homestead—was like homesteading, the ranch, up north
of Pyramid Lake. And it was called Potato Patch. And that’s where I was raised. And my
grandmother, my great-grandmother, and my grandpa, they raised potatoes. And they
used to travel by wagon, and come all the way into Nixon. And they had to load the
wagon full of potatoes, onions, and vegetables. Then they asked them where they got the
potatoes. They said they had a potato patch way up north. And that’s how that’s named
Potato Patch Ranch.
M:
How far is that from Nixon?
B:
It’s about 28 miles north of Nixon. And then, after that, my ancestry on my grandfather’s
side, where we come from, north of Gerlach, from the Granite [Peak?] area. And they
come into Pyramid Lake at the north end of the lake. And they would trade their rabbit
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blankets, and their deer jerky, their tanned hides from the deer, and they would trade it
for the fish that is famous from Pyramid Lake. Cui-ui. And—
C:
What did you call that fish from Pyramid Lake?
B:
A cui-ui or cui-yu.
M:
Cui-yu.
B:
Uh-huh. And it’s a, that’s historic fish. And we no longer can fish that fish. And after
that, I was raised in Potato Patch most of my life, but I was schooled to the third grade in
Nixon, at the old school. And then I was, my mother married to a man from Fort Bidwell.
And so therefore, we traveled north of California and Nevada, back and forth in the
summer, but we’d always come home to Potato Patch.
C:
So, was Nixon—that school you talked about, was it a tribal school, or BIA school, or…?
B:
A tribal, it was a tribal school. And—
M:
Government school, yeah.
B:
A government school at that point. But I went to school there.
C:
Uh-huh. How big was the school, and how many students, would you say?
B:
It was a two-story, two or three story—because the restrooms were at the basement. Then
the next floor up from the basement was the kitchen, the dining area. And then the level
way up, this third floor, was all the school rooms. And it was the first—at that time, we
didn’t have kindergarten. Just first grade up to the third grade, and then it was another
classroom from third grade up to the—third grade, fourth grade, and then just, it escalated
up. And after you finished the 8th grade, then you was transported to—7th grade, actually.
6th grade. Then you were transported to Wadsworth, which was 18 miles south of Nixon.
And they had another school there, and I went to school there in the 7th grade, until the
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year I moved to Pyramid Lake, back to where my mother was working out at the Bear
Ranch, north of—northern part of California. I went to school in Eagleville, California. It
was just a two-room school. And I went to school in Fort Bidwell, which is a historical
spot now. The school is no longer there, but it’s all boarded up, and it’s fenced around it,
because it’s considered historic. And then I think that we came back to Cedarville to go
to school. And then, from there, I moved back to Nevada, and I stayed in Reno almost
twenty years. Then I moved to Pyramid Lake, and I’ve lived in Pyramid Lake for about
28 years. But I wasn’t raised around Pyramid Lake, just at Potato Patch there. I’d just
come for the summer. But I went through all of the, growings up of the cultural that we,
as a woman, when become a woman. We were not to live in the home, in the house. We
were taught to live across a ditch. And we had a special house across the ditch where we
stayed when we became a woman.
C:
At what age would you say that begins at?
B:
That would be around, in the early [19]50s.
C:
Uh-huh. But I mean, what age were you when you—
B:
I was seventeen when I become a woman. My first steps of being a woman, was sixteen
and a half, seventeen years old.
C:
So was there like a cultural pr—
B:
Procedures that you make.
C:
—that you go through?
B:
We lived away, we had to make our little house across the ditch, away from the main
house. And we had to stay there for ten days, and we could not eat red meat. We could
not eat any—and play with the boys, or eat, or be associated with any of that male
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members of the family. And Grandma would come over to visit us to bring us our food.
But we weren’t allowed to eat red meat. We had to eat just vegetables, or whatever,
berries that was dried, or—that was prepared for us, in soup manner, or a cake, or a dried
fruit made into a cake, like a patty-type. Patty. But we were not allowed to eat the red
meat, or any types of meat, because it would bring bad luck to you at that time. To the
male who hunted that animal. And then, because of the red meat, has blood, red blood,
just like red blood that flows through a woman. And each month, the woman would have
to expel all her waste. So we were not allowed, because it would make the man sick, the
male sick, or whoever hunted that piece. And we were taught that we couldn’t eat it,
because it would make him sick. But it could bring him bad luck in his next hunting
adventure. And plus, releasing the blood from our own body, and the waste would bring
on cramps—bad cramps—and make us hurt even more during that period. And after that
period, we finished, then we would have our little, we would have to go and bathe ourself
in the ditch, and cleanse ourself, and be blessed by our grandfather, by the medicine herbs
that he—sagebrush and cedar—and he would bless us. And there, after we would finish
that, then we were allowed to come back into home. But at that time, we weren’t. Well,
ten days, we were allowed to stay away from majority of the house, or anybody that—
you couldn’t go out and play. Then, after that, we’d have to, like, run—during that period
while we’re on, the, releasing the waste, we would have to race and climb a mountain,
while we’re on our menstrual. And that would show the endurance, of how we were
going to be. Were we going to be lazy, or we were going to have the endurance to live a
long life, provide for our families, and be a strong person. That we could handle all the
stress or the hardship. And that was the teaching that we had to go through to become a
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woman. And every month, we had to move across the ditch, and stay away from them,
the whole entire rest of the family. And I would do that.
M:
And my, my story about that—when I was growing up, they told us, “Don’t play with
girls.” And said they had bad disease, because they bleed every month. And in that way,
we was taught lot of things about our culture, about one another’s life. The boy’s not
supposed to play with the girls, and the girl’s not supposed to play with the boys. And lot
of things they teach you about. The hunting, and what you gather, and you can’t be
around the place where girls are cooking. You can’t be messing around. Only time you
congregate is at the table where you’re eating. And when the girls are cooking, you don’t
hang around there. And like if you’re grinding pinenuts, or some kind of wild seed, make
flours, or something to eat, we had a little round rock. And it’s flat, and you get that natta
[19:56], and you get your tusu [19:57], and you get all kind of, different kind of seeds.
We have, there’s lot of different places we travel, we get different kind. Like, we go up in
the mountain, get pinenuts. Then we come down off of the mountain, we go down there
and get sandgrass, they call it kuu’ha [20:15]. In that way. And we’ll grind all that up to
make different kind of cereal, and grind it up and make flour. That’s the way we preserve
our food. And us boys, we just do the harvesting, and the girls prepare all of that for our
cooking, so we can eat in the day. And when we do that, we’re not supposed to be
hanging around the girls, and the girls aren’t supposed to be hanging around us when we
are skinning a deer, and curing the meat. They’re supposed to stay away from us. And we
do all the, work the jerky, and do the fishing, and they do all the cooking. And lot of
things they teach about how to cook. How to do it, when it’s time to prepare your food.
And they teach a lot of things, those old people. Because we don’t have much time to
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explain lots of things about—we just go to seminar four nights a week. [__inaudible at
21:17__]. And the things that we are not supposed to do, and do—like when they’re
playing games. Certain games we’re allowed to play with the girls, in front of the
grownups. But we can’t be playing with them in the dark or anything like that. We’re real
careful. Everybody goes to bed just at sundown. And you’re supposed to be in bed, no
noise. Because when they teach, old people teach you to be quiet, because in them days,
lot of people come around and invade your camp. Like, the white people come by—or
even Indian people, other tribes come around at night and steal your children, the babies.
Like, some of them can’t have babies, and they’ll steal your children. And you have to be
real quiet at night so you won’t give your position away where you’re camping that night.
And things like that, they teach you be quiet. And then, that big man. White man call him
a Bigfoot nowadays, but in our language, we call him Pa’aitso [22:24]. He’s a great big
Indian guy. And he goes around collecting little Indian kids, and put them in his, in this
willow in back with spikes in it. He drops you back in there, and he takes you to his
house, and he’ll cook you and eat you. So that was one thing they teach us: don’t be
running around late at night. So that that story has stayed with us for many years. And
then, when I grew up to that way of life, I remember all of the things that them people,
old people, taught me. What’s not to do, and what’s right, what’s wrong. And they tell
you, be nice to older people. Be nice to other tribes. Don’t be doing things. Because
nowadays, our children is growing up, and what they are doing now, they’re doing lot of
things backwards from what the old people taught us people when we was young. And
nowadays, our children is playing with foreigners—different nationality from different
country. And they have different way of life. And our children’s getting into that
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category, and they are going out of boundary. But as native people, supposed to be
teaching our native people. And now it’s getting to where, like me, I look back on my
days, our language is going away, slow but sure. But not only our Indian people—
Paiute—but lot of other tribes throughout this country, the United States. Even the
Hawaiians have said they’re losing the language. The Alaskan Indians are losing their
language. And the Somoyans [Somoans?] out there in the Pacific, they’re losing their
language. And there is lot of native people in Mexico that don’t understand Mexican.
And they’re originally from Mexico. But a lot of them—I went to a native culture school,
around Tucson, Arizona, but they was very sad, some of them crying, because all their
children don’t understand their language, wherever they come from. And it’s very sad
that nobody is teaching our younger people the way our life used to be, when we was kids
and we had pretty rough life to grow up to. But nowadays, everything, the new modern
way, they say that you’re living in a fast lane. When you’re living in that fast lane, you
get hurt and get killed. And that’s what’s happened to a lot of our young children. And I
hope this things that we are trying to talk about, our children, I hope they understand
what we are trying to tell you, that things that we grew up to, is supposed to be real, real
strict with our life. And we listened to the old people say it, and that’s what we go by.
Nowadays, when our kids marry from another tribe, another country, and they lose our
language, and they losing our culture, they losing our way of life, and they’re doing
something else from some other country and way of life. And especially in foreign
countries, they use all kinds of medicine of different kind. But misuse it. Like tobacco:
we use our native way when we smudge each other, and bless the ground for our people.
This morning, we put tobacco there and we pray for them in our language, and we go on
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and continue on with our life. Because those people, they have spirits that goes through
the air, rest of the centuries. And you are supposed to pray for them. You see a whirlwind
out there spinning around, little tiny one; that’s a baby. He’s traveling someplace with his
parents. Or you see a great, big whirlwind over there, lifting tumbleweeds, coming way
up. That mean there’s some old people that’s going on a journey to another country to
powwow or see their family in another territory. You pray to that whirlwind, because he’s
somebody in that spiritual way. He’s some of your family, or some of your tribe member
that go to visit some other tribe way out in other territory than the country where they
come from. Maybe they go up to Yerington; maybe they go up to Nixon. Maybe they go
to Owyhee, maybe they go to Las Vegas. You see whirlwinds all over. Those whirlwind
represent something in our native way of life. But this, our people, travel from this
country, they’ll go over to another country. Maybe they’re going to go hunt rabbits,
maybe they’re going to pick pinenuts. Lot of things that they’re doing, those whirlwinds.
And you pray to them, that whirlwind when it’s going. That’s another thing that we were
brought to attention. And the different kinds of stars in the sky. A lot of different relations
that up there, that have passed on, way up there, watching you do whatever you do
wrong. And you’ll be punished for doing something wrong. You’re not doing the things
that they taught you, the old people from way back. And you’re doing something else.
And that’s why lot of our Indian people getting hurt. And you pray, you use that tobacco.
We don’t misuse that tobacco. We use that tobacco for a purpose. For offering to the
spirits. We either smoke a little bit of it, or we take the tobacco and roll it, and smoke it.
We bless the ground with it, or put it on the brush, or scatter it on the table where we’re
going to eat. And we do a lot of things like that. Spiritual way, with that tobacco. That
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tobacco is something really—is strong thing in our livelihood, of our Indian people. We
don’t misuse our tobacco. You see some people over there light cigarettes, one right after
another. But that guy, he’s going to be sick after a while. He’ll get black lungs and he’ll
die. That’s how the white people misuse our tobacco nowadays. And it’s not their fault
for doing that, because they get addicted to that smoke, and that’s what happens. And
things like tobacco, boy, that’s our main source of blessing each other, with that tobacco.
We smudge our bodies with that tobacco. We smudge our bodies with sage. There’s lot
of different kinds sage out there: blue sage, gray sage, and desert sage, and riverbottom
sage. You harvest any of those, and you dry it out and make a little packet out of it. You
can light it and smudge people with it. And you do that with your food, and smudge your
food before you eat. You pray with it. And that’s how it is, that sage. And that tobacco,
same way. And everything we do, we do the prayers to the Spirit, to protect us in our
travels, wherever we go. We use that sage to bless each other. And we all—when we go
to school, or a workshop, or do something in another country, we bless each other. I
remember one time, I was going to Elko down there. An old guy come along and bless all
of us. And he lit up his sage before we get on the airplane. He asked the spirits to go with
us so we’d be protected on our journey to our workshop, wherever we’re going to go.
Some of us went to, way back into Maine, to this Passamaquoddy Tribe. And we had a
little conference back there with different tribes of Native people of United States. So
those guys, you know, they did the same thing, too. And they sang us some songs with
their drum And the drum is something that’s sacred, too, in our history, in our life. That
drum, we use it for peaceful work. And we protect our body with that drum. And only
one supposed to use that drum is a male. Male child, boy, or a man, old man. He’s the
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only one supposed to use that drum. Nowadays, no teaching. We see lot of powwows, we
see ladies over there using that drum, and pounding the drum and singing. That’s not our
culture. Our culture, what the ladies are doing is they’re destroying our native food, or
our native hunting grounds, or something that we use, year-round. And the womens that
using the drum, they’re not supposed to use it, because they’re women. They have
different type of livelihood, because they menstruate every month. Every month they
menstruate, and when they menstruate, then all that bad poison come out of their system.
And they’re supposed to bury all of that thing in the ground when they get through out
there. After their grandmother or mother blesses them, then they come out of there. Their
home out of that, where they have a menstrual for that twelve days or whatever days it
take to be sick and leave the house. When the ladies use our drum, that’s why I believe,
nowadays, our pinenuts is drying up. Lot of our Indian food, especially our grass, the
ones we harvest for food, the seeds, they’re all dying out. But we are practically misusing
our culture by using the drums, because ladies supposed to stand behind the men to sing.
Not to use a drum. Because the women have a beautiful voice. And they’re supposed to
stand behind the men and sing. But they cannot use that drum. That drum is made by the
man, and he’s supposed to use it as a man to defend his country, whatever territory he
works at. And then what he’d do that—the culture, that it’s supposed to be taught by the
parents, the older parents: don’t do this, don’t do that, do this here, and do it that way.
Because we are growing up in a place nowadays where everybody goes and do whatever
they want, and like I said, our culture is slowly diminishing, because nobody teaches
children the old ways of life, the way we grew up. But we as children—I am 80 years old
now, and I remember all the things that my grandpa taught me, and a lot of ways that my
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grandmother taught me, too. What they say about the girls, and how to prepare our meat
and stuff like that for the next winter coming. And we do that with rabbits, and we save
their fur. We make the pelts into long strands. We hang around the eaves of the house,
cured by the womans under the roof of the house. In springtime, we’ll braid the rabbits’
fur pelts together and make a big blanket. I have slept many days, nights in rabbit
blanket. Just like sleeping in electric blanket. And they were pretty warm. We could sleep
on top of the snow with rabbit blanket. It’d be, it’s nice and warm.
C:
Harold, is there anybody that still makes rabbit blankets?
M:
That’s what I want to do this winter. I’m going to make one. I hear there’s lot of rabbits
around a certain part of the town back there, in Mason Valley, Smith Valley. So I’m
going to go out and harvest the rabbits. It takes about 95 rabbits to make a blanket. So
I’m going to go ahead and make me one. And I’ll hang it up in the museum out at
Pyramid Lake, out by [__inaudible at 34:11__]. Before it, like, holds a purpose. And
when I was teaching my language there at Pyramid Lake, in day care and Head Start, I’m
teaching kids the way I was brought up, and teaching them what’s wrong and what’s
right. Lot of our animals we call a “beast”—they are not beast, they are part of us. We
human beings at one time—now, we was animals, like the Coyote. In Paiute way, we call
him, Coyote is our uncle. We call him ha’atsi [34:50]. And the Bear, he is our aunt. We
call him pa’hua [34:56]. Someplace, some Indian got Bear to get the pelts off their fur
and make a different kind of rug for their house or whatever they, tepee, they got then.
Different kind of headdresses out of the bear’s head. And we have a Bear Dance up here
every year, around Susanville area. I used to go to them kind of Fandangos once in a
while, but I haven’t been going too much anywhere lately since I’m catching up in my
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older ways of life. Ever since I’m getting crippled now, I can’t hardly do anything. And
maybe one day, I’ll make a recording of the things, the songs, what they taught me about
certain kind of animals. And there’s lot of stories about these animals. We talk about the
bumblebee that lives in the ground. He can’t fly, but he crawls on the ground real fast.
But we call our great-great-great-aunt, or great-great-grandma. The wihimomoza [36:01],
we call them wiwihi. You probably see those little holes in the ground, about size of a
dime. That’s where they tunnel into the ground, and they disappear in. And that’s where
they live. They don’t fly. They look like big bumblebee. Lot of kind of little animals will
teach us something about our culture, what kind of relation they are to our Indian people.
And you’re not supposed to hurt them, just take care of them. Because they are one of
your people. Do not kill them. And see, we’ll come to town today, and see one of our
uncles laying side of the road. Somebody’d hit him, and drag his body alongside the road.
Maybe I go back tomorrow, tonight, and pick up his body and bury him. Because white
men, they don’t care about our animals. And he’s one of our relations, our uncle. So I’m
going to pick him up and bury him. And lot of other things that we talk about. Our
friends, the birds. All kinds of birds is our friends. The wild sparrow, he’s a
chickenhawk-looking guy, he’s a stool pigeon for our people. He’ll tell on you. He could
tell an eagle, “That guy’s bad guy.” Or he could tell a buffalo elder, “That guy’s good
guy.” Or, “he’s doing something great for his family.” The sparrowhawk—you can’t hide
from him. He’s always there, watching you do something. We call him the stool pigeon
for our tribal people. All over where the sparrowhawks live—that’s another thing, lot of
story behind that bird. And lot of other birds got a lot of stories behind it.
C:
Can you tell me about Wovoka, and what the Wovoka dance is all about?
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M:
Yeah, Wovoka, he got his name when he became to be an Indian doctor. They tied him
up in a rope, and laid him flat on the ground, on top of big pile of native grass. They call
it memmewahaaru [38:04], wild hay. Indians probably make their—they make mattress
out of it. And you leave it that way for the next party coming by, they’ll sleep on it. Well
that’s what they did to this guy. They tied him up with rawhide rope. And next morning,
in his spiritual way, somehow he was so powerful that he broke the rope into million little
pieces. There’s little pieces laying all over. And then them old people came over to visit
him by morning, see how he was—gone. He was gone! And just little pieces of rope all
over. That’s what them guys was saying. They said, “[Paiute at 38:42].” Said, “He broke
the rope into million little pieces.” That’s how he got his name, that man Wovoka. Lot of
people have different definition of saying that word “Wovoka.” He’s not cutting wood or
anything. The word means “Hey where’d he been, that he broke up that rope into million
little pieces?” Wowovoka hoka [Paiute at 39:03]. So that’s how that word, he got his
name. And we used to hear him sing at night, and sometime we hum—hum his tune, his
song. And when he’s Indian doctoring, sometimes he’d pick a kid to be his janitor—to
bring his sand and stuff like that into the patient’s room. Then he’ll take out his feathers
with a stick, and put that stick in the ground in those buckets, or little cans loaded with
sand, river bottom sand. And then one can was half sand and half empty. Way below—
maybe quarter sand, but in a can, yellow can. And that’s where he’d spit all of these other
things that the bad medicine—he’d do that. And that’s what the janitor’s supposed to take
care of in the morning. Have them clean all of that up, and then dig a hole in a place
outside, then dump all that sand in there. Then that’s up to the doctor to do what he is
supposed to do with that, with all that chemical stuff that he had regurgitated during the
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night when he’s doctoring the patients. And he takes his feathers out… He doesn’t fail.
He doesn’t leave the feathers all rolled up, he leaves them exposed to the daylight.
There’s things like that they teach you. And each feather’s got words named for them.
And that’s the spiritual way he doctored his patients, and there’s big feathers of different
kinds. Sometime he get chickenhawk feathers with pretty designs in it. And those mean
something—like I told you the first time, those birds have a lot of meaning, like our
relation, and all those related birds are supposed to be some kind of native relation to our
people at one time. And we are one of those animals that grew up to what we are now.
And we’re living in, where we live, buy hats—like I got my World War II hat on, and my
Goodwill shirt, white knight shirt. We don’t have no more buckskin clothes. We don’t
have no more war bonnets, and it’s against the law to shoot eagles in the sky like we used
to, years ago. But nowadays, we go around when they’re nesting, and we’ll pick up their
feathers from the ground. And then we’ll have to bless those feathers from picking up.
When they get them, put tobacco on the ground where they pick up the feathers. And
that’s our spiritual way of receiving our eagle feathers. And we don’t kill birds no more.
We don’t do that. So you pick up the ones that die from old age, and then you go to
certain ceremonies to pick the feathers off of that bird that died, or died from some cause
or way in his death. So everything is religious thing that we are to be taught in our way
and our life. And our children’s not learning that, and we’re supposed to do things like
that. And that old man, he used to sit down at night and hum his songs, and pretty soon
everybody’d be going to sleep. And I was younger one then. We’d get carried into our
tepees, or into our kamai [42:43]. Our little willow shed or whatever you call it, kamai.
And they put us to bed. Next morning, wake up, our storyteller’s gone. He’s over there
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sleeping in his little shed over there. Making lot of noise if he’s home. And quite a thing
that we do: everybody gets up early in the morning, before sunup. Our grandparents wake
us up. And we bless our head with water, and then we get some water in our mouth and
spit it toward the sun, spray it with our mouth. And we talk with the spirits for our
coming day to be protected by our way of life and the prayers, the certain way of the
birds, and animals, and whatever we do. Before we eat, we do that, do lot of our
ceremonial work before we eat. Do a quick job of praying, wash our head in water, and
then we drink water and bless toward the sun. Sun just coming up. That’s how we was
taught to do. And the old people, that’s the first thing they do. They outside, making lot
of racket, talking to somebody. Sound like lot of people, but it’s just really one person out
there, saying the prayers for the whole family. The old people, the grandfather and
grandmother, they the ones, the first ones up. They talking real loud to the spirits, pray
for all of us that still sleeping, our childrens. And the married couple, the father and the
mother, and the old people, they protect everybody. They pray early in the morning.
Sometime they take a bath in that ditch, too, when there’s ice in the water. I don’t know
how they do it, but they do it. Boy, I tell you, a lot of racket they make! And they’re
praying, swimming in that ice water. And I seen my grandma and grandpa do that, wash
and take a bath in there, and do a lot of talking in their native words. When they taking a
bath, they blessing each other with the sage, and they got a little pot with them, they go
in with that. Smudging it in there. Dry each other off, and they go about their business
like nothing happened. But they protect the whole family by doing that. And they
sacrificed a lot of things by what they do to protect us as growing up children. And
there’s lot of teaching to kids like that. And when we’d do that, we’d pray to our food,
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and we give a little offering. Maybe you see some old people got little piece of bread, and
they’d throw it out the door. They tell their spirit, “Eat. You travel with this.” And that’s
how they teach you, with bread or any kind of food, where they dunk a bread in the soup,
or coffee, or cereal, and throw it out the door. And we’d tell the spirits, “Eat.” Then you
travel and have a good day. They said all of that different things about our food when I’m
eating. And then when we get to eating, everybody picks up their plates or whatever they
eat out of, and they put it in a little pan so Grandma and Mother can wash the dishes. And
the boys go out the door, and they go about doing their hunting, or making arrows, and
bows, or help skin rabbit, or, doing lot of outside work. Making your little drums, or
whatever things they are allowed to do. And the girls are inside the kahni [46:21], they
helping the mothers cleaning up the inside, and shaking the blankets outside and hanging
them up on the sagebrush, airing it out for the day. And they do lot of work, the girls.
They do hard work. And do lot of cooking, teach the girls lot of cooking. And there’s lot
of teaching about that, seeing if they going be lazy, or be active when they grow up to be
a woman. And they teach them, they test them all different ways, those old people. And
they tell us, “That guy’s going to be a good man, they’d better go over there and marry
him. He’s from another tribe.” And the girl go over there and investigate. Sure enough,
that little boy, he’s working hard, doing lot of things, and that’s what she’s after. She
want a good provider, good man. So she can marry him and have a good family. That’s
what the old people teach you. You chop wood, you hunt, you do a lot of things around
the house, outside. And the girls go about doing their works, about making baskets, and
all different kind of baskets, and collecting rocks to grind the foods on, and all kinds of
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thing. Making the buckskin clothes. There’s a lot of teaching to that, all of that. This what
the old people had taught us to do.
C:
I see Beverly laughing. Did you want to comment on what Harold’s saying?
B:
Yeah. That was growing up—the early teachings, was when I was growing up, my
grandpa didn’t allow us inside to heat up water to wash our face. Had to go out to the
ditch and watch our face in that cold water, or the snow. And after we would wash our
face in the cold water or the snow, then my grandma would get the deer fat. And she
would put it on our face. And that was our lotion. Because we didn’t have no cold
creams, or any type of perfume-smelling lotion, or any of that when we were raised way
out in nowhere. So we had to put—so she would grease us up with the deer fat. And
that’s how she’d have a flour sack, or that sugar sack, for the deer fat. And that’s what
we greased our face with, and our arms. It would be all shiny! [Laughter] And that was
one of our teachings. And we didn’t—and I still abide by this. I don’t wash my face with
warm water. I always use cold water.
C:
What was the reason for the cold water?
B:
So you wouldn’t look old when you turned old. And that was, Grandpa says, “You don’t
want to be looking old when you get old like me,” he says. “You want to look good, a
woman’s still supposed to look pretty for her man.” [Laughter] Used to tell us, “And
don’t look at nobody else’s husband. Because you remember how you got him. Because
when he get tired of you, he’s going to leave you for another woman, better-looking than
you. So you have to stay pretty!” [Laughter] And a male, he stays with his mom until
he’s about six, seven, eight years old. So he learns how to cook, how to take care of
woman, how you’re supposed to protect. Because the teaching is, some day, you might
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marry a woman that’s lazy. Then you might have to do all the chores to provide for her if
you love her. So he says. And that’s what I tell my grandchildren. I says, “You’re going
to get where you’d better start learning how to cook, and this and that, because some day
you might marry a woman that’s lazy, don’t want to cook.” And that came to true with
one of my grandkids. So he gets up and cooks, wash diapers, and bathe the babies, and
this, that, and get them all ready for school. He makes sure everything is done. Because
the woman he married was this lazy—but she’s gotten little bit better now. [Laughter]
But that is part of the teaching! When the male stays at home, helping Grandma or Mom
with the chores, so he could learn how to provide and take care of his household in case
tragedy—death, his wife died in childbirth, or he marries a lazy woman. Because got to
take care of his family. And that was one teaching. And so we abide by that. I even teach
that to my children. Even now, I say that to my grandkids. [Laughter]
M:
Yeah, that’s funny thing now. When you stop back to think about the way the old people
taught you, and then you explain it to this younger children, and lot of them don’t
understand, because—
B:
Oh, they think you’ve got old ways.
M:
Yeah, they think you got old ways in your life. But actually, it’s true. And then, later on,
when they get—I got little grandkids, great-great-grandkids, that’s coming up now,
they’re about twelve years old, but they live up in Billingham, Washington. But they
know who I am. They come up to me and hug me, and hold me around the hand like this.
They know all of that now. And they, “Grandpa, why don’t you tell me—tell me about
that bird, what they used to do when you was my age, when you was growing up. What
did they eat?” “Well, they ate lot of things. All kinds of fruit. They go out and gather
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fruit. Just like they make nest in the tree. Go way out there and get something, a worm or
something, a seed, they’ll bring it back to their little babies. Feed them. Well, we do the
same way. We go out there and hunt for our family. We bring back deer meat, or we
bring a rabbit, we bring back some kind of a wild game bird, and we prepare our food
that way with our family.” And that’s what they were really interested about, different
kind of game, and how I grew up. And that’s what they were saying. And they wanted to
know. And I tell them. And then, they says, “Well, how old were you when you got
married?” “Well, it was about 22 years old when I got married.” Because my grandfather
used to tell me lot of things about women. And when we used to stay out on the ranch,
where we worked for my grandparents, my dad and mother worked, everybody, whole
family out there working. And every day, cut hay, breaking horses’ team for the
machinery to pull, and they do lot of work. And the ladies and the old people work inside
the big, huge cellar, underground cellar. They’d sort potatoes in their way. Selling
potatoes, the ranch would sell these potatoes, and load it in box cars, and ship it to
whatever town need potatoes. And that’s the kind of work that the old people did. The
younger people be out there either plowing, or breaking horses to pull the machine work,
or whatever they doing. And that’s the way was our life. And everybody had something
to do to take care of one another. Nowadays, our children should be doing same thing,
instead of staying at home, laying out flat in front of a TV, and telling their mother that,
“I want dollar.” “I want ten dollars.” “Give me money for my car to get gas.” That’s no
good. They should be out working, and help support their mother and father and
grandfather. So that to raise a child you’re glued to what they are doing now. And
nobody teach them. And that’s why they lay around front of the TV. And when sundown
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comes, they out the door, they going out to party. And we didn’t do that in our young
days. When we go out there to play, it’s daytime to play. Not at night. Because you get
hurt at night. And the big giant come and pick you up, and throw you in his basket. He’ll
take you to his residence, and he’ll try and cook you and eat you. That’s the way, the life
we grew up in. And so we was scared of that paiyitsoo’ [54:54] coming around and
jerking us up out of the playground, and take us to his house and kill us and eat us. That’s
the way we was taught. So everybody go to bed early. Right at sundown, you’re in bed.
You don’t fool around at night outside. Or went to go potty, and then you come back
right in, back into bed. With your grandpa or your dad. And the girls sleep with their
grandma or mother. We had separate beds. And the, when the mother and father goes out,
they sleep together away from the house, and nobody see them. Then they go visit, or go
visit somebody at a place, do some shopping out in town or something. That’s the only
time they sleep together. But other than that, they don’t sleep together in the house. They
always slept in the separate beds.
B:
And especially during the month that the woman is on her moon. She does not sleep with
her husband. She sleeps in another room. Or them days, she would sleep away from the
house. Maybe her, and the babies, and the younger ones, the girls, they all go sleep away
from the house. They stay away for about ten days. And then, when she’s finished, she
come and she bless herself in the creek or the cold water, and bathe herself in creeks. And
then she comes back in house. Because she’s on her monthly, the man has to provide and
take care of the rest of the children while she’s over there. And, but we don’t use that no
more. Now, the men sleep with their wives and whatever. And when we were growing
up, I was growing up, we had to sleep separate, we slept separate from our husbands
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during the time we’re on our moon. And that was one of the things that we aren’t
practicing now.
M:
And when you get married, you can’t do lot of things like when you’re single. When
you’re single, you can go hunt anytime, whatever you want to hunt. But when you get
married, and your wife’s pregnant, you can’t hunt. Otherwise the child be born and
crippled, or—
B:
Some deformed—
M:
—some deformation of the child. You can’t go hunting, you can’t go fishing, when it’s
almost time for delivery. You can’t do nothing. You got to stay close to the wife and take
care of her. Otherwise, you do something wrong, you go hunt a rabbit, kill a rabbit,
you’re punishing your child that’s in the womb. And you can’t do hardly anything.
B:
That’s part of the teaching.
M:
That’s part of the teaching. You want a strong child. But they got to stay close to the wife
and take care of her once her once she’s in pregnancy time of the child that’s in the
womb. There’s lot of stories, lot of teachings like that. There’s too much things to—
B:
So many, so we don’t even have enough time. There was lot more to be taught. A lot
more that must be taught. But then we don’t have that anymore. We’re losing it. Because
of intermarriage of different tribes—and not only different tribes, but married into other
races. Hispanic, or the tai’po [58:29]. We’re losing it.
M:
Yeah, if your wife is pregnant, and you’re out there in the field irrigating, and the storm’s
coming up, you’d better leave the field and get home. You can’t stay out there, otherwise
they claim that the lightning will come down and kill your child while she’s carrying
your baby in the mother’s womb. When lightning striking, you got to get inside, keep
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everything—pull the curtains, and shut the doors and windows, and stay by your wife so
the child be protected. That’s how—that’s another teaching, about the storm, the
lightning, and the thundering. And I think lot of people forget to teach their children that.
That’s why a lot of our children, some might deform. They’re born crippled, or mentally
ill somewhere. Or maybe, what they call it? Some kind of syndrome, where they lay in
the bed and they die. What do you call it? Crib death? Something of that nature. Lot of
things that can happen when you don’t follow the life the way the old people taught you.
And you do something else. And you punished your child or your family that way.
Supposed to be carried away the way the old people tell you how to live your life. And
that way wherever you go, you got to do the right thing. The thing to always do, to do
things you are supposed to do with the family, don’t run off and leave them. Take care of
them, provide for them. And that’s the way life is today. And even now today, our
grandkids, we have to prays for them guys, so they won’t be going off to another tribe.
And lot of our children nowadays, they living in fast lane, I said earlier, because nobody
give them the right teaching. The correctioned way of life. Nowadays, you see kids
writing graffiitis which we don’t understand. Things like that. They stay up all hours of
the night raising Cain out there with some other nationality of people. They don’t care
about their world or their life or the family. They growing up wild, they like wild beasts,
with no correction. Everything’s got to be taught. You got a dog over there, you teach a
dog. “Come here, poochie. Sit down. Eat.” You got to talk to them. Even girls got cat,
you’ve got girls talking to it, “Kitty kitty, oh you kitty, oh kitty.” We talk to the animals,
you got to teach them! Our children growing up that way. We have to be taught by the
grown-up. And don’t leave your children unattended. And always teaching your children
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the right thing. Not the wrong way. That’s our Indian way of life. But when we get old,
we’ll think about that on the way down to our grown-up way. And what our grandparents
and the old people have taught you, in the hair days of the life, after you grow up and
then you think back, “Gee, them people were smart. They teach me that. And now I’m
living through that life right now so I got to take care of my family.”
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
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Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
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GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
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2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
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Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
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Beverly Brazzanovich & Harold Miller
Location
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Reno-Sparks Indian Colony [Reno, NV]
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01:02:40
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http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/534
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Beverly Brazzanovich & Harold Miller - Oral history (10/12/2006)
Subject
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Oral history interview with Beverly Brazzanovich & Harold Miller, Northern Paiute from Eastern Nevada on 10/12/2006
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Beverly Brazzanovich and Harold Miller are both Paiute from eastern Nevada. Harold Miller was born in 1927, and whose native name is Bazinokwah, is from the Walker River reservation near Schurz, NV. Beverly Brazzanovich, on the other hand, heralds from the Pyramid Lake Tribe by Pyramid Lake, NV. Harold begins the interview by speaking about the Depression and how many natives worked on ranches, and how his parents met one another at Stewart Indian School and eventually married. He also speaks of his childhood, being raised by his grandparents, and going to the Indian School in Schurz. Likewise, Beverly was partially raised by her grandparents on a homestead or ranch called the Potato Patch. Both speak of the native Paiute culture including women’s rights of passage, hunting practices, religious teachings, taboos, folk tales, and harvesting practices. They both emphasize how the younger generations, by means of assimilation and contact with other groups, have lost many indigenous cultural practices including their native language.</p>
Video pending <br /> <a title="Beverly Brazzanovich and Harold Miller Oral History Transcript" href="/omeka/files/original/2f402f34e1f52f9732fbccbb9711634b.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read Beverly Brazzanovich and Harold Miller Oral History Transcript [pdf file]</a>
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Great Basin Indian Archives
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 010
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
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10/12/2006 [12 October 2006]; 2006 October 12
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Norm Cavanuagh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America
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Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017.
Consent form on file (administrator access only):
Language
A language of the resource
English; some Paiute
Community
Crossroads
folktale
gathering
GBIA
hunting
Paiute
Pyramid Lake
ranching
Stewart Indian School
Story
traditions
Walker River reservation
-
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a44adada5c7b5c9bab1b8ca2af602e58
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/78f41864118130645a9e999fdce39237.pdf
3a14b89510b59ed169c5ce8df6951b4d
PDF Text
Text
Anthony
Tom
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
039
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
June
5,
2014
Lamoille
Canyon,
NV
Great
Basin
College
•
Great
Basin
Indian
Archives
1500
College
Parkway
Elko,
Nevada
89801
hCp://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/
775.738.8493
Produced
in
partnership
with
Barrick
Gold
of
North
America
�GBIA 039
Interviewee: Anthony Tom
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: June 5, 2014
T:
Morning. My name’s Anthony Tom. I come from the Te-Moak Western Shoshone band.
I live out in South Fork. Back then it was known as “Lee,” the Lee community. But yeah,
I was raised out there since I was a little kid. My dad and mom, they got assignment out
there in, what—1948, I believe. And that’s the year I was born. So we had that
assignment out there all these years, and I lived there. I don’t remember for sure, I think
they lived in Elko way back then, and then they moved out here. We weren’t, they
weren’t the original South Fork assignees, I don’t know what they call them. Anyway,
they didn’t have assignment out there. They got, it was little later after that. When they
got their assignment, and we’ve been there ever since. We’re still there today. My mom
and dad, they’re both gone now, but, yeah. Been out there as a little kid. And back in
those days, South Fork was more like a country community, you know? Like, it was—I
remember going from, there was no road by our house. There was no road. We had to get
our wagon and horses and go up to my grandma’s house to get our car, then we’d come
in to Elko. I remember that, riding on back of the wagon. Makes it sound like a long time
ago. [Laughter] But, yeah. And to go visit people around there, yeah, we’d be traveling
on wagons to go visit to houses and whatnot, because there was that much road out there
back then. And actually, back in those days, South Fork was a really nice, peaceful
community. The people were, you know, they worked together back in those days.
Because there was no—you had to. Because there wasn’t the money, the job like it is
now. Even the government money wasn’t there, the 638 contracts or whatnot. It wasn’t
there. And so they kind of depended on each other to live out there, putting up our hay. I
remember we used to help each other put up our hay in summertime. Cattle. Everything
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was all done together. I remember going out in the mountains to gather the cattle in the
falltime. Everybody was together. Everybody went out and got their cattle. And the
wives, the ladies, they’d all come out with food, to meet us out there and we’d have a big
old lunch. You know, coming back, bringing our cattle back. I remember those days.
Those were pretty cool days. Even what they call Association Field. That’s where all the
people got together, and they had a big feed, down right near where the administration
building is now. They had a big feed there, and we’d all get together and put up the hay.
And it would take about day or so to put the hay up. But I remember those days. We
don’t do that no more. That’s all kind of gone. Now, I think the equipment, I think, is
what really ruined it for us—that kind of lifestyle, anyway. Because everybody put up
their hay with horses. Horses and the buckrakes, and wagons and buckrake—or, raking
the fields with a team of horses. There was tractors out there that were just for mowing.
That’s all they used them for, was mowing. But that’s how they put up their hay. And it
was all summertime. Summertime job. It was like, lasted the whole summer, putting up
the hay. Nowadays, you know, they put it up within a week or so because of all the
equipment they have there now. It’s not like a whole summer like it used to be. And—
C:
So what type of hay did they produce out there?
T:
Just wild hay. Just wild hay. In those days, too, the people had gardens that they relied on
for their food and whatnot. And I remember Grandpa John, he used to have a—man, his
garden was fantastic. It was all kind of vegetables, and we sit down for lunch after being
out there all morning, putting up hay, and the home table would be filled with just lettuce
and onions, all kind of stuff, you know? And it was good. It was just like—it’s hard to
explain, because it was such a good time, actually. You know, just—and the hunting. I
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remember mom used to tell me about the old days, when me and my grandma, we used to
go out and go hunt. We’d be out there all day, and they never worried about us. Because
we’d be out there, and we’d hunt and shoot squirrels, rabbits, or whatever’s out there.
Fish. And cook it out there, just me and her. And she’d be cooking, making bread right
out there on the land. Like the old days, I guess, you know? [Laughter] But yeah, I
remember that. And we used to even travel all the way down to Battle Mountain, or up
towards on the other side of Wells, I don’t remember those places up there. But I
remember going up there. Yeah, we’d spend days up there. And mom—not days, but a
whole day out there, just messing around, hunting, doing different things. And those were
good days. And back in those days, we never really had cars, either, to go around. We
were always playing with, riding horses, you know, going, just riding all over, raising
heck with—on the community. [Laughter] First, I was talking about the good days in
South Fork. I wish it was always that way, but you know, as you grow up, things change.
But my dad had passed away, probably when I was—right in the summer when I was
seventh and eighth grade, right in between there. He passed away. And I think back about
it now, he was always the one that was kind of kept me in line, because I was afraid of
him. Even though he never hit me or nothing, it just, the way he’d talk to me. It always
kept me in line, I was afraid to do anything. I remember one time, he told me, you know,
like, “If you want to drink, bring it home.” He said, “I’ll drink with you.” See, my dad, he
used to drink until he got married, so I never knew him as a person that drank or nothing
like that. But he said, “I’ll sit down and drink with you if you want to drink. You know,
find out how it is.” But I was so afraid, I never did that. I was always afraid. But after he
passed away, it kind of opened doors for me to do all these bad things, and that, and I was
�
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kind of going down the wrong road for a while. And I went to eighth grade here in Elko.
And I was kind of, like I said, I was kind of like going down the wrong roads, drinking,
doing all these bad stuff that we all do. Well, not all, but a lot of the Indian kids, you
know, I was just following along with them. Going along, doing things that they were
doing. So after I finished eighth grade, we start talking about sending me away to school.
And my mom, she says, she told me one day, she says, “I don’t want you to go nearby,
because that’s where all your friends are. You might end up doing the same thing.” And
so I ended up going down to Phoenix Indian School. And I think about it now, that was
probably the best move in my whole life, is to get, just get away from here. And not
being around my friends. But that was kind of bad, because it’s like, they’re your friends,
you grew up with them, you know? But I had that opportunity of being away from them,
and going to a school that was just far away, and you didn’t know anybody. It was a good
thing for me. I think about it, my freshman year was a tough year, because, like, down
there, I was the only Shoshone down there. There was Indians from all over the country
down there. And so, you almost had to—not almost, you had to—prove yourself. You
know, I was always in fights, and doing all kind of stuff. And eventually, it got to where I
got to know people, and then the school start—it was a good experience for me. Like,
there was, I did things down there in Phoenix that I know I would have never done here. I
was involved in the sports, I sang at a Nativity scene, you know, for Christmas? I was
involved in speech contests, you know, down there, won awards in the city of Phoenix
itself, in the Indian school. That kind of stuff I would have never done here in Elko. It
was like—it was like opening the doors for me. Getting involved, doing different things.
But that’s what the Indian school did for me. And you know, there’s a lot of people that
�
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talk about how bad the Indian school was, and I think back about it, and I say that wasn’t
me, you know? Indian school, for me, was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.
Because like I said, I did things down there that I would have never done up here. Or
probably anywhere else. And then the friends you made down there, they’re like forever.
I still keep in contact with lot of my friends that I have down there. Or I’d meet them on
the road somewhere at a meeting or something. And we always talked about the good old
PI days, you know, Phoenix Indian days. And it’s like a fraternity, you know, like, it was
pretty cool. Yeah. And the teachers and everybody was just really nice. It was a boarding
school, I don’t know if you guys know what an Indian school’s like, but it was a boarding
school, and you just learn how to survive. You know, you ironed your own clothes, you
did your laundry and whatnot. So, that was pretty cool. And when I went to the service,
all these people that was in the service, they’re all homesick, and I was already gone from
home. So that was like great training for me, when I went into the service. So that was
pretty cool. [Laughter] And, yeah, I graduated, and that was probably one of my saddest
days of my life, when I graduated. Because I knew I probably would never see them
again, the students down there. I remember sitting there, waiting for all these people
loading up on the buses, they were crying and whatnot. So everybody had a good, you
know, same kind of reaction; you know, we probably never see each other again. But we
did. Eventually, I went back down to Phoenix, and they were still hanging around down
there. [Laughter] And it was pretty cool. It was like, I don’t know. It’s… And they come
back up home, it was—home was never the same. Once you leave home, it’s never the
same. It’s always, people grow up, it’s just never the same. And I remember coming
home back in the summer, like I was talking about earlier, about haying. I was out haying
�
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one summer, one day, and of course I was in town partying that night before. And I’m
talking about this because it was kind of like something that, one of those events that’s in
your life that you realize something’s changing, you know? And anyway, I was home,
and we were bucking bales, and it was right before lunchtime. And I was sitting there
sweating. All that dust, the hay dust, was all over me. And I’m sitting there thinking,
“I’m not going to do this all my life. I’ve got to start doing something else. This life is not
for me.” Even though, you know, yeah, when I was younger, riding horses and all that,
but things change. As you get older, you get more responsibility. Like, in the young days,
you didn’t have no care in the world, because your parents are always taking care of you,
you didn’t have to worry about where you’re going to get your money to keep going, to
live and whatnot. So, those kind of things kind of start, I guess you kind of start growing
up. Start thinking about, “I’d better do something.” Because those days, I didn’t even
think about what I was going to do. Or I hadn’t even thought about it. But, yeah. And it
was—after my dad had passed away, he was the one that, like I was saying, he’s the one
that taught me drawing, and got me interested in drawing. But once he left, all that was
gone. I never picked up a pencil or anything after he passed away. I was just, I guess just
wandering. Didn’t know what I was going to do with myself, or anything. And even in
high school, and I never really, you know, my friends that I have now, that I talk to, they
didn’t never realize that I even drew. Or that I was an artist. Because I never did nothing
like that. I was just doing different things. But once I graduated, I think it took a year
after I graduated, I ended up in the service. I was in the Air Force for four years. And
when I was about ready to get out, I started wandering—by that time, I was married. And
then I start really thinking about, what am I going to do? Because, like, in the Air Force,
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again, they provide everything for you. Your food, your lodging, everything. You don’t
have to worry about nothing, you’re just in the service, doing what you have to do. And
when I was going to get out, I start thinking, “What the heck? I’ve got wife, and I’ve got
couple kids already.” And I didn’t know what I was going to do. And I was in bed, I was
sleeping one day, or just laying there thinking about it, and I fell asleep. And I had this
dream. I had this dream, it was an eagle flying over the mountains. And it just kept
coming back to me, kept coming back to me. And I started thinking about, “You know,
maybe I should just draw this eagle.” And so I did. And I haven’t done anything like that
for years, by that time. And I went down to the store and bought me a big old paper, and
pencil and pen. And I started drawing this eagle. And I don’t remember how long it took
me, but by the time I got out of the service, I had it done. I was done. And I started
thinking about, you know, maybe I should start doing something along those lines.
Getting back into my art. And maybe art school. That’s what I was thinking. And so
when I got out of the service—I was living in the Bay Area then—I went to a junior
college for a couple years. And I was about ready to get out of there, and these
representatives from the art school, California College of Arts and Crafts, they came up.
And they were, I guess they were recruiting. And the art teacher, he told them about me,
so I was up there, and they were looking. And I showed them the eagle. And they thought
that was pretty cool. And they said, “You know, one thing unique about this eagle is,
you’re not just drawing the eagle, you’re looking right at him. So you’re up in the air.”
Because the trees and everything was like you were up in the air, looking down on the
mountains, with the eagle flying up. You know, like. And I never thought of it that way. I
was just drawing the dream. And so, say, “Yeah, you know what? Fill out your
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application, we’ll ship you down there to the drawing school.” And that’s how I ended up
over there. And that was probably a pretty good move, for me anyway, to do that. And I
was there for couple years. And I remember walking in there the first week, thinking I
was the best artist in the world, you know? [Laughter] And I walked in there, almost left.
Because, oh, the things they were talking about, and the students there that, you know,
their drawings was just… I don’t know, for me, walking in thinking I was the best, and
walking into the art school and finding out I had a lot to learn. And so I really kind of
buckled down and start learning about art. So that was pretty—and there were some
Indian students there. You know, so that was pretty cool. And I graduated from there, and
went to school, or went to work, over in the Bay Area. This Indian program over there is
called the OSIDA program. It was, they were looking for someone that has, well, they
were looking for Indian, anyway. They were looking for Indian. And what that job was to
do is go out and find jobs for Indian people. And they hired me, even though I never had
the experience, or even the education to do that. But I learned as I went along, and ended
up working there for years. And that was pretty cool. And I got to learn, there was
actually a lot of Indian people there in the Bay Area. And just the hardships that they
were going through, just to survive there. Because at that time, it was the Indian
Relocation Program, where the Indians, they were pulling Indians off the reservation and
sending them to the cities to get a trade, and get them away from the reservation. And
they ended up, a lot of people just ended up gathering at Indian bars, you know, and
that’s where they kind of hung out together, and that’s just the way life was, I guess, back
then. Just hanging around the Indian bars and partying it up. And gradually, I got
involved in that, too! [Laughter] I was there, you know—because, by that time, my
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marriage life was coming to an end. you know, we were breaking up, so… So that was
kind of a, I guess a bad point. But yeah, that was pretty—but it was all, everything I did
down there was always involved with Indian people. And it is always a learning
experience for me. Because when I moved back up here to Elko, I had that urban Indian
life background behind me. And when I was working up here, it really helped me out,
because it was kind of, you know, just kind of learn how to live off the reservation. And
that’s a whole different ballgame than it is here on the reservation. You know, that
experience I had in California was—working with Indian people—that was good
experience for me. But I’ve always, always, all my jobs always been working with Indian
people. And it wasn’t until I came back here, I started working with our own Indian
people, I guess. You know, like, the people around here. And what a difference it was
from the urban setting to reservation life. I got a job as a administrator out in South Fork,
and I think, you know, to me now, I look back at it: those were good times. I really
enjoyed working for the Tribe, and getting the projects—we had irrigation projects going,
and agriculture, and the whole bit. And it was cool. Because I knew that these projects
were for our people. You know, our own people. And hopefully, it was the betterment of
the South Fork reservation. You know, because I think back now, when I first looked at
all the irrigation ditches and whatnot, and the structures, there are some structures that
was there when I went away to school. You know, they’re old, old structures. And so we
had all them changed. And just different things. Seeding the agricultural land, where they
put the cattle out, just doing all these kind of things. And to me, it was a challenge.
Because I had no idea of what the heck, what agriculture—well, I had an idea what
agriculture was, but as far as putting it into planning, and putting into a project, and
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actually getting done? Never done that before. And it was cool. It was, like I said, it was
for our people. And I enjoyed the heck out of that. That was pretty cool. In those days,
too, I was drinking, so it was kind of—you know, I’ve been drinking since I was, what?
Before I went to high school, I started drinking. And so I guess I just kind of went along
with everybody, you know. And we go to meetings, and we’re partying, and all these
Indian things that they do, back then. [Laughter] You don’t see that as much anymore.
But, back then it was. I laugh about it now, but… All that time I wasted. All the moneys
that I, all the checks that I wrote in the bar, you couldn’t even read the dang checks,
because it was, you know, I just—they cashed it for me so I had money to drink with, you
know that? That was life then. I enjoyed my job, but partying and drinking was a lot, part
of the whole thing, too. And then, eventually I got into politics. I was a tribal chairman.
Te-Moak Tribal Chairman. And to me, even though that was a position of high standing,
you know, I didn’t really enjoy it as much. Because I felt like I wasn’t really doing
anything, because it was all the bickering that we were doing in back in those—you
know, they still do it today. But you just can’t really do anything, because everybody’s
fighting with each other. It’s not like the old days in South Fork, where, yeah, there was
fighting back then, but not like it is now. You just can’t seem to go anywhere, because
everybody’s too busy fighting with themselves. Or with each other. And so I served one,
what, four years? I think it was a four-year term, as Te-Moak chairman. I went right back
into tribal administration and did that. And I enjoyed that. More than being chairman.
And, but I know one thing, you got to travel, and when you’re traveling, you went down
to—I went down to Arizona, and the meetings and whatnot. And I ran into a lot of my
friends, from high school. They were there. And it was kind of neat, because you like to,
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you got down there, got to share your experiences with each other, and where you’re at
today and whatnot, and how it was in high school, and just where you’re sitting at. And
everybody’s the same. The Indian people down there, they’re just like us; they’re all
fighting amongst each other and whatnot, and they’re trying to get projects going and
whatnot. So that was pretty cool.
C:
—of the leaders that you ran into in Phoenix. Were they from the other reservations in
Arizona?
T:
Yeah. Yeah, they were, yeah, their leaders also, their work administration and whatnot.
Because it seemed like the Indian school, the students that went there, they went on to
school. I guess it was kind of a good school, because a lot of the kids, they went on to
college. Well, they kind of prepared them for college, you know, college education and
whatnot. I know when the Indian school first started, it was all vocational. They taught
them a trade. But the Indian school, Phoenix Indian School itself, they prepared you for
college. Your courses and whatnot all prepared you for college. And it was kind of a, I
don’t want to say simple for me to get into college, but it helped out a lot. You know,
my—I had, of course, my confidence was real low, being Indian and whatnot, and getting
into the whiteman world and going to college, it was hard to adjust to that. But once it got
going, it wasn’t that bad.
When I finished up my term as a tribal chairman, I was really dissatisfied with what I did
or what I didn’t do. Because of all the bickering and fighting that we were having, I just
couldn’t seem to get anywhere. So I went back into administration again. And like I was
saying before, I really enjoyed that. Because you’re actually doing projects for the tribe,
or for South Fork. But that eventually came to an end. And… About that time, too, I had
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a phone call from a friend of mine, down Arizona. And he was one of my partying
partners. You know, we always partied all the time, had a good old time down in
Phoenix, all over Arizona, whatever. We had a good time. And he calls me up one day—
or, he wrote to me. And he told me, he says, “You know, I got some bad news for you.”
He says, “Our partner, he was killed in a car accident.” He was one of our drinking
partners. And he said he was drinking one day, and he was going home, and he got in a
wreck, and he was gone. But—and he says, “And I haven’t drank for,” I think, three
months at that time. I think he said he hadn’t drank for three months. And I called him
up, and I told him, “Mike, you know what?” I said, “I been thinking about doing that, too.
Quit drinking.” But I didn’t know how to do it. And so we just start talking. And
eventually, I quit drinking, too. Because I looked at Mike, like saying, if he can do it, I
dang sure can. You know, like, because that’s all we ever did was we just partied all the
time. We’re partying and have a good old time. And I figure, if he can do it, I can do it.
So that kind of got me going there, and I just kind of quit cold turkey. Actually, sitting in
jail, I quit. Or I thought about it, and that was it. So after I quit drinking, I said, “Now
what?” And I start thinking, you know what? I went to school and all this, and think it’s
time for me to start getting back into my artwork again. So that’s what I was doing. I was
in town one day, and I saw the gallery there. So I walked in. Start talking to him, told him
my past, you know, went to school, blah blah blah, went to—and I didn’t know at that
time that the school I went to was probably one of the top schools in America. One of the
top art schools in America. And so they were all impressed, you know. And to me, it was
just an art school. [Laughter] So, I showed them my artwork, and they were all pretty
impressed by it, and so I got back into my artwork. And at that time, that’s what really
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helped me along with, you know, quit drinking. Because I had something to do. I was
able to concentrate on my art, and not thinking about drinking all the time. Then I went to
the, what is that, CBC? The junior college here?
C:
Great Basin College.
T:
Yeah, I took a drawing class there. It was a beginning drawing class, of all things. Well
you know, I figured I haven’t drew for years, so I’m going to start up again. And I took a
class over there with Sarah Sweetwater. And that got me going again into artwork, and I
got to know Sarah pretty good. We got to be good friends. And, so that got me back into
my artwork. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since, is doing artwork. And then I was
working little bit in administration off and on, you know, so I was doing a combination of
things, there. But I was getting back, getting back and getting pretty serious with my
artwork. And my artwork, I was introduced to colored pencil, in art school. And I always
painted. I was a painter. And I was dissatisfied with my art, with my painting, because I
could never get the detail that I wanted, and the color I wanted. And so when they
introduced me to colored pencil, that was it, you know. I could do all the detail, and the
color at the same time. And I never got away from that. I was always just doing, working
with colored pencil.
You know, I’m, after I quit drinking, I started thinking more seriously about my art, and
my future in art. But before that, when I was going to college, my sister in law, she was a
beader. She always beaded. And she told me one day, she said, “Try this. Try beading.”
And like when I was going to school, there was always that pressure on you to get your
assignments done, and all this, you know. And so I start picking up beading, and I found
that to be really relaxing. It was like, I was like in my own little world. It was like,
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beading was, I really enjoyed that. And I still do that, still enjoy it today. To bead. Just
kind of takes me to another dimension, I guess. You just forget about time and all that.
Anyway, I started beading, and got to be pretty well known as a beader, actually. I’ve
sold things to people from New York, Oklahoma, all over United States. And all this
time, you know, my beading and my art, I start traveling to different powwows and
setting up. Got to meet lot of people. See how they’re running their arts and crafts, and
got to know a lot of people, and just the ideas and whatnot. And I always talked about a
store. Doing a, opening up a store. And that’s what I wanted to do, because I enjoyed that
so much. It was something that I really liked. And this opportunity came up. A friend of
mine, she—well, actually, the person I talked to when I first quit drinking and went to the
gallery. She was ready to retire, she wanted to get out, because she was getting sick and
she just didn’t want to do that no more. And so she calls me up one day, and she says,
“Are you interested in taking over the store?” And how much it would cost, and whatnot.
And that kind of floored me. I wasn’t really ready for that. Because it was pretty
expensive. But, and then she was so sick, she passed away. And so the, what do you call
that, the mall manager, she called me up and asked me if I wanted to—because I guess
my name was in the store. So she called me up. And made me an offer that, I just
couldn’t refuse, because the price had gone down. Because all she was looking for was
somebody to take over the store. So she didn’t have to move all that stuff out of there.
And that’s how I ended up getting the store. It was pretty cool. And that was, for me, that
was life. Because I didn’t have to worry about, you know, my boss looking over me. I’m
my own boss. If I mess up, that’s my fault. But if everything works good, hey, that’s
because of me. And that’s a completely different kind of feel. And I enjoyed the heck out
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of that. And then with my past experience hanging around with the craft people, I got to
know lot of craft people, and so I kept in contact with them. And then my art, the Indian
artists that was going to school, I contacted them, they bring their pictures up to the
gallery. It was really a good time. Good time for me. Everything seemed to just kind of
work together. But unfortunately, then I got sick. And I had to closeit, close that place
down because I couldn’t handle the time, or couldn’t keep it in operation. Because what I
was doing was, I was framing. Framing pictures and whatnot. And I never at the time
trained anybody. And so when I got sick, I couldn’t keep it open, and so of course you
start losing business because you’re not there. And there was nobody there to kind of take
over for me or not. So I just kind of lost the whole thing. You know. And that was kind of
bad, but… Hey, you know, you got to keep going. You got to keep going. And that’s, I
guess that’s where I’m at today, is, I sit back and think of all the things that I couldawoulda-shoulda done, and things that I did do, and that’s what I’m trying to talk about.
All the bad things that had happened to me, or the things that I did, that, man… the things
that I lost. Actually, you know, lost, talking about the checks that I used to write, you
couldn’t even read them. There was a lot of money gone there, that was just thrown
away. All because I was drinking. And it’s sad, really. But you know, if you get a chance,
just to keep going, keep going. Because there’s always, something will come up. And it
always seemed that, you know, no matter how bad your road is, something’s always there
to kind of pull you out of that. Somewhere. That’s all I was trying to talk about when I
got the store, everything kind of just seemed to fall in place. And it was a good time for
me. Because like I said, I really enjoyed the job, because I didn’t have to worry about
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anybody watching over me or whatnot, you know? [Laughter] Yeah. And of course, I
was still doing my artwork.
Okay, I brought in a few pictures that, these were mostly done, probably after I’d quit
drinking. And like I was telling you, most of all of them were done with colored pencil.
Some of them were done with people around here. Some just done from books or
whatever, you know. I used to always like to add color to it. This one here was a white
man. He was a contractor. And he came up to me one day, and asked if I wanted to do a,
he wanted a portrait done for his kids. And I told him, I said—kind of joking with him—I
told him, “I never done a white man before. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out!”
[Laughter] Which was true, you know. I’ve always done just Indian people. And it’s, the
problems and complications of it, way different when doing a white person to an Indian
person. But it came out all right. And I think I named it, “For My Kids,” I think was the
name of that project. Yeah, and then these up here were pencil. This one here was the
first one I did when I got, when I started sobering up. Right here. And the owner of that
picture, I think, is one of the Gallaghers here in Elko. And then of course, the feather
drawing, I think that’s what most people know me by. The feather drawing, I think—let
me tell you a little story about that one. That one, although it’s just real simple feathers
coming down, that was done, or, the idea of it—when I was a little kid, my dad, we were
down near Smoky Valley visiting these old people down there. And I remember the old
man was telling my dad about his headaches. He had a lot of headaches. And he said he
came out the door one day, and there was a eagle flying above him. He prayed to the
eagle, and the eagle dropped a feather down to him. And that’s where that idea came by.
So I’ve always kept that in my mind, and just kind of put it into artwork. But that’s about
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all I got here. I don’t really have that much stuff, but the time we have to sit here and talk,
it’s actually pretty short. You know, I didn’t—and I kind of sugarcoated a lot of stuff,
because, you know, the things that I went through, in drinking and whatnot, were tough
times. Were tough times. And when a person comes up to me and talk about drinking and
whatnot, I really don’t know what to tell them. Because I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy it,
because I did. I liked my partying days and whatnot. But I just couldn’t—I don’t know
how to tell anybody, like, “That’s bad for you!” I don’t. I really don’t know how to tell
anybody that. But I can just relate to what I did. And all the time and the money that I
lost. I always think about that nowadays. Like, “Damn, you know what?” But, I have
grandkids. I have nine grandkids, and two great-grandkids. And one thing I can say is,
I’m proud to say they don’t know me as a drinker. They’ve never seen me drunk, or
never seen me touch drink, or anything like that. Because I had quit drinking before they
were all born, except for the oldest one. He was just a little baby. But they don’t know me
that way. And I can probably say that, like. They don’t know me that way. I’ve told them
stories about, you know, like, I was out partying, but they look at me like, “Yeah, right!”
You know? Because they just don’t. They just don’t know me. It was like my dad, you
know? I never knew him as a drinker, because he never drank—when I was around. He
had sobered up when he got married. Yeah. And that’s one thing in my whole life that I
feel real proud of, that I could do that.
C:
So how many grandchildren do you have, and where are they? Do you get a chance to
spend time with them?
T:
I have, what, nine grandkids, and two great-grandchildren. The two great-grandchildren
were just born not too long ago. One end of last year, one just about a month ago. And
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the grandkids, they’re, they live in Reno. There’s two back East, their mom’s in the
service. She’s been in the service over 20-some years. And they’re, shoot, they’re going
to college now. And actually, she’s an officer in the Army. She went in as a nurse, and
ended up being a minister. But she’s an officer. That was so cool; I remember talking to
her when she was getting her bars, and she says—and I told her, I said, “You know, your
dad went to the service, and barely made it out of there with a stripe. And here you are
being an officer!” [Laughter] Which was really cool, I thought that was cool. And then
the others, they live in Denver. Other grandkids, they live in Denver. They were, most of
them were here when my last grandkids, great-grandchild was born. They were all here.
Yeah, so I see them every once in a while. But they’re, you know, they’re all, they’ve got
their own life. They’re moving out. You know, and doing different things. Yeah. But
that’s cool, it’s always good to see them. And the house is all noisy. [Laughter]
C:
Sounds like you’ve had a full life, Anthony. And so what do you do now, yourself, to
keep busy, or just for hobby? I noticed you have a championship jacket on there. Can you
tell us a little bit about the handgame jacket or where you won it? Is that something you
do nowadays? Something you like to do?
T:
I almost forgot about that. When, after I got sick, I was put on dialysis. And I’m thinking,
okay. I’m just sitting home, being all depressed and whatnot, angry with myself for
letting myself get that far and whatnot. Lot of time to think. And I said, you know what?
I’ve been, all these years, when I was messing around, going around, I was always sitting
behind Uncle Nathan, listening to his songs. His handgame—he was a handgame player.
And I never played handgame. I always just listened to him, watched the game, and
whatnot. And when they, my cousin and her husband, she says, “Come on, let’s go play,”
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I said, “I’ve never played,” you know. And all the excuses about never played, can’t sing,
and all this. Hey: when I got involved—I still can’t sing—but when I got involved in
handgames, I got hooked on it. And this jacket I’m wearing is probably one of my
proudest jackets, because it was my first jacket that we won. We won in Duckwater. But
they had a tournament down there, and we won. And I felt so good. It felt so cool to win.
You know, win the jacket, and have a jacket that you can remember this thing by. And
everybody’s always asking me, “What’s a handgame?” You know? [Laughter] And so
you have to explain to them what handgame is. But yeah, that’s what I do now, is go out
and just play handgames. And it’s so… It kind of makes me feel like a—a Indian.
[Laughter] It does, you know? Because, like, it’s an old Indian game, you know, and it
just feels good. I’ve been away from just Indian life all these years, and just drinking and
whatnot, and the handgame kind of seemed to kind of pull me in, and you get to meet
people, get into the handgame crowd, and it’s almost like the powwow crowd. Everybody
comes together once a year, and they just enjoy powwows. It’s the same thing with
handgame. You come in, you see people once a year or so, and just enjoy it. Just a
weekend activity. That’s what I do now. [Laughter] I’m not that good at it, don’t get me
wrong! [Laughter] I just enjoy it.
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Anthony Lee Tom
Location
The location of the interview
Lamoille Canyon, NV [South Fork Reservation]
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
DVD, AVI, and MP4 Format
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:50:18
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/462
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Anthony Lee Tom - Oral History (06/05/2014)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral History Interview with Anthony Lee Tom, Western Shoshone from South Fork Reservation, NV, on 06/05/2014
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Anthony Tom is a member of the Te-Moak Western Shoshone and a veteran from the Air Force who lives at the South Fork Reservation, which he and others referred to as Lee, NV. He speaks about the South Fork community’s virtues, as well as, his experience growing up there and ranching. Anthony also talks about how and what he would hunt with his Grandpa John. He goes on to tell of his time at the Phoenix Indian School, and how it changed his life, an in fact led him to attend the California College of Arts and Crafts. He also informs his audience of the Indian Relocation Program, and the resulting aftermath. He also speaks about his time in Tribal administration, his time as an artist, and how he owned Picture This in Elko, NV. He ends his presentation by telling us about his time playing hand-games.</p>
<p>Anthony Tom Oral History Video pending<br /><a title="Anthony Lee Tom Oral History Transcript" href="/omeka/files/original/78f41864118130645a9e999fdce39237.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read Anthony Lee Tom Oral History Transcript [pdf file]</a></p>
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Great Basin Indian Archives
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 039
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Great Basin Indian Archives
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06/05/2014 [05, June, 2014]; 2014 June 05
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Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America
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Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017
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English
artist
Community
Crossroads
GBIA
handgames
hunting
Indian Relocation
Phoenix Indian School
ranching
Shoshone
South Fork Reservation
Story
Te-Moak tribe
veteran
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Raymond(Yowell!
Great&Basin&Indian&Archive!
&GBIA!007B!
Oral(History(Interview(by(
Norm(Cavanaugh!
August(17,(2007(
Elko,(NV!!
Great!Basin!College!•!Great!Basin!Indian!Archives!!
1500!College!Parkway!!!!!!!!!Elko,!Nevada!89801!
hCp://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/!
775.738.8493!
Produced!in!partnership!with!!
Barrick!Gold!of!North!America!
�GBIA 007B
Interviewee: Raymond Yowell
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: August 17, 2007
Y:
My name is Raymond Yowell. I was born here in Elko on September the 23rd, 1929. I
was born over at the hospital that’s now torn down. Not there no more. My father was
Ray Yowell. And his lineage is into the Bill family. That’s the Bill family that’s around
here. And then, on my mother’s side, her lineage is into the Mary Hall lineage. And that
goes down into, now, into what’s know as the Dann family. But that’s my immediate
lineage. In childhood, I never really knew much about my mother. I guess my mother and
father were together just a short while. And I knew very, very little about her. And I
really didn’t know my father at all, as a child. I guess I was kind of taken care of by other
Indian ladies. Because when I was in my teens, these Indian ladies used to come along
and tell me that they took care of me when I was a baby. Of course, I don’t remember
nothing about that. But I ended up with my maternal grandmother. Sometime, maybe
when I was about two and a half, maybe three years old—I don’t remember. And she had
a half-sister that was down in Smoky Valley. And she made arrangements with her halfsister and her husband—their name was Frank and Annie Charley—to take me down
there. Now, apparently, they didn’t have any kids, and they wanted to raise a child, and
they were willing to take me. So this arrangement had been made, I guess, for several
months. And my grandmother prepared me well for that. She said that, “You’re going to
be living with them, that’s where you’re going to grow up at.” And Granny really
prepared me, because I remember when her and her husband took me down there, and of
course they stayed overnight, and of course, when Annie, when I first met her, she was
just like—it’s hard to explain, the feeling you get from somebody who really likes you.
And that’s what it was, she really liked me. And of course, I liked her instantly. And then
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 2%
the next day, when my grandmother left there, I didn’t cry. I was practically at home. So
my early years were spent in Smoky Valley. And got to know Eva Charley, and Elma
Charley, and Herbert Charley, and Doug McCann. And those were Shoshone kids that
was kind of around down there. And when I got to be of school age, I started school there
in Kingston. They had a school there, like an old country school. Used to be first to the
eighth grade. And I started school there, when I was probably six. Six or seven,
something like that. And it came about—I don’t know what happened, Frank and Annie
talked a lot about peyote. They were afraid of peyote. But I don’t know whether they
were sick, or they weren’t feeling good, but they tried to go in to the doctor, Indian
doctor. And then, we did come up here a couple of times. There was a Indian doctor here
by the name of, I guess his name was Dicey. Dyson. He’s related into the Coochum
family, the Coochum family that’s here now. But he was Indian doctor around here, and
one time we came up here, and he doctored the—and I can’t remember who he doctored.
Most of the times, he just doctored one or the other. I’m not really sure. And then we
went back to Smoky Valley. And then we came up another time, might’ve been a year
later, I can’t remember. And Frank had a sister here that lived on Elko Colony. And her
name was Mamie. She was married into the Dixon family. Mamie Dixon was her name.
And we stayed at her place. And we’d been there, I think, just one night—one or two
nights, I can’t remember. There was a rodeo going on at the time across the river over
here, across the Humboldt River right there. And coming over, I seen the rodeo grounds,
and there was a rodeo there. And we went over there to watch the rodeo, watch the
activities. But I can’t remember whether it was the first night, second night, that we were
there, Frank’s sister, early in the morning, about sunrise, this nice-looking man came in.
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 3%
And he had a puppy. Little puppy. And he talked with Annie, and for some reason I liked
him right away. [Laughter] I don’t know why, I just, just liked him, he was a nice-looking
man. And then, I was still in bed on the floor—I slept on the floor there, I was still under
the covers—he came over, he talked to me. And I can’t remember all he said, but he said,
“Do you want this puppy?” I remember that. I said, “Yeah, I want the puppy,” you know?
So he gave me a puppy. And shortly thereafter, he left. He sat and talked there with my
grandma, and he left. And so I was asking, “Who is that? Who is that man? Who is he?”
And she wouldn’t tell me. And of course, we went back to Smoky Valley, and over the
period of the next few weeks, I kept asking, “Who was that man who gave me this
puppy? Who was it? Who was it?” And finally, she says, “Well, that was your father.”
[Laughter] Boy, he knew he was my father, you know? And that was quite a thing. Now
that I think back, quite a thing. But anyway, like I said, they talked with that Indian
doctor, the nice Indian doctor, and they talked about peyote, they were afraid of the
peyote. But for some reason, they went to Fallon, and there was a doctor over there. And
I went with them, and this man doctored them. And there was a certain point in the
doctoring, and he gave them, as I recall, a white substance to eat. As I remember, kind of
slender, maybe the size of your little finger. And it was white, I remember. And he gave
this to them, and said, “Eat this.” And so they did. And I was kind of flabbergasted,
because I heard them talk, and how they said they didn’t want to eat any peyote. I thought
that was peyote. I don’t know if it was or not. But anyway, they ate it. And so the doctor
told them—I remember just a one-night deal. Anyway, he told them, he said, “Don’t do
anything. When you get back, rest. You know, don’t do anything hard, physical, just take
it easy.” And I don’t know whether he gave them a length of time or not. I don’t
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 4%
remember that. But it was in the fall, I guess, like maybe September, something like that.
Maybe in October. But when we got home, they had to get their winter wood in. And so
we lived out there, we lived where pine trees are. And so after getting the dead pines, and
when Frank would get up in the tree and shake it back and forth to make it fall, and then
he’d chop it up, and then drag it to the house, and then we’d cut it up there, chop it up for
wood for the winter. And of course, I didn’t know, I didn’t think about it, but he had told
them not to work. But they did all this hard work at that time. And then, it happened that
Barbara Ridley’s mother and father came down. They were part of the family, they’re
part of the Mary Hall family. And they came down for a visit. And they’d been there
about a day when Frank Charley got sick, and stayed in the bed, didn’t get out of bed.
And it went on several days, seem like it was about the third day, and then Annie got sick
around that time, too. So they were both sick. And I think maybe about the fourth day,
Barbara’s mother, I took her and her husband outside and I told them, I said, “I think
these people are getting worse. Why don’t you go down the valley here, and let his
relatives know?” Which is Winston Charley. That’s the father and Cleveland, and
Dalbert, and Herbert, and those guys. “Let them know that they’re sick.” And so, he
did. He took off in his car, and went down there, and I think—I think it was the next day
that all of the people arrived there. There were two cars that came up. And I think Frank
Bradley, who was a Shoshone who lived down there, and I think he was raised with
Winston Charley growing up. And I think Winston Charley came up. And as I
understand it, Winston Charley was probably the nephew of Frank Charley. I’m not sure,
but I think he was. And I remember the men dressed Frank, and he was crying the whole
time. And the women dressed Annie, and she was crying too. And they literally drug
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 5%
them to the cars. I remember then he was sliding back with his feet, and they were
dragging him, forced him in the car because he didn’t want to go. Annie same way; the
women were dragging her. They put them in two separate cars. And by that time, my
grandmother, who had taken me down there—my mother’s mother had, they had come
down. And so, when they left, they took them to Schurz, and of course, my mother’s
grandmother took me. And they entered them into the hospital over there. And the last
time I saw them was on the highway, when we stopped to rest to go about nature. That’s
the last time I saw either one. And then, we stayed in Schurz, I think for a day or so, and
then my grandmother had to get back up here, so they headed back up this way. And on
the way up, they left me at Beowawe, with the family of Barbara Ridley, which is related
back to Mary Hall. Because they were relatives and all. So they left me there. And of
course, I didn’t know them. [Laughter] They were strangers. But I was there for several
months. I guess this was maybe like in October, it might’ve been November. I’m sure it
was in the fall. And then on about January, sometime in January, this man and woman
showed up. And Barbara’s mother, when I came to the house, they said, “Come here,
come shake hands with your grandmother.” And again, I’ve never seen either one of them
before. I’d never seen them. And her husband, which was George. George Yowell. And I
didn’t know either one of them. Said, “This is your grandmother. Shake hands with her.”
So I did. And so they picked me up, and then brought me up here. And then, that night,
when [__inaudible at 12:28__], here’s this nice-looking man that I’d seen before, come
in. And he, in the meantime, had married another woman. My stepmother. And that’s
how I ended up back up here. And we were here, probably, until 1937, when South Fork
was purchased as a reservation. And we were one of the first families to move to South
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 6%
Fork. The first year, we wintered in a tent out there. And as I remember, the snow was
like two feet. Real cold, it was like 30 below. In them years, it used to get real cold. And
we used to have to get up early in the morning, and dress as quick as you could, because
it was cold! I sure used to hate to get out of them blankets! [Laughter] And then we went
to school out there, we started school there at South Fork. And there was just a few kids,
a few white kids, and the rest were myself, and Willard Green, Bennie Tom, and Perry
Hill, and Floyd Hill. And we were the ones that were going to school. And the white kids
was Bill Kane, and then Roy Henry—or Bob Henry. There were two white kids. And
then there was Leroy Horne, and his sister Kate Horne. And then Charles Down. But
they were the school. It used to be one-room school here. All the grades were taught in
one room. Had one teacher here [__inaudible at 14:02__]. You know, I mentioned the
Indian doctor earlier, mainly to explain a little bit on how that was done. There was a way
that you approached the doctor, which is not direct. He had a helper—he or she had a
helper. But he would go and make the appointment. Then the helper would speak with
the doctor, and then he would tell her, “Well okay, on this day, this place.” There was
money involved, but I can’t remember maybe, no more than five dollars, probably, or
three dollars. In them days, they had silver dollars. And usually that’s what they’d pay.
Now, I think Dicey, as I remember, doctored two nights. I think he doctored two nights.
And when he would start his doctoring, he would go through a process. He would sing
some songs, in Shoshone, his songs—what was revealed to him. I guess the way the
doctors come about is, in their youth—he or she—in their youth, they start to have
dreams. Maybe like twelve, thirteen, fifteen years old, somewhere in that time. Dreams
start coming to them, telling them to do certain things. And if they did those things, then
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 7%
the dreams would get more specific. And at a point, actually, the songs would be revealed
to them, for them to sing. Some of them had the eagle for a doctor, that was kind of the
image or whatever. Some of them had a bear. And there might’ve been other things that
I’m not aware of. But those are the two that I know about. I don’t know what Dicey’s
power was. Nobody ever said anything, you know. And these doctors, they were kind of
mysterious people to me, because they never said anything about their power. They just
performed what they were instructed to do, and they never talked about it. I was present
when Frank and Annie would go to the doctor, and the way they do it is, he would sing
some songs, and sit a lot with his eyes closed, and then he would sing songs again, and
sit a lot with his eyes closed. And then, at a certain point, wherever the ailment was—it
was in the chest area, or wherever the ailment was—he would just put his lips to that
place, where it’s at, and make like a sucking sound. [Makes a sucking sound.] Like that.
And he’d do that several times, maybe in different places, not just one. He’d kind of
move around. And then he’d sit back some more, and sing some more songs. And this
would go on maybe until about midnight. [__inaudible at 16:54__]. That’s how long it
took him. And the second act was almost a repetition of the first act. And I don’t know
whether that was painful, but I remember it would make welts. You would see the welts
where he made the sucking sound. In modern day, “monkey bites” they might call it
sometimes. But that’s what would show up. And sometimes, he would go outside. And I
guess, maybe, you know, throw up what he had taken in. I remember, one doctor out at
Lee, he had to be held outside. He couldn’t walk by himself. We would carry him and
take him in or he wouldn’t come here. And my grandfather, George Yowell, and I think
another person helped him out, outside. He went in the house there, and they helped him
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 8%
outside. I guess he threw up; I didn’t go [__inaudible at 17:53__]. That was his thing, you
kind of stay away from that. It was that sacred thing. And then, when he came back in,
then he came back in on his own power. But that’s how it’s done, basically, is they would
put their lips to where the disease is, and suck it out. It may sound skeptical, it might
sound like superstition, but those things actually worked. I’ve seen that work for the
healers, what they had done. And just not anybody, as I say, could be an Indian doctor. It
had to come through—got the language, with the Shoshone, it comes through the
language. Somewhere in the language is a doctor. And sometimes, it may skip a
generation, it may skip a couple generations. But someplace, it’ll surface again. And if
that individual listens to what his dreams tell him, then they get stronger and more is
revealed to him, like when he’s maybe eighteen—seventeen, eighteen, maybe nineteen,
somewhere in there. Then he’ll be told—in the white man’s terms, he can now start to
practice. [Laughter] You know, practice medicine. But they couldn’t do, like, operations.
They couldn’t do anything that white people do. That was not their power. But they had
the gift to take disease. Disease, I mean, I guess disease is actually a thing. Like, it’s in
you. And they had the power to be able to take that out. And like I said, it’s a sacred
thing. And I only knew two Indian doctors, and neither one of them talked about, you
know, about their power. It’s just something, I guess it’s sacred. Whether they were told
not to talk about it, I don’t know. But they just wouldn’t talk about it. Continuing on from
where I left off, going to school at Lee, in [19]39, then there was a lot more people came
to the reservation. A lot more families. And the Indians actually outnumbered the white
kids then, from then on. A lot of Indian kids that were going to school. And we grew up
there, and we helped the folks with the hay. The first few years, up until 1940, we didn’t
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have any cattle. And the hay was put up loose in them days. You know, buck rakes, and
we’d stack it by hand. We’d pile it in a big stack. And then around 1940, we got a few
cows. My dad and my grandfather got a few cows, and of course, you had to be on
horseback to run cows, and so we started to mess around with horses. Started to ride
horses, and by the time I was thirteen or fourteen, I was breaking colts. And that was a
wonderful thing for me to do: ride, and be out there, wandering free, and riding free. It’s
hard to explain that feeling that you get when you’re on a horse. And you’re out there,
and it’s your thing, your world, and you have a good animal under you, and it’s a
wonderful feeling. So that was the way my early childhood went. Being out with the
Mother Nature, what you might call. And seeing things come and go, winter, spring,
summer, fall, you know. And right about the same time, I’m twelve, thirteen, fourteen, I
started going with the men hunting deer. And deer was our main food. Not too much
money to buy food with, mainly just, like, for sugar, flour, beans, that kind of thing.
Coffee. And the rest you just kind of grew yourself or you hunted. You know, rabbits,
and squirrels, and groundhogs. And the deer was the main thing. And the Shoshone deer
season starts probably around—about now, up in this country, probably about the end of
August. When the bucks are fat. And of course, that’s the law. Bucks only. Didn’t kill a
doe unless you really had to on the way home. Come back empty-handed, then you might
kill a doe. But bucks only. And I stated, about twelve, thirteen, fourteen, then we started
going with my father in the mountains along with my uncles to hunt deer. And they
carried down the first just along there, aiming at things, and helped us where they
could. And then, at probably thirteen or fourteen, they start letting me fire the gun. And I
think I was fourteen years old when I killed my first deer. It was a buck. Of course, that’s
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a great event among Shoshones. In our youth, once you first kill one, it’s quite a thing.
The men that were there, it must have been Harry Tom, John Tom, [__inaudible at
22:49__], both my parents, you know, my grandfather and them. Andrew was there, they
all came up, and they’d kind of pat you down. You feel good, you feel good about it, this
is your first kill, and now you’ve really become a man. It’s quite an event. I remember
that. And then, some of the tradition that the Shoshones have. The rule was that you don’t
eat your first kill; you give it away. Went through that, and—
C:
So, what kind of a gun did you use to kill your first buck?
Y:
The first thing they let me carry was a .22 Long Rider. And it wasn’t a new one. Pretty
old. And it’s hard to believe now that a little bitty bullet in a .22 could kill this buck. I
had shot enough squirrels by that time to know where the bullet went, and how to aim.
But yeah, the little bullet killed this big buck. And it’s amazing now. And the funny part,
too, is—I shot him right here, and it went completely through the body, and ended up in
the thigh. And when my dad was eating a steak off the thigh, he bit into the bullet!
[Laughter] And I used to say, I had that bullet for quite a while. I don’t know, I don’t
think I’ve got it now. But it was quite a thing, you find the bullet on your first kill, you
know? I saved it. But that’s quite interesting that he bit into the bullet that I shot my first
deer through. And of course, later on, when I got up into the teens, and later, fourteen,
fifteen, sixteen, up into there, did a little work with white people and make a little money,
and bought a heavier .30-30 deer gun. And I started hunting, of course, with that, and that
had a little more range than the .22.
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 11%
C:
Raymond, you mentioned—the Shoshone way of hunting sounds like it was seasonal. So,
can you elaborate on the seasonal aspects of hunting various types of animals that the
Shoshone depended on for food?
Y:
Certainly. As I stated, in this country here, probably late August, maybe last week in
August is when the Shoshones start to hunt deer. Because that’s when the bucks were fat.
And it went on into probably, maybe the last week of September. And I don’t think they
went into October. I think it went into the last part of September, and that was it. That
was the deer season, Shoshone deer season. And the way the Shoshones prepared the
meat was they would dry it. They would jerk it, dry it what you’d call jerky. And they
would dry it, and keep this for the winter. And that was the main meat through the winter,
dried deer meat. And they’d prepare it in certain ways. Some of them boil it just as a
strip, just boil that. And there was another way that they’d make kind of like a stew out of
it, with a little bit of flour gravy, and then add some potatoes and a little bit of onions.
That was my favorite plate. And they would cook beans with that, that was a meal.
Beans, in the stew. And that was real, real good stuff. Tasted real good. And with the
squirrels, the squirrels, you know, they would hibernate. Like, they hibernate in the
beginning of June. They only come out for just a couple months and then they go back to
sleep. And then they come back out in late February, back up in this country. In South
Fork, they’d come out around late February. And the days that we were out there, we
used to drown them. Drown them out with water. From the, you could see their holes in
the flat. And you take water in a fifty gallon drum, and take a five-gallon bucket and
drown ‘em out, and catch ‘em as they come out. And when they first come out, they’re
still fat. After they’ve been out maybe a week or so, ten days, they lose that fat and get
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 12%
real skinny. So we would eat that first, that would probably be the first fresh meat in the
spring. And then, a little later on, about the end of March, then it came time to hunt the
sage hen. And again, it was the roosters. Roosters only. And at that time, the roosters
were breeding—what we call “dancing”—they had a big paunch in the front, it’s like an
air sac. And that was a delicacy. They would get—that’s why they hunted them. And
they would roast that up real crunchy, and that was a real delicacy. And that, sage hen
season probably only lasted about two weeks. Maybe about 10th of March in this country,
‘til maybe the 20th of March. And then that was it, they’re going. And then, after that,
probably the groundhogs—what they call “rock chuck.” They’re a good-sized little
animal, out in the hills, on the rocks. And that’s the next thing they would hunt. And of
course, they always tried to get the males. But a lot of times, you couldn’t tell the
difference. A lot of times, the male was the one they hunted. And they were huge,
sometimes. And there was a lot of fat in them. And they hunted them right in the end of
June—it varies, different places. And they’d get them there, you know, too. So that was a
big staple. And fish, in South Fork, in those days they still had the cutthroat trout. The
native cutthroat trout. And, oh, they were probably thirty-six inches long, end to end. And
they would make their spring spawning run about this time of the year, up through the
South Fork, and lay their eggs up in there and then come back. And a lot of times, they’d
get in the irrigation ditches out there. You’d hear them flapping around, and you’d go and
get ‘em. And that was another seasonal food during that time. And when they were
plentiful, before they got disrupted by the white man’s management, Indians had their
own stations out there. They used to harpoon them. Had harpoons. And this fish, as it
migrates, of course, it gets tired, and seek an eddie, and rest right in this eddie. And the
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 13%
Shoshones knew where these eddies were, and each family had their spot, in such-andsuch a spot. And so, they would harpoon these migrating fish. And again, they’d dry that,
too, and keep it for later use.
C:
So, what did they use for harpoons? Was it made out of willow, or was it metal, or what
was it?
Y:
Well, with the coming of the white man, of course they’ve got the metal. They actually
were made out of, just like a fish hook. But it was pretty big, about that size, you know.
But it had a barb in it; once it went in, wouldn’t come out. And there was an attachment
to a hard willow—what we call hathuunte [30:01], that’s hard willow. And then had that
wrapped on the front of the thing, and that’s what they harpooned with. And people, my
grandmother used to laugh that—Willie Carson had a spot up the road—the main bridge,
there, on I believe the main bridge, he had a spot up the road there. And I don’t know
whether he was in a precarious place or what, but when he harpooned this fish, the fish
pulled him under the river! [Laughter] They used to laugh about that! But yeah, every
family had their little place. And like I said, there was a lot of fish in them days. And we
were—now to South Fork in the [19]30s, they were in decline already. And the county at
that time planted brook trout. They had their own hatchery over there in Lee, and they
planted brook trout. And it was County Game Board. And then, with the deer, they—you
shoot only bucks. Bucks only. And there was a lot of deer. Lot of bucks. And lot of fish,
had a lot of brook trout. And then around 1949, maybe 1950, the Nevada State law:
couldn’t shoot no wildlife without paying the distance. And the first thing they did is do
away with the brook trout and add rainbows. And come to find out, the rainbow and
cutthroat were inbreeding, across. And that their offspring were sterile. So around 1956,
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 14%
1957, cutthroat was gone. And I don’t know whether they added fish later on, but that’s
what they did. You hear talk now that they’re going to bring cutthroat back, but if they
keep trying to replant rainbow, they’re not coming back. And again, that same fish was
up in the lakes in the Rubies. And they were huge, something like that. And George
Yowell talked about where, I guess in the [19]20s sometime, maybe in the teens, people
were up there dynamiting those lakes, and killed off all the big fish, and then planted
brook trouts. And I’ve seen pictures of, in town here, Sarah Billings’s documents in the
[19]20s and into the [19]50s where they were catching brook trout. They were big!
Maybe about that big, and about that thick. But shortly thereafter—see, a brook trout
won’t eat himself? It’s not carnivorous, not cannibalistic. And they ate themselves out
food available. And so then, from then on, you’d see fish that had a big head like that, but
a little tapered body. And that’s how it is now up there. Still see them like that. But the
cutthroat, the cutthroat is carnivorous. It’s cannibalistic. They’ll eat each other. It keep
itself down to what food’s available. They’ll eat each other to do that! [Laughter] And so,
that was a natural balance, you see. But that was upset. So all the fish are going out of the
Rubies. All the lakes they have up in there. And it’s unfortunate when I look back and see
that. You see talk they’re managing game and land up there, but I don’t know when to
take the deer now. It’s unusual to see a four-point deer. For me. I hardly ever see a fourpoint deer. Three-point, two-point. And some of them using bait. In my youth, when I
first started hunting, they were like this. Big! Huge deer. Big deer, big bucks, you know.
Of course, to a Shoshone, the bigger deer you kill, the better hunter you are. The big ones
are really smart. They’re really smart to be around a long time. And they never sit in a
place where they can be ambushed. They’re always in a place where they can look all
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 15%
around. [__inaudible at 33:37__]. Bound two jumps, and they’ve gone out of sight. I’ve
seen many big bucks that way, never get a shot at them. They position themselves in a
place that can’t be approached without him seeing you. And he’s got his escape path,
doesn’t matter which way you’re coming. A few bounds, and all you see is the horns and
a little of his back, and he’s gone. That’s the way it used to be. You don’t see that any
more.
C:
Raymond—
Y:
That was real hunting. In them days, that was real hunting.
C:
Raymond, you mentioned that the Shoshone only killed a male species, of, like the deer,
and the groundhog, and the other animals they ate for food. Can you explain why they
only killed the male?
Y:
Yes. It’s pretty simple, if you look at nature. The male, no matter what species, can breed
a lot of females. And so if you kill a male, I mean, you’ll be killing one. But if you kill a
female, then you’re killing the future production. No matter what it is, you’re killing
future production. So that was a law. You only take the males, and take one male, no
matter what the species. Going to breed a whole bunch before winter comes up. And so,
that’s how come we kept the game kind of, you know, in balance. And—the other thing
is, only take what you can use. Never waste any of it. Never leave a dead animal out
there. Always, if you kill him, you’ve got to take it. Don’t waste it. That was drummed
into my head since—Frank and Annie Charley drummed that into my head, you know?
No matter what is—if it’s a plant, take only what you can use. Never waste it. Always
leave some for the future. That’s Shoshone law. I guess, going on from there, as I grew
up, of course, the Korean War was going on. And they had the draft out. I managed to
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 16%
stay out of it for a while, and my cousin was gone, he was in the service. And I told the
draft board that my grandfolks needed help. I was the only young guy that could help
them with the ranch and stuff, and so I got out of it for a while. But then, when my cousin
came back, I got orders from the service. So they drafted me. And really, I didn’t think I
would pass the physical. I didn’t think I was physically able to serve in the armed forces.
And I went and took the physical in Salt Lake. I was surprised that I passed it. A
difference, really, between the army. I was really surprised that I passed that physical.
And so I came back, and they were talking to Dad, and I said, “I passed the physical. I
really don’t want to go in the Army. How about I go in the Air Force? I don’t want to be
knocked in a foxhole.” So I had seen enough of World War II to see what that was. So I
got up to there, and went to work over there. So, I went downtown here to the recruiter’s
office, and enlisted, and took another physical. Passed it, you know. When they were
getting ready to swear us in, the guy that came in, the officer came in there told us, “Did
anyone in here take the physical for the army? You better speak up, because if you don’t,
we’re going to come get you.” I said, “Well, let ‘em come get me.” I didn’t say nothing.
And they swore us in. You know, for six months I worried in the Air Force that they were
going to come get me! [Laughter] But after six months went over, I thought, “Oh, they’re
not going to come after me.” So I spent four years in the Air Force. Started out, after
basic training, ended up in what they call “turret system mechanic.” And what that meant
was you was only an aerial gunner. We didn’t know that at the time. You get to be a
turret system mechanic, that’s a step up to gunnery, air gunnery. And I ended up on B-29
as a gunner. And we were ready to ship out in Korea, and the Korean War ended. We
were going over the next month. And they were ready to give us our last leave, and when
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 17%
we come back, we were supposed to be the crew they’d end the war with. And then, of
course, everybody was in extended peacetime over there, and we ended up over here, and
I got an airplane, connected them for about a year in Topeka, Kansas. Then they started
the air refueling of the B-47s. B-47 was a big bomber, arm of the United States through
the Cold War, you know. And ended up taking training for air refueling, and that’s what I
did until I got out of the Air Force. Refuel the B-47s as they made their flight from the
United States to wherever they were going, over in Europe someplace. And as I gather,
they refueled them twice. B-47s never landed anywhere until they got to refuel them
twice. And usually, they were coming out of California. And one time, we were up in
Goose Bay, Canada, refueled them there, and then ended up flying over Iceland and then
they were refueling over Iceland. And I don’t know where they went from there. Maybe
into, down in Turkey, or wherever, different places. And that was quite an experience. It
was interesting to do that kind of stuff. And of course, they encourage you to stay in the
extended service. And put kind of the fear into you, “When you get out, and you don’t
find a job, you’re going to starve. Here, you’ve got it easy in certain ways, every year a
vacations, and [__inaudible at 30:10__] better now.” And they give you a talk about two,
three weeks before you’re discharged, try to tell you everything to re-enlist. “I could give
you a bonus,” you know, seven thousand dollar bonus. That’s all they did out there. And
my crew, my aircraft commander, he tried to get me to stay in. He had a special answer,
because he was married to an Indian. He says, “[__inaudible at 39:37__].” So he had kind
of like a special interest in me. And he tried to get me to stay, and I said, “No.” And I
said, “I’ve had enough of this.” Military life didn’t agree with me. And so, when I got
ready to get out, and I said my goodbyes, he said, “You’ll be back. And if you come back
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 18%
in three months, you go back in the same grade. Don’t lose any rank. And get your boss
in. You’ll be back.” I said, “Don’t hold your breath.” [Laughter] And when I left the
service, that was it. I never even dreamed of going back, I had had enough of that. And
then, the gas pipelines were the main thing going on. In Canada, and over in what is now
like Saudia Arabia and those places. They’re building these oil pipelines. They had a
deal, you could go to work for these companies for a thousand dollars a month. And at
that time, in the [19]50s, that was a lot of money! And then, you had to sign up for
eighteen months. Well, you come out of there, eighteen thousand dollars was a lot of
money. “Well, I ought to do that,” you know? So I took my G.I. Bill, and then
[__inaudible at 40:49__]. But I never did make it. Never did make it in there. Come back
here to Lee, ended up back in the cowboying and the ranching business, and kind of spent
most of my life doing that. The welding and the trade come in handy. Repair your own
stuff and things like that. So that can come in very handy. But I often wonder, had I not
come back here, and gone on those jaunts, or signed up for those tours over there, where
I’d have been today. Probably been totally different. Continuing on a little bit on the,
what you would call the ways of the Shoshone, going way back. Actually, they were very
religious people. The white people would call us ‘savages’ and ‘heathens’ and whatever
else, but really, in our own way, in our own laws, we were very religious people. And
nothing was done without prayer beforehand, and then prayer afterwards. No matter what
was going to be done, there was always prayer involved in it. If you were going to go to
war, there was a special ceremony—a sacred ceremony—that was performed. And then,
if you come back from war, everybody would sing to you, and then [__inaudible at
42:13__]. This was where the war dance comes from, which you see now in the
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 19%
powwows. It’s become a show. But that was a sacred ceremony, to us. To us Shoshone.
And I suppose to other Indian nations, too, but for sure, that’s the way it was done here. If
they went hunting, same thing: a prayer was offered, and safety was asked for during the
hunt, that you would be successful in the hunt. And then, when you come back, you give
thanks if you had a good hunt, you know. So, very religious people in our own way, from
what we understand. I guess the reason the white people say that we were not religious, is
because they didn’t see any churches, coming across the land. In the Indian ways, it’s the
whole earth, the whole outdoors, is the church. There is not a part of it that isn’t sacred.
So you’re always in our church. And that’s a concept that I think many white people
don’t grasp, is you have to be in a building to be in a religious ceremony. But to the
Shoshone, that was the church. And I want to make that known, because I think if you
look at the history, that’s not testified. The history that’s taught in schools. That is not
touched on, the sacredness that the Indians held everything in. Everything was sacred.
Nothing was taken without thanksgiving, and like I said, as always, you left enough for
the future. [__inaudible at 43:47__], no matter what you were doing, no matter what you
took. A little bit into the Shoshone bow. Old Billy Mose was a relation of my greatgrandfather, Elwood Mose. And my grandfather told told us when we was little guys.
He used to come down and visit my grandmother quite a bit. And he was probably maybe
104, 105, at that time. He was pretty spry. Had all his faculties. Hearing was good. Only
thing, his eyesight was a little bit dim, you know? But he used tell me—he’d come down
and visit my grandmother—he talked about a different part of his life. And as a kid, I
found that interesting. I would sit and listen. I didn’t take part in the conversation—I’d
just sit and listen. All done in Shoshone, you know. Listen to what he had to say. And it
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 20%
was amazing, as I think right now, he never repeated himself. Never told the same part of
his life. Each time he came, he told a different part of his life. It was like he remembered
it. But he always said—and one of the things that I found interesting was the way he
described the Shoshone bow, and the way it was made. And actually, in today’s terms,
it’s a laminated bow. And some way, they would straighten out the horn of a bighorn
sheep. And that’s curled, they would straighten that out. And in some way slice it, and it
was the back for the bow, the wooden bow, made probably from a cedar. Cedar is that
little juniper, you know, it’s the main thing that they—but some way, they would join it
in the middle. That’s a lost art, now. But some way, they would join it in the middle. And
if you think, when you bend something, they don’t give the same, because you’re pulling
it different ways, and so on and so forth. So, some way, they still kept that power, this
recall ability, that retains, even though it wouldn’t bend the same. Somehow, I don’t
know how did that. And he talked about that that’s the way the bow was made, and it was
a very powerful bow. And he said, the fighting bow is short, about that long. He said the
hunting bow was little longer, about like that. And they’re both made the same way. And
of course, arrows would be flint, flint, obsidian, or black flint or red flint, or the white
chert, which is buried in the north of Battle Mountain. That was one of the favorite
points. They call it Tosawihi. They call it “white knife.” But even in trade items with
another tribe, they traded that. Pretty prized piece of [__inaudible at 46:20__]. Now, the
favorite wood that he talked about to make the arrow was the rosebush. The long shoot of
the rosebush. Which if you’ve seen them, they grow very straight. And he said they
would straighten them with heat, as soon as they scrape that bark off, and the spines and
all that, then they would straighten them with heat. And the feather was the feather of a
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 21%
sagehen. And I don’t think they had three feathers; I think they probably had two
feathers. And from hearing him talk about that, I think, from what little I gleaned, I think
it only had two feathers. And now you see the white man add three feathers in some of
them books. But I think the Indian arrows probably just had two. And they tied them on
with sinew, deer sinew, the same as the arrowhead. Tied down with the deer sinew. And
then they string the bow, also deer sinew. And it was a very prized item when they
traded. The Indian nations traded before the coming of white men. They traded among
themselves. And whatever each nation had, they would trade, and put their own value on,
and actually barter portions of weapons for food, just a lot of trade. And it’s said that the
white chert that I mentioned north of Battle Mountain has been found as far east as St.
Louis. So you can see how far that item had been traded. And he had a very interesting
life. He talked about the first white man he saw coming on horseback, up there in Ruby
Valley. And he said he thought the man was on fire, because smoke was coming off of
him. And he went riding up there. He thought the man was on fire. Black beard, you
know? And he come to find later on, the guy was smoking a pipe. But he’d never seen
that before, khe thought the man was on fire. [Laughter] And then, later on, he got to
talking one time about the way that the Shoshones would go and, I guess you would
maybe call it a “war party.” But I don’t think Shoshones looked at it that way. It was a
way of going and proving yourself as a man, as a warrior. That was what they meant to
do with the war party. Proving yourself as a warrior, as a man. And one story that he
told, I remember it: they had gone east someplace. I don’t remember what Indian nation
they were in, but they wiped this village out. Killed everybody there. And of course, after
that, when they had killed everybody, then comes time to divide the spoils. Well, horses
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 22%
was a big thing. But that’s what they usually nabbed, was horses. And they say that these
two warriors, Shoshone warriors—the rule was that if you came up to a horse and hit
him, that was yours. Undisputed, that’s your horse. Nobody would challenge it. And so
these two warriors came to the same horse at the same time, and neither one of them
would relinquish his claim. And they argued for a little bit there, and then they actually
backed off and were going to shoot each other over that horse! And the leader of the
party, the leader of that group, ran up and shot the horse. And neither wins the argument.
[Laughter] I remember him saying that just like he said it yesterday. And then he said
those two guys, they looked at each other kind of ashamed, and probably very emotional.
And that was interesting that that happened, that that warrior, that leader had that kind of
a sense to gain way in the argument without doing anything else. And it did end the
argument. There was no argument. [Laughter] He talked about hunting buffalo. And I
thought that was interesting, from here. When I guess into probably eastern Wyoming,
and western Nebraska, he talked about where there’s no mountains. The amazing part to
me was that the Wind River Shoshone—of course, at that time, they were not in Wind
River, they were all over. Not been put on the reservation yet. And he called them people
by name! I was amazed that from here, that he knew those people over there by name!
That was an amazing thing that I remember. And then he described hunting the buffalo
itself. And he said that this one gentleman was calling the names that the—and he said,
“Your horse one day will be good here in this hunt.” He says, “I’ll give you one of mine.”
And he told him, he said, “Now, when we start this hunt here”—I guess they would run
the buffalo, they would start the buffalo maybe to naturally stampeding. When they saw
the horsemen there, the buffalo would run so that you could come alongside of it, and
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 23%
when you shoot the arrow, you shoot the arrow into up here, because there’s no bones in
the pouch, and it ended up in the chest. “And when that happens, when you do that,” he
said, “when you do that, this horse will leave that buffalo and go to the next one. So you
don’t have to worry about it. And you just take care of your arrows and your shooting,
and don’t worry about the horse.” And so he said they started things, got going up, and he
was in the last, because everybody rode off but him. And he said that he come around this
buck, well, he shot him with his arrow, and he says, “Sure enough, as soon as that horse
heard the twang of that bow, ran right alongside the next one, just right here. Right here
quick. Just had to lean over, and stick that arrow into his chest cavity. And of course,
buffalo would run away, bleed to death, and soon as they got done with all of them,
they’re on the road. And then, all of the people from the village would all come out and
help butcher it up. And of course, they dried it, and kept the hide for tanning and for
blankets and that. That was a favorite winter item, was that buffalo robe. Called buffalo
robe in place. I’m told now that the buffalo has 40,000 hairs per square inch. And that’s
how thick that hair is. You tan that, I guess it’s one of the warmest things there is. And he
talked about that. From Ruby Valley to that far away. It amazed me, the distances that
they could cover, just on horseback and that. It was very interesting, I would say those
are the two things that stand out. One other thing I’d like to mention is, in those days, the
Shoshones had runners. That’s how they kept village to village informed, throughout the
whole nation. They had runners. And from my best estimation today, I would guess they
would run 100 miles a day. From the distance they covered in one day. And the reason I
come up with that figure is, my grandmother’s brother, my maternal grandmother’s
brother, was one of those kind of people. And I don’t know whether it was a gift, like the
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 24%
Indian doctor, or whether they were trained from childhood to be able to do that, I don’t
know. But she talked one time—and she wasn’t talking to me, she was talking to
someone else, and I was sitting there listening—where they were camped around where
Brigham City is now. They had been away hunting, on the way back on a wagon. And
they might’ve had a saddle horse or two. The family was camped there, and the middle
brother, I guess, got mad at her. And he took off for Ruby Valley on foot. Wanted to go
home, and [__inaudible at 53:50__], and he left. And so they came back through, back
through, come to Salt Lake, and probably about six, seven days later, you know, as a
team. And he was there. He was there. So they asked the people, they says, “How long
have you been here?” “Oh, we’ve been here about four days.” So, during that time, I
figure he did about a hundred miles a day. It took him about a day and a half. And that
was it. And another story is, that he could go from Ruby Valley to what they call
Tonammutsa, which is Battle Mountain, in one day. And you have to think, the way he
went, all mountain ranges. All mountain ranges. And he’d do that in one day. So, those
people were very gifted. Very gifted people. Like I said, I don’t know how—again, this
might have been a power that given to them, from the Ape, from God; or whether they
were trained from childhood. I don’t know. But Shoshones had those sort of people. And
like I said, they probably run a hundred miles a day, or pretty close to that, maybe a few
miles one way or the other. And again, that’s something that we don’t have today,
because—I guess because of the influence of the white culture. We’ve got automobiles
now. Maybe that, there’s no more need for that. But that’s some of the old things that I
remember. I listened to the old folks talk. And I found that very interesting, to listen to
the old guys talk. In my childhood, what I got to remember, maybe 1934, 1935, in
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 25%
through there, what I can remember real good, the guys are alive at that time were
probably born about 1850, 1860. They were about in their seventies and eighties at that
time. And that kind of pre-white settlement in this part of the country, pre-white
settlement. And I don’t remember all the things I used to hear. Only some of the main
things I used to hear about that. And unfortunately, we didn’t have no modern devices
like today to be able to record that, because that would have been priceless to be able to
record that part of our culture and our history, the sacred part being talked about. It’s
unfortunate.
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
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Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
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Oral histories compiled
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
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GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
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2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Raymond Yowell
Location
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South Fork Reservation, NV [Elko, NV - TV Station]
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DVD and VOB Format
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00:56:46
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http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/452
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Raymond Yowell - Oral History (08/17/2007)
Subject
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Oral History Interview with Raymond Yowell, Western Shoshone from South Fork Reservation, NV, on 08/17/2007
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Raymond Yowell is a Shoshone who was born in Elko, Nevada on September 23, 1929. He spoke of his birth and the eventual adoption by his relative Frank and Annie Charley from Smoky Valley. Raymond also spoke of traditional medicines, traditional practices and the Indian doctors who conducted the events and used these items. He also speaks of his travels as a child moving back into the Lee, NV area, and going to school there. He also tells us of the traditional hunting practices of the Shoshone as well as the types of animals that were hunted during certain seasons of the year. Raymond also entered the Air Force during the Korean War which he comments upon. Lastly, he tells us some traditional Shoshone history as told to him by one of the Shoshone Elders.</p>
Video pending<br /> <a title="Raymond Yowell Oral History Transcript" href="/omeka/files/original/2e116bef5d665b44867b522f1e77cd3e.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read Raymond Yowell Oral History Transcript [pdf file]</a>
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archives
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 007B
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
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08/17/2007 [17 August 2007]; 2007 August 17
Contributor
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Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America
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Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017
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Language
A language of the resource
English
Community
Crossroads
GBIA
heritage
hunting
Korean War
Shoshone
South Fork Reservation
Story
traditional food
veteran
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/dce7b9a523cee33bb759484f81ba2d2c.jpg
41bb2d55d06e6fbe935bdd07b5fd42a3
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/03d093eb7d9d2699409e60ba3cc01c37.pdf
83e1fd9398700c0aa3a9ba7a47600d39
PDF Text
Text
Nevada
Penoli
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
006
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
April
26,
2006
Elko,
NV
Great
Basin
College
•
Great
Basin
Indian
Archives
1500
College
Parkway
Elko,
Nevada
89801
hCp://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/
775.738.8493
Produced
in
partnership
with
Barrick
Gold
of
North
America
�GBIA 006
Interviewee: Nevada Penoli
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: April 26, 2006
P:
My name is Nevada P. Penoli, and I have been here for 74 years. And I was born here,
and I’m raised here, and probably I’ll die here. And I’ll just give you a small story,
because sometime I like to talk too long. And I think I’ll just talk about getting ready to
go pinenutting. That’s interesting part. Continue?
C:
Uh-huh.
P:
Does that sound all right? Okay. First of all, when we get ready, Grandmother would get
everything, tell us, “All right, time to get ready, go pinenutting. Who wants to go?” So
everybody wants to go. So we start getting our cans—five-gallon cans to put our water
in—and small buckets to put our pinenuts in when we start gathering. And she would get
her a long pole to shake down the pinenuts, pine trees, and then she would make a hook
to put on the end. And then she’d get our boxes for our clothes, and our groceries, and a
heavy cast-iron cooking pots, and coffee pots, and everything would just go in there, put
on the wagon, and get the horses ready to take us up there onto the mountains. The
mountains were not very far away from us. Maybe about four or five miles, and there’s
pinenuts there. And we gather them as much as you want to. But we just want to go
gather a large amount, and once we get up there, we’re going to start finding a place to
camp. And every one of the people that’s going up, young and old, they know what to do.
And of course, the children like to run and play and look the area over to see what they
can play with. But then they had to come back in and start work. The mens, they start
putting up the tents, and find a good place to put their tents and sleeping blankets and
stuff. And then, the part that had to be dug for the main part of the pinenuts, because
there’d be large amount of pinenuts going into that big hole, after the fire is started in
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there. Well, then we all settled down for a supper. The womens, they would all prepare
the meals, and gather everythings up, and then the mens would go gather some wood, so
that we could be ready for the next day. My grandmother sure liked to make the Indian
bread, what we call the ash bread. She always had to make one big ash bread to go with
our meal. And usually it’s deer meat stew, and everybody likes that. Then the big pot of
coffee on the fire. And they don’t have the, I don’t know what you call it, but it’s the
thing that you hang over the fire so the water would boil, and the coffee would boil, and
everything would be just perfect. Many times, people would come back in, or have cup of
coffee, and sit there long into the night and tell stories. Sometime it was grown-up stories,
and sometimes short stories of different animals, how they acted. Sometimes they would
hear laughter, because we would have to go to bed early. And sometimes there would be
jokes of all sorts. So then, after, they’re talking about we’re going to do it tomorrow,
Grandma say, “Oh, shut up, you guys! Go to sleep.” But we’d all laugh and do what we
were going to do, and my Grandma and the other ladies, they’d talk to each other what
they’re going to do. And they had their bandannas to put over their heads, to go out to
look at the trees, because the pinenuts usually falling on their heads, and the pine, um—
it’s sticky. Yeah, pitch, on it, and then land in their hair and be sticky. And so that’s why
they wore bandannas. And then they had gloves to wear for their hands, because their
hands would be sticky and everything. So we’d all get up and have breakfast. And they
would, the men would all go out with their poles, and they had long willow poles. And
look for the pine trees that had nice, good-looking pinenuts, pinecones on them. Then
they’d knock them down, and the womens, they get their baskets and pick up the sticky
pinenut cones and put it in the bucket. And when they fill up with that, they take it back
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to the campground, and that guy there would be ready to throw it in when we get enough.
And then, they’d set fire in that pit. It’s just like a barbecue pit. And then, when they get
enough in that pit, then they would cover it up with fire, and then they’d put some dirt
over it, and they’d let it steam. So then, after that, people would sit around that day and
talk, and have their lunch. And then they’d wait until the, they know just about what time
it would be when the pine nuts would be ready, and the pitch. And when they do it, they
always took one out as they took a shovel and got one out of there, and they said, “Here,
you try it!” So then, they said, “Okay.” They took the pinecone and turn it, put it in their
hands—with their gloves on, because it was hot—and they twisted it different directions.
And then when it was easy to twist, and they said, “It’s ready!” So then they all start
getting shovel, and all start digging up the pinecones in the pit. And then it would be hot.
And then, after a while, they would cool off, and then they would, the womens, they
would gather a spot where they’re going to sit, and they would have their pinecones in
front of them. And they start twisting the pinecones in order to get the nuts out of there.
And then, they’d use their thumbs and their fingers to start digging the pinenuts out of
there, and shedding the nuts so they get them out of the cones. Then, they would put it in
the buckets, and throw the pine cones, the old pine cones away, and then they’ll be doing
that all afternoon until it’s all done. And then, they would, the mens, they would go out
for some more trees to get some more pine cones off. And that goes on for until we get
maybe two, three bags of pinenuts, cones that had been shelled. And then, they would go
out, take some raw pinenuts, and put them in a gunnysack, and take them home. For their
own use. And the ones they already cooked in the barbecue pit would be cooked, and that
one needs to be selling. Sell it to the people outside. And that’s how that was done with
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the pinecones. But the gathering of all the things to work with is very tedious, because
they’d have to go up with the proper wood to use for the poles, and the hooks on the top
of the poles, and the canvas to put under the trees after they start knocking them down.
And the children, they liked to pick up the pine cones, and each throw it at each other.
But then, they would be all sticky with pitch. But then—they all had their old clothes on,
but other than that, that’s where the pinenut story ends, there.
Many a times, when I’m sitting by myself, I remember the times my mother would talk
about old days like wagons, horses, and bridles, and reins, and everything getting all—
horses hooked up to the wagons, so that when they drove, traveling, that’s all they would
have is the wagon. Because they never had no cars, or anything to use to go traveling.
The horses was the main thing for the Indian peoples to have in them days. So that
would’ve been in the 1860s, somewhere in there. And so, then she would watch the TV
shows that had Lonesome Dove on it, and the chuck wagon was main thing that caught
her eye. She says, “That’s just the way we used to do it, when we got ready to go
somewhere!” Wagons and the food, it all goes together. And everybody knew what to do.
Nobody ever got on the wagon without knowing to take care of something. Horses had to
be taken care of, and sometime they’d have a chicken. They would take that along, too.
Because of the eggs they’d have to have. And then Gram, she would gather up her
children, and put them all in the wagon, where they would sit and have their blankets
there, because sometimes they’d drop off to sleep. Mom would do the same. She would
be the oldest member of the family besides her sister, and they would know what to do to
tend to the children, and all those things that girls do. No one had time to play or
anything. So that every hand on that wagon had a job to do. There never was an idle hand
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on there. And lot of times, Mom would tell us, “If you only was there when I was a kid,
you would probably just sit down and cry, because that time was real hard. We didn’t
have nothing to do our work for us. And you guys got it real easy!” And the children
nowadays, if they were always doing their work with their grandparents, and their
mothers and dads, they would know how to handle themselves, and respect their own
lives as we had did then. So, on our wagon trip down through the countrysides, when our
horses was get tired, we’d stop and rest ‘em. We’d always find a spot to be cool, by some
willow trees or by water. And then, when the horses got rested, then we’ll start again. But
most of the time, we keep going, keep going, ‘til we found a place where we could camp.
And that would be a place with some trees. And then Grandfather, he would get his gun,
and then go out and get some rabbits, or a deer, or maybe a bird. Some kind of sagehen, I
think he would get. But other than that, that’s all he would get. Bring it in, and then the
womans, they would prepare the meat by scraping the deer hide, and taking care of the
hide, and the meat. And that is another story. And so then—I won’t go into that, because
it’d be another long story. And after everything was prepared for, the meat was prepared,
then Gram would take the meat and put it over the fire, and we’d have fresh meat over
the fire. And everybody would really like that. And then she’d have her ash bread, and
she’d give us all a piece of ash bread. Sometime we’d want more, but then she’d say,
“No, if I do that, then we won’t have enough for breakfast! Oh, well, go ahead. I’ll fix
some more tomorrow.” So then we had some more bread to eat, and we all went to bed
with our tummies full. I told mom that time, “Did you know you had a very good
childhood? Because you was, all you did was just go around. There was no fences, no
gates to open, and nothing to—nobody said, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that.’ You just
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went.” And she says, “Well, that’s because you guys all knew what to do.” So then, I
just—that’s sad, because I didn’t have that kind of childhood. And that’s all I’m going to
say.
C:
Uh-huh. So what parts of the country did you guys travel?
P:
They traveled from O’Neill, O’Neill down this way, along the Snake River, down to
Jackpot, and all the way down this way, because there would be fishes in there. And then
they would gather the fishes, and they’d dry them, and prepare them for getting dried up,
and then they’d have dry fish, and then they wouldn’t spoil. And then, down here, about
10 miles, 20 miles out of Wells, there would be the deers. And they’d probably get a
young doe and bring that in, because at that time, if they got a deer, they just didn’t
mutilate it. They just brought it in, took care of the meat and the hide, and dried the meat
like jerky. And everything was fine. And then brought everything in. Nothing was
wasted. Because Mom and Gram, they took care of the meat real good. And Grandfather,
Chief Jones, would have hanging up the deer for them to work with. And then they
would go down into Wells, and then they’d take that down the edge of the Humboldt.
Right up where Ogle’s Ranch is now. They’d be camped right there, where many of the
peoples who was on wagon trains would travel through on horses. They would stop there,
also, and refresh their horses, and go on their way. That was just like a water stop where
the peoples nowadays, they stop at the cafés and places to eat. And that’s why I build that
gold oval samote [15:50] water over here, is place where the people can rally around and
camp, and enjoy their rest time. They traveled then, they’d either travel south to Ely, and
then west to Elko, and then east to Salt Lake, because that’s the poor travels way.
Highway 48, and Highway 93, both north and south. And east and west.
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C:
How many days did it take to travel, like, to these places?
P:
It would take probably about—a steady drive would be about two, three miles a day.
They would stop and camp, and then they would, to Elko, mom told me it would take two
days just to settle down in the night, and then get up early and go in the morning to Elko.
By the time they got to Elko, it’d be about noon. And from here to Ely, maybe it would
take about three days, three to four days. And then, that’s the only trip they ever took. But
that’s travel by wagon and horses.
C:
How many horses pulled the wagon?
P:
Sometime four, sometime two. If it got light, it would be two. But they always had, Mom
would be the wrangler. She was the, she liked the horses. She always was a horse woman.
And she always took care of the horses. So she had one horse she always had, and she’d
ride it bareback. So, she was quite a lady.
C:
Where did they get their horses from?
P:
Oh, they were from the ranches where they worked. They’d buy it and work for the
ranches. Then they would buy the horses. Or he would, Grandfather would break wild
horses. That’s how they got their horses. Because there were wild horses around here.
C:
So, was there a lot of mustangs in Nevada at that time?
P:
Yeah, down by Currie. That was the area where they had the mustangs. Wild horses in
Butte Valley, Odger’s Ranch and around in there. But you could look there now, there’s
not too many. The horses are all getting down now. At the time, when the horses were
here, people respected them. But now, they’re killing them, and I don’t think that’s right.
The horses have a right to be on earth as much as we do. And that’s all I can say about it.
C:
So did the Indians back then use saddles, or did they ride them bareback, or…?
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P:
They had saddles, and they had—Mom rode on hers bareback. She didn’t like saddles.
And Grandpa, he always had a saddle when he rode broncos. And he had his reins and
everything. Even made his own lariats and rawhide. And his bridles. Many years ago,
when my mother and her mother settled down in a place where they were going to work,
with Grandfather and the rest of the family, usually there’s about three, four hands along
with my grandfather. My mother Ruth, and her mother Gimma, knew just about how they
were going to prepare their tepees. Their tepees and tents. [__inaudible at 19:42__] tepees
are pointed places, and a tent is like a room. And that’s what they used. And then they
would cook outside. And they would live like that all summer, and then, in the
wintertime, when they were getting ready to move out of there, and get ready to move out
to the ranches where they were going to settle and spend the winter, then they’d have to
find a place where they could live. Sometime it’s a shack, or sometime it’s just a lean-to
with willows, a willow bows to hold a canvas over their other, regular tents. And it
wasn’t too easy, either, for them people. And I look around when she tell me that, and she
says, “You know, people are very lucky to have homes like they have now. They can go
in and open their doors, and they have stoves in there. And all we had in our places was a
tub to make our fire in and cook on. And people nowadays really don’t take care of what
they have. I really like my stove. Because I have a cookstove now, and I have that. And
we have that in our tent. But we had to watch our tent, for the roof of the tent, because the
chimney would go through the tent, and sometimes that stove fire would get hot, and
would burn the canvas around the tent. And when that started, our tent would start
leaking, and we would have big holes there, and we’d have to run around looking for a
piece to put in there, which wasn’t very easy. Because we’d be way out there, and, the
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men would have to get an old blanket and put it on the sides. So then, while they were
doing that, we was fixing our place where we were going to eat, and which, we ate on the
floor of the tent because we didn’t have no table. So we’d put our blanket, or our canvas,
down so we could sit there and eat off the floor. But we was always clean people. Some
people would say we weren’t—because we always washed our hands before we ate. And
then, we settled down, get that all down, then we start getting ready for night. And then,
next day, when we’d have to do the same thing all over again. Until the boss, the white
man who Grandpa was going to work for, came and saw the family living like that. He
said, “We’ve got a bunkhouse up there you guys can use.” And boy, my grandma was so
happy, that she’d put everything on the wagon just as it was, never even took care of
whatever. She just threw ‘em all up back of the wagon, hooked up the horse, and away
they went up to that bunkhouse, and unloaded ‘em up. And in there they had a stove, and
a place to put their water. And everything was really nice. They had a table. So, that’s the
way they lived in white man’s place when they went up working in the hay fields. And I
think all them people around had lived that same way. And every man, again, they would
go hunt for deer. Deer, and then they would get their meat. Sometimes, the rancher would
have some beef for them. And usually it’s the ribs, and parts that they wouldn’t use, and
they would give it to the family, and they would make use of it. Make soup and stews.
And which is better, because meat that time, you’d have to eat it right now, but the soup
would last a long time. And they always had a good time, preparing their meals, and their
homes. Once they chinked up the holes in their log cabins, sometime used the logs to
make their homes, and it was done with mud so that they would chink up between the
logs, so the wind wouldn’t come through. And that’s what we liked to do was play with
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mud. So that was the job that children did. Chink up the holes in the walls. And that,
mostly all the children liked to do that. And when I grew up, we didn’t have that. We had,
our homes had walls in. So we didn’t have very much hardship then. But I always think
about mom, how her hardship. And I feel sad for her. I feel sad for all the old people at
that time, had to live like that. Now, I see the people in the overseas, how they’re living.
They just live like we did then. It’s just not fun. So, the children should respect where
they live. Take care of their homes and their families. That’s what I like for all the
youngsters to grow up loving their families, as the kids love their families now. That’s it.
C:
Where did they get the water…?
P:
From the well, and the river. Streams.
C:
And so was the water good for drinking then?
P:
Yeah.
C:
And the streams?
P:
Yeah. Water was good everywhere. ‘Til now; it’s been all contaminated with all these
things floating on the air. And every stream was always running. It was good. Of course,
you always ask Gram when—when we went out to go fishing, she’d taste the water,
because there’s always been a dead cow above it, or a deer or something. A horse died in
the water. And then you’d tell Grandpa or one of the guys to go up and see if there’s any
animal dead up there. Because there’s always, sweetwater, they call it. So when they’d
come back down, they said, “There’s nothing dead up there. It’s clean.” So that’s where
we’d get our water. It was clean.
C:
So what kind of fish was in the streams back then?
P:
Mountain trout.
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C:
Mountain trout?
P:
Uh-huh. I like them. They’re real sweet and delicious. I don’t like the trout from the
lakes. They’re no good. They don’t taste good. Now, I’ll talk about the deer hides. The
deer hides was intended for the wearing items. Pants, shirts, gloves, hats, moccasins.
Nothing was wasted. Nothing. Bones were made into needles. And spoons. And things to
do the stirring the food with, and eating the soups and stuff. Things that—anything that
they could think of. Nothing was wasted. The Indian people always used everything. And
mom and them, whenever they got a deer hide come in, a deer, they take the hides, and
scrape it and stretch it out, first thing. And make sure it doesn’t have too much holes in it.
Because sometime, like a shot, they’d have holes in there. And then sometime there’d be
one big deer, sometime they’re little ones. Sometime they’re bucks, and they’d be heavy
hides to handle, and so then, first thing Gram would do is take the head off and then put
that aside, and then cut the neck off, and strip it down. And then she would take the legs
off, and set the legs aside, because she used that for purposes of her own. I could not say
what it was. It was her special ways of tanning the legs of the deer. And the tail’s also
special thing to handle, women to handle. And I can’t talk about that either. So, they took
the part of the deer, and they’ll make jerky out of it. And then they make stew meat out of
it, and dry it, and make sure that everything is just right. So when that’s all done, then in
the meantime, when that was being done by the younger woman, Grandma’d take her
deer hide out, and get some water in the tub, and put the deer hide in there. And get some
rocks and put on top of it. And that would sit for about three weeks in the water. Tub of
water, and then every day she would go check the fur of the hide that’s in the water
soaking. And she’d turn it, and handle it just right. And then she’d take the fur of the deer
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and pull it. And if it comes off easily, it’s getting close to where she can take it out of the
water and put it over her log, which she’s going to use to scrape the deer hide on. Then,
when the heavy part of the deer hide, by the shoulder, the fur would come off of there,
then it was ready. So then she’d take the—it was a wet job when she took the hide out of
the water, and she put it in that bucket, and she’d take it over there where she had her log,
and stretch it on top of that, take—her scraping knife would be a bone. I think it was a
horse bone, rib. Something. Either a horse rib or a cow rib, to use. And then the shin of
the deer was also an implement for scraping. And it’d be a certain bone. And then she’d
use that. And then she had a knife—a draw knife, she called it—and I’d see her standing
back there, humped over that log and that deer hide, scraping that heavy deer hide, and,
boy! I’d go back there from school, and she’d, “Come here,” she says. “Give me some
water.” And just, I’d go there and give her some water, and I says, “What are you
doing?” She goes, “Scraping the deer hide.” I said, “Pretty soon we’ll get some money
and buy some potatoes.” So then, we’re so happy because money was coming. So, one
time, one day when I came back from school, I went back in where she was, and
somehow that hide didn’t smell good. And I said, “Pew, what is that? What are you
doing?” She said, “It’s a deer hide. It got a little wild for me, and I’ve got to hurry and get
it done.” So I kept saying, “Pew!” to it. And she says, “Well, pretty soon you won’t say
‘pew,’ because we’ll have some money and we’ll buy some good stuff.” So then she said,
“Help me move that deer hide around.” And so then, so I grab ahold of one leg, pry its
leg and move it around. And it was heavy! And I don’t know how she ever managed to
use that big deer hide, moving around on that pole. So then, because she was a 5-foot-4
woman, and she wasn’t too strong, didn’t look too strong, but she was strong. And she
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moved herself around really good, and got her deer hide working right again. So then one
time, I tried to use a draw knife on it, and she told me, “Leave it alone! You’re going to
put a hole in it.” So then, that’s the time that I never bothered the deer hide. And I grew
up not knowing how to scrape. But I know how to sew the deer hides together. Because
she showed me how to do that. And when she was ready to take the hide off, I helped her
take it off, and the same with Mom. She always, I always helped them both. But I was a
little girl at that time, too. But I was always there. I knew just about what to do for them.
And then, come tanning, same thing. I helped them get some wood, and you had to have
certain wood to smoke them. Have a certain place to put the deer hide to hang up after
it’s been dried. Because it’s lot of work to get those deer hides to where they could be
pliable to work with. Because I missed one spot, one item, is from the scraping to the
stretching of the deer hide, to make it soft and pliable, they had to work with it. They had
to put brains on there, smear the brains on the underside, and on the top side, in order to
soften it up. And that was a job, too. If you didn’t have the right kinds of brains, it
wouldn’t soften. It’d take long time to soften. So, Grandma’d always hurry and do that,
and stretch it up on the wall, leave it up there and let it dry that way. Or put it on the
clothesline. And if the dogs don’t get it, she was fine. But if the dogs come around and
tear it down, she has a fit. But you have to watch it all the time. So then, when that’s all
done, then she’d soak it again. I don’t know how many times she soaked that deer hide in
water in order to get it all softened. And she’d put it on a tree stump, and tighten it up
then. Wring it out there, and let it stand on that, wring it out on that post until it’s dry.
And then she’d shake it off, and then she’d work it. Stretch it this way and that way. It
was a time to do that. And I asked her, I said, “Don’t you ever get tired of doing that?”
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She said, “I’ve got muscles! I don’t get tired.” But she did have muscles. So, then when
she got all through doing that, then the smoking started. Now, it was vital to do that. The
two ladies would take care of the smoking. They’d have to have just the right color, and
use the right kind of bark in order to smoke the hide to make it smell good. The
sagebrush is strong smoke. And cedar is good smoke. The fire would make the cedar
smoke, smell good. And so that they would use that. But then, you leave it in too long,
it’s just too dark. And Grandma’d always say, “Go check it! Go check it!” So I’d go over
there and peek at it, where she has her hole. We’d have to put a cloth back in that hole.
So then I told her, “Okay, it’s yellow.” So then she’d go over there, and pull the bucket
out, and take the hide off that’s hanging there, and turn it inside-out, and it was just right.
So the hide turned tanned, that’s how they tanned their hide. It used to be a very hard,
tedious job. But I wouldn’t want to do that. I can’t do it now. But it was enjoyable to
watch them ladies do that. Which I know I’ll miss as time goes on. And I hope
somewhere along the line that somebody will pick it up. They get the gloves ready to
sew. And then they have a pattern. A woman’s pattern, and a man’s pattern, they’re all
different sizes. She know the size of a man. Says six, size six, seven, eight, and she’d
make a—a six is a small one, and a seven is a medium, and a eight is a large. And then
the buckaroos, they come around for their gloves to her, because they already ordered
them, and so then, when she’d get ‘em all ready, she’d send the kids out, tell them that
their gloves were ready. So, as time went on, she’d do that every day. And she’d sit there,
afternoon until night. And all she had then was an oil lamp. And they’d have a whetstone
to sharpen their needles with, and a buckskin thread to use that would be a heavy number
3 thread. And then she’d run out of that, and then she would go get some more, and add
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wax, beeswax. She’d have to go find her own beeswax. And sometimes she’d get bit by
the bees. That was quite a hard job for those ladies. And I’m sad for them, and I’m proud
of them, because they knew what they were doing, and how to do it, and how to get
things ready for everybody. And I don’t think none of the womens could do that
nowadays. Because everything’s prepared for them. And I hope somebody picks it up
from here on. Like I said, I hope some, or a lot of the ladies will pick up the sewing of the
buckskin, because it is very tedious job, and you poke your fingers, and then you run out
of thread, and run out of glove wax, and needles. You break many needles. But it’ll be
four-pointed needles to work with those buckskins, to push the needles through the
buckskin. And a good sharp scissor, and a good steady hands, and good eyes, and
uninterrupted work. And then, what was that?
C:
How much did they sell it for?
P:
Oh, the buckskin, the gloves—you either had to have the working gloves, they would be
heavy buckskin. That’d be the buckskin that would be heavy, in order to work on the
field where they had to fix the fences. And they either had a short gauntlet for the
working gloves, and for the long gauntlets, they had that for dress-up. And the long
gauntlets used to have beadwork done. And fringes on there. And Grandma liked to fix
the fringes and beadwork on them. She was an avid beadworker also, as well as my mom
was. And that’s all they ever did was just beadwork, all, from noon ‘til night. And sit
there, and sit there, sit there… “When you guys going to bed?” somebody would say.
“When I get this rose done.” “When I get this leaf done.” And always something like
that. And I know somewhere along the line that there are still beaders out there, and
buckskin workers, and womens, they’re out there doing buckskin scraping. And I hope
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that they would teach their youngsters to do it right now, before it’s too late to even teach
them. Like they done to me. They was always chasing me away when they were making
deer hide, scraping the deer hides, because they thought maybe I might put holes in it. So
I never did actually learn how to scrape deer hides. But I watched it. Then I beaded with
them. But the gloves, at that time, they sold for ten, nine dollars. And then the cowboys
and the buckaroos, they’d come and look at it. And always would look at the thumb part,
because that’s where most of the heavy part of the work of the glove is done, by the
thumb. And so they’d look at that, and they says, “Good, that’s what we wanted!
Something like that so it won’t split open.” So they asked my grandma, “How do you do
that, Gimma? You know, you’re the best buckskin glove makers that I’ve ever had.” And
they’d always come back to her, every year. Before the seasons of gathering the cattles
in. That was it for her. Mom was the same.
I have a grandson who was five years old when he started powwowing. And he danced.
And his name was José E. Salazar. E is for Edward. And I put him in the, made a
costume for him for the parade. We always had parades here in Wells, Nevada. And
every summer, I’d make a float. We’d go out and make a float, and put all the kids on
there. All native children. We’d make costumes for them, and dress them up with feathers
and everything. Faces and whatever. So then, grandson, he’d want to learn how to bead,
and to work with, sew the buckskin. So my mother and I, and Ruth Jones and me, would
sit there and show him the needle, and how to thread and everything. And the beads. And
we told him, “It’s going to be hard! It’s going to be hard on your eyes!” So he’s 26 years
old now, and he’s glad that he had learned how to bead, and work with feathers, and
respect the feathers. And people are proud that he had learned how to do his dances. He’s
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a traditional dancer. But right now he’s working for the white man world. And he doesn’t
[__inaudible at 42:32__] powwowing. But when he does, he goes out. But he’s working
now to get his own regalia ready. And when he does that, when he gets it finished, he’ll
go out and dance again. Which I’m proud to say that he was a good little dancer, from
five years old up to twenty years old or so. And he bead his own beadwork on his
headdress, and his roaches. I got him a roach, and it was for a little boy. He said,
“Grandma, that’s too little for me! We got to get a bigger one.” And his, I call them
“tailfeathers.” He said, “No, they have word for that!” So I just call ‘em tailfeathers, the
big old plumes and feathers behind him. And he said, he start laughing at me. And so
then I said, “Okay. I won’t say ‘tailfeathers’ anymore.” Mom made his moccasins. She
made several moccasins for him. He outgrew ‘em, because his foot got long. And then,
now… [Crying] now she’s gone. So then I’ll have to do it. But I’m proud that I had
taught him all these things. Because my mom doesn’t no more.
C:
Yeah, tell us how you got your name, Nevada, and how that came about.
P:
Many years ago, when I was born, it was in December, and my grandmother and my
mother both worked for a family that was known as Agee-Smith family here. They were
quite rich people, I’d say, because they had cattle and everything. And they lived up in
the Ovin Hill area. That’s where they originated. That’s where my mom and my
grandmother used to go up there and work up there in the field, in the hay field with my
grandpa. So, in December, in the [19]30s, my mom was expecting me, and I was born the
15th of December. And so, when they got back down here, they made a moon house, her
and my grandma, because my mom couldn’t go in the main house, because there was
mens in there. And boys. You can’t go take the womens in there like that. As most of the
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older people know, that there’s a taboo for the women to go in the main house when
there’s mens in there. So, my mom and I, we lived in this little house, what people call
“moon house.” And my grandma fixes, prepared a place for her to sleep, and cook, and
have water and stuff. Eat. And have me in there. So this one night, mom was getting
ready to give birth, and I was born there in that little tiny shack behind, right where I’m
living now. Where my mom was living. So it’s a time of naming the baby—me—Gram
had went to work that day for this lady’s daughter. And so, this lady’s daughter told her,
“What are you going to name the baby? Did you name it yet?” And she said, “No.” And
her mother, Mrs. Agee was standing there, she says, “Why don’t you name her Nevada,
after my daughter, Nevada Smith?” Nevada Agee, and then as time went on, she became
Smith. So then, I became Nevada at the time. So the white lady gave me the name of
Nevada, after her daughter. And so I’ve been Nevada ever since. And my last name was
Kamassee. But, my dad came from Idaho. So, every time I give my name to people—
they ask, “What is your name?” I said, “What state are you in?” As time went on I said
that. And they stand there thinking, and they says, “Nevada.” I says, “That’s my name.”
And then they start laughing, says, “Really?” I said, “Yeah.” “You’re just kidding me.” I
said, “Nope. That’s what my name is: Nevada Ellen Kamassee.” And they say, “Oh,
how original! That’s so authentic, that’s such a beautiful name.” I said, “I know it is! It’s
a beautiful state, too.” So that’s how I got my name, from another lady was named
Nevada by her mother, Tressa Agee. It’s been just like family name. I been with this
family forever, ever since I was born. And that’s my name: Nevada.
C:
Huh. That’s good, Nevada.
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
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GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Nevada Penoli
Location
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Wells, NV [Penoli residence]
Transcription
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http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/447
Original Format
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DVD; VOB format
Duration
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00:48:28
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Nevada Penoli - Oral History (04/26/2006)
Subject
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Oral History Interview with Nevada Penoli, Western Shoshone from Well, NV, on 04/26/2006
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Nevada Penoli was born in Wells, Nevada, and has lived there for 74 years. Nevada spoke about growing up in the area pine-nutting with her Grandmother and the rest of her family. She illustrates how her family lived back when she was a young girl. She also talks about how she use to travel around in wagons drawn by horses, and how they would camp along the way when traveling to distant locations. Nevada also speaks about how her Grandfather would go hunting and how the women in the family would take care of the deer, rabbit, or birds that were gathered. She tells us about her grandfather, grandmother, and mother and their experience with ranching.</p>
Video Pending <br /> <a title="Nevada Penoli Oral History Transcript" href="/omeka/files/original/03d093eb7d9d2699409e60ba3cc01c37.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read Nevada Penoli Oral History Transcript [pdf file]</a>
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Source
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 006
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
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04/26/2006 [26 April 2006]; 2006 April 26
Contributor
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Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America
Rights
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Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017
Consent form on file (administrator access only): http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/items/show/313
Format
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DVD; VOB Format
Language
A language of the resource
English
Community
Crossroads
gathering
GBIA
heritage
hunting
ranching
Shoshone
Story
Wells
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/4d39c7244ee9e08ada9c31a5b12fec1c.jpg
a1b76b4497e076bda2efcd725bb3b1a6
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Dan Blossom
Location
The location of the interview
Elko, NV (GBC Campus)
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Transcription in Process
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
DVD and VOB format
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:48:30
Dublin Core
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Title
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Dan Blossom Oral History (03/27/2012)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral History Interview with Dan Blossom, Western Shoshone from Battle Mountain, NV on 03/27/2012
Description
An account of the resource
<p><img style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; height: 50px; width: 50px;" title="Shoshone Language Marker indicating Shoshone content" src="/omeka/files/original/79de1f8d7d9a264c3fb9973a5346a076.jpg" alt="Shoshone Language Marker" />Oral History Interview with Dan Blossom, Western Shoshone from Battle Mountain, NV on 03/27/2012<br />This oral history contains significant Shoshone language conversation, and is recommended for usage by community language teachers.</p>
<p>Dan Blossom (Cho Cho Kunn) was born in Battle Mountain (Dona Muzza), Nevada in 1924. His mother was Miley Jackson-Cavanaugh. He is part of the Jackson Clan. Dan Blossom describes how he grew up on the outskirts of Battle Mountain. He describes how he would hunt for food such as gomba (type of desert ground squirrel), and eat other foods such as deer, duck, etc. He describes how his grandmother Aggie Jackson and his family lived while he was growing up in Battle Mountain. Dan also tells us of his school experience, and how he was not allowed to speak Shoshone. He later describes his life while he was in the Army during the Korean War. He later tells us a traditional Shoshone Tale: Coyote and Wolf.</p>
<p>Interviewed by Norm Cavanaugh</p>
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<p><strong> </strong></p>
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archive
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A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 027
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
03/27/2012 [27 March 2012]; 2012 March 27
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; Aldun Tybo [community member]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2016.
Consent form on file (administrator access only): http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/items/show/id/308
Language
A language of the resource
Shoshone; English
Community
Crossroads
folktale
GBIA
heritage
hunting
Korean War
ranching
Shoshone
Story
veteran
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/db3ea557ef3992516cf9e33bfa8c3dc0.jpg
f4bea4965da781d01c5ba20fcb8b0e4e
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/83b8215251fdfddcb32887d17fede7f9.pdf
fba2492374b153c1d21414c352f2defc
PDF Text
Text
Floyd Collins
Great Basin Indian Archive
GBIA 050
Oral History Interview by
Norm Cavanaugh
June 2, 2016
Duckwater, NV
Great Basin College • Great Basin Indian Archives
1500 College Parkway
Elko, Nevada 89801
http://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/
775.738.8493
Produced in partnership with
Barrick Gold of North America
�GBIA 050
Interviewee: Floyd Collins
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: June 2, 2016
FC:
My name is Floyd Collins. I was born in Ely, Nevada, August 27th, 1937. My dad’s name
was Abe Collins, Sr. My mom was Della Small out of Bridgeport, California. They met
somewhere over in Stewart when he used to ride broncs. Broke his leg, that’s how she
found him. Couldn’t get away—couldn’t run. [Laughter] Yeah. So, grew up in Ely. We
moved around quite a bit. Spent one year in Elko, one year in Carson, half a year in
White Pine before I got eight-sixed out of there. [Laughter] Then I joined the Marine
Corps. Eight years in the Marine Corps, and come back, married Mary—Collins now.
Forget what her name was before. She was from Ely. Her dad used to be a shovel
mechanic up at Kennecott, in Ruth. If they worked; they stood around the fire a lot and
cooked pinenuts in the falltime. Yeah, then when I was growing up, we used to do lot of
deer hunting, lot of fishing. Rabbit hunting. Sagehen. Didn’t have any chukar yet. They
weren’t planted yet. Didn’t hunt elk, there wasn’t any yet. They didn’t plant them until, I
think it was the late [19]40s when they finally planted elk over there, up above Cave
Lake. Sometimes we lived on the Colony, other times downtown. And we’d go hunting
down in Cave Valley, up Spruce Mountain, up in Long Valley. Then, you could hunt
anywhere in the state; not like it is now, certain areas you draw for. No deer in one area,
you go up to the next area. We’d go up to Spruce mainly late in the season, because
you’d get the migrates coming out of Idaho. Bigger bucks. But then, the horns were a lot
bigger, too. Not them little willow horns like we got now. They used to be mainly all
four-pointers, which is—now all you see is two-pointers, even out here on the
reservation! Look at my grandson, he’s about ready to go get us one here, pretty quick.
Jerky time! I already got jerky shed made; wires are up. [Laughter] And the little one in
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there, the grandson, he wants to go fishing. He don’t need a license because he already
knows how to fish, he told me.
NC:
Going back to when you came back out of the Marine Corps, what’d you do?
FC:
Oh, I worked for the BLM for about four years as a fire control technician in Ely. And
then went to work for Kennecott, took a mechanic’s apprenticeship up there. Then moved
to Reno—after I got divorced in Ely, of course. And I run my own business over there
until I couldn’t afford the rent on the building. [Laughter]
NC:
What kind of business did you run?
FC:
Diesel mechanic. I just worked on the eighteen-wheelers. That, and went to air
conditioning/refrigeration school down in California, city of Industry, to work on reefers:
Thermo Kings and Carrier Transicold. Then I worked for Thermo King in Reno for a
while. And other trucking companies over there. And I went to work for an outfit called
Westran out of Missoula, Montana. They come and found me in Wadsworth and put me
to work. [Laughter] And I traveled around with them for about five years. We’d haul
asphalt, and doubles, belly-dumps, cement. Could pay—use them for cement hauling. It
wouldn’t leak out. And down in Phoenix; Ontario, California; Lovelock; St. George;
Tonopah; and a few other places I can’t remember. Yep. So that’s about what I’ve been
doing. ‘Til I retired when I turned seventy-five; I quit. Turned in my Tribal credit card
and said, “I’m gonna retire.” [Laughter] But I still do work for the Tribe. I still got to put
a motor in here soon’s they get one. They don’t have big enough tools to put motors in.
NC:
So how old are you now, Floyd?
FC:
Seventy-eight right now. I’ll be seventy-nine in August. Still a pup. [Laughter] I used to
go to Sundance up in McDermitt. Everybody had to have a pipe up there. So, you make
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your own. Get pipestone out of Minnesota. I got one piece left, and that’s about it. This is
how they looked when you get a wider one. But that’s basically the pattern you use. Then
you drill a hole down through the top, down here. Then you drill in this way with a
eighth-inch drill bit, to meet. Then you make a bigger one on the end, three-eighths or so.
And about a five-eighth hole in the top. And you can whittle these down with a knife.
Feels like talcum powder when it’s on your hand. But since I’m out of stone, I ain’t made
one. And for the stems, I’ll use chokecherry or cedar. And drill a hole through them all
the way through. Partner used to say it’s hard to train a termite to drill that one straight
hole through there! [Laughter] Then, me and my grandkids, we’ll sit around here and
make drums. Make them out of any old wood we can find. We got one up there, and one
over there. Sell some, give them away. Give some to the Tribe for their festival, so they
can raffle them off. Yeah. I make little rattle drums, too. Like this guy here, that’s a little
rattle drum. If it’ll come off from there, if I don’t lose everything else. I don’t know what
that guy’s doing up there. Yeah, they make them like that. Use sacred rocks in here:
whatever you find on the ground. [Laughter] Yeah, we make a lot of them. Donate them
or sell them; only get about fifteen bucks apiece out of them, but we use that new white
man’s wood in them, called “PVC”? [Laughter] And these here are bigger drum rings,
like that. Just smooth ‘em up, put a rawhide on ‘em, tie ‘em up; then they come out like
that one up there. Started my youngest—middle-age grandson, I guess he is—he’s
starting to do the painting for me.
NC:
So, what kind of hide do you guys use to make those drums?
FC:
This one here is elk hide. It’s a little tougher than the deer hide. And it lasts you a little bit
longer. Yeah, and we just tie them up in the back. Just—take rawhide across there, at
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least a quarter inch thick so they don’t break on you. It’ll only take you about hour to
make one. But it’s scraping the hide; you have to scrape the hair off, and the membrane
off. We got a scraper set outside. We don’t want no hair in here! [Laughter] It’s hard to
pick up! So, yeah. That’s what we do. Mainly wintertime, but then, we don’t do much in
the winter because our water freezes up out here. So, summertime—and now, we don’t
get no hides ‘til about falltime. We go into the butchers’ shops in Ely, because they’ll
process the wild game in there for these hunters. They do the skinning, so you don’t have
to worry about skinning them. Take them out and soak them in water and little bit of
lime, or the ash from your woodstove, the white, that’ll make a lime solution that’ll make
the hair and the membrane come off a lot easier. And then, just scrape them until they’re
nice and smooth, or make buckskin out of them. Because we make our own drum sticks,
too. We use—well, I use white buckskin for the outside, and then stuff them with buffalo
hair. One guy, he asked me, “Where you get your buffalo hair?” I told him, “Off a
buffalo! Where you think?” [Laughter] Then one guy asked me, “Where’d you get your
pinenuts?” “Took them off a pine tree!” [Laughter] I don’t know about some of these
guys out here. I think that was old Maurice Churchill ask me where I got my pinenuts.
That’s what I told him at lunch. “Off a pine tree!” [Laughter] And Jack Malotte asked me
where I got my buffalo hair. I usually get that from my nephew Shawn up there in South
Fork. He was raising buffalo, so he always had hair there.
NC:
So, is he still raising buffalo, your nephew?
FC:
The last time I saw him, he was. But I don’t know, I haven’t been up there for long time.
Since can’t play basketball no more, don’t have to travel! [Laughter] Yeah, we’d go play
Owyhee, Elko, Wells. Went to LA for their world tournament one time. Come out fourth
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in that, from Ely. We didn’t have very many Indians, so— And some tournaments we
went to, there was only five of us. We tell them our other car broke down with our subs.
[Laughter] Yeah, we go play in Fort Duchesne, up in Fort Hall. Reno. We go over there
and play Stewart every now and then. Play Elko in afternoon, Owyhee at night. Then
drive back home, go back to work. Moved to Reno, used to play softball with the Reno
Indian Athletic Association over there. We played that AAA fast-pitch over there. Then
go down California and play a lot over there in their tournaments.
[Break in recording]
Oh, I made that one when I was married over in Wadsworth. Then, when I got divorced
over there, I took my tools, and my stove, and my old pickup. That’s what I got away
with. Oh, some clothes, too. I didn’t leave all my clothes. [Laughter] But there was a lot
of them I left there. Couldn’t pack them all, I only had a [19]67 Chevy pickup, that was
my ride for a long time. I used to use that for my service truck, too. Up and down the
highway, working on trucks. Yeah. So, me and my grandson built this shop we’re in, and
it’s all out of scrap lumber from housing. [Laughter] Couldn’t throw it away, couldn’t
burn it up. Had to have a place to put the stove, keep warm in the winter. That’s drill
steel. I just welded the bottom, top, and legs on it, and made the door. Put hinges on the
door so we could open and close it. It keeps it warm in here. This sixteen by twenty. So,
it works all right in here. I got one sitting outside I made out of a fuel tank. [Laughter]
That’s when I worked for trucking. We had a shed up there that was cold, so I made a
stove and put it in there. Then, when trucking folded up, I went and got my stove back,
too. Yeah, I had a Ranger 8 welder, but Shawn, my nephew up there in South Fork was
building his buffalo corrals. So I says, “Take mine up and use it.” Never went and got it
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back; I don’t need it right now. If I need one, I go get one out of the shop over there. We
got a little buzzbox there, and we got oxygen, acetylene, so. Ain’t much we need in here.
Got beer in the fridge, so we’re in good shape. [Laughter]
[Break in recording]
I’m not much for their powwows; I go to one here in Duckwater. Now and then, to the
one in Ely. But, they don’t have much in Ely. They got no singers, no dancers, no drum.
Least Duckwater’s got their own drum; kids are singing out here. And they do have some
dancers. My grandkids quit dancing already, so. Don’t have to make any bustles now.
[Laughter] Yeah, we made all their stuff. My wife, she made all their outfits for them.
Sewed all them together, made the bustles, their moccasins. Just about quit making
moccasins, too. Don’t nobody need them now. None of the kids. I don’t make them to
sell. I don’t sell them. They’re just for the family. Grandson in Pyramid Lake, he’s got
one with all eagle feathers. Oldest one here, he’s got eagle feathers. The middle one, he
got hawk feathers in his. Not supposed to sell feathers from birds of prey. You can give
them away, but you can’t sell them.
No, out here, Boyd Graham from Duckwater does it in Ely. There’s hardly anybody in
Ely talks Shoshone, except the ones that moved in from Duckwater. The last ones in there
pretty well died off, that talked. And mainly, the ones in there that do talk the language
are mainly from Duckwater, some of their kids that’ve moved in. But the older folks,
when they started passing away, it pretty well died out with them. Because them days,
you couldn’t talk it in school anyway; you’d get whacked. So you, you know, even if you
had friends you could talk to, the teacher catch you talking, that’s the end of you. Oh,
they’d whip you! They’d actually whip you then, they had their own paddles in every
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room! [Laughter] Well, that’s just like Stewart, they couldn’t talk their language over
there, either.
I only made it halfway through my junior year in White Pine High School before I got
kicked out of there. Don’t know why I got kicked out, but I did, but then, there’s always
the Marine Corps, so I joined them. That was in 1955.
Oh, I spent a year in Japan, six months in Okinawa, Phillipines, Formosa, and a lot on the
ocean. Float around on carriers, mainly.
NC:
If you were to recommend anything for the youth of today, what would you recommend,
or what do you think is important?
FC:
I think, school: go to college. Get a degree in something, because every job you apply for,
you’ve got to have a college degree in something. And out here, what they hire, they
stipulate a lot of, you know, what you’re supposed to have before they hire you, but it
don’t work; they just hire whoever comes in. And none of them been to college that I
know of. Ely, same way: they don’t go to college. They go to work for the mine, then the
mines’ll close up on you overnight. You’re out of a job again! [Laughter] Oh, if you’re
living on a Rez, you need a trade school. Learn mechanics, welding, electricians. Because
out here, it’s a long ways from town, so you usually have to do all your own work. You
can’t afford to have a service man come out and work on your tractor for you. That’s why
I don’t work on them; they’re all broke. They pay you payday, but they never have a
payday! Yeah, so I don’t work on cars or anything like that; barely work on my own. But
you know, on a reservation, you’ve got to be able to take care of all your own equipment.
NC:
So out here in Duckwater, is it more of a ranching community, then?
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FC:
Yeah, most of them do have ranches, but they’re small. You’re not going to make a living
on them. So, you do have to have a job, too. And if you don’t work for the Tribe out here,
or down to the oil field, you don’t work.
NC:
So, is your family all here in the Duckwater area, or Nevada, or are they—they live
elsewhere?
FC:
Oh, they’re all buried at White River. We have our own family cemetery over there. Just
off the highway over there. My grandfather and grandmother used to own a ranch right
there. It’s up on the hillside above it. But, don’t dig the grave by hand unless you got
dynamite. So we use a backhoe now to get in there. But I got—my mom and dad are
there, and my grandfather, grandma, two brothers, one uncle, one aunt. And a whole
bunch of kids that my grandma and grandpa had that didn’t live past a year or two.
Nope. But some of these kids got to learn how to keep their crafts alive. Make drums,
pipes, moccasins. Tan hides—hardly anybody tans hides anymore. And you get a good
tanned hide, you can get about three hundred bucks out of them. But, you ain’t going to
sell them to an Indian, because they ain’t got three hundred bucks! [Laughter] Mainly,
that’s—you know, I see lot of people take them to, like, their powwows, because you get
a lot of white people around there that does have money, and that’s about the only ones
can afford to buy them. Indians got three hundred dollars, they’re going be drunk!
[Laughter] There, that’ll conclude it!
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Floyd Collins
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:20:53
Location
The location of the interview
Duckwater Reservation, NV [Floyd residence]
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/526
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
DVD, MP4, and AVI format
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Floyd Collins - Oral history (06/02/2016)
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Floyd Collins was born in Ely, NV on August 27, 1937. His dad was Abe Collins Sr. and his mom was Dellis Maul. Floyd speaks about living all around Nevada but mostly in Ely, and how he worked different occupations such as BLM, Kennecott mine, and West Tran to name a few. He also recants about the hunting him and his family take part in, as well as keeping up with traditional crafts such as creating drums and tanning hides. Floyd joined the U.S. Marine Corp in 1955 which he stayed with for 8 years. He retired at age 75 but still assist the tribe as needed. He also speaks about his time playing basketball and softball with the Ely Indian Colony. He concludes his oral history by suggesting to the younger viewers that they should keep in school and attend college.</p>
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qB5hNy_KZOg" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p>Interviewed by Norm Cavanaugh</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 050
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
06/02/2016 [ 02 June 2016]; 2016 June 02
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; Scott A. Gavorsky [VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017.
Consent form on file (administrator access only): http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/items/show/345
Language
A language of the resource
English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history interview with Floyd Collins, Western Shoshone from Duckwater Reservation, NV on 06/02/2016
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
MP4
Community
crafts
Crossroads
Duckwater
Duckwater Reservation
Ely
GBIA
hunting
Shoshone
Story
traditional crafts
traditions
veteran