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Lois
Whitney
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
026
Oral
History
Interview
by
Lois
Whitney
May
2011
Elko,
NV
Great
Basin
College
•
Great
Basin
Indian
Archives
1500
College
Parkway
Elko,
Nevada
89801
hDp://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/
775.738.8493
Produced
in
partnership
with
Barrick
Gold
of
North
America
�GBIA 026
Interviewee: Lois Whitney
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: May, 2011
W:
Okay. My name is Lois Whitney. I was born and raised right here in Elko, as were my
children, my mother—who was born up on the hill, next to the smoke shop. So we have
strong ties to Elko. But, my dad is from Owyhee. His name was Dale Dick. And there’s a
large family of Dicks in Owyhee. We’re related to many people, including the
Whiterocks. And the family is big. But anyway, on my grandfather’s side—he’s from
Austin, the Austin area, and he’s a tekkotekka [1:31], and we’re also, I’m part of the
Tosawihi, too, because of my dad, moving from the Paradise Valley, Owyhee, the
Golconda, that area there, as they were pushed into Owyhee. So… And then, I’m also
indirectly related to the Marshs, and the Caskeys. My grandmother is a Caskey. Or, she
was a Marsh, actually, Ollie Marsh. So, I come from a big, big family. And I’m just
really glad today to hear each and every one of you tell a little bit about yourself, which is
a lot. We don’t do that anymore. And as a way of introduction, if you came into a room
where there were other Shoshone people, generally you would have to say, “I am So-andSo, this is my grandfather, this is my grandmother,” and you give them this long list of—
and then they finally say, “Oh, I guess we can sit down and listen to this person talk.”
Otherwise, if they can’t validate who you are, they look at you with a little suspicion.
And anyway… I am doing a small presentation, and I am picking up for Katherine
Blossom. I am not a prayer person, or a healing person, but I do know some about the
medicines that we do have. And so—and I know that that’s what Katherine does. She
does prayers. But that’s not to say that prayer wasn’t always something that was a part of
our lives, because every morning, my grandmother, Judy Jackson—[Judy] Johnson
Jackson, who was from the Beowawe area—she would not be carrying one of these
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bottles, but she would have a cup of water. Water was very critical to our way of life as
Native people. And I wish more and more people would recognize the importance of
water. And I’m just going to go off and tell you a little bit about water. Grandfather said a
long time ago, one day we’re going to be paying for our water. And that’s before he
understood about airplanes, and cars that ran by themselves, or windows that went up and
down by themselves, and everything else that’s going around. But he also said that one
day, our water would be on fire. We would not be able to see it. We would not be able to
taste it. But our water would be on fire. And I believe what he was talking about was the
nuclear fallout that we’re getting really close to being subjected to, especially after what
has happened in Japan. So value your water. My presentation today is to talk a little about
the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual healing of our Native people. Water was
critical for that. If a child fell, or if somebody fell, and they were knocked out or
whatever, feeling bad, water was used to bless them. It was taken and their, the area
where they fell was usually, water would be sprinkled on them, or their head. Water was
sprinkled on them, and prayers were made, and prayers always went up in that direction.
But yeah—and for little children, they always says, [Shoshone at 4:55] “Ma
mappuisinneh.” [“Bless him/her.”] And that means if a child fell, and wasn’t coherent,
then they would put the water on the child and bless the child until the child was feeling
good again. So water is very important to your physical, your emotional, and your
spiritual health. Don’t forget that. So we have to take care of water. Okay. I’m going to
start at the physical part. We did water. Sagebrush. Sagebrush was taken internally by our
people almost daily. Maybe two or three times a day. It was either chewed on—if you
had a cold or were coughing, you would take a leaf and chew on the leaf—or it was
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boiled into a type of a tea, and many of our people would drink this tea throughout the
day. Maybe at morning and in the evening. And those people, according to some medical
information we’ve gotten, have verified that, apparently the properties in the sagebrush
have helped them in their cleansing and their healing, and it was very useful to them. If
you got a bee bite, what’d you do? Go take the sagebrush and rub it on the area that you
were bitten. That helped soothe. So we had all of our medicine at hand, we didn’t have to
go out looking. And sagebrush—I consider sagebrush in this area to be our rainforest.
And they cut my rainforest down pretty quick. So I might throw a little bit of activism
here, but that’s kind of how I feel. So the sagebrush was used to—was ingested, and it
was also used in part of the offering that they made when they made the little bit of
tobacco. And they drank it, they chewed on it. The other item we have here is what we
call totsa. The totsa grows usually in areas where it’s higher, rocky—kind of hard to get
to. And it grows like a big tube, tubular. It can probably can get as—I’ve seen it get that
big. [Indicates roughly six inches or more.] And it looks like, probably, a great big
sugarbeet. But it grows into the ground. It’s related a little bit to the parsley family,
because it grows tall. It’ll grow tall, and then the tops have like a little poofy spiral type
of flower. It’s not really a flower, but when it’s dry, and usually you can smell the totsa
when you’re out in the mountains, you know you’re nearby. But you really have to dig
for the totsa. The totsa is in—per our family, and I see Norman has done the same
thing—the totsa is cut in circles, very much like Norm has done here. And then it’s
strung, he strung it through wire to hang it up to dry. It also is good for colds. You can
smoke this, you can drink it, you can chew on it. You can put it on the stove—for those
of us who have wood stoves, or even if you’re out, you’ve got a campfire going. I
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wouldn’t put it on your gas burner, but I would put it in a pan maybe on your gas burner.
But this has the properties of healing for our colds, allergies probably. A lot of our people
have allergies nowadays. And I know Leah, my sister, drinks totsa almost daily because
she has tons of allergies; she’s always got a cough, something going on with her. But the
totsa is then shaved, and I see Norm has done that right here. This is your totsa, and he’s
shaved it to where it’s really fine. And this is really nice. This is really nice. And that can
be rolled along with other—tobaccos, or whatever else you might have—and it can be
smoked. And when we smoke, it’s not the same as when a person—I mean, I’m not a
smoker, but I will smoke for my own cleansing. Giving up a prayer, and the smoke
carrying my prayer up into the sky, up to where it needs to go. That’s generally what our
people do. Most native people are smoking, too, for that physical, for that emotional, for
that spiritual release and healing. If I go too fast, stop me. Headaches. I’m a willowweaver, and these are willows. These are natural, the willows from this area. These are
native. We have a lot of invasive species right now, so they, you can’t use as much of the
invasive species as we can of our traditional willow, because of the bitter taste, and it
leaves a funny film in your mouth. But we split the willows with our teeth, and with our
fingers. And this has the properties of getting rid of headaches. And as a matter of fact,
that’s what aspirin is made of, is the willow. So this is natural. Let’s see here… And then
we have over here—you said you thought this was antapittseh kwana. Actually,
papohovi. It’s this one here. That one there? This is antapittseh kwana—oh! Am I not
supposed to move around too much? Well, this is—maybe I’ll get Norm to help me. Then
I won’t run around so much. This is antapittseh kwana. This antapittseh kwana came
from the Owyhee area just above the rodeo grounds, up on—there’s couple, oh—you
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know where they have, the water comes naturally, this kind of marshy place there?
Virginia Jones’ dad did that for me. And then, it also grows in Lee, Nevada. Usually, it’s
ready by June, I believe. And it’s a plant that grows about that high, and it’s pretty
delicate, because apparently, whoever collected this just rolled it into a little braid here,
and that’s what it’ll look like. But the leaves, the property of the antapittseh kwana is
great for taking out infection. If you have a sore, infection, and it needs to be cleaned out,
you take that antapittseh kwana, and it’s put between cloth—it’s wet—you make a
compress out of it, and it has to be wet, and you put that on top of the infection, and it
helps draw out the infection. And it has this sweet smell. Too bad we didn’t get any seeds
with it, because I would have tried to plant it to see if I can get some growing. But most
of our plants, they’re used to a certain area. They don’t just grow everywhere. It’s just
like the different zones of the growing season. You can’t plant something delicate in the
real cold area. I mean, these, they all have their own properties, the way they survive, and
many of our plants were very delicate. I am certain that there—and so have our people
felt—that there was more of the plants here at one time. And that disappeared when we
had that rush of people coming through the Humboldt River and exhausting all of the
plants that were in that area. So there were very few plants that survived. These are just
some of the plants that we have now that we’re still able to collect. And so, we didn’t
have the doctors that we’re used to. But we did have doctors. We had prayers, people that
did prayers, and we had people that did hands-on healing. There are very few that are left
now. I think the last doctor that I was fortunate to get prayed for and doctored was when
Alec Cleveland—he was from Owyhee—when he did the doctoring for me when I lost
my two girls. And that was quite an experience. It’s just too bad we don’t have that kind
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of strong people anymore that are taken care of from the time they’re real small to the
time they’re starting to practice. And I don’t recall him ever using anything more than
just water and prayer, when I was doctored. But it was an incredible experience for us—
for me at that time, because I was at that point where the outside world looked really
attractive to me, all that glitter and glamour of the new society, the things that were
happening, you know. So I was already married, and had children probably in the
[19]50s—no, it was in [19]68, was when Alec Cleveland doctored me. And I still, it was
an incredible experience. You have to be—for somebody that had to learn the doctoring
from the time he was real small to the time he became an adult, that was his life. And it
was a very humble life. So, not very many people will brag about being a doctor. As a
matter of fact, these people never say anything. They are always just sought out because
it is known by the communities that these people with special gifts are the ones that you
go to when you need the special healing, the hands-on. Or even the physical. And also,
these doctors—which I’ve come to realize, too—spoke a language that was different
from our language. Because they always had a helper that they spoke to, and then the
helper was the one that interpreted to the patient what they were supposed to do, to go
about this healing process. So it was an incredible experience. I’m hoping that at some
point, we’ll get some young people who have that gift, and those people will be nurtured
and brought forth so that they can share what they do know. Okay. They ingested—and
this, too. This is called papohovi. Most often, this grows in the area where there’s water.
It’s a sweeter type of a sage—it’s a sage. And it can be boiled into a tea. It can be used as
a compress as well, as can the sage. That can be used as a compress. Let’s see. Now,
we’ve been—oh, and now we’ve come to this. You’ve seen this plant a lot. And this red,
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and when it’s ripe it’s just real, just real deep red, almost this color right now. I had to
collect this, because I didn’t have any. But right now, it’s growing, because the leaves are
starting to, they’re just starting to come up. They’re starting to, they’ll grow probably
about three, four feet high, and they’ll be in tight clusters. Now, if I’m not mistaken, this
is for diarrhea, and also for—it’s boiled to help combat diarrhea, and there’s the other,
and I can’t think of the other condition that the person had to boil to drink this. But if I
think of it, I’ll try to come back to it. Okay. Now, we’ve talked about all the ones that can
be ingested—the totsa, the sagebrush—oh. Oh! Yes. And then, we have this root, which
is—I’m not really certain the name of this root, but what you do is when you have a cold,
you’re not feeling good, you just chew on it. And it’s like just keeping a toothpick in your
mouth, you just suck on the item, and… Now, I believe this came from Pyramid Lake,
this came from some of my husband’s family from the Pyramid Lake area, and I wasn’t
quite sure what he called this plant.
C:
Bear root. They call it bear root.
W:
Bear root. Okay, this is what they chewed on. So. And I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen the
bear root in this area that I could pick it. It has to be probably in the California area,
Pyramid Lake, Alturas and that area there. And I’m only speaking of plants that are from
this area here. And most of these can be, you can pick this up here. Also, to be ingested.
This white rock is called pisappin. Pisappin is used by scraping it into water. And it can
be drank. It goes along with prayers. Pisappin is used for, also going into—when you’re
going to be doctored, it’s basically ground up, either to use as a powder, or with a little
bit of water. And it’s the face, or the areas of the body are marked. This is called
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pisappin1. Also, I was surprised that I found the pisappin in—these were given to me by
Robert Burton from the Battle Mountain area. And when I scraped it, it was, the rock
seemed a little bit pink. But most often, it’s white. It’s like a chalk—it looks like a chalk.
But, my understanding, it’s good for stomach ailments as well. And again, for drinking it.
Usually when you’re going into a sweat, sometimes when you’re doing a ceremony. Even
a gathering of people. It’s mixed with the water that you’re going to drink, and everybody
drinks it. Everybody drinks part of this water, and that’s part of the healing. If I’m going
too fast, slow me down. Okay? Now… Those are the medicines that can be used for the
physical. Now, for the emotional, would be—again, the sagebrush, for prayers. The
sagebrush here, you see I picked it up from the root. For those people that do prayers,
that’s how you collect this sagebrush, for praying with, and to use in some of the
ceremonies. And also, then, we use—the cedar is very, very important, too, in the
spiritual and the emotional. It’s, again, mixed with other tobaccos or similar native plants
that can be smoked, put on the hot rock, or the fire. Mixed smoke. And usually, the cedar,
the sage, the rabbitbrush, they’re all used to ward off bad energy. And generally, when
our people talk about the emotional, that’s that bad energy. The spiritual, they’re having
trouble with the spirit side of them. They would bless themself with the smoke from the
cedar. This is rabbitbrush. This is also for the emotional and the spiritual. In our family, if
a child had, or family member was being bothered by bad spirits, or just felt really bad—
nightmares, whatever—towards the evening, just before the sun goes down, this bunch of
rabbitbrush would be lit until it creates like a smoke. And the person that was going to be
blessed would be placed in the immediate area of a room where they’re going to be
1
Actually
aippin;
LW
corrects
herself
further
on
(see
p.
17,
or
42:50
in
the
audio).
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sleeping, and they were covered with a cloth of some sort, just to keep the burning
embers from getting on them. But this was burnt, and then they were blessed. Prayers
were given, said, throughout their whole body. And I remember Grandma doing this.
Grandma just prayed, she was not a healer. But this is the things you did for your
immediate family, when there were no doctors around. So, this is the emotional and the
spiritual use of this rabbitbrush. And also, when the rabbitbrush’s flower turns bright
yellow, that’s when it’s time to go pick your pinenuts. That’s when you knew that
pinenuts were ready. I brought with me, as well, for the—this should have been the
physical part. And this is also spiritual. This is the wild rose bush, native to our area.
Some of the prayer people, as part of the—they each have their own use of particular
items. So not one [skip in audio at 24:03] always use the same one, they had their own
choices. But I understand that this here, the wild rose bush, was boiled, and it was given
to the person that was having problems, the ailing party. And usually, at least our custom
in our family, is that when we have a family member that is deceased, this rose bush was
put into the coffin, or the burial garment, or whatever they were wearing, so as to protect
the family so that the one that was deceased would not come back and bother the family.
That was what was used for the wild rose bush. But I think that the wild rose bush flower
is much more fragrant than what they have in the market today, because I make potpourri
out of the little pink flower that I gather. And I mix the potpourri with the cedar, with the
sage, with the grandfather sage, with the sagebrush, and with some of the willow. Now,
that takes care of the physical and the emotional. And now we’re going to come back
over here to the spiritual. Again, water was very critical to the spiritual. Always cleansing
yourself, blessing yourself. I understand—this here is actually the shavings, it’s the inner
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membrane that I’ve scraped away from the willow. I take the bark off first, and then
between the bark and the actual rod itself is a membrane, and that’s what this is, where
I’ve scraped it. And I’ve kept this because there is a gentleman that uses this for his
sweats. He smokes this with his mixture. So, and I didn’t know of that. And I’m not
sure—I think the man was from the Pyramid Lake area. Also, the sweetgrass. You can
pass it around. I think a lot of you have smelled the sweetgrass. You can take some of
this, here, too. Smell that, and… Sweetgrass is burned for the emotional and the spiritual,
again with prayers. It also helps when you’re having a bad time in warding off that bad
energy, to smoke your house. I say “smoke your house,” other people say “smudge.” But
that’s what it’s used for. And then, this here is grandfather sage, or white sage. This does
come from California, from the California area. Bishop, Lone Pine area. And it’s a
bundle, and it burns really well, and it smells so nice. It’s all different. And again, that’s
for part of the prayers. And then, I just have a mixture of tobacco, and this is papohovi. I
haven’t put any of the willow on it. Or the totsa, that could use a bunch of totsa with it,
too. Does anybody have any questions? Because this is just a little bit of what we have. I
wanted to talk a little bit about, not only do we use the white rock, but there’s also a red
rock, and that’s called aippin2, and it’s for women that wear rouge, it sort of has that
property. It’s powdery, and it’s really red. But that was also to ward off bad energy. If
you were going into a gathering of people that you weren’t familiar with, the individual
would put the red on the forehead, behind the head, wherever they felt that if anybody
struck them with bad energy, that it would protect them. And it was a powder, too, very
2
Actually pisappin; LW corrects herself further on (see p. 17, or 42:50 in the audio).
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much like this. Let me just kind of pass this around, so you can see what this is here.
Does anybody have any questions?
U1:
Well, I do, I guess. So, all of these are native to Nevada, pretty much?
W:
All of them are native to Nevada, yes.
U1:
Would there have been any other things used that might have been traded, or prized,
or…?
W:
Well, I think probably, if anything would have been traded, it might have been this root
here. Also, the stick with the grandfather white sage. I had some camas seeds, too, that I
intended to plant; this gentleman said that his last name was Camas, but camas was
eaten, the camas bulb was eaten in the Idaho area. And that was part of trading. Our
people used to make jerky out of deer meat, and also antelope. And I’ve seen that, we
don’t go on antelope drives anymore, so antelope has not been used as much in our area.
But from the Fort Washakie area, they traded some antelope jerky with us. And it was
really quite good.
U1:
[__inaudible at 29:43__].
W:
Yeah. It’s really quite good. Yes. Well, actually, when you’re going to smudge a room,
you’ve got to open all your windows, and all your doors. Because the smudging is to get
rid of that negative energy that—so, what you would do is, either you would burn that
smudge stick there, or you would make a smudge stick out of your sage. And you would
smoke the whole house, go through the whole house, filling it with smoke. Your fire
alarms will go off, but that’s what needs to happen, because it has to be really thick. And
then, when you open up your windows and stuff, all of that is just blown out. The bad
energy goes out. And some of our people today still have problems with the houses on
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the top, because they’ve been visited by—not our people. I think they’ve been visited by,
probably, there were Chinese people that came through and had little encampments in
different parts of this area here, and I believe that the top Colony, from the information
that I’ve gathered, the top Colony has several places where they might have disturbed the
resting place of an oriental person. I know in my daughter’s house, they see this little tiny
man. They see him often. He’s in the house. So, every once in a while, when they start
feeling really bad, or when they’re at a bad point in there lives that that’s when it bothers
them, then they go and have the house smoked and prayed for. And my uncle passed
away in my house. And my house was a new—I consider it a new house, they were built
in the [19]70s. Or, [19]68 and [19]70s. And I’ve never had him bother me, but my
children see him there. And sometimes it’s the little guys that see things, not the older
people. The little ones are more in tune as to what’s going on. And when you see, when
that starts happening, you know, get somebody to come pray for you. And we have
several people in our community do the prayers, do the smudging. I think among those
people are Chet Stevens, Katherine Blossom, Sean Marsh… These are some people that
can help. But generally, your elders know how to smudge, and they can come and take
care of that for you. And I’m real fortunate to know that [audio cuts out at 32:22] Gerry is
a prayer person. And she did a lot of prayers for my mom when my mom was sick, and
we lost mom last year. But she’s always been great about standing up and giving the
prayers for us, and putting us in a good place before we start our meetings. That’s always
really, really important. And think, when your uncle—her husband—was really sick, he
had cancer of the throat, I believe it was her prayers that really helped him. And he’s
giving me a bad time all the time, he gives me a lot of grief! [Laughter] But, does
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anybody have any other questions, or something that, you know, you would like to share
that your family does? Because not everybody does the same thing. There’s a general
thing we do, and then there’s the things that are reserved for families. So, even though we
are all Native American, we’re all as different as we are similar, in the way we believe
and the way we do things, the way we present ourselves, and so forth. And so—and I am
Shoshone, from this area. And my grandparents are Shoshone, from this area. And even
though there’s paperwork that says that my grandfather, the Dicks that came from the
Paradise Valley area, are—the papers say they’re Shoshone, but I believe that they’re
Paiute. So, I’m a mixture, too. And Whitney is a Navajo name. [Laughter] My exhusband was Navajo. Navajo and Paiute. And so, Whitney would not have been a
common name among the Shoshone people. But, and Norm is right, you know; we all
had, many women had Indian names, Native names, and they might’ve been given a
nickname that was built on, or they might’ve been named after a rancher. But these are
basically the same medicines our people would have used then, that I’m hoping our
people will use today. Continue to use it. If you don’t use it, you lose it.
U2:
You lose it, yeah.
W:
You lose it. Because, as, even though we think there’s an abundance of sage, it’s not the
abundance of sage as it used to be. And if you don’t pray for your medicines, your
plants—I don’t think we do a lot of planning, but if anything is going to be passed on, it
should be done in the family, you know, the same way with the language. If you’re going
to speak your language, it should start in the family. And that’s where we keep things
going. Oh! Chokecherry!
C:
Explain how [Shoshone at 35:24].
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W:
Oh, okay. I can do it. This is a chokecherry patty. This is chokecherries that have been
mashed—because they’re, the seeds are not broken—and made into a patty, like a
hamburger patty, and dried for storing for later use. So, if you were going to use it, you
take what you need, you boiled it, and you mixed it with other things. I just like it plain,
just plain chokecherry pudding. And I’m going to be providing chokecherry pudding,
buckberry pudding, and tepakwini [36:05]—pinenut gravy—during the reception on the
11th of July, for visitors. As a matter of fact, we’re going to get a lot of stuff. We’re
getting three elk, seven deer, groundhog from Owyhee, deer from Owyhee, deer from
South Fork, and we’re trying to get more groundhog from the Yomba Tribe. And we
have squirrels running around here, but nobody wants to eat the squirrels in this
neighborhood because we don’t know what they’re eating! [Laughter] But, the
groundhogs, yeah. I was raised on groundhog. And my birthday always fell on Memorial
Day. And that was always a sad time, but I always looked forward to having groundhog
during Memorial Day! [Laughter] And our groundhog, just like the—there was a tribe, a
group of people that came here, the ones that live in yurts. What are they called?
U3:
Mongolians.
W:
Mongolians. They eat groundhog too. And they prepared their groundhog here, we
prepared our groundhog, and we shared.
U3:
Was it similar? Or was it different?
W:
Theirs was different. Our groundhog was, after you’ve gutted the groundhog, you singe
the hair, you’ve pretty much laced up the area that you took the intestines from, laced it
up. And some people might have packed it with some type of an herb or whatever. But
we just laced it up, and burnt the hair off. And then you’re left with this sort of crust,
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nice, thick crust. Black, burnt crust, which is like foil, and then the groundhog is cooked
underground. And it’s cooked until it’s done, and it’s pretty rich. You can’t eat too much.
It—
U3:
It’s kind of a dark, darkish meat, isn’t it?
W:
No, it’s not. Well… Well, it is darker—well, I would say, it is darker than chicken.
U3:
Tastes just like chicken! [Laughter]
W:
It’s different! [Laughter] You’re going to have to try some. It’s a little bit different. It’s
like with anything that you never had before, you have to acquire a taste for it. Just like a
lot of people don’t like pinenut pudding, and all it is is ground-up pinenuts that have been
roasted and charred and dried and ground into a thick paste, just with water. And a lot of
people don’t like that taste, and I just love it! [Laughter] It’s good for you! Very, very
healthy. But you know, you can only eat a little bit. Too much of a good thing is not
good, as we’ve come to find out as a people. And two, because of the food that we had
was sparse, our people were not big. Our people were thin, they were strong, they had
endurance, they could run a long ways, they traveled for long distances, and they ate just
a little bit of whatever they could put in their hand, you know? That’s, and now we’ve
become excessive with everything that’s good, and I think we show it. You know? Okay.
Norman says I can go ahead and touch this. He says this is not eagle, but this is—this is
just a dreamcatcher? The dreamcatcher didn’t come from the Shoshone people, it came
from the—is it from the Sioux tribe, or other tribes? Their thoughts were that if you hung
up this dreamcatcher, that your bad dreams would be caught, and the good dreams would
come through the hole. And there’s usually a hole in the center. But, and then it’s
adorned with the plumes, and the feathers. The feathers are earned. When you earn your
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feather, then you can wear your feather. And that’s talking about an eagle feather. And
it’s very respected. The eagle takes our prayers. It is the mightiest bird. And I wanted to
say, too, about prayers—when the person that’s giving a prayer gives a prayer, it covers
everything. Yourself, your family, all the little children, all the relatives, those that are
getting old, those whose hearts feel heavy, those who feel good, those who are traveling
that they get to their destination in a safe way, but their families are going to be fine, the
four-legged ones, the ones that crawl, the ones that live under the water, that live under
the ground, the ones that walk upon the land, that fly upon the land, the mountains, the
water, the food. That’s what you give thanks to. You name everything, and sometimes
our prayers do go on and on and on. But, that’s the spiritual part. Well, I want to thank
you for letting me do this, and I also would like to invite each and every one of you to the
reunion. Even share. I mean, this is part of the healing, we’re having a difficult time,
many of our people right now. We’re losing a lot of our culture, we’re losing our ties to
our families, when that’s what it used to be about, is that if our family was together, we
were all together. We were happy. But different occupations, experiences, take us
different places. But we never forget who we are. We’re still here, and we’re still using
some of our plants and our animals in a good way. Okay. I think I can. This one was
papohovi. This one is totsa. This one here is tontsiah, which is—tontsiah is like, the
blooming, there’s girls that are named tontsiah. But this is tontsiah. I’m not sure what
they call the rabbitbrush again—
C:
Sippapin.
W:
Sippapin? Okay. And… help me.
U4:
What is that, cedar?
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W:
Cedar.
U4:
I don’t know. In Paiute, we just call it waap.
W:
Waap3? Okay. This sehepin is willow. Pardon?
U4:
Saawaapi? In Paiute, sagebrush. Saawaapi.
W:
Mmhm. And that’s it. I’m not sure what they call this. And this was called pisappin. Or
no, this epi. Epi is the white one, pisappin is the red one. And pah is water. We all know
water. Yeah.
U5:
Real quick question: do you say dotsa with a “d” or totsa with a “t”?
W:
I say with a “d,” dotsa. Even—other people will put “t” in front of it, but I say “d,” dotsa.
And, but, we’re all mixed, now, too. So it’s okay. And what’s really interesting about our
language is the different dialects. You can tell when somebody’s talking—I know when
somebody’s talking that came from Duckwater, because they speak different than Ely.
And what’s really different is to hear the Timbisha Shoshone speak. They—but they
speak in Shoshone. But here, the Comanche speak Shoshone. Or the Eastern Shoshones.
We’re all the numic-speaking people. And the Utes! I couldn’t believe it! I could hear the
conversation of the two Ute people that were talking in Ute, and I thought we weren’t
related! You know? But Shoshone and Paiute are so close, closely related. And that’s all I
have.
[End of recording]
3
Waappin
�
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
Lois Whitney
Location
The location of the interview
Great Basin College Campus (Elko, NV)
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.)
00:44:00
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/572
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
Lois Whitney - Oral history (05/2011)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history interview with Lois Whitney, Western Shoshone from Elko, NV, on 05/2011
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Lois Whitney was born in Elko, Nevada along with her children and mother “Liz” Brady. Her family hails from all over the Western Shoshone territory. Her presentation goes over the different types of plants that are indigenous to the Great Basin area, and how they were used by the native people in the area. As Lois says, her presentation was to “talk a little about the physical, the emotional, and spiritual healing” characteristics of the plants as well as how they were used by the Native peoples. She also speaks a little about other items within her presentation as well.</p>
Video Pending <br /> <a title="Lois Whitney Oral History Transcript" href="/omeka/files/original/8c894abc984f242d04cc980bd9b50207.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read Lois Whitney Oral History Transcript [pdf file]</a>
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 026
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
05/2011 [May 2011]; 2011 May
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/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/352
Language
A language of the resource
English; some Shoshoni
Community
Crossroads
Elko
GBIA
Great Basin
medicinal plants
Shoshone
Story
traditional medicines
traditions