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df14ae09ae5353c3a9ef4593f2376495
Dublin Core
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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
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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
James Hedrick
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Elizabeth "Liz" Dann
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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01:40:17
Dublin Core
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Title
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Elizabeth "Liz" Dann - Oral history (07/18/2017)
Subject
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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
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 063
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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
-
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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
Original Format
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MP4
Duration
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01:31:51
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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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>
<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_lrvbszl2&playerId=kaltura_player_1501624865&cache_st=1501624865&width=560&height=395&flashvars[streamerType]=auto"></script>
<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
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
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/fbdde5d06106bed95680c6201ee2ee30.jpg
0c32fa88d3ad86cb236ab25e06e69845
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/42e8cfd518657ccafcf2585ac27ed966.pdf
4b6a6c0876d2c97152d0e4a09144ce62
PDF Text
Text
Illaine
Premo
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
024
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
November
30,
2009
Owyhee,
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 024
Interviewee: Illaine Premo
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: November 30, 2009
P:
My name is Ilaine Tybo Premo. My mother’s name was Ada Cortez Johnson, and her
mother’s name was Ida Cortez. And Ida’s dad’s name was Cortez Charlie. They’re from
the Cortez area, and then they moved down to Beowawe, and then from Beowawe, they
moved down to Battle Mountain. And from Battle Mountain, they moved to Elko, and
from Elko to South Fork, to Lee. And that’s my mother’s side. My huttsi, my grandma,
she was born and raised in Austin area. Austin area, and from there she moved on to
Battle Mountain, where she lived. And my grandpa Jim Tybo is from around Big
Smoky—I guess that’s what it’s called, Big Smoky. That Smoky Valley, I guess, where
Felix is from. That’s where my grandpa is from. And my dad’s from Austin area, also.
C:
What kind of work, or what did your family do, prior to moving? Or did they move to
find jobs?
P:
I think they just migrated from Austin down to Beowawe, probably looking for work on
the ranches. Because my dad was a, worked as a sheepherder, I heard, as a young man.
He herded sheeps for some big sheep ranchers. And my grandma, my huttsi, she went and
worked in the same ranch families raising their children. Raising their children, I guess,
the owners’ children. Raising the Marvos from Battle Mountain, Tom Marvo and his
family. She raised those boys, all of them. And they looked up to my grandma as their
mother, that she raised them. And my mom, she worked in Battle Mountain in the
restaurants. I don’t know, probably washing dishes and so on. Grandmas just stayed
home. And that’s just about all I know. That’s from, in Battle Mountain. Then from
Battle Mountain, we migrated. From Battle Mountain—now, we were real little—no, I’m
getting ahead of myself. [Laughter] That’s before we were born. And then my mom and
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dad met each other, and then they got married in Battle Mountain, I believe. And then,
they were—then four of us girls were born. We were still little when we were in Battle
Mountain. We hardly remember the story. But then, after that, my dad got a ranch in
Lee—Lee, Nevada—and he moved up there. Moved my mother and us guys up there. We
were little tiny girls then. And then, left my grandmas behind in Battle Mountain. And
then, along the way, my mom and dad divorced when we were still little. He was in the
army. He came out and found somebody else, and he divorced my mom at a young age.
And then, we moved back to Elko with my grandma, Lucy Cortez. We lived with her.
And my mom. We lived there for a while. We were still little then, and then my mom
died from sickness, and then a year after that, my grandma Lucy died from loneliness
because my mom died. She, it was loneliness that killed her. So, we went back to Lee
with my dad. We were little yet. And then back and forth, we went to my huttsi’s place in
Battle Mountain on the Greyhound. When we’re little, we get shipped back to Battle
Mountain, back to Lee, back to Lee. And that’s where I knew about my grandma Minnie.
She was a medicine lady. And she delivered most all the kids around the Colony. She had
delivered them, and then she was—every night was her ritual. Every night, she would
bless us with her eagle feather, because she was a medicine lady and all. She blessed us
with her eagle feather so we will not get sick, all four of us girls. We never got sick. And
then she had sagebrushes in a little glass of water that she has by her bed day and night,
day and night. And she dipped the sagebrush, and, “Mei mapuisi,” [5:08] she blessed us
with it every morning, early in the morning and at night. And she prays all the time,
morning and night, morning and night. And we never got sick as little girls. Hakapi e ha
napan’ni [Shoshone at 5:20] I don’t want to forget.
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C:
So you guys used to ride back and forth on a Greyhound, from Lee to Battle Mountain.
P:
Uh-huh, yeah. We were little then. We were just put on the Greyhound, and we would
travel all by ourself over there. And Huttsi would meet us over there in Battle Mountain,
and that’s how we traveled, back and forth. I guess we were—I don’t know why. Well
anyway, Huttsi was very interesting, because she was real traditional. Very traditional
Indian. And we drank all those Indian medicines—sagebrush, really. Antapittseh kwana. I
don’t know what the taipo name is for antapittseh kwana. But we’d, we grew up on that,
and sagebrush. Drinking sagebrush liquid, all the time. And we hardly ever got sick—
especially me. I never got sick. Huttsi said I was tough like her! [Laughter] Ah, but,
um—and then, we lived on jackrabbits a lot. Because everybody’s poor in the Colony,
and not everybody had jobs. And there was a lot of jackrabbits around in the desert, I
guess, behind Battle Mountain. They hunted a lot, and then occasionally deer. But
mostly, we were raised on weyempi [wi’ompi], you know, that buckberries. That
Grandma used to go down on the Marvo ranch and get. We’d have buckberries, and
that’s what I grew up, and I really love it, buckberries. She’d make pudding, and put—
make Indian bread, and just break the Indian crumbs into that, that would, sometimes
we’d have it three times a day, because there was nothing to eat. And, Usen kia [7:02],
let me see, my huttsi… So in Austin area, my dad’s side, and my mom’s Cortez,
nemmesen Tosawihi, now, White Band. White Band Shoshones. White Knife, White
Knife band. [Shoshone at 7:16] Cortez [Shoshone at 7:18] Beowawe, and Battle
Mountain’s also considered White Knife nemiya. Carlin, that area. [7:27] Nemme setai
kimmate. So, then we go back to Lee. Back to where I grew up, were going to school
over there in Lee, from first grade to eighth grade, and then I was shipped off to Stewart,
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where I stayed for four years. But in Lee, it was—oh, it was a good life over there, too.
My dad ranched back there, and we lived the furthest from the school, a real long ways.
Way down there. Just mananku. And we’d go to school on horseback all the time. Winter,
we’d have a barn back there where we’d tie a horse. And we’d run, and race up the hill.
Race up the hill [8:12] nemna’ punkukate tea. You know, all three of us, that’s Lilly and
me, and Joanne–but mostly me and Joanne, because Lillian’s older than us. Irene Diggs,
she, my huttsi raised her in Battle Mountain. And so, I remember the incident, you know,
when we used to come down the hill toward where Raymond Yowell lives now. That’s,
his grandparents used to live over there, Muumpittseh and his wife, Muumpittseh
Hepittso. Muumpittseh Hepittso [Shoshone at 8:39]. We’d come down that hill, and
there’s a gate right by her house. [Shoshone at 8:46], the bareback through her house.
And then, and I guess we leave her gate open, I don’t know! We get [Shoshone at 8:55]
with her apron. I always remember her. She’d come on her porch, waving her fist at us.
She said, “[Shoshone at 9:02]!” “I’m going to tell Burt on you!” But we laugh and just
race through there without shutting her gate! That is awful! [Laughter] But we grew up
like that on horseback. And then, at Lee, we had good teachers. One of them was Norman
Thompson, and his wife—hate nanihante? Norman’s—Ellen. Ellen Bea Roth. And they
were teaching us over there, for quite a while. And then, we all talked Shoshone over
there. Hardly any English. Mostly Shoshone over there. And those taipo kids that went to
school with us, like the Kanes, Marilyn Kane, Bob and Bill Kane, the brothers, two
twins. Twins. And Charles and Linda Dran were our neighbors back there. And Elbert
Berrenega, he’s a Basque from under the mountains. [Shoshone at 9:52], they know
how to talk Shoshone. Because we all talked Shoshone, and then Marilyn Kane and them
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rode horseback with us going home. [Shoshone at 10:01] every night, we race, you
know, up the road. Race real fast, and we leave her behind, Marilyn-ha. Then she’d cry,
said, “Don’t nukki! Don’t nukki! Don’t nukki!” [Laughter] “Don’t run! Don’t run!”
[Shoshone at 10:12]! [Laughter] It was—oh, we had fun up there! [Shoshone at 10:20].
C:
So who were your sisters?
P:
Oh, my sisters. My oldest sister is Lillian Garcia now, still lives in Lee where we used to
live. And Joanne Manning, and Irene Cota. And my half-brother’s Milton Tybo. And
that’s us.
C:
So at one time, did your Grandma Minnie tell you stories of what she recalled, or
anything about what her childhood was like?
P:
Yeah. Well, she told us real stories, because my huttsi was a real good storyteller. Every
night, we hear stories. But I’ll probably just tell you one of them. But we heard a lot
about tsoo’apittseh in the hills, and of course Itsappe—Ish. And the water babies,
pa’ohaane. And—because they lived around that river in Battle Mountain. Paohaane.
And then, she told a story about Toya Tuineppe, the Mountain Boy. That’s where I come
from, the Mountain Boy, I was one of the descendants. Mountain Boy. Himpa—Huttsi
used to tell us that when they used to go from pinenut hills to pinenut hills long time ago,
because they didn’t have anyplace to live, they just migrate from hill to hill, and they live
in camps. Probably, I don’t think it was tipi, it was just those willow huts, I guess, or
something. She never really went into it. But they moved from area to area, pinenut hill
to pinenut hill. And she said that Toya Tuineppe was always around, tepitsi atsatsi
[11:53], he was a real naughty boy, she says, a real mischievious, very naughty. And he’d
come down the hill, akka toyama [12:02], but he’d slide down the hill, down the hill, and
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he’d holler and laugh. You can’t see him. They never see him, but they know that he’s a
little boy because it’s got the voice of a little one. They’d see him coming down the hill,
making dust down the hill, and they’d say, “Oh, there’s Toya Tuineppe again!” Toya
Tuineppe, Little Mountain Boy. Then, when they’d camp and go to the pinenut hills to
get pinenuts, they’d come back, their camp would be all destroyed. That Toya Tuineppe,
Little Mountain Boy would kick all their food all around, ashes all over from the
campfire. They know it was him, because he’s mischievious. And they hear him laughing
in the trees, Huttsi said. You know, he’s always doing some kind of tricks to them. And
sometimes, he’s good, too. You know, he blesses people. He blesses people, even though
he’s kind of bad. And that’s what I remember about Mountain Boy, because he’s my
descendant. One time, after I married Willis and moved to Duck Valley, I got really,
really sick. And Judy Jackson, my aunt, was still living here, so she said, “Alec
Cleveland’s going to be here tonight.” [Shoshone at 13:09], because I was sick. I don’t
know the for—probably stress, or, I don’t know. And then, I went over the [Shoshone at
13:18] Alex, [Shoshone at 13:22]. And I’m one of those persons who grew up kind of
funny, [Shoshone at 13:27]. That’s what got me sick. You know? I’m always scared at
nights, I don’t know why. Even though I was little and grew up and got married, I was
still scared, because my husband used to wake me up, Willis used to wake me up, and I
was talking, talking, and crying, and wake me up from that. But I always knew it was my
mother. Somehow, I knew it was my mother, doing that to me. [Shoshone at 13:52]
Neweh nohimpai. Then it got me sick, because I was always worried in my house, you
know, looking for her, looking for—over here, at my house. And so I got sick, and Judy
said, [14:03] “Attik tai puhane to come on over tonight,” so I went over there, and Attik
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said, [14:08] “Tsatta em pii. Your mother’s bothering you all the time.” Because you
know—I probably was her favorite, because she used to take me to Starr Valley or Ruby
Valley for work, you know, on ranches? And she’d take me all the time, I don’t know
why. But I was little, she always took me with her. And Attik said, “She wants you,
that’s why she’s bothering you. [Shohone at 14:29],” he said, “You have to get after
her!” In the olden days, old people cuss them out, you know, spirits. [Shoshone at
14:37]. Tell them to go away and leave you alone. Said “That’s the only way you can get
rid of her, is just tell her to leave you alone! Cuss her out! Be mean to her! She’s trying to
get you. She’s going to get you if you don’t get after her! [Shoshone at 14:58]. That’s
why you’re sick,” he told me. And I always remember, because Attik doesn’t know me.
You know, he’s from here, I’m from the other area. And he said,
“Always remember that [Shoshone at 15:10],” you know, “You’re a descendant of Toya
Tuineppe. So every morning when you get up, drink a glass of water three times, face the
mountain, and pray”—[Shoshone at 15:24]. Pray and bless yourself, every
morning.[Shoshone at 15:29], and you’ll get over that sickness, over your mother. And
so I said, “Oh, that was all that was wrong with me, I guess! Her haunting me all the
time.” And I was really sick. So I came back, and she was still haunting me. [Laughter]
And the latest was, she was haunting me, and I heard her downstairs in my basement, and
I got up, and I done what Alec told me. I went down there, and I cussed her out in
Shoshone, and told her not to bother me, and told her leave my kids alone, because my
kids were down there. My girls were down there. And not to bother them, because some
are bothered by her, too, some of them. And so, I said, “Don’t bother me anymore!” in
Shoshone, and I threw down whatever I can get. Shoes, clothes, I just threw it down there
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real mean like that, where I couldn’t see her, but I knew it was her. After that, she went
away for good. Never bothered me up to this day. She never bother me again. But that
was one, I guess you can call “superstition” or something, I don’t know what it is, that
happened to me. So that’s how I grew up. Was in Lee. I don’t know what—hinna tease?
C:
When you guys lived in Battle Mountain, was there a lot of pinenuts?
P:
Up in Austin area. From Battle Mountain, we go up to Austin on wagons. We go up there
and get pinenuts. Or else some other relative will bring it down to us, because it’s too far.
But when my huttsi was growing up, they lived up there in the Austin—on the pinenut
hills. So that’s where they got their pinenuts, they lived on pinenuts, all the time. And so
did my mom and them in that Cortez area. They live on pinenuts, too. And they walked.
They never used cars or wagons, because they’d—before, when my mother was growing
up, they didn’t have any horses or wagons. They usually walked long ways for food and
roots, hunting, and getting pinenuts. That’s what they done. You know, when we went to
Cortez last week—whole bunch of us from Duck Valley went. Gerry Brady and us guys
went, and she said, “Just think, our old people used to walk these hills for many miles—
and look at us getting tired already!” [Laughter] You know, we’re climbing the hill,
we’re real tired and breathing real hard. We got to sit down every once in a while! And
they used to roam these hills walking. [Shoshone at 17:59]. But that’s what they done, I
think, that Old People.
C:
So is there still pinenuts left there in Cortez?
P:
Lots. That’s a pinenut hills. Pinenut hills. But the mine, the new mine’s going up. That’s
how come they invited us, because they said most of the descendants from Cortez is
Duck Valley White Knifes. So that’s why we were invited over there. And there’s lot of
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pinenuts. But there’s a new mine going up there in that Cortez mine. Great, big giant one.
We went to visit that one. Plus, there are old mines. And the new mine’s going to be so
huge. I don’t know. And that pinenuts, some of the pinenut hills they’re going to destroy.
They’re going to cut them down. But they’re going to save some of the young ones, I
think, that’s what they were saying. The younger pinenut trees. So, the mine is really
expanding.
C:
So what kind of mineral are they mining for?
P:
Gold.
C:
Gold?
P:
Mmhm. I don’t know, but that’s where my mom is from. And they said that used to be a
real big Shoshone settlement at one time. Rehabi Whitney was telling us that, at one
time—or was it Felix Ike? That was the biggest Shoshone settlement in that valley, Grass
Valley—over the hill is Grass Valley. That’s another valley Huttsi used to talk about
[Shoshone at 19:32]. She used to say “Grass Valley”—but you know, in Shoshone—
“Grass Valley,” “Grass Valley.” And we never paid attention to her. It’s over the hill
from Cortez. Big Shoshone area. From there, they migrated different areas, like Duck
Valley, Fort Hall, Ruby Valley, other areas. But I really grew up in reservation, in
reservation life. And a little bit in Elko, not too long. Because we were just little girls
when we moved to Lee. So we grew up on a ranch.
C:
So, do you remember any of the stories that your Grandma told you, many about the
Tso’apittseh?
P:
Oh yeah, Tso’apittseh. [Laughter] Tso’apittseh. Yeah, she told lot of stories of what her
mother and them told. I don’t think it was when she was young, I don’t think, because I
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think tso’apittseh was way back there. And she said they didn’t—they were still
wandering around the pinenut hills, living here and there in the hills, and they used to sit
in the, by the campfire, and tell stories that, you know, Newene, the Indians would sit
around the campfire telling stories. All they do every night is tell stories. And then they
hear from way back, Huttsi said—because she was going to scare us, now, because we
were little girls, they always thought we were naughty, and she tells us scary stories so
we can go to sleep and be quiet, I guess! [Laughter] And then, she said, well, they were
sitting, talking, they would hear Tso’apittseh away just miles and miles away. [Shoshone
at 21:05], he’d be crying a lot, coming to the camp, and everybody’s getting scared now,
trying to hide their kids. And—[Shoshone at 21:13]—he was singing that song,
“[Shoshone at 21:17],” was getting closer and closer. Finally, he just squatted down that
campfire. And every time he leaves—I don’t know whether this is true, or it’s just to
scare us—she said he takes off with a kid in his [Shoshone at 21:31]. You know, that
little—a little basket behind his back. He’s supposed to be a rock man. Rock, I think,
made out of rocks. But he’s got a basket in the back that was coated with pinenut sap.
[Shoshone at 21:47]. Big enough for an adult to go into, [Shoshone at 21:51], he’d take
one of the kid and take off with it. And he’d go crying away, [Shoshone at 21:59]. After
he steal that kid, and everybody was so scared of him because he’ll always find them
wherever they’re at. Even if they move or run away, he’ll find them. So they just stay put,
because that Tso’apittseh was around. And then, one time, she said he came again. They
were sitting down, they heard him crying, and he was coming again, and this time he sat
down and talk Shoshone to them, and asked how they were doing and all that stuff.
Talking and eating with them, whatever. And finally, he kept looking at this one young
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man, she said. A young man, not a baby or a little boy. He was a young man, I don’t
know how old he is. He kept looking at that young man. Finally, he got up and grabbed
that young man, and threw it behind his big basket and took off. Took off, and that young
man was old enough to know what was happening. So when the Tso’apittseh was running
along under the pine trees, he thought real fast, and then he—when he was running along,
crying along, that Tso’apittseh, he grab a limb up there, and he climb up on that limb and
Tso’apittseh didn’t know it. Kept on crying down the hill until he got where he was
going, probably to his den. And he found out that young man was missing. So he turn
around crying real loud, coming back again to the camp, looking for that young man.
Young man was up there waiting for him, she said, with—he made fire out of rocks or
something, I don’t know. He made a little fire. When Tso’apittseh was right underneath
him, he threw that fire into that basket, that sap, and that burnt real bad, and Tso’apittseh
ran away crying. [Shoshone at 23:42] down that hill, he was just crying and panicked,
you know? And it burned him up. It burned him up, because he never bothered the
Indians again. That’s her story about Tso’apittseh. He never bothered them again. I guess
he burnt to death, or something happened. His big basket burned up. [Laughter]
C:
So what did he do with those kids? Did he eat them, or what did he do with them?
P:
That’s—according to her, [Shoshone at 24:08]. He tears the head off, I guess he eats the
head. That’s what she said. But maybe different people have different stories about
Tso’apittseh. But he does kill them, the kids. So… There was another story about—
Huttsi, she told us so many stories about the Cottontail. Of course, that’s simple
Cottontail. There was another story about a big bird, and I believe she called it Ish. Ish,
that bird. But Ise was supposed to be the Itsappe, Ish. But she called this big bird Ish, too.
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[Shoshone at 24:44] Pia ______ kwina. Like an eagle, but it wasn’t an eagle. It was a
real big bird. On the island, ka nakkan, some island, middle of the water. He live over
there, and he come every now and then, fly to the Indian camp again, take people and
take it over there to eat, I guess to the island. Back where he live in a great, big nest.
[Shoshone at 25:05]. And, I guess long time ago, he stole a lady. And that lady grew up
to be a old lady. And she slaved for him. Cooked for him. He demanded this and that,
demanded she cook his food. Whatever he brought home, she cook it for him. Mostly
humans. She cooked that food for him, and over the many many years, just getting real
old, just getting tired of that big bird doing that to her. And there’s no way to get to that
place except—wasn’t no way to get there. It’s the middle of a big river, open ocean, or
something. And so the old lady was getting tired, and was getting mad at the big bird. So
she finally thought, “Well, I am going to get rid of him.” In Shoshone said she’s going to
get rid of him. “[Shoshone at 25:55].” And so, she got some kind of flint. Uten obsidian?
That black flint? She chipped it real fine, chipped it real fine, and so he came back with
whatever he had. And—oh no, it was a young man he brought back again, a young man.
So she got really upset, the old lady. She wasn’t going to have him kill the young man.
So she got some flint, and chipped it, and put it in a bowl for him with soup [26:23],
before he killed that young man. She made him some kind of soup because he was so
demanding. And then soup, she put it in front of him. And he started drinking the soup.
But every time he was drinking the soup, he would put his big [Shoshone intermittently
after 26:38] in the air like [26:39]. And he’d kind of like gurgling sound in his throat,
kind of choking because that thing was already working on him, that flint. Gurgling,
gurgling. And she watched, she sat there and watch him. The bird wasn’t saying
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anything, he was just eating and doing that gurgling and choking and so on. Her and that
young man watched that bird. Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He got up, and he
flew away. He yetseko [27:04]. And he flew away up the middle of the water, and
[27:08] behind, say they never saw him again. That was another story she told.
[Laughter] I believe she called him Ish. And I always say, “Why did she call him Ise
when Ise is supposed to be Itsappe’s brother?” So, that’s one story she told.
C:
What about the water babies?
P:
Oh, water babies! Yeah, Battle Mountain [Shoshone at 27:30] water babies. Everybody’s
scared of them, because they hear them crying, you know? Babiesne. [Shoshone at
27:36] used to always tell that all the time. My uncle Willie Johnson, he used to tell about
water babies all the time. And he also took babies away from mothers that was fishing on
the banks—you know, with their baby, and their—[Shoshone at 27:53]. And he just
snatch them off of them and take the baby underwater [Shoshone at 27:58]. The baby’s
lost for good. But one time, he done that to another young man—[Shoshone at 28:05],
and that somehow, that young man—I don’t know this story too good. But somehow, the
young man killed that water baby, and came back again. But all the Indians know about
water babies. They say they’re still alive—I mean, you can still hear them. And you know
what that—I forgot to tell you about this. Mountain Boy, Toya Tuineppe, they say you
hear him in any mountain. He lives in any mountain, high mountain. And sometimes, you
can hear him whistling at you, whistling. Sometimes, you think it’s a bird, you know. But
it’s Toya Tuineppe. And a lot of times, I go hunting with Willis way up in the mountains,
way back there [Shoshone at 28:48]. And I’d be sitting there waiting, because he walked
a long ways. I’d sit there, wait for him. [Shoshone at 28:53], whistling, [Shoshone at
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28:55]. Then, I thought it was, you know, a bird. And then I remembered what Attik said
to me: “If you go in the mountains and hear some whistling, that’s Toya Tuineppe. He’s
whistling at you.” So that’s—he said it happens with anybody. Any Shoshone. You go up
to the mountains and hear him whistling at you. So if you ever go hunting and hear
somebody whistling? It might be him and not a bird. [Laughter] Huttsi was telling me
some, another good story… Oh, I forgot! What was it about, now? Wait, ask me another
question.
C:
Do you know anything about [29:41] Toyanatsi’ that live out there in Ruby Valley? That
you could talk about?
P:
Osen kwai, yes. [29:46] Suteen Toya Tuineppe naa. What did they say about Toya
nukutsi?
C:
They take care of the wild horses there, and the wild sheep?
P:
Oh.
C:
Yeah. [__inaudible at 29:57__]
P:
Oh, that’s probably their story from that area. Oh! Hm. That’s interesting.
[Break in recording]
P:
When he died [Shoshone at 30:08], we go up to [Shoshone at 30:11]. And we’d, we
meet our ancestors up there. [30:16] Tammen naa supai akka nupuwiiha. Milky Way
[Shoshone at 30:19] you know, Shoshones souls have the dance in the Milky Way.
That’s why when you see the Milky Way, it’s all dusty-looking? That dust, when they’re
kicking up their heels, kicking up their feet, and all that dust, dancing, because that’s
what they do. That was their routine up long time ago, to the Shoshones, was Round
Dance. They sing in their old language, and so they’d sing a Shoshone song, telling
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stories and their music. And the Milky Way is where we go to to dance when we die.
That was a Shoshone belief. So when my daughter died, I always look at the Milky Way.
[Shoshone at 30:55], she’s dancing up in the Milky Way now, with her grandmas, and
her aunts and uncles, her dad. Because I believe they came after her when she died that
night. They all came, picked her up, and took her away, and now she’s up in the Milky
Way. Osen tammen belief, you know, we’re dancing up there. That’s one of the Shoshone
belief that I grew up on. So, hinna tease?
C:
So, in the dancing of the Milky Way, are they going someplace? Is there a belief that the
people are going—are they traveling, or are they just dancing?
P:
No, I think they just dancing. They go up there to be happy up there. You know, they’re
free. Free of all kinds of worries and stuff. And so, they just go up there to Heaven to
dance. Dance up there. So when we look at them, we see them up there, we’re supposed
to see them up there dancing. Sometimes it’s so pretty, you know, up there. The Milky
Way. Another belief that I was told long time ago is, take a star for your loved one that
died. A star. And I always look at the star and pray to God for that star to take care of
your loved ones. So I picked a star for my daughter Francine. The Evening Star. [32:13]
Sokka nabuite, and then I always nanisuntehai, I pray. Because, you know, I really miss
her. And so, that’s one of the beliefs. So everybody’s dancing up there. And I believe—
that’s my belief, I don’t know whether anybody else believe like that, but I believe we all
go to Heaven. Everybody, good or bad. Everybody goes to Heaven! [Laughter]
C:
Well, that’s a Shoshone belief. There’s—everybody goes to the Spirit World.
P:
Mmhm. Yeah. So, that’s one of the stories.
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C:
Were there very many medicine—or healers in your family? You mentioned your
Grandma was a healer.
P:
Yeah, her stepfather was a real powerful medicine man. [33:00] Himpaise ma nanihante
Sam Wilson. Sam Wilson, nekka. Is it Sam? I believe from the Austin area. A old man
that was like a hermit. And he was married to my huttsi’s mother, Katie. Katie Wilson. I
don’t know what their maiden names were—because a long time ago, they only had
Indian names, and when they worked with a white man, they change all their names. So,
Katie Wilson and so on. Indian names. Like, my [Shoshone at 33:30]’s name was
Paampokompi. Like, “water currant.” Paampokompi. And from there, they were changed
to Lucy Cortez. And so, anyhow, [33:45] himpai nani_____?
C:
Oh, healers.
P:
Oh, that Sam Wilson! He’s a powerful healer, Shoshone healer, up in Austin area. Was so
powerful that he had, that Katie Wilson, his wife, had two daughters: my huttsi, and
Davis Gonzalez and their grandma. Their grandmother, Nellie Woods. Nellie Woods. So
Katie had two daughters. Katie Wilson’s really Sam Wilson’s daughter. Sam and Katie’s
daughter. My huttsi is a half-breed; her dad’s half white. But somehow, Sam Wilson
chose her—my huttsi’s more Indian because she’s got more Indian belief, even though
she’s half white. She’s real traditional. But keep her with him as assistant. You know,
assisting him with preparing things when he’s going to doctor somebody? [34:44]
[Shoshone at 34:44], it was for a young girl, that was just job for the girls—that’s
what my huttsi told me, that I used to [Shoshone at 34:51] kumaitte mia. I go with them
to help them prepare their roots and the medicine. And she listened to him. All the songs
and stuff, she listened to him, and it got into her. So she became a medicine lady. Not as
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great as Sam, but she still know what she was doing. And then Huttsi used to tell me,
when she used to come visit me at my house when I had all my kids, she’d say—well,
nowadays, nobody took after Sam, you know, that powerful medicine man. But some day
[35:24] there’s going to im himpa, emerge a medicine man from one of your family.
Our family—you know, the Tybos, I guess—our family’s going to emerge some day. A
powerful medicine man. It might be your kids. If not your kids, your grandkids or your
great-grandchild. “Some day,” he said, “himpa tipitsi Newe wepekanai [35:46]. It’s going
to come.” I don’t know when that’s going to be! [Laughter] But that’s what she always
tells me. Because of Sam Wilson. That’s the only one I know. The other medicine lady
that I know is Satii Nap from Ruby Valley. Her name’s Sally Brigham, I think. She’s the
one that raised Anna Premo. Sally Brigham, and I knew—we call her Satii Nap.
Nowadays, she’s dead. Satii, she used to come down to our Colony in Elko, to our
little—and doctor my mother, because my mother’s really sick. Doctor her all the time.
Was a very powerful medicine lady. I remember her. She’s real tall and skinny, had long
gray hair. [Shoshone (?) at 36:29] and every night at midnight, she opened the door, and
then she’d pray to God, I guess. [Shoshone (?) at 36:34] up to the Heavens. Then she’d
come around and doctor my mother again. But my mother didn’t get healed, because it
was tuberculosis that killed her. It wasn’t other kind of disease, sickness. And so, those
two I remember really good. Satii Nap and Sam Wilson. And of course, Atikko here in
Duck Valley. That’s all I know.
C:
So these people that were healers, they were blessed with the power? Or, I mean, they
didn’t go to school for it.
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P:
No, it was blessed by power. They had it from the ancestors, from way back. I guess it
just came to them from way back. And—no, they didn’t. They weren’t taught. It was just
in them to heal people. And they really did heal people, you know, in the old days.
Nowadays, we have this young modern medicine—claim to be medicine men. I think
they’re just out here for the money! [Laughter] Money, you know, they’re not really
healing people like the old people. They’re all dead now.
C:
What kind of medicine did they use? Were they all different, or—?
P:
They’re all different. Like, sagebrush was the main one from that area, Battle Mountain,
Cortez, [37:56] kwaiya. It was pohovi. Pohovi and totsa—totsa’s a lot, too. Antapittseh
kwana. Those three I know.
C:
Is there anybody that still uses those kind of—
P:
Medicine? I do. We do. I taught all my kids that, you know, my girls and my son? We
harvest totsa up in Scott Creek back in the mountains every fall. And that heals anything.
You drink it—but it’s real greasy. Like, greasy? I really don’t like it. But some other lady
told me to make it kind of mild, put more water in it, and strain it, and then you can drink
it. But it’s supposed to heal your insides. Any sickness that’s inside of you. Stomach
problems. Some people even says cancer and other kind of dreadful sickness. It cures that
if you’re very faithful to drink it every day. Like, Huttsi used to drink, like, a half a cup a
day. So I guess… But I don’t do that. I use mine for sores, when you get cut. Like, for
animals too. Like my dogs get run over and cut or something, like, I boil that totsa and
make it real mushy—you know, that real mushy—and then I mash it with my hands. And
I cool it, and I take that pulp, and I just put it in the dog’s wound, and it heals it
immediately. Or anything. Horses, anything. And humans also. And you can smoke it,
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too. You can smoke the totsa. Just pound it up to a little tobacco, and roll it up, and
smoke it. My huttsi—again, Grandma Minnie over at Battle Mountain—she used to roll
up totsa, and she’d smoke it every wintertime. She’s sitting by her stove, smoking totsa.
And she’d always make me wrap her totsa—you know, her tobacco, in the little paper. So
I wrap it for her, and then she would give me one, just for so I won’t get sick. Because
it’s totsa. And that’s where I started smoking little bit, because of her! [Laughter] And I
used to remember that. I was the only one that smoke among my sisters. I had fun with
my huttsi, although she was really strict, too. Really strict with us. So… We were taught
how to get up early in the morning to do our chores. Every morning, my dad done that to
us when we were growing up. We got up, she made five in the morning. I still now, to
this day I get up at that time. And that was good teaching. We done all our chores early in
the morning. And we didn’t have no electricity. We had to haul our water from a well, or
from the river. And a lot of hardships, you know, when we grew up, and nothing—
outside toilets, no water. Had to wash your clothes out by the river. Or in a tub with
washboards. That’s how I grew up. Nowadays, we have it easy.
C:
What about the antapittseh kwana? What’s that used for?
P:
Antapittseh kwana is a real powerful healer, too. More powerful than all of the other
medicine, according to Huttsi. And it grows up here around Cleveland Trail, back here.
Cleveland Trail? Because she used to tell George Blackett to get it for her every fall. He
goes over there, [Shoshone at 41:34], he’s still walking way off from where the plants
are growing, and he’d be singing. [Shoshone at 41:40]. In order to get it, he has to sing
and pray to it. So he’d go over there and get whole bunch of it for Huttsi. Some long, tall
plants. And then she’d boil it, I guess, and then drink it. Again, drink it. And then it’s also
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good for healing, like the totsa. You know, you’ll get it pulpy, boil and get it pulpy, and
put it on sores or whatever. Cuts. And that’s supposed to be real powerful. But it’s hardly
any totsa around. I mean, hardly any antapittseh kwana around. I’ve heard that they’re
gone, now. And they don’t grow anywhere, just rare places. But I rely on the totsa now.
And mostly pohovi, I love pohovi yet. And I walk along, and I break a piece of pohovi,
young pohovi, young one along outside my house. I just have it, smell it, and feel it, and
inhale all the good medicine inside of you. I love pohovi. And [__inaudible at 42:47__],
that’s, I was raised with pohovi and totsa.
C:
How about cedar? Did you use cedar much?
P:
Not the Battle Mountain area. I never heard of them burning cedar. Did you?
C:
Well, I hear people talk about it.
P:
Yeah, some, I guess. But I never heard my Grandma talk about cedar. Only when I got
over here. So I burn the cedar now all the time. It’s good to bless your house with.
C:
Uh-huh. Okay, we’ve got about ten minutes now. Is there anything you want to wind up
with, or tell at the end here, about things that maybe your grandchildren, or if you were to
tell them what’s important in life, and what’s important in terms of tradition, what would
you think of would be the best thing it is to say to them?
P:
My grandchildren. Well, I would tell them to get up early in the morning, because
nowadays, those young people stay in bed, stay in bed ‘til ten, eleven. And that’s not
good. Because I notice some of my grandkids are like that. And I try to make them get up
early, but they’re spoiled, I guess, in the modern world. Because I didn’t raise them, their
mother raised them. Their mothers raised them. If I raised them, it would be different. It
would be different. Because I raised one granddaughter—that’s Nammi up at the
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hospital—I raised her. I made her get up early in the morning, do chores. So she works all
the time. She gets up early. She does her work. But the other grandchildren, I don’t know.
Well anyway, so I tell them to get up early in the morning, work, and make a living, and
be honest and giving to people. Talk to all the elders. Respect elders, and respect all
people, animals, everything. And to—and not get involved in alcohol and drugs, because
that’s killing people nowadays. And that’s what I want to pass on to them. That tradition
is—keep up the medicine. Keep up the medicine, the totsa and the sagebrush. And just
pray. Mostly pray. Pray, in the Indian way. Most of my grandkids and my kids doesn’t
talk Shoshone. They understand it, my kids understand, but they don’t talk it. And
grandkids are even worse. So—but they hear me talk all the time. So I just tell them what
I know about living a good life. That’s what I want them to do is live a good life, free of
drugs and alcohol. And that’s what I want to pass on to them.
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
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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
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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
Illaine Premo
Location
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Duck Valley Reservation (Owyhee, NV)
Original Format
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DVD and VOB format
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00:45:58
Transcription
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http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/566
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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Illaine Premo - Oral history (11/30/2009)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history interview with Illaine Premo, Western Shoshone from Battle Mountain, NV on 11/30/2009
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Illain Tybo Premo was born to Ada Cortez Johnson and Cortez Charlie who were from the Beowawe/Cortez area. Her ancestors came from Smoky Valley and the Austin area. During her childhood she speaks about moving all around Western Shoshone territory to places such as Elko, Battle Mountain, and South Fork. She speaks about living in both Battle Mountain and South Fork reservation. She also speaks about her grandmother Minnie, who was a medicine woman, who lived in Battle Mountain and taught Illain traditional lifeways of the Shoshone. She was taught traditions such as picking nuts and berries, hunting deer and rabbit, using traditional medicines, and getting up early and doing chores. She also speaks about attending Stewart Indian School after 8th grade. She also tells us a few Shoshone stories including the Toya Deanapa (Mountain boy), Tso’ovich (stone man), and ba’a wa’a (water-babies). She ends her narrative by cautioning the younger generations about using alcohol and drugs.</p>
Video pending <br /> <a title="Illaine Premo Oral History Transcription" href="/omeka/files/original/42e8cfd518657ccafcf2585ac27ed966.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read Illaine Premo Oral History Transcription [pdf file]</a>
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Source
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 024
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
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11/30/2009 [30 November 2009]; 2009 November 30
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/373
Language
A language of the resource
English; some Shoshoni
Battle Mountain
Community
Crossroads
Duck Valley Reservation
folktale
GBIA
medicine woman
Shoshone
Stewart Indian School
Story
traditional foods
traditional medicines
traditions
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2ec11c23b9237c5d336c815cb990b554
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/e34fcae3740194b994ff8ad125af279e.pdf
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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
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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Florence Steele & Lee Moon - Oral history (12/06/2006)
Subject
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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
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/13c3901ad0d5535cdbf76bc9a955ae07.jpg
309a02d076f1a46ff9c4b5792dca2eb2
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/2f402f34e1f52f9732fbccbb9711634b.pdf
02b3ae47a79ce054b5347e17da835e30
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
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
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)
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Oral history interview with Beverly Brazzanovich & Harold Miller, Northern Paiute from Eastern Nevada on 10/12/2006
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<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
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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
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/b965b64509cb891eb3487f6579ba3b18.jpg
4225eef6ec37eff068ae5b839bc7e30d
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/6f59b3830b97effc7197139ec5224afb.pdf
e646eb888f2b5a6bef2ded3e69b0efe9
PDF Text
Text
Delores
Cummings
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
017
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
June
20,
2008
Owyhee,
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 017
Interviewee: Delores Cummings
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: June 20, 2008
DC:
Okay, my name is Delores Cummings. Shaw is my middle name. My parents are Marie
Jones and Kelly Shaw, Sr. My mother was from around the Golconda area. She was of
the White [Knife]1 clan. And my dad came from Paradise Valley, Nevada. And after that,
they both came this way. My mother came through—with her parents—came to
Tuscarora, where they worked, her mother worked, in various ranches, like, cleaning, and
cooking, and all of the things that were what people required of them doing on ranches.
My father worked on ranches, too. Well, her fathers did that. They worked in the hay
fields and everything. And somewhere along the way, I don’t remember my mother
calling my grandfather by his Indian name. I can’t recall that. But one of the ranchers that
they worked under took him in and named him Charlie Jones. That’s where the name
came from. In the Battle Mountain area, around in that area, there were Jones ranchers
there. And I’m assuming that’s where he got his name, then. And then, as they came from
Battle Mountain, they came over to—well, I’m getting mixed up. They started from
Golconda, and they worked their way over towards Tuscarora, where they got jobs and
everything. And then, eventually, they worked their way over here to Duck Valley. And
that’s my mother’s side. My dad came with his grandpa, who is the late Louie Dave’s
father. And he came over with them on horse and buggy. My father at that time might’ve
been about five or six years old. And he lived here until they died, his grandpa and
grandma, and he lived around different people around here. And believed that Joe Simms
was one of his uncles. And he lived with them. Because my dad always said Jack Simms
was his cousin. And as he grew older, my dad was sent to Chemawa Indian School, the
1
Ms. Cummings says “White River” here, but it seems to be a misstatement (see p. 3).
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boarding school. And that’s where he got his education. And he stayed around in that
area, working after he got out of school. He never completed high school or anything, but
he worked on farms over there. He was a good farmer. And when he came back to Duck
Valley, he had got his own little forty acres, and we had to clear that by hand—the
sagebrush and everything. And he, about in the [19]40s, I remember him having oat
fields and wheat fields. At that time, my mother was just a housewife. She took good care
of us. But going back to my mother again, when they first came over, she used to say that
they came over on wagons. They stopped in White Rock. One of my aunts, I believe it
was Katherine Jones—Kate Cota, the late Kate Cota, rather—she was born in White
Rock, coming over. When they got here, they made their homes out of white sagebrushes
and rye grass. They weaved the rye grass and lived in that. And right now, it’s over—the
place where they all lived was over there by Donald Jones’s. Where Donald Jones lives
now, in that area. They kind of all lived in little groups there, the family. Some of the
families that came over at that time was John Paradise and his family. And the Sopes,
the Strawbucks… My mother always said that Sopes were relatives of hers, too. I guess
back then, way back then, they had been living with one another, the Shoshones and
Paiutes. So… My mother is Shoshone and Paiute. My dad is Paiute. His mother was
Paiute, from Paradise. And they lived here, and eventually my mother and dad married.
And of course, I was born. I was the first in the family. And as I remember, in our little
homes, in order to keep warm during the wintertime, my mother used to put rocks, little
round rocks—[__inaudible at 7:19__] rocks—those rocks that we have. And during the
winter, she’d put them on the stove, and then she’d roll the rocks up in rags or whatever,
and then she’d put that in our beds. That was one way of us keeping warm at night. And
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we only had two beds. Them days, the big beds were double beds. And I think there was
about three people that slept in one bed, and three in the other. I believe we had a good
life then. My father and mother were very good providers. I think I was one of the more
fortunate kids around here. Some of our people, like I remember Darlene John used to
live up here on the hill going towards Paradise Points. And they just lived in little tents. I
remember sleeping up there, spending the night up there with Darlene and her sister and
her mother, and they were real poor, they were pitiful. They had just one stove. And she
just, she didn’t have wood, she used to just pull wood from around their house there to
keep warm on. And they never had much to eat. I remember her mother making gravy,
just plain old gravy, out of lard, and mixing it up with water, and flour. And they’d dip
their bread in it, and that’s what we had for our breakfast. I remember that so vividly.
And did I mention White Knife in there? Anyway, going back aways, from where my
mother came from, she was from the White Knife clan, which I’m real proud of. And I
remember, growing up, my mother had this rock. She used it when she did her hides, to
tan her hides. And I wish I still had that. We probably threw it away as kids. But we had
hard times, too. I can’t remember of anybody really being sick unless they died of
pneumonia. And probably, like some of the others were saying, I think there was typhoid
fever that killed a lot of people off over here. And my mother raised her nephew, who
was Bobby Jones, because his mother had died of that typhoid fever. And he was six
weeks old when he died, so she raised him until he became 18, until he died. It, to me,
everybody in the valley had cows and horses. There might have not been that many cows,
but I believe each family had a few head of cattle. And how they did it, they survived
with that much. They bought maybe shoes once a year, and you had to wear them,
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whether they got small on you or not, until after school. Usually everybody ran around
barefooted after that. And…
NC:
So how many brothers and sisters did you have?
DC:
Oh, I’ve got two sisters and one brother. We lost a baby, an infant brother. And, what else
should I say?
NC:
So as you were growing up, would your mom or grandmother or grandfather tell any
stories of creation stories, or any stories that you remember or recall of how things should
be and so forth?
DC:
Okay, my mother used to tell us stories. One was about the Itsappe and his brother, the
Wolf. And I can’t recall that too well. But every night, that was our bedtime stories. One
was—the one that I really especially liked was called, “The Mother Bear and the Mother
Doe and Her Fawn.” And that was my favorite. I should write a story on that sometime.
It’s something like the story that Beverly Crum told. It’s almost the same thing. Only, it’s
a little bit different than what she writes, from how my mother told it, or how I gather in
my mind. And…
NC:
Can you share that story with us?
DC:
Now?
NC:
Yeah.
DC:
It’s, it goes along for a while.
NC:
That’s fine, we’ve got time.
DC:
Okay. When they used to tell stories, you had to repeat to them almost everything that
you say. When they were telling it. Like, my mother used to say, “Himpaisen. Tepitsi
himpaisen. Soteen weta”—the big weta, the mother weta and baby. They lived up in the
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mountains. And the mother deer and her baby lived up there, too. And just like anybody
else, us Indian people, like Indian people, they had to go out and hunt for food for their
babies. So they had their little homes out there. I always pictured it as being a cave,
where they lived. And she said they used to, the momma deer and the mother bear used to
go out, and they’d gather what they could for their babies, and they’d bring it home, and
feed their babies. And they’d, while they were gone, out looking for food, the kids, like
all children, got out and played together. They did all kinds of things. They chased each
other around with sticks, and they’d be all dirty and everything when the mothers would
come home. And they’d always, like children, always got into mischief and everything.
Well, one day, the two fawns—there was two of them. There was two cubs, and two deer
fawns. Well, they were out—they got tired of playing, and they decided that they wanted
to do something a little bit different in playing. So they decided, “Well, we’re going to
smoke it. It’s going to be called ‘smoke out.’ We’re going to smoke each other out.” So,
in their houses, they went and put something in front of the house, in the door. They built
a fire inside. And they all took turns of going in first. The baby bears went in, and they
stayed in there until they couldn’t stand it any longer. You know how the smoke burns
your eyes and everything. If you start to cry and everything, then you let them out. This
went on for a while. And the little cubs would go in, too. Same thing would happen.
Finally, they sent the two bears in. And the two deer kept them in there a little bit too
long. After a while, it got real quiet in there. And they were crying, they says, “Let us
out! Let us out! Our eyes are hurting, are burning!” By the time they took the door down,
there they lay. They were both dead. They died of smoke inhalation. So they didn’t know
what else to do. The two baby fawns said, “What are we gonna do? What are we gonna
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do?” And then, so, they planned it. They went ahead and they put one cub on this side of
the door, and the other cub on this side of the door. And then, they went and put the bear,
the mother bear’s pisappen, huge on their faces. Dressed them up like that. And here
comes—that evening, when they came home, there was the mother bear, looking at them.
She said, “What’d you guys do? You guys got into my rouge!” She slapped them. One
fell over and didn’t move. And she went back and did the other one. Slapped the other
one. The other one fell over. And she was mad walking around. She finally realized that
her babies were dead! And she, right away, she started sniffing around, and looking
around. And she, right away, she knew what happened, because she followed the
footprints of the little fawns. And by then, when they got home, the mother deer started
looking for her fawns. Her babies. She took off looking for them. She followed them.
And the mother bear was sniffing along, she was tracking them. They were going on and
on and on. They went down, they were running along the—they knew that the bear would
come after them, so they were going as fast as they can. The younger deer was just barely
making it. But the older one was urging him along. They come across this river, then.
They said, “How are we gonna get across? How are we gonna get across?” I’m making
this short, now. And there’s that koonta, sleeping. A crane. He was sitting there sleeping,
and he had his legs crossed. He was sitting there sleeping, and then finally the deer says,
“Oh, we’re really, we’re running away from this mother bear. She’s after us.” And the
little fawns said, “Our uncle”—they were talking to the crane, that was their uncle—
“help us! We need to get across over there! How are we gonna do it?” He says, “Yeah,
I’ll help you. So he stretches out his long leg, and he puts it across the river. And those
two little fawns, they ran across the river. And then pretty soon, here comes the mother
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deer off the mountains. She seen that happening, so she went after them. And the old
crane was sitting there, half asleep, with his leg out across the river yet. She come along,
and she asked him, “I want a drink of water, I’m real thirsty.” So the crane says, “Well,
here’s my cup.” So she takes his cup, and she goes across on his leg, and halfway across,
she decides she’s going to take her drink. And when she was doing that, she took her
drink and she was watching the little deer going across on the other side, running. Well,
she took her drink, and after she took her drink, she went and hit the cup on the crane’s
leg, and hurt him. And he says, “Ataa!” He pulls his leg up, and the mother deer falls into
the river, and she’s carried away down the stream. And that was the end of the story.
[Laughter] But that’s just, I’m not saying it all the way like my mother had said it. I did
write it down somewhere, but I can’t remember—I think I let my sister have it. But she
hasn’t returned it yet, and that’s been a while, so hopefully I’ll get that back.
NC:
Yeah, that’s a nice story, Delores. Okay, in terms of, when you were growing up, were
there things that your mom shared with you as to how important it is for young girls
growing up to, type of practice, or whatever you should do in terms of getting into
ladyhood?
DC:
Mmkay. Well, this is what my mother did when I started my monthly flow: she said,
“You got to start learning how to take care of yourself. First thing you’ve got to do is go
out into the willows, and bring some willows home, and you build a fire. You heat your
water, and you take a bath in it. And you clean everything up that you slept in. You also
cannot eat any meat that is red,” like deer meat, beef, rabbits. Anything like that. The
only thing you were allowed to eat was vegetables maybe, if you had it, and maybe fish.
And then, too, you had to take care of your utensils that you used. You washed them and
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put them away. And that’s where it stayed. You will always use that, from the time you
become—when your flow starts again. And you couldn’t be around men. She always
said, “[Shoshone at 23:17]” [Laughter] You stay away from them until you’re through.
And after, too, after you have your baby, again, you stay away from a man for a whole
month. You’re not seen in public places with your child. You stay home and take care of
your child until you’ve passed that. And then, you cannot ride horse, is one of the things
that they always stressed. You don’t go anywhere hunting with your man, when you’re
on your monthly period. And what else? And you’re always next to your baby. Of course,
that’s how it was when we were, years ago—you didn’t have anything else but that. And
that kind of—set your babies two years apart. You don’t wean a baby until about two
years after, and that’s when most babies were born. Two years apart. Anymore,
sometimes you have your babies nine months apart. But I think that was a really good
thing. When you did that, you had to bring your—before my time, when my mother was
a young girl, she said they had what they called moon houses, hunnaikahni. That’s what
the Shoshones call it, hunnaikahni. And you stayed in there. You did a lot of sewing. You
took care of, maybe, your little brothers’ and sisters’ stuff that your mother taught you
how to sew. And too, we also had—listening to the other ladies, too, they talked about
blankets. Rabbit blankets. They say they sewed theirs, but I remember my aunt Anna
used to take the fresh rabbit and they twisted it some way. And then they kind of weaved
it, this way and that way. And then I guess they tacked it down, you know, with, I don’t
know, cord of some kind. Probably rawhide, is what I’m thinking. But I remember
sleeping under that, and like the other ladies were saying in their interview, it was just
nice and comfortable. And that’s all they had. And, let’s see…
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NC:
So did you ever watch your grandma or your aunt make those blankets, those rabbit
blankets?
DC:
No, I never did. I wished I had. But, I seen them do hides. My aunt Anna made beautiful
buckskin gloves. My mother made—she didn’t work with beads, but she made work
gloves, that the men use when they do their fences. And also—going back to, when, your
monthly flow, and everything, you couldn’t even go down to the Fourth of July grounds
if you were that way. You couldn’t be hanging around there. And one of our traditions,
here in the valley, was—this is going to be on the Fourth of July. Lot of people from all
over came to celebrate the Fourth of July here. Our people started making their shades
like a week ahead of time. And our Fourth of July grounds still exist down there. I think it
was somewhere else before they had it where it is now, today. But before you went to the
grounds, you had to purify yourself. We had little sweat huts—my mother said, back in
their days—and you had to clean up, clean yourself, before you went down to the
grounds. It was like a sacred grounds, I guess. And I thought that was good. And then, the
last night of—no, I shouldn’t say last night. The last day of, when we broke camp, they
would sing during the day, and then they went clear around. And it was like blessing,
blessing our grounds again for the next year. And that always stuck in my mind. I didn’t
really get to know my grandparents. My grandparents that I adopted was Willy and Lina
Wines. They were my grandpa and grandma. And they, she taught me a lot of stuff. And
hers was giving. She was always giving. And I think all of our people around here always
gave something. You know? Grandpa Wines used to buy us anklets. And that was to take
during the Fourth of July. He used to give me—and I used to get kind of jealous of my
brother, because he would buy him more than us girls. He bought him cowboy hat, and
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boots sometimes. Where they got their money, I’ll never know. Because our people
weren’t the richest. But those people always had money to give. And I think our grandpas
and grandmas always had a little money tucked away somewhere for each and every one
of their grandchildren, because they always had little bit of money to give. I’m—there
was a lot of handgame and cards, those days. We used to go to different homes, and they
gambled. And I remember my Aunt Daisy, before she went, she used to put this rouge on
her face. That’s to keep the spirits or bad medicines they brought against you. She was a
great believer in that. I’m proud to say, too, with our old people, they did leave us
something. And it’s making cradleboards. And today, that still exists. And I’d like to
mention those names of who the cradleboard makers were, and I start it with my aunt,
Daisy Teller, because she made my cradleboard for my first child. And that was a gift.
And she never charged me anything, she just gave it to me. Nowadays, cradleboards run
you to two or three, four hundred dollars, and even more. They’re decorated with
buckskin and beads. But Minnie Jones was the other one. Lucy Hall, Nellie Harney,
Rosie Dick, Elsie Hall, Jessie Charles, Alice Whiterock, Mamie Thomas, Allie Thacker,
Jessie Little, and… I’m not sure who else did, there probably was some more out there.
Today we’ve got Pauline Whiterock carrying on this tradition yet, and Rosie Shaw. And,
I believe Pauline has taught her grandchildren, and some of her—well, I guess just
grandchildren, because she didn’t have any. Oh yes she did; she’s got some of her girls
working on cradleboards, too, which is really nice.
I’m going to talk about death now. How, from years back, from what I seen, I believe a
lot of our Indian people practiced it. How they said they kept the body for five days.
Well, when my cousin Bobby died, that’s what we did. My mother kept him for five
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days. People came to our home when his body came back from Elko. And we kept him in
a tent, not a tepee—in them days, they didn’t have tepees. I believe tepees at that time
were used for just mostly peyote meetings. But anyway, we kept the body there at the
home for five days. We cooked all those five days. We usually killed the—my folks,
when Bobby died, they killed their cow, they butchered. And everything was given away.
They cooked—what was left after the funeral was given to the people around. With the
person that died, they took his clothing, his personal belongings, and they burned them.
They’d go towards the west, and they’d burn the clothes. That, I think, was a practice
from way back. But as I recall, one time my mother was telling me that when my dad’s—
my grandmother died, her one and only horse that she had, they took that horse after the
funeral, after the body was buried, they killed the horse on top of the grave. They sent
that horse, I guess, along with the person that died, to the other world. And I don’t
believe they practice those any more. But that was a good way. Lot of people had used
ashes. They felt that the spirits came back. We call it haantma [34:54]. I don’t know
them days what they called it. But there was a, they called it spirits, I guess. They’d get
ashes, and they’d put ashes around the house so the spirit wouldn’t come in. And then
they’d get that cedar, and they’d cedar your house out. That’s so that your dead won’t
come back and bother you. I think Lorraine did that to my—Lorraine and Alvin did that
to our house when my mother and dad passed away, different times. I felt real good about
that. You never felt that they would be around, and they never were.
NC:
So when they did the cedar, did they smoke it, or did they just leave it around, or what
did they do with it?
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DC:
They smoke it. They build little fire, and then they, where the ashes are still hot, they
sprinkle the cedar on them, and then they go through the house, in each room, and they
pray, and they say, “You’re gone now, and you’re in a different world now, so just go on.
They’ll be all right here. Your family will be okay.” And I experienced that with what
Lorraine and Alvin did for us, and that was really appreciated. I think it helps you,
sometimes. Anymore, when somebody dies, what do we do? We go out and get drunk,
and we try to forget about our people that way. We cry and everything. But I believe that
really helped me, when I lost my folks. So that was a good thing. And one thing I think
we’ve lost now is our medicine men. Some of our medicine men that I remembered
was—I’ll name them. One was Alex Cleveland. John Damon. Billie Shaw. Hugh
Thomas. And there might be some more out there that I don’t know of. But that’s been all
gone. And I wish that somehow—I think you had to be gifted in order to be a medicine
man. And I don’t know how that was, whether they named those people, agreeing that
they, this is what they were going to do, or what. I don’t know. But, I’m glad that we still
carry on the peyote tradition. It hasn’t gone away. In fact, I believe it’s coming back. A
lot of our people have gone into that. I do believe it’s helped in a lot of ways, especially
now with meth and everything out there. Some of our younger people have gone into
that. And I’m really proud to say that this has helped them. Some of my relatives, I
believe, have gone into the peyote meetings, and I believe it’s helped. And we also, the
Sundance still exists here, too, and I think that is a good thing, too. That we have
Sundances. And I believe that, to me—I respect all that. That’s their tradition. I wished I
could be a Sundancer; I believe that’s a real hard thing to do! But I’m always there to—
what’s the word for it, now?—to support them along the way. Same way with, when they
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have their peyote meetings. I’ve tasted the juice, and it’s helped me, it has made me feel
good. I haven’t done the other, where they eat it. It’s very bitter. And I have a lot of
respect for those people. I think they’re kind-hearted people, the peyote people. When my
folks were sick, they always remembered those people out there, no matter who they are.
If they were ill, if one of your relatives was serving in the service, they always
remembered them. They prayed, they prayed to the Great Spirit, that they be safe. I know
my grandson—my great-nephew, I call him my grandson, it’s my sister’s grandson—
Kendrick Owyhee. He went over to Iraq two times. And he had difficulties. But with
those prayers, I think it really helped him. He was, I’m really proud of him right now.
He’s a sergeant now, still in the service. I believe he’s making it his career. But I think
with the help of those people, the medicine people out there, they came in and helped.
Even Pete Putra, he came in the day before my grandson went to Iraq for the second time.
Pete went down to the house, and he prayed for him. And I believe that helped him, also.
And I’m just proud of what he’s done in this life, so far.
NC:
Are there any medicine men, or healers, that you know of today that practice healing
people here in the valley?
DC:
I’m not too sure, but some of them come in and they pray for you with their own—maybe
not medicine, but they just pray to the Great Spirit that you’re helped. It’s just like going
to church, I guess, where you’re asked for blessings, and sometimes they’re not really
involved with peyote and all that. I believe lot of times, when you go out and pick up
some medicines like the roots—the antappitseh kwana, and totsa—those are healing
stuff. And usually, what our people do—at least, that’s what my mother did, is when we
went out to get totsa, she’d talk to it, to the totsa, and ask that it would help us in some
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way. We use totsa in smoking when we got a cold, and then when it’s dry we use it like
tobacco, I guess. And they even cook it. They boil it. And with that, they put it on your
wounds, if you’ve got a sore that’s not healing properly. Or sometimes, I remember, my
mother got this totsa, and she gave it to little Stevie Hall. Stevie Hall had this baby—I
call it a “baby disease.” It was, something was wrong with the body at that time. You get
it on your cheeks real bad, and some on your legs. And my mother used to—well,
Stevie’s mother said, “I’m getting tired of this, now!” Because I kept encouraging her,
“Why don’t you try that on him? That might help his face.” Little guy would be sitting
there, digging, scratching his face. So she finally says, “I’m tired of all this. Will
Grandma help me?” And I says, “Sure, take him over there.” So they boiled it, and they
put that on him, and they prayed with it and everything, and she sent Judy home with that
medicine, and she put it on his face. And it cured it! And I think a lot of people did—they
were healers, I might say. The same way with the antapittseh kwana. And when my sister
was sick, laying in the hospital, she was paralyzed from the shoulders down. Some kind
of a disease of the nerves, I guess—because she couldn’t walk for a month. In them days,
too, the hospitals thought that peyote was bad. Or any kind of Indian medicine. But my
mother used to take a jar of that. They just kept my sister in the hospital for about nine
months up here. And she used to boil that antapittseh kwana. It’s just leaves. And she
used to have her drink that, with a straw. And my mother noticed that when she started
doing that to her, she had catheterization, so she wouldn’t be wetting her bed. And it
cleared it up. Her pee became real clear. Eventually, my sister started walking again. And
maybe it was through that, too, but she got blessings from Guy Manning, and Tom
Premo, and then—Tom Premo, and who was the other man? Louie Dave. They went up
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and blessed her. They anointed her with oil. And after a while, she started walking again.
So they were healers, too. In the whiteman way, through the church. And I believe that
we should always respect religion in some way. Because I believe it’s helped.
NC:
Okay, next, in closing, Delores, what are some—I guess advice, or important things that
you’d like to pass on to your grandchildren, or to the young people, that are important to
you, that you think that they should be made aware of, and that they should maybe
practice or… along that line?
DC:
Well, one thing I got for my grandchildren, and I gave my relatives around here to use—
they’re all relatives here, in some way—is, have respect. I think that respect can take you
a long way, when you respect everything around you. You respect your elders. You
respect your mother and father, and you listen to them, regardless of whether you don’t
like what they’re telling you. They may have been through it before, and they don’t want
you to be doing what they had done. And this is one reason why they would like for you
to be better. And respect food, healthy foods. Eat that instead of junk food. We’ve got
some hard times coming. I think it’s almost starting now, I think that’s happening. And
one thing I really like: I talked with some of my grandchildren, [__inaudible at 47:49__]
a little bit with Rachel’s boys, but—respecting a woman. I’ve told them that. You come
from a woman. You were born through a woman. You’re part of your mother. And you
don’t go and take a girl out and take advantage of her. And then make fun of her. Don’t
go with anybody else and rape anybody, gang a girl. That is very wrong. And that’s one
thing that I’ve talked with them. I’m hoping that the rest of the kids around will do that.
And one thing that I have done, which I am doing now, is I take my little grandson,
Monty, to the senior citizen’s when I can. And he’s got to go over there and shake the—
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“grampies” and the “grammies,” he calls them—their hands or hugs them. And he goes
over there, and he empties their plates and put it in the trash. And so, I think that’s my
way of trying to teach respect to him. So he could help them as he get older. I’ve noticed
sometimes some of the kids will say, “Who’s that?” And they don’t know. And I always
say, “You don’t say that! You know everybody here! If you don’t know them, they needs
something done, go over there and ask, and say, ‘Well, I’m Delores’s grandson. Can I
help you?’” Or something. And—I feel old! [Laughter] But, I think respect is something
that we should all do. And sometimes, we have our bad days, maybe this person is
hurting and they may growl at you sometimes. But diabetics are bad. They have bad days.
You don’t know when they’re having good days. Sometimes, like before when my mom
was sick with diabetes, and would go down there and start talking, you know, “I’m happy
to be here with you.” I’d ask her, “How you doing mom?” She’d say, “Lousy!” And that
tells me that she’s not feeling so good. She’s hurting somewhere. And you have to
respect that. You just don’t turn around now and walk off or anything. But I think we
have to show respect, and not lose that. I think a long time ago, our older people did have
respect for one another. That’s about all, I guess.
[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
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
Delores Cummings
Location
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Owyhee, NV [Duck Valley Reservation]
Original Format
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DVD and VOB Format
Duration
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00:50:30
Transcription
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http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/459
Dublin Core
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Title
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Delores Cummings - Oral History (06/20/2008)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral History Interview with Delores Cummings, Western Shoshone from Duck Valley Reservation, NV, on 06/20/2008
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Delores Shaw Cummings was the daughter of Maria Jones and Kelly Shaw Sr. Her lineage is that of the Dosa Wihi (White Knife) clan. She explains her family’s journey towards Duck Valley Reservation by means of a horse and buggy. She describes growing up on the Duck Valley Reservation, and the native traditions that were practiced in regards to the rights of passage and death. She also tells us a story of the Mother Bear and the Mother Doe and Her Fawn as told to her by her mother. She also speaks of the traditional practices associated with the Fourth of July gathering in Duck Valley and the peyote meetings. She goes on to leave a message for the younger generations – respect.</p>
Video pending <br /> <a title="Delores Cummings Oral History Transcript" href="/omeka/files/original/6f59b3830b97effc7197139ec5224afb.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read Delores Cummings 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 017
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
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06/20/2008 [20 June 2008]; 2008 June 20
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/321
Language
A language of the resource
English
Community
Crossroads
Duck Valley
folktale
GBIA
ranching
Shoshone
Story
traditional medicines
traditions
-
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
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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
Source
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 027
Publisher
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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
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/68b1e6bc52ad8e733de76925b8c54a26.jpg
1ce882b9f8510f5a121e94c10ee155c7
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/9efa92ba00f6da9497be61fe35430e01.pdf
7faee4f774f2c0406aa22d413c288d22
PDF Text
Text
Clara
Woodson
&
Gracie
Begay
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
005
Oral
History
Interview
by
Joe
Duce=e
March
16,
2006
Elko,
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 005
Interviewee: Clara Woodson and Gracie Begay
Interviewer: Joe Ducette
Date: June 20, 2006
W:
Well, I was born in Battle Mountain, Nevada, June 20th, 1920. I lived with all my
grandparents. And my grandfather was alive, too, at that time. And he was the only male
in the family. The rest were all widows, or divorcee, or whatever you call it! [Laughter]
And, but I lived with all of them. And I lived with my great-great grandmother for 12
years, because I was 12 when she passed on. But I lived with the rest. After she passed
on, I lived with my great-grandmother, Mary Horton, that you see in the picture. She goes
to work every day for the Horton family in Battle Mountain. And where she got that
name of “Horton,” she worked for a Jim Horton that had the grocery store, dry goods
store, right there in Battle Mountain where the Owl Café is, and casino. That used to be
his store. So, my great-grandmother Mary worked for them for all these years. But I
didn’t see this part of it, I just heard this one. They told me that Mr. Horton told her that
she’s been in his family for so long, that he was going to give his name to her. So that’s
how she became Mary Horton. Whether there had been any papers drawn, or anything
like that, I don’t know. That part I don’t know. So, she became Mary Horton. So, she was
Mary Horton until the day she passed on. And she worked for these people all these
years. She was already in her hundreds, when she used to go to work, about a mile and a
half each way. And she was active. And never stopped for anything. When she gets
started, she just walks until she gets there, and walks until she gets back. And she worked
there for many, many years—until I grew up, and then when I grew up, I took over her
job, because she got to the point where she couldn’t work anymore. So I worked there for
quite a few years, too, after that.
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I’m from Shoshone, in Battle Mountain. And at that time, our chief in Battle Mountain
and Austin area was Tutuwa. And he was the chief on that side, whereas Te-Moak was on
this side. And so he’s been a chief for all those years, and he, that was his responsibility,
was the area on that side.
D:
And then, did you have a nickname as a child, or…?
W:
Waiyu. Wai-yu. I don’t know what it means. Do you? [Laughter] Yeah. Waiyu.
D:
What was life like growing up?
W:
Wonderful. We didn’t know what hardship was, because we were just having too much
fun! [Laughter] We lived in the hills for many years, and we didn’t know what it was to
struggle because my grandfather was a good provider.
D:
What was your house like?
W:
We lived in tents. And sometimes, we lived in—
B:
Wikiups.
W:
Huh? What they call it? Wikiup, yeah. So, wherever we wanted to go, that’s where was
our home.
D:
Can you describe what a wikiup is like?
W:
It’s sagebrush. Just all built together. Together, and packed together somehow, I don’t
know. But that’s how it was. And then the tent was a regular tent that you buy from any
store. So we lived in that for years and years. And we had, my grandfather had plenty of
horses, and he had plenty of wagons, and we lived between Battle Mountain and Austin,
up in there, in King Creek area. And my grandfather was given some land up in that area.
I guess it’s registered in Austin, because Austin at that time was county seat. So, he was
given that strip of land back in there. So that’s where we lived for many years. So, twice,
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maybe three times a year, he makes a trip into Austin, or he makes a trip into Battle
Mountain, gets all his supplies. The rest, he grew. And he’d hunt. So we always had
plenty to eat. So, we were—and we were never sick. We never had to go to a doctor that I
would even remember. We never had taken any medicine, except an herb for a sore throat
once in a while. But we were never sick. And we were just happy as a lark! [Laughter]
D:
When—as children, what did you do for fun?
W:
Anything you wanted to do. You can go for walks, you can climb trees, you can go
wading, whatever. It’s there.
B:
Picking pinenuts.
W:
Yeah. Pinenuts, and berries.
B:
Berries.
W:
Everything, was just right there. So, whatever you want to do.
D:
Did you have any games that you played?
W:
Mmhm, yeah. Different kind of games that they taught us how to play. So, like, whatever.
D:
What kind, or don’t you remember?
W:
Well, one was kick the—what they call kick, they made a ball out of a rag, like a ball.
And then you kick it. No! You don’t kick it, you take a stick, you hit it with a stick.
Remember?
B:
Unnnhh, I don’t remember that part! [Laughter]
W:
Yeah, you hit it with a stick, and that was it. So… But, at least, whatever you wanted to
play, it was there. So. But, everybody was happy. Nobody, there was no fighting, no
nothing. There was no booze, so there was nothing like that. So everybody was happy.
When people stopped by, they know that my grandfather always had plenty of food, so
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whoever’s going through always stopped by for two or three days, and visit, and he gives
them enough food to go wherever they’re going to go.
D:
What kind of food did you have as kids?
W:
Whatever you—
B:
Whatever.
W:
Everything. Everything was there. We had wild potatoes, we had onions, we had carrots.
B:
Wild carrots.
W:
Wild berries, and...
B:
Pinenuts.
W:
Pinenuts.
B:
Jackrabbits.
W:
Berries. Jackrabbits, squirrels. You name it, it was there. Deer. Want to go fishing,
there’s fish. You name it, it’s there. And it was free. And you didn’t have to ask anybody,
or worry about anybody telling you you can’t hunt here or you can’t hunt there. And he
made, my grandfather made ropes for the ranchers. He made cowhide ropes, and
whatever the horses, they call it. What they, they’re on their heads. Conchos?
B:
Mmhm.
W:
Yeah, he made all of that. And made all kinds of stuff for horse. And lot of smaller ropes,
and bigger ropes for bigger wagons and stuff like that. But he did all of that. He took care
of all the horses for all those ranchers. So he worked several ranches down there. And
then, when his sons got older, they followed his footsteps, and so they did the same thing,
too. The grandparents—the grandmothers, every night is storytime. And like I said, we’re
up there in the open, in the tents, and there’s two, three kids all out there, and they all go
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to bed at the same time. So, that’s when the storytime comes. And what you do when
they tell you a story, you repeat what they say. And, so, she tells the story, and pretty
soon she only hears maybe five voices. And then she knows one’s down. And then she
keeps on telling, and then there’s three, and then there’s two, and then pretty soon there’s
no more. And that’s the end of the story. But you’ve got to remember where it ended,
because the next night it’s going to continue from there. So, every night, we have to have
stories before we went to bed.
D:
Do you remember any of the stories?
W:
God, it’s been so long, I don’t even remember! [Laughter] There’s a lot of those stories,
most of them was stories that they say how the world was made, and you know, about
God, and things like that. And how things originated, where they came from, and it’s
stuff like that.
B:
I was born in Austin, Nevada, in 1935. Have both my parents, the pictures. When I was
growing up, my—well, in the earlier days, my mom, when they first went to school, she
said that the superintendent came and they were all hiding in the sagebrush. They didn’t
want to go to school. And so they finally caught them, and some of them got sent to
Stewart, but my mom said she was glad that she went to school to the eighth grade. And
she was thankful for that, because she knew how to read and write. And she knew how to
count money. She was smart at math and all this kind of stuff. And so she was always
thankful that she went to school. But my aunt and them never went to school, and all she
had learned was how to write her name. That was Adele. And my mom used to work for
the Hiskys, when she was a young girl, like her grandma did. And she said she used to
save the soaps, you know, from when she was cleaning house, and from the bathtubs and
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stuff. She used to save all the soap. Then she’d take it home and make soap out of it to
wash her school clothes with. And she’d heat her own water and stuff. She told me all
about that, you know. And so, when she got—I’m getting way ahead of myself. My
grandma said that when they were, when she was a young girl, she remembered the
soldiers coming, she said. I don’t know where that was, by Reese River someplace. By
Austin. She said lots of soldiers came during the big flood, and she says they took them
in wagons. I guess that’s when they moved them to Austin. And she was, she said they
was giving them blankets and food and stuff. But she said lot of the people got sick from
those blankets and stuff. And she said, “They promised us money,” and she said, “We no
see no money.” That’s what she was telling us, you remember. “We no see no money.”
So…
W:
We still don’t. [Laughter]
B:
Yeah! [Laughter] Still haven’t seen it! So then she moved, we moved to Battle Mountain.
And in the, must have been the 19—I must have been six years—no, about three years
old. Maybe 1935. Or was it 1937? And there was a little school down here in Beowawe,
in Dunphy. Dunphy, Nevada, where my dad was working for the Hilltop Mine. And so
we moved to Dunphy, Nevada, in Ricksie’s, they used to call it. You know where I’m
talking about down here? There was a little school there. There was a store, run by Mrs.
Wallace, and there was a school there, and they had cabins. I think there was ten cabins.
That’s where I went to school in kindergarten. And my sister must have been in the first
grade, and my older brother Edward, I think he was probably in the third grade or
something like that. But we went to school in Dunphy. And I remember my teacher’s
name was Christine Cox, and she was, we went to school there. That’s the time the kids
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used to first make those rubber guns, you know, with the—wooden rubber guns? And I
remember one of the boys, young boys, got his eye put out with that rubber gun, because
it slipped, hit him in the eye. That’s when we were in Dunphy. Then we moved to Battle
Mountain, and I went to first grade there. And I grew up in Battle Mountain. My dad built
his own house, and he built—we had a well that he dug by his self, and he used to buy
watermelons, and bacons, and hams, food, and put them down in the well. And they used
to be nice and cool. We never had refrigeration, and we never had electricity. And, so he
made his own well, and he made his own—we used to have to go out and get the ice from
the railroad. Because he worked for the railroad, and they used to dump these big chunks
of ice from the ice cars. And we had, us kids had to go over there every morning and pick
up the ice with a wheelbarrow and wheel it back home. That’s what my mom used for her
iced tea, and they had a, like a swamp cooler, made out of gunnysacks and screen. Sets
up high like this on the—and that was our refrigeration. With the ice that we picked from
the railroad.
D:
What did you do for fun?
B:
Well, there wasn’t much fun in those days, because we didn’t live—we were in public
schools, and we didn’t live up on the Colonies. We didn’t live on the reservation,
colonies. We always lived downtown, and away from friends, really. And so we just went
to school, and learned discipline early. Not like it is today. We had to learn to be, get
home a certain time and all this, or there was the willow tree. And boy, you got willowed
if you didn’t mind! You know. Now, I remember Battle Mountain, too, and Clara’s, her
great-grandma. Mary Horton and Aggie and them. They used to make rabbit blankets, out
of the rabbit fur. Jackrabbit fur. And I can remember them sewing those blankets
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together. And they always had those rabbit blankets, remember they called them? Used to
put them down on the floor, and they used to sleep on them.
W:
Oh, there’s nothing like a rabbit blankets.
B:
Yeah! [Laughter]
W:
And that’s all you need, is one blanket. [Laughter]
B:
And I remember her doing that. So in my time, generation, I’ve known five generations
of people that lived past their hundreds. And I’m proud of that, because I can still
remember them.
D:
Who are they?
B:
Well, we had… I wrote down their, let’s start with Mary Horton—and her name was
Kangaroo, her nickname. And I didn’t know ‘til now where she got her name, the Mary
Horton, until I just heard it from her just now. And she was born in 1859, she died in
1974. And she was the mother of Aggie Jackson. No, wait a minute, I’ve got that wrong.
Mary Horton was born 1825, and she died in 1956. Mary Horton. Aggie Jackson was
born 1859, and then she died in 1974. Ida Blossom Long, a daughter of Aggie Jackson,
was born October 5, 1907, and she died July 5, 1988. Glenda Blossom Johnson was the
daughter of Ida Johnson, but I don’t have her death listed down. Harlan Jackson, son of
Aggie Jackson, died age 101 in Battle Mountain. Then you had Millie Cavanaugh,
daughter of Aggie Jackson, which is Clara’s mom. Then Jerry Jackson, son of Aggie
Jackson. And I’ve got Clara Blossom Woodson, daughter of Millie Cavanaugh. Then I
got Dan Blossom Cavanaugh down here, the son of Millie and Louie Cavanaugh. That’s
the generations. Then on my mom’s side of the family, I remember that Joe Gilbert—and
I didn’t write those down, I didn’t have time, really—but my grandma, and her great-
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great grandma was the same as my mom’s. Said she used to call it, little, oh, what was
her name?
W:
Josie.
B:
Yeah. You said it. What was her name? Jenny—not Jenny, um… You said that was
buried in Battle Mountain, at 117? That was Ton ti?
W:
Tii Tsosie.
B:
Uh-huh.
W:
Yeah. That’s little Peggy.
B:
Yeah! Little Peggy. Peggy, they called her. And, then my grandma died at 104 years old.
And she had sisters, they all lived into the hundreds. And I’ve known, from my
generation, the five generations, I remember them. Annie Dusain. She was a hundred and
something, and she was—used to walk with a cane. She used to walk real fast. They
always had apples when we used to go over to their house, and she used to say, “Oh, oh
oh! Little Grace! Oh, oh, oh!” She used to call me. She little old lady, who stood about
this high. But she grew to a little old age. And so that’s something to be proud of,
knowing in my lifetime, the generations. Don’t really—I don’t really know what they
wanted to have. But, I’m just going to try my best from the time that my grandma told us.
D:
Do you remember any stories from when you were young that your grandmother told
you?
B:
Well, she used to tell us about the—and which we don’t practice today—she used to
drink her Indian Tea every day. They used to call it, what, Indian Tea? And every day,
she drank a fourth of a cup of that. Every day without fail. She was not sick. She died of
old age. She only had little bit of arthritis in her neck. But that’s all.
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D:
And do you know what the Indian tea was made of?
B:
Pardon?
D:
Do you know what the Indian tea was made of?
W:
Tea. The Indian Tea. Mormon Tea [Shoshone at 20:29].
B:
Yeah.
W:
Mormon Tea, they call it Mormon Tea.
B:
They call it Mormon Tea. But it was the sage tea.
D:
So made from sagebrush.
W:
It’s made just like a sage—it grows like a sagebrush.
B:
Grows in the wild.
W:
It grow wild up in the mountains. Like, in Eureka. That whole mountain will just be
covered in the spring with that. You can see it right from the road.
B:
Purple flowers.
W:
Yeah. Just go out there, and—
B:
In those days, there was no diabetes.
W:
No.
B:
In those days, there was no heart disease. And they smoked cigarettes, and they smoked,
just—
W:
Indian—
B:
Indian tobacco. Indian sage. They got pinenuts. I remember, we used to have sacks of
pinenuts, sitting, you know, in the rooms. You don’t see that anymore today. You have to
go out and buy them because we can’t, just can’t get out and do it anymore!
W:
It’s so many pounds. You’re allowed so many pounds, anyhow.
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B:
Arthritis and everything else, we can’t, not active like our elders were. And we used to go
down to Twenty-Five Ranch and get the buckberries. Remember the weyem?
W:
Yeah.
B:
And that’s all closed off now. You know, to the freeway and stuff. So. We used to get
tubs of it.
W:
Everything is closed or locked up.
B:
Yeah, everything is closed, now. Everything.
W:
Gates are locked.
B:
Berries.
W:
Can’t go anyplace. Mm-mm.
B:
And that’s what I remember about growing up. And then, of course I went to school in
Battle Mountain, and all through my high school years. And my mom had nine children.
Two girls and seven boys. And we all grew up in Battle Mountain. But when we moved
to the South Fork reservation in 1952, there was no high school there. And I was a junior
in high school. So I never got to finish my high school. I never got to graduate. Because
we moved, and there was no high school where I went. And my brothers, same thing.
They had to—my parents had to board them out so they can go to school, because we
didn’t have no school in South Fork. Up to the eighth grade.
D:
Any Shoshone traditions that you can, want to pass on, or you can remember…?
B:
Oh… That’s what my kids always say. “Mom, where’s your traditions?” And I really
don’t know of any traditions. She probably knows more about that than I do, because my
dad was a Irishman. He was white, and my mom was Shoshone. She never talked to us
about things like that. But Clara grew up with all that stuff. I didn’t.
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W:
I do remember that Aggie—which is in that five generation deal—she told me ever since
I was a little girl, she told me, she says that she worked for an Indian agent here in Elko,
when she was a young woman. And she said that she did domestic work at the house. I
don’t know how long she’s worked for this man. And she says, one day, she says, he
came in, and she was doing some dusting in the living room, and—he had a office right
off of the living room. So he said to her, he said, “Aggie?” And she says, “Yeah.” He
said, “You see that great big trunk sitting by the window there?” She says, “Yeah.” [He]
says, “That trunk is full of things that you Indian people can have. It belongs to you.
Everything in there is about the Indian people. You people have so much money! If you
were to get this money, you would never have to work for anybody else. And you would
never have to sell your land to anybody else. If you can get your people together, we’ll
open this trunk, and I’ll give you all the papers.” And he says, “You can take that, and tell
the government you want this money. And when you ask for this money, after you get
together, what you call this money is, it’s called ‘Ancestor Money.’ Nothing else. When
you’re referring to this, you call it Ancestor Money, because that’s what the white settlers
put on it when they put that aside for destruction of your land, and what they have done
to your land, and how they ruined everything as they went through. Here they were good
enough to show them where to hunt, where to get their clean water. And when they left,
they put some stuff in it so that the Indian people can die from it.” And which a lot of
them did. And he says, “All this money was set aside in this great big pot. And this is
supposed to be your money, the rest of your life. They have to pay you for everything
that they have done on this earth, as they went through. It is your money, so it’s called the
Ancestor Money. It is yours. And there is a lot of it.” So all the time, when I was growing
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up, Aggie would tell me about this money. And she’d tell me and tell me. And she said,
“When you grow up, I want you to look into it. And I want you to get with your people,
and the young people, your generation, and see if you can get that money. Be sure you
call it the Ancestor Money.” So, anyway, this went on and on. All through the years. And
then, when they start having meetings about this land sale and all this, she would go to
that, and she would try to tell these young people that’s sitting behind a desk here, about
what this Indian agent told her. And all they do is brush her aside. They’d say, “Oh,
you’re old, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” That’s all they ever told her. So
she got to the point where she don’t say it any more. And the last meeting was, when they
had this Broken Treaty. She told them then. She said, “Get the Ancestor Money. You
don’t have to sell your land, just get the Ancestor Money.” And then, the day that she
died, that’s the last thing she said. “Please get your family and everybody together and
get this Ancestor Money.” But nobody ever listened to her. So that was her only worries,
is that nobody will ever get it. And so, today, they’re still fighting it, and they’re still
throwing that land deal in! Did you notice in the paper?
B:
Yeah.
W:
Always throwing that land deal. And he told her, “This has nothing to do with your land.
This is your money set aside for you.”
B:
Which we never got. Which we’re still waiting for.
W:
Well, it’s just like you told that lady: “Do you have the money, or not?” [Laughter]
D:
Any other traditions you remember?
B:
So, that was—mostly, a lot of that. Mostly, what she would tell us is the right—wrong
and right, in this world. How to live. What you do. What you shouldn’t do. How you
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raise your family. And just little things that, to give you an idea, you shouldn’t do this
and you shouldn’t do that. Mostly, for your own good, taught to raise your family. How
you treat your family. And mostly, to survive.
D:
Any stories like, with the, Mr. Coyote, or anything like that?
B:
Yeah—
W:
Yeah, lot of those stories, yeah.
B:
Itsappe.
W:
Yeah, Itsappe, Itsappe. Lot of those stories.
B:
They call—
D:
Got one you can tell us?
B:
Are we still talking, then? Should I—
D:
Yeah.
B:
Okay. They used to say, when somebody’s making a joke or something, they say, “Oh,
that’s the Itsappe. That’s Coyote, they’re acting funny.” They always use that itsappe
word, in Shoshone for coyote. The itsappe. “Oh, you’re being itsappe, they used to say, if
they thought you weren’t telling the truth, or joking, or something. But there are a lot of
stories about that, about the Coyote, if we really had the time now to—
W:
Well, there was two brothers. The older brother was the honest one. He did right by
everything. And his younger brother, he was all mischief. He’s always doing things, he
never does anything right. No matter what his older brother tells him, he says, “Yeah,
yeah, I’ll do it.” So, that’s why, now, when the Indian people refer to somebody here that
never tells the truth, they always say, “Ehh, Itsappe.”
B:
Yeah.
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W:
The young brother. [Laughter] But lot of that is kind of… not good to tell. [Laughter]
B:
Yeah!
W:
How it’s originated—yeah, you don’t want to hear that.
B:
But then, in them days, they used to have pinenuts and everything there. It’s not seen
anymore, because we don’t teach our young generations right way to go out and—
because they used to go out and hunt, and pick pinenuts, and put them up, and dig holes,
and put the cones in to roast, and they’d pack them up on their back, and go to another
camp, and pack some more. All winter long, they had the sacks of pinenuts in the house.
We’re always eating pinenuts, all winter long. Pinenut gravy, and the house always
smelled of pinenuts. We’re still trying to get our younger generation to try to find out,
and try to learn them how to go out and, do get the pinenuts, and show them that they
have to put an offering down.
W:
Oh, you never pick anything without an offering.
B:
Yeah, you always offer.
W:
Always offer. Always pray for whatever you—
B:
A nickel, penny, anything, that offering to the Mother Earth, for plentiful food. And you
always have food every year. Fruit off the trees and things. Until they started destroying
the trees. And I guess you’ve seen the Broken Treaty at Battle Mountain, which was very
sad. Makes you cry, when you see that. Every time I see that film, it makes me cry.
W:
[Shoshone at 31:30] Itsappe __
B:
Oh, the funny thing I could tell them about—
W:
California. California [Shoshone at 31:34].
B:
Do you mean tell about when they tell a lie? Call them Itsappe? I already said that.
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C:
Well, maybe some of the ones like, the handgame story? Itsappe [__inaudible at
31:46__].
B:
Oh, when they playing hand games?
C:
Playing hand games, yeah. He was ready to bet his mukua, [Shoshone at 31:54]. Maybe
you could tell that.
B:
Oh, I didn’t know about that.
W:
Well, he bet everything else.
C:
Yeah, he bet everything else.
W:
He bet everything else, he bet a lie, and to tell the truth, and all of that. And then when it
came to death, he said to his brother, he says, “I’m going to bet on death.” And his
brother says, “What are you going to bet?” He said, “Well, I’m going to bet, and I’m
going to say, ‘I think it feels good if we just die one time.’” You heard that one? Yeah.
And his brother says, “You’re going to be sorry! You’re going to get hurt one of these
days, and you’re going to be sorry.” And his brother said, the younger, mischievous one
said, “Nah, I ain’t going to be sorry.” And then right after that, his brother’s son got
killed. And then he came back to his brother. He says, “What did you say about wanting
to just die one time?” He start discussing that with his brother. And his brother was so
disgusted with him, he says, “I don’t want to talk about it. You said it’d feel good if we
died just one time.” He says, “No, I really didn’t mean that. I think dying twice would be
better.” And his brother says, “No. It’s already done. You lost it.” So he lost his son, and
his son didn’t come back. That was one of them.
C:
So before that, when people died twice, how long did it take before they used to come
back to life the second time?
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W:
Well, your—when the person—well, that’s only just a few years back. They only, if a
person dies, they keep you five days. They don’t bury you before five days. Because
there’s couple of times in Austin, I don’t remember which one it was, one of our relatives
died, and I think on the fourth day or something like that, they took him to the cemetery,
and they always have a last showing at the cemetery. And so, when he was, they open the
coffin and everything else, everybody praying and everything else, and he sat up in the
coffin. And he looked around, and everybody’s at the cemetery, and everybody is crying
and all that. He looked around, and he said, “What did I tell you? You wait five days for a
person, to declare them dead.” He says, “You never bury them before the fifth day.”
B:
I’ll be darned.
W:
Yeah.
B:
See, I never knew that.
W:
But he came to. And he says, “Let this be a lesson to you. You always leave the body for
five days. And you don’t bury before.”
C:
So that’s why the traditional Shoshones believed in not getting embalmed, right?
W:
Yeah. Mmhm.
C:
They kept the body, without getting the embalmment.
W:
And you kept it five days.
C:
And so after the second time they come to life, how long do they usually live?
W:
I don’t know about that part. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one. Of how long they
lived. But, there’s some strange stuff, too, that—like, Maggie, that she turns to a wolf.
B:
Oh! See, she knows things that I don’t. That’s why—
W:
Yeah. Maggie, you know, whatshername? Jean Joe’s sister?
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B:
Oh, Giannetti.
W:
Giannetti. Well, it was their grandmother.
B:
Elsie.
W:
No, Maggie.
B:
Oh, Maggie. Yeah.
W:
They say that there’s times that she turns to a wolf. And how they knew that was, they
lived in Letley, right out of Austin, just a few miles out of Austin. There is a place called
Letley, and that’s the territory that Tutuwa, that was his area. And so they were all living
down there. And I guess her husband beat up on her. So, she start running out, outside.
And the snow was so deep. So, her husband figures, “Oh, she ain’t going to go very far.”
Snow’s so deep, you know. So he waited. And then, after a while, he poked his head out,
see if he could see her, because all flat ground. And he don’t see her anyplace. And he
just kept looking and looking. Never saw her. So he was getting kind of worried. So he
went down to his buddy’s place there, and he told his buddy. He says, “Well, I did
something bad this morning. I beat up on my wife, and she took off. She hasn’t been
back, and you can’t see her. I’ve looked and looked, can’t see her anyplace.” He says,
“Well, let’s saddle up and follow her.” So, they start to follow her. Going towards Austin,
they saw her tracks, going to Austin. So they followed it and followed it, all the way. And
just a little ways out of Austin, it was the track of a wolf. He says, “Well, this is a wolf
track!” He says, “Are you sure?” He says, “Yeah! Get down here and look at it!” So they
looked at it, and they kept going and going and going, all the way into Austin. It was a
wolf track. And there used to be a Chinese guy there that had a laundry. And he was
married to one of our kinfolks.
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B:
Yeah.
W:
Yeah. Motti. Remember Motti? Yeah. She went to Motti’s house. And all the tracks went
clear down there, except to, pretty close to the laundry. Then was her footprints to the
laundry. So him and her husband knock on the door, and he says, “Is so-and-so here?”
“Yeah, yeah, she’s in here having coffee. Come on in.” [Laughter] But they say that’s
what she used to do.
B:
Fact of the matter is, the house that I was born in is supposed to still be standing. That’s
what Mary McCloud told me.
D:
You mean in Austin?
B:
Mmhm. And also, there’s a white rock, over there to the, Chauncey used to talk about.
She said there’s a writing on there in white chalk, on a rock. And me and Ida, we were
supposed to go find it, and we never did. Remember?
W:
Mmhm.
B:
We were going to take a trip to Austin and see if we could find that rock, but she said
that’s where the treaty was signed. The Tututwa treaty. We never followed up on it.
Whether it’s still there or not—I imagine it is, probably, but it’d take a researchers unit to
go up there. Maybe with the EPA people, we can go there.
W:
Oh, I know Vert Avery said it was in the courthouse. The original was in the courthouse.
And Tutuwa was given a copy. See?
B:
Oh.
C:
Well, in terms of other stories, do you guys know the pine nut story? Where the animals
got together and went after the pinenut? And that Itsappe was involved again? Can you
tell that one?
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W:
Yeah, the Itsappe is the one that in the Owyhee area, they were having that handgame.
He started betting all the food.
B:
Yeah, that’s what—the food.
W:
Yeah, he start betting on the food. He lost that.
C:
Can you go ahead and tell that story?
W:
Yeah. But I don’t remember just—
B:
She probably knows.
W:
What he was doing is, he was betting everything. And he was losing it. Was losing just
about everything. And they said something about the pinenuts. He says, “I’m going to bet
the pinenuts.” And he says, “No, you better not do that.” He says, “Yeah, I am.” And it
was something I can’t remember now, because—which bird has an extended tongue?
C:
The woodpecker?
W:
The woodpecker? Is that they say has another extension on the tongue?
B:
Oh, I guess.
W:
Yeah. And they said that they made him be the carrier of the pinenuts.
B:
Oh, I remember!
W:
Because they said that everybody tried to get that pinenut, and they said they couldn’t
reach it. They couldn’t get to the pinenut to take it away so that they could take it out of
Owyhee and come towards Beowawe, someplace in there. So they were going to bring it
this way. And so, they says, “Well, this one bird has that extension on his tongue.” So the
bird, they called him, ask him, if he can reach the pinenut that’s over here because they
already lost it in the handgame. So he says, “You can get it. Make your tongue go as far
as you can. You can get it, and then you can take the pinenut and go towards Beowawe
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area and through there. And so the bird went over there, and he says he put his tongue out
there, and he kept going way out there, and he finally got it, and he reached the pinenut.
And that’s how he took the pinenut out of Owyhee area, and brought it into Eureka. And
that’s why there’s lot of pinenuts in that area. Eureka.
B:
Oh, really? There is a lot.
W:
Austin and all that. And that’s where he planted it.
B:
And there is lot of pinenuts out there, too, really.
W:
Austin area and all back in through there is lot of pinenuts. Going towards Ely. And
going towards—
C:
So what type of food, or what type of dishes did Shoshone people make with pinenuts,
long time ago?
B:
Pinenut gravy.
W:
You mean the dishes?
C:
Like, the type of foods they prepared.
W:
With the pinenuts?
C:
With the pinenut, uh-huh.
W:
Well, I don’t know—what do you call it, willow?
B:
I don’t know, I think they put char—
W:
I think it’s involved with willow. It’s weaved in the willow. I know they used the jug for,
with the willow jugs. And it’s best drinking water, too. And make this great big
container, and they coat it with pitch.
B:
Pine pitch.
W:
Yeah. And it seals it all off.
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B:
They make their pinenut gravy in that.
W:
So, that’s how they keep the water.
[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
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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
Clara Woodson and Gracie Begay
Location
The location of the interview
Elko (GBC Campus)
Transcription
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Transcript available: http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/429
Original Format
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DVD and VOB Format
Duration
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00:43:06
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
Clara Woodson and Gracie Begay Oral History (03/16/2006)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral History interview with Clara Woodson and Gracie Begay, Western Shoshone from Elko and Wells, NV on 16 March 2006.
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Oral History interview with Clara Woodson and Gracie Begay, Western Shoshone from Elko and Wells, NV on 16 March 2006.</p>
<p>Clara Woodson was born in Battle Mountain. She tells us about her family and who they worked for, how they lived, and what traditions that they had. She describes the sociopolitical setup of the Great Basin region in relation to Chief Te-Moak and Tutuwa. She illustrates how her grandfather still used wagons and horses to get his supplies. She also explains what type of traditional food that they hunted and gathered. Gracie Begay was born in Austin where her family lived. She tells us of her families experience with school, and when the soldiers came into the area. They both tell us about where and how they lived in Battle Mountain. They also speak of some of the traditional Shoshone stories such as Coyote and the Hand game.</p>
<p>Interviewed by Joe Doucette for the Great Basin Indian Archive</p>
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 005
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03/16/2006 [16 March 2006]; 2006-03-16
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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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English
Battle Mountain
Chief Te-Moak
Chief Tutuwa
claims
Community
Crossroads
folktale
GBIA
Shoshone
Story
traditional food
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PDF Text
Text
Earl
and
Beverly
Crum
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
004
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
February
1,
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 004
Interviewee: Earl and Beverly Crum
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: February 1, 2006
BC:
The songs, the Newe hupia, that Earl and I share with people, are those songs that have
been handed down through the oral tradition. It means you learn it from somebody older
than yourself. The somebody who is older than yourself has learned it from somebody
older than themselves. And so that’s the way it makes its way down, that’s the way oral
tradition continues. But then, one day, if you stop doing that—
EC:
What I learned for my own personal self is that, I learned it from my—my mother
recorded some songs for me. And she put it on tape. That’s how I learned most of them.
But the ones we have, we are singing, were something that I had heard at different round
dances. We call it Fandango. And possibly from older people that I’ve contacted in my
lifetime, you know, as a child, or otherwise as I was growing up. I grew up with this
stuff. So round dances is an old tradition with the Shoshone people. It goes way, way,
way back. It’s—it has to do with the closeness of the people. And the main thing is, the
songs that goes with the dance. If you listen to the words, you interpret it. Lot of them,
many songs can be interpreted in different ways. So if the people are dancing, one might
interpret it one way, and another one might interpret it in a different way. But, I mean,
generally, you had one central, main meaning. There are many, many round dance songs.
Many more than handgame or bear dance. And I’m talking about with the few handgame
songs, especially those that have words in it. And I kind of have a leaning toward that.
But, most all round dances have words. And there’s a story to tell. Where in hand game,
it’s just fun on it. And the bear dance has lots of words, but it’s something that has been
going on for years and years. They don’t do that anymore, I don’t think. When they talk
about the Ute bear dance, well, that’s different altogether. That’s their culture. But we
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have that culture, too. And all of our bear dance song have words. And then, all bear
dances don’t have—they’re not singing about a bear. Some of them has to do with
people, or other animals, like birds, or… That’s what those are about. So, like I say, both
kinds, but...
BC:
Well, we try to pick songs that are—like you told us last fall, for example. You said,
“This is going to be about water. The issue of water.” [Shoshone at 4:41] You told us
already what the topic was. So, we just looked down into our songs, and those things that,
songs that were about water in particular. Some things that had to do with the issue of
water. No matter our closeness to it or whatever. And we picked those out. So that, you
know, it would be, go along with you, what you needed.
Poetry songs was not used—the poetry itself, the words, was not used in isolation. It was
a unified whole. The music, and the poetry, and the singing, they were a unified whole.
You never pulled them apart and, you know. And so, this is what we’re attempting by
doing an oral presentation where we’re reading just the poetry. See what I mean?
Because you’ll keep repeating the same thing. That same thing over and over. And it’s,
one of the, some linguist who was looking, reviewed some paper I was having published.
He says, “Why do the Shoshones keep repeating certain things? Why do they have that
need?” I says, “You dummy! That’s because they were dancing to the stuff.” And they
were dancing to it, and they were singing it. It wasn’t just poetry. It wasn’t just—you
know, “Tiger, tiger, burning bright / In the forest of the night.” You know, like taibo
poetry. It was more like, like this one song— [Begins singing]
Tamme yampa sateettsii
Okwai manti puiwennekkinna
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Yampa taai, yampa taai, yampa taai
Yampa taai, yampa taai, yampa taai1
See, you’re singing it and you’re dancing. And the poetry is all at once. But in the, but
when you come to, when you get to isolating the oral presentation, the poetry part all by
itself, you can say “Carries them away, carries them away, carries them away.”
[Laughter] You see what I mean? That it has this—like, Earl, one of his songs will be that
[Shoshone at 7:00] It starts out by a—
EC:
I’ll sing it. [Begins drumming at 7:05, singing in Shoshone from 7:08-7:50]
BC:
Okay, thank you, Earl. Thank you.
EC:
See, you can put it in poetry now.
BC:
So, like, if I had to—when we translate it, it goes, “Hunter, hunter, hunter”—that’s three.
“Hunter, hunter, hunter. Hunter, hunter, hunter.” So, you know, that makes it awkward
reading. If it was just going to be, just the oral presentation. So, what I had to do was just
say, pick out only, use that word “hunter” only once, after, you know, for the English
translation. Then it made it a nice reading for just the oral presentation, understandable to
the group. You’re kind of lost in your hunter, hunter—how many “hunters” are go there?
Is there one hunter? One, two, three, you know? You get to sing—but it’s the same
hunter, but it’s… You understand? So that part, is the ones that we have diff[iculty] going
from one culture to the other. That is kind of a neat little understandable problem once
you get it under control. [Laughter] How about the one we just got through with? How
about Pia Isam Peentsi?
EC:
Oh, okay.
1
See
Beverly
Crum,
Earl
Crum,
and
Jon
P.
Dayley,
2001,
Newe
Hupia:
Shoshone
Poetry
Songs,
pp.
152-‐53.
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BC:
Go ahead with that one, you can sing it.
EC:
[Begins drumming and singing at 9:10]
Pia Isam peentsi
Pennan kwasin katsunka
U piyaatehki
Piyaatehki,
Piyaatehki,
Piyaattua noote.
Pia Isam peentsi
Pennan kwasin katsunka
U piyaatehki
Piyaatehki,
Piyaatehki,
Piyaattua noote,
Pia Isam peentsi
Pennan kwasin katsunka
U piyaatehki
Piyaatehki,
Piyaatehki,
Piyaattua noote.2
[Concludes at 9:52]
Haiyawainna.
2
See
Crum,
Crum,
and
Dayley,
Newe
Hupia,
pp.
86-‐87.
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BC:
Okay, thank you, Earl. There, I could see—the writing system, I think the writing system
is going to change the speaking part of it. Because, noote. Piyaattua noote. But, there
would be, the sound, the “noo-teN,” the “nnn,” wouldn’t show up until there was
something following it. Remember? One of the rules? One of the rules! [Laughter] Well,
it’s the silent “n.” The silent “n.” So that, you really do need to have, like yourself,
teaching a class, who is a Shoshone speaker. And the [Shoshone at 10:44] newe
taikwaken, the newe taikwa, tamme _________________. That’s language. Not the
written part. That’s just symbols representing language. So that, you know, I’m really
happy that you’re teaching. That’s all I could say for that. But that was about, Pia isan
peentsi, furry wolf. Pia isan peentsi. Furry wolf, [sings the song back to herself quietly]
he carries him away, carries him away, carries him away—there’s one of those
repetitions again. Carries him away, on his tail he carries the child away. [Shoshone at
11:26] Upi naah kwasipi ____. When the—now, I’m 79, and back then a lot of the
parents were still telling their kids that “Ukka kai”—if you don’t mind, a misbehaving
kid, [11:43] “Ukka kai en tenankanku, Itsappe en kwasi pinnookkwanto’i!” “If you don’t
behave yourself, Coyote’s going to carry you off on his tail.” So, it’s just more—the song
has to do with more of that part of our culture, not so much talking about Wolf. Not—or,
Itsappe, either one. It’s not talking about either of them. It’s talking about that short
saying. Every language in the world has sayings. Well, Shoshone’s no different.
To children, how to keep them in line. [Laughter]
NC:
So the stories had a way of, having a moral to the story, of letting children—
BC:
Yeah! Yeah, without being preachy. A song is one of the good, really nice ways, yeah.
Well, the saying, though, is hitting it pretty well over the head: if you don’t behave
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yourself, Coyote’s going to carry—who wants to be carried off by Coyote? I don’t know
whether the kids would still be afraid of Coyote this day and age, I don’t. Or anything
else, for that matter. Anymore, what is their bogeyman? [Shoshone at 12:54] You don’t
know? It’d be a nice research. [Laughter]
EC:
But, first I’m going to start with a handgame song. It’s about snow coming down. Well,
[__inaudible at 13:15__].
[Begins singing in Shoshone at 13:16]
[Concludes at 13:44]
That’s Doc Blossom’s handgame song. [Laughter] Anyway, maybe it’s not his, but that’s
what he learned from somebody else.
NC:
Okay, can you tell—or Beverly, can you elaborate, on the handgame? And maybe tell a
little bit about what is a handgame song. How is it played?
BC:
It’s changed, over time. Remember how they do it in Fort Hall? Do you remember? How
did they do? Do they use sticks anymore?
NC:
Not hardly.
BC:
Really? It’s more the drum?
NC:
The drum…
BC:
Remember when it was all stick? They used the stick, completely. [Shoshone at 14:27]
Oh, that was exciting to me, it was exciting! [In the background, tapping of a drum stick
on the side of a drum, imitating the sound of two sticks clicking.] Like that. Oh, yeah! It’s
changed. I remember, as a child, the women had their own group, and the men had their
own. And the women had a nice, slower—I was too young to really know what they were
saying, but to me, the guys were really into it, pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum,
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they were much more, what do you call them? Not pum-pum, but, the stick. It was much
more peppy than, whatever.
EC:
They put a log in the front, long one, front of the players. And they beat on that log. Like
if they sit the log, then you’d hear [taps on object in room]. You’d hear it like that. And in
unison. And they sure sound good!
BC:
Yeah. They lost something by stopping that, I think.
EC:
They got four—two sets of bones, who hands them out. They say, well, this is the white
bone. The one’s got a black marker on it. And you supposed to guess that unmarked one.
But the players put it in their hand, the marked one and the unmarked one. The unmarked
one is the main one. And so, they psych the other people out. They sing, and it goes:
[Sings a handgame song at 16:05] See, it’s got no words, they just sing that. Anyway,
then you’re going to have to try to guess me, which one’s got the unmarked bones. And if
you guess wrong, well, you know. They got ten sticks over there. Well, yours, and ten
sticks on this side. Then if you can’t guess it, you’ve got to give up one stick for the
people on this side. And if you can’t get guess at all, it’s ten times wrong, you lose all
your sticks. You lose that game. And you start all over again. And—
NC:
Can you tell about what they played for? What’s at stake?
EC:
Well, nowadays they play for money. They bet any amount of money they want. Twenty
dollars, 10 dollars. One dollar. Even the audience can get into it, offer money, you know.
Then they put the money in a pot, in the middle, you know. And there’s a judge over here
that’s, they’re keeping track of everything that’s going on. And that’s what they’re, what
they bet on. They bet on, whoever wins get that pot. Then they divide it among each
other. You bet all your money that way. You bet 100 dollars, you win 200 dollars.
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[Laughter] So, you win your own back and, you know. That’s the way it’s played. One
dollar, you get, you double it. [Laughter] That’s gambling! Anything else?
NC:
So, prior to the way they play it now, what did they used to play for? What did they used
to bet?
EC:
Oh, a long time ago?
NC:
A long time ago.
EC:
They bet, they said they bet, you know, something of value. Maybe a deer hide, a badger
hide, or… any kind of a skin. If it has value, then they bet that. But when [__inaudible at
18:28__] come, then it goes back [__inaudible at 18:34__]. Coyote was gambling,
playing handgame, and he lost everything that he had. The only thing he had left was his
mukua. You know what mukua is? That’s your soul. And he bet that soul, and if he lost
his soul, they say there would be no more Shoshone people.
BC:
[Laughter] [Shoshone at 19:08]. He’s sitting there crying for fear that—
EC:
He got lucky; you know, they get luck come in. He got lucky, they said that he won back
his soul. But not only that, won that soul back, but he won all the stuff he lost. He had it,
he won all that back, and then some from other people, the opposing players. He won
their tradition, too. [Laughter]
BC:
There’s the bad luck—the one story he has, he not only won his soul back, his mukua
back, but he won, they mention all the illnesses. All the human illnesses. He won all that
besides! [Laughter] So, you know, the stories are really unbelievable, you know. Well
made. They’re second to none, in storytelling. Oh, just so good!
EC:
That’s where the handgame come in. You know, they were talking about.
BC:
The earlier handgaming.
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EC:
The earlier, yeah. But see how it’s changed. And now it’s all money, you know.
NC:
Okay, Earl. If you could talk about the Bear Dance. And maybe have you sing a song for
us, and then I’ll have one of you explain what the Bear Dance is. About it, and how
people danced the Bear Dance, and why it was called the Bear Dance.
EC:
Well, long time ago, when I was a boy growing up in Battle Mountain, the Indians used
to do the Bear Dance. They took a washtub, an old-fashioned washtub, and they turn it
upside-down. And they get the stick, they get the stick, and then they rasp it. They call it
“rasping” that, so [uses drum stick to make rasping noise on drum]. It makes that kind of
sound. And then, they have the men and women, they’re standing in a row here. Like, the
men on this side, and then over there, the women will stand over there. They face each
other. Then, they get to singing. At first, they choose partners. So women choose. The
women would pick out any man they would choose, she’s interested in dancing with. So
she pick that man out. And the men are, there’s a circle of people here, like in this area
here. Then there’s an outer circle. Those people are spectators. But the inner circle are the
people who’s going to perform the dance. And the women, it’s their choice, they could
pick a man out, and the man can’t refuse. If he refuse, he’s got give her money. So, she
has, then she’ll go pick out someone else. But, if it’s okay with her man, then those two
pair off, and then other women will go and do the same thing. And they pick their
partners. Now, for this dance you have a whole bunch of dancers. Say there’s a partner in
a row, and the other partner over there. And the singers will start to, they warm up, you
know. [Rasps with the stick.] Start singing their songs then. Then when they dance, they
stand facing each other. Like we’re facing each other now. When the music start, they
come toward each other. And they intertwine hands, like this. Then they go around like
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this, and then go back around, their original position. They go together. This is one, that’s
one way. Other, they start dancing. They dance with each other, and they go back and
forth, back and forth, like this. And that’s the way it was done.
BC:
I’ve heard it referred to as [Shoshone at 23:52], you know, the Hugging Dance? Or else
[Shoshone at 23:55]. The rasping dance. It wasn’t called “Bear Dance.” Don’t know
where that came from.
EC:
Anyway, I’ll sing that song for you. This is, not all Bear Dances is about Bear. There’s
lot of them, but this one’s about the bird. This is what I learned from our old folks.
[Sings in Shoshone from 24:33-25:31]
They say that the song is about a bird. The flicker. You know what a flicker is? It’s like a
kind of woodpecker? Anyway, the bird, it’s real—it’s got a certain style of flying, like
this. [Makes rhythmic motions with arms.] If you ever observe it, that’s the way he flies.
And [__inaudible at 25:55__], that’s the name of the bird, some people call it that.
[__inaudible at 26:00__]. Because of the sound that it’s making, the noise from the
throat. It’s got its own special cry. And then their [__inaudible at 26:15__] are red, you
know. Like this. [Taps.] That’s a rope. They write it in that song, [Shoshone at 26:22], it
needs to [Shoshone at 26:29]. We use that word now, but, [Shoshone at 26:33], the old
people use that word. He’s pecking at the wood. [Taps to imitate pecking sound.]
[Shoshone at 26:42]. Because that’s, that mean. [Sings in Shoshone from 26:50-26:55].
That’s, that’s the flying motion that it makes. That’s what that song is about.
NC:
So the Bear Dance was like the mating dance for native songs? Where people got
together at the—
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BC:
Not mating, but more… social. Not so much—mating songs are more, animals.
[Laughter]
EC:
It might. It might lead to marriage, but you know, it’s fun. Supposed to be, anyway.
Anyways, there’s something about Bear.
[Sings in Shoshone from 27:39-28:41]
[Sings second song in Shoshone from 28:44-29:50]
BC:
Haiyowainna. [Laughter]
NC:
And what was that song about, there?
EC:
[Repeats lyrics in Shoshone at 29:57]. It’s, over there, other side of us, there’s a
mountain that’s covered with evergreen forest. The bear is over there, scratching on trees.
He’s marking his territory. [Laughter] That’s what that song is about.
NC:
Well, in the time we’ve got left, could you both share just a little bit about yourselves and
your childhood? Where you grew up, and how things were when you were growing up?
Maybe Earl, you could go ahead and start it, and then we’ll finish with Beverly.
EC:
Okay. When I was growing up, lived in Battle Mountain, during that time of the Great
Depression, what they call the Great Depression. Hundreds of men used to ride the
freight cars. They’d go back and forth on the Union Pacific, probably between
Sacramento and Ogden, Utah, or wherever, you know. It was a time of unemployment.
People were looking for jobs, and they can’t find any. So all these men were idle. They
go back and forth, back and forth. And we used to listen to them—when we were kids,
we used to listen to them. And they talk about Ogden or Reno, you know. And they
always warn each other about the bull. Back then I couldn’t understand, I thought it was
real bull, you know. [Laughter] They’re referring to cops. You know, the railroad
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policemen? They’re talking about it. They taught each other how to avoid ‘the bull.’
[Laughter] Anyway, that’s some of my experience then. Occasionally, one or a few of
them used to come to our house. Used to live at the west end of Battle Mountain. That’s
where all Indians live, in one place. And occasionally, couple of them have come over,
and they would beg for food. And we had bunch of old dried-out bread. So, they say
ranching life was hard, you know. So, Gram make a big pot of coffee. Probably can’t sip
it that high. And when they come over, she’d give them coffee and the hard bread. Then
they dip that hard bread in the coffee, and they eat it.
BC:
Sounds good.
EC:
And then, in appreciation, you know what they did? In appreciation, they steal a sack of
coal from the coal trains. And they bring it over to the house. That’s what we used to
burn. That’s the only one thing I remember, when [__inaudible at 33:24__].
NC:
How big was the Indian Colony there in Battle Mountain at that time?
EC:
I imagine there was about, anywhere from 150 to 200 people. Counting everybody, men
and children. And women. You know. My grandfather, he was the shaman, the Indian
doctor. And different old men would come over, and they did bloodletting. They made a,
go out there and make a little [__inaudible at 34:03__], with a sharp, pointed end. And
they would place that on the side of the podium, maybe on this side, and then take a
large, like a weight, and hit it like that. And a pool of blood would pour out down there.
That’s what they call bloodletting. I don’t know whether it’s, that was to prevent stroke,
or… But anyways, it was for my doctoring people. That I remember as I was growing up.
NC:
What was his name? What was your grandpa’s name?
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EC:
They call him Shoshone, [34:48] Natapaibui. “The one who sees the sun.” Or, some of
them call him “sharp arrow.” Mutsipaka [34:58]. Others would call him, [35:04]
Puyapekken, “duck down.” He had all the names. Those are two main ones that he used.
But his English name was Dick Crum. And he got that name from, he’s a Shoshone, he’s
a white associates. Somewhere, he got along good with the white people. Mainly, his
peer group, his own age group. So one of the ranchers close by—my grandfather had a
land there, and when the homesteading came in, the white rancher came and claimed that
land and homesteaded there. Telling my grandfather, he said, “Dick,” he told him, “you
were here before we were. This land is really your land.” So, the old man believed him.
And he lived on that ranch where they claimed, and they claimed that was the—actually,
it was a part of the Homesteading Act. And the old man, that old Crum died. That’s why
he has the name Crum. From the white man. And he died, and his son took the ranch.
And one day, he had a confrontation with my grandfather. And that young Crum told my
grandfather, “Get off my land!” You know. So, Grandfather moved to the town of Battle
Mountain, just on the west side of that—which later became the Indian colony. Then dad
had a—in them days, he used to live like a white man. So he bought two lots in town.
And he built three little houses, made it with two-room houses. And Grandpa and
Grandma living alone. He live in the other one. Us and the kids live in one. Third one
was for my mother’s moon house. And I guess Frances was up in the house. That’s how
we lived. Anyway, about early part of 1930, an Indian activist came through Battle
Mountain—I’ll never say the name. I know who it is, though. He even told my dad. He
said, “You know, Jim”—my dad’s name was Jim—“You know, Jim, Indians aren’t
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supposed to pay taxes.” My dad was paying taxes on our land. My dad quit paying taxes.
And the county foreclosed his land.
BC:
So much for doing it like a white man, huh?
EC:
That’s when he moved to Owyhee. [Laughter] That’s the way—yeah, so that’s a true
story.
NC:
So that’s how you guys, that’s how you ended up in Owyhee?
EC:
Yeah.
BC:
Had no more land. [Laughter] I think one of the joys of my childhood was when my dad
and mom would go up to the mountains in the falltime of the year, because, you know,
you had to have burning wood? Everybody went after wood, up to the mountains. So
we’d do that. While we were up there, it was the time of the year we could pick
chokecherries, see, because mom and dad had a lot of us kids where we was spending a
lot of time picking chokecherries. And so when my mom gets home, she could make
patties out of them and dry them for the winter. That I remember really well. The times
when I’d be there at home.
NC:
So most of your childhood, you grew up in Owyhee?
BC:
Not most of my—some of our childhood. Because of my health, I had to be sent off to a
TB sanatorium in Idaho.
NC:
In regards to your family, that’s where you learned a lot of your stories, as well? The
Indian stories and the legends?
BC:
Yeah. My mom was a storyteller. But my dad worked with Julian Steward and those
early anthropologists. Then he’d come home at night, and he’d tell us about what those
old people told Julian Steward. That was in the 1930s. Some of the really old people were
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still living, who were probably… I doubt it’s when the reservation started, was the 1930s.
They were very old already. And so he just said, “You could spend days with one
particular old people, because [Shoshone at 40:33(?)].” They were just full of stories to
share, and were fun to work with. And others, he said, really had—they were not able to
do that well. I tend to the conclusion some people must be storytellers, and so are maybe
able to retain more or something. So…
NC:
Okay. Is there anything else you want to add, Earl, or Beverly, before we complete the
program?
BC:
Well, I would say that the passing out—the reason we wrote the Newe [Hupia]—the
songs, Shoshone Poetry songs, is that we could pass it on to other people. Because the
language is quickly—if we’re not careful, we don’t have too many more years for it to
continue, right? Less and less children are speaking it. And a lot of the old people, either
aren’t willing, or whatever the reason, is not passing it on. I keep telling them, “When
you die, it’s going to go with you. When you die, it’s going to go with you.” So for that
reason, it was important for Earl and I to do something like this. It took us a lot of soulsearching. Honestly, it’s like we’re giving something away to taibo—but that’s not the
purpose. We had no choice. We had the opportunity to do something, to save something.
Desperate measures, as it were. You really do.
NC:
Okay, well, that’s hitting hard, there, Beverly, what you two have done in regards to
putting the songs—
BC:
And the grammar. The grammar, all this was a spirit of love. But we never got any grants
to do either that, no money, no grants, zero. The same way with the grammar. I’d already
gotten a lot of it translated before Jon Dayley, the linguist, joined me. I had really done it
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for four years, working, and—the thing he did was expertise. Realistic expertise about the
sound system. But Wick had already put the grammar together, so we already had
something to work with. The orthography was already done. It was not never intended for
Owyhee, it was intended for Goshute. But it’s applicable to all of Shoshone—because
we’re the same sound system. Little tiny of changes, like someone would say, [43:16]
tso’o. Tso’o, with a distinct “ts.” Others say tho’o. Tho’o. But then you could still spell it
the same way. And still know that they could still say it that way: [Shoshone at 43:30].
So there’s stuff like that. And I’m saying, no big deal if we have such a big stake at hand,
us losing it completely, with nothing left. And it could happen to little small tribes like
the Shoshone—because we are a tiny little tribe when you think in terms of the world
globe. It’s really small.
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
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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
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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
Earl Crum and Beverly Crum
Location
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Elko - GBC (Campus Studio)
Transcription
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Transcript is available: http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/426
Original Format
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DVD, VOB format
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00:46:00
Dublin Core
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Title
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Earl and Beverly Crum - Oral History (02/01/2006)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history interview with Earl and Beverly Crum, Western Shoshone from Duck Valley Reservation, Owyhee, NV on 02/01/2006.
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Earl and Beverly Crum speak about the different types of traditional Shoshone songs sung during different ceremonies and events. They speak about how songs are more than just a melody but include a story and sometimes a moral. They also talk about how the language is put together and how it is culturally significant. Earl and Beverly also tell about the customs of the Shoshone Bear dance and hand games as well as provide a tale explaining the hand game: Coyote and the hand game. They play an array of traditional Shoshone songs. Earl describes his childhood in Battle Mountain, Nevada during the Great Depression.</p>
Video pending <br /> <a title="Read Earl and Beverly Crum Oral History Transcript" href="/omeka/files/original/7fd3c0dc61c03af54cc104e7396bb57b.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read Earl and Beverly Crum Oral History Transcript [pdf file]</a>
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archives
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 004
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
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02/01/2006 [01 February 2006]; 2006-02-01
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 © 2016.
(Administrator access only): http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/427
Format
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streaming video
Language
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English; Shoshoni
Battle Mountain
Community
Crossroads
Duck Valley
folktale
GBIA
language
Shoshone
Story
Swayne school
traditional songs
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/fd7baa05cb485ca2d5342732b29185fb.jpg
d97f150f64ddc116641f32441a7f2ba7
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/ca19c29d24318e8927a3aa630ba1e8a3.pdf
4c14242d807552a120af88ca0201d502
PDF Text
Text
Ellison
Jackson
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
003
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
and
Joe
Duce>e
January
27,
2006
Owyhee,
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 003
Interviewee: Ellison Jackson
Interviewers: Norm Cavanaugh and Joe Ducette
Date: Jan 27, 2006
J:
As I remember, we used to live in a tent when I first remember it. On side of the road, by
the Presbyterian Church that’s out of town out here. And I remember I lived there in a
hard winter. My grandpa used to get up and paw the snow off the tent, so he said it won’t
break it, it won’t rip the tent. We get a lot of snow. And that’s what I remember about
that.
Well, our Indian diet mostly… meat, dried meat. You know, you make venison, you
make a jerky out of it, and a berries that my grandmother and grandfather get, we put it in
a patties like a hamburger and grind it. During the winter, eat that. And usually make
bread out of a flour, we called Indian bread. You know, they put it in the oven, you know,
cook it like that. Or over a open stove, like with a grease, lot of grease. And they call it
“grease bread.” That’s what we loved to eat. And our old-timers, if you set up a table and
there’s no Indian—we called it Indian bread—if there’s no Indian bread, you put a white
bread on, they said, “Throw that white bread away! That’s no good. We want Indian
bread.” So the womenfolks usually always making that bread, they don’t buy that readymade bread, Wonderbread.
As I remember first, we used to have a wash tub stove. Like, in a tent? In a wash tub, you
cut a hole in there, put a pipe in there, and put a little door in the front. Use that for stove.
And they cook on it.
Yes, or sagebrush, or willows. Whatever that you get. My parents were Robert Jackson,
and my mom was Lena Jackson. When he first moved to Owyhee—in [19]30s, I guess,
I’m not too quick on that—and I was born here in [19]34.
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I moved here because my mom’s dad, my grandfather, they lived here. They raised
horses, cattle, you know. So he move here and work on odd jobs around Owyhee
reservation.
Well, we used to grow up playing all the time. In the snow, in the winter; sometime we’d
go swimming; and sometime we go hunting, with the slingshot. You know, with the
slingshot, we’d go out and kill these squirrels, and we cook them over open fire out there
someplace and have it for lunch. That was our life.
I had two sisters and one brother. I’m the second. Second to my sister, my sister was
oldest and I’m the second.
School was, they called—what was they call it—Swayne school, I guess. Because I
remember, went to kindergarten. I don’t know how old I was. I didn’t know how to speak
English. Maybe “yes” or “no,” as I remember. [Laughter] And I always tell this story
when someone ask that question. Said I went to school. And the teacher got a paper, and
calling people’s name out. So they said, “Raise your hand up when you hear name.” Kids
start raising here and there, you look around. And there was lot of people that we don’t
know everybody, because they come from different areas. And we only knew people in
town because we live in town. Surrounding area, we’re not too acquainted with these
other kids. So I said, “Whose name is that?” Look at them. So pretty soon, the teacher
said, “Ellison Jackson.” I was looking around. Who’s Ellison Jackson? Nobody raised
their hand up. And the teacher pointed at me. And I said, “me?” They say yes. Says,
“Raise your hand!” So I raised my hand. It was a funny name, I never did like since! I
said growing up, “I hate that name!” Because my Indian name my grandfather gave me
was Bombo. Everybody called me Bombo. So I thought that was my—well, that was my
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name. Still they call me that today! [Laughter] They don’t use Ellison! I thought that was
so funny.
Well, I went to seventh grade. I went to seventh grade here, I go to work on a ranch.
C:
And what did you do at the ranch? What was life like?
J:
I was a buckaroo. Horse riding life, you know, ride a horse? Cowboying for different
ranch. Wherever they hire me, I go to work.
Well, generally, it’s mostly… You work with cattle. On a horse.
Early. Four in the morning.
Sometime, if you work close to the house, you work long hours. Like, eight hours, nine
hours. And sometime you’re far away, you don’t come home until late, like couple
twelve hours in fall. In roundup time, you’re busy.
We used to make hundred and quarter a months. It’s a room and board. So, I thought that
was great.
When you get in in the morning, there’s a buckaroo boss there. In the corral, there’s a lot
of horses. Then you tell the buckaroo boss which horse you’re going to ride. You’ve got
about six horses that yours, like they belong to you. You keep them in good shape, you
put shoes on them, make sure they’re not sick. You feed ‘em, take care of them like you
really own it. So you tell the buckaroo boss, “This horse I want.” So they’ll go out there
and rope it for you. So you saddle up, get ready for—other cowboys get ready. Then
everybody ready, then you go. The cow boss take the lead, so you follow. Like he’d say,
“Well, we’re going to work that area.” Certain area of the hills, mountains, you know.
You’re working cattle. You’re moving from, move a cattle from different places to
different area. Like, fall, spring, summer, then branding time. You know, you do all that.
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C:
And how many buckaroos would you have on a ranch?
J:
It’s a big ranch, usually about ten. Small ranch, maybe five.
C:
Were they married?
J:
Mostly young, young buckaroos. There are about eighteen, seventeen, eighteen, up to
twenty young buckaroos. A few of them married, you know.
Well, my dad, he was… He became a operator, cat operator. Later on in years, learn how
to run the Cat. The big D… D8 or something like that. Anyway, he worked on a Cat. And
he worked as mechanic, here. But he don’t—he’s always busy, so he don’t, he really
didn’t teach me anything as I remember. But my grandfather, Jim—his name was Jim
Cavanaugh. James Cavanaugh. He’s the one that give me a lecture on, you know, learn
how to work. Mostly ranch work he was talking about. Like fixing fence, stacking hay,
being buckaroo, being nice to people, and always be polite at the table. You know, these
things which, were never taught that at home. He said, “You go work with these ranchers,
you’re going eat. Everybody eat together. There be twenty people there, maybe fifteen.
So you always say, ‘Please.’ When you order something, always say ‘Please.’ Then don’t
point at things.” He taught me all that. Then later on, I learned that my grandfather came
from Battle Mountain, that area. They’re the people that was called Western Shoshones.
And my dad came from Austin, Nevada. They’re also Western Shoshone people. Western
Shoshone band, I mean.
Well, it’s a long story… [Laughter]
C:
That’s okay!
J:
It goes—a legend, way back in legend times, the story goes like… There was a Coyote.
They go into Coyote, like this. Well, the Coyote’s our father. No, Wolf’s our father, and
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the Coyote is Wolf’s brother. So, us Indians, we’re all Coyote’s children. So, he was our
father. And he had whole bunch of kids, in different race, I guess. But there was only two
that he brought home. And to Nevada, I guess, to his home. After he got this woman
pregnant. And anyway, so he brought two home. Where they live in the mountains, where
there was a stream. And, so early in the morning, when he woke up, he thought his little
boys need cleaning, like a bath. Stream running, so he got up, and he give them a bath.
He use, the Indians use that mud, the fine mud, for soap. [Rubbing hands together] You
use that for soap. Put that on them and clean them up. But the two little boys, when they
first, when he let them go, after he let them go—they always fighting. You know how
boys… They fight each other. So, then the Coyote said, “Well, this not going to work.
You’re both my boys, you guys fighting.” But he said, he put a curse on them, he said,
“What I’m going to do is I’m going to separate you two. Apart.” So, he took one of his
boys, he got to live on the south, and one on the north. So the guy who going to give you
a, you be the—well, I don’t know where the Shoshone came from, but “you be the…”
They call them a newe, Indian. Shoshone word means, you’re your person, newe. And the
Paiute separated to the north. But he was your brother, and he was separated from you.
Then I don’t remember where he get the name Paiute, but they was both neme, because
they’re both brothers, they’re both Indians, that’s what was given to them. But the curse
put on them was, “Whenever you two meet someplace down the trail, no matter where at,
since you don’t like each other you guys going to fight. The Paiute and the Shoshone, you
meet each other on the trail somewheres, you just going to battle it out. You won’t like
each other.” That was the curse put on them. And they said, “The way you can recognize
each other is, the Shoshone will have a round eyes, like a owl.” Kind of round eyes.
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That’s a Shoshone. You look at the other guy, he’s a Paiute, he’ll have a slant eyes. Like,
upwards? So that’s the way you can recognize each other. So that’s the way the story go,
end up like that! [Laughter] So, that’s where we came from. That’s what the legend told
us. Yeah, it was kind of interesting. But in life, today, when you tell that to a Paiute, they
get hostile. I tell that story lot of times, and they say, “We’re all Indians! How come you
don’t like us, the Shoshones don’t like Paiutes?” “But it’s a legend!” I said, now, yes,
once.
Well, this one I always tell. You ask us where we came from. You know, I always—well,
my grandfather said, well, this is… When—we don’t say “God.” We have our own
religious way of live, I guess. Our own belief, the Western Shoshones. So, that’s what my
grandfather told me.
There was this world. It was up there. There was nothing on it. But that’s where they
believe that Wolf—they call it a Wolf and a Coyote—that’s where they came from. From
this, uh… the world was getting made, and that’s where they came from. So we, like a
Bible say, we came from our Father, the God. And it’s similar to that. But in Indian way,
that’s the way they tell. But they said, “That’s where we came from!” And when the,
after the world was, people on it already. There’s human beings on it. But the sun was
going too low. Instead of up high. It was too low. It was so hot. So the people that live on
this earth, they live underground. But when he cool off, they’ll come out. At night. So,
you roam around. So, then they go back underground, when the sun coming out. So the
chief decide—they had a chief—but Coyote wasn’t one of it [16:30]. There was some
chief, they had, I can’t remember the names. But the mostly animals they talk about. The
Indians said, “Well, we should do something about this sun. It’s too low, too hot up there.
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Why don’t we set it up higher, so it won’t burn us?” So they decided, “Well, we could do
it.” Then they said, “Well, how?” Then their chief said, they decide, “Well, we could kill
the sun. Because Sun’s alive, because he come out every morning. He’s alive.” So they
said, “We’ll kill it.” Then they said, “Well, if we kill it, it’ll come down to earth and burn
us,” somebody said. Then they said, “Yeah, that’s true.” Then they said, “Well, we’ve got
to find somebody that could run fast and dig a hole underneath the ground and jump in
there before the sun come down to earth, after they shoot it.” So the Coyote said, “Pick
me!” But they said, “Don’t pick Coyote, he’ll do something wrong” because, see, they
don’t trust him, the Coyote. “So what? I could run fast.” So they put a test, who could run
fast. You know, so many yards, who could run fast that distant. So the people keep
trying, Coyote keep saying, “I’m fast!” He’ll go up there and come back. Real fast. But
they don’t trust him. So there was, two people was pick. There was a Cottontail, and the
Brush Rabbit that was picked. So they said, “Well, you two kill the sun.” So they went
out, went to hunt for the sun. So they went to the mountain where the sun came out. They
settled to wait for the sun. So the next morning, when they sit up there, the sun didn’t
come out. [Laughter] He come over the other mountain, across. So they never did caught
up to the sun. But keep traveling, keep traveling. But every night when they camp out, or
dig a hole where they going to live, under the earth. So, finally, I don’t know how long
they travel, try to catch the sun, but finally they… One morning the sun came out on top
of that mountain where they were staying. Close. It was so hot! So they came out of their
hole, and they had a bow and arrow to shot at it. And their bow and arrow just burned.
Pwoosh! The arrow. They don’t had it. Or they shoot it, and it burnt before it reach the
sun. It was so hot. So the, they decide, “Well, if we use a medicine”—the Indian people
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use certain type of medicine that’s strong. So they decide, “Well, we’ll just use a
sagebrush bark and wrap it real tight around that arrow. And they pray to it. Put their,
whatever medicine they have, they put it on and pray to it. And they shot that. And that
thing burn, Pwoosh! And hit the sun. Once it hit, Sun got hit, he came down. Fall off the
sky to the ground. So they took off and jumped under a hole. So the brush rabbit and the
cottontail jump in their hole, but that brush rabbit didn’t dig a deep hole. And the
cottontail, it was a deeper hole. So pretty soon, the Cottontail, he hears his buddy Bush
Rabbit crying. Screaming. But it was so hot! The Cottontail put his foot in that hole,
where they dig to keep the heat off. So I don’t know how long, it took quite a while for it
to cool off. So after he cool off, the Cottontail came out of the hole looking at his brother.
His brother was all cooked, blacked. Singed. So then he notice, the sun was laying there
on the ground. But the sun was still alive. So, then he told the sun that’s what’s
happening. “You’re burning us,” you know, “You run too low. Why don’t you go up
higher?” So he grab it and send it up higher, up into the sky. So he won’t be traveling
close to the earth after this. But he cut his, Brush Rabbit’s gut, and use the
[cut in recording from from 21:33 – 21:36]
you travel up there, you make a star. Became a star. And the gut here became a Milky
Way. And what else they made out of that? [Laughter] I can’t remember—That’s what he
did! So, like, they say, “Well, today when you look up at the sky, you’ll think, ‘Well,
that’s the Brush Rabbit’s eyes shining.’” Oh, they made a moon out of the kidney! Throw
it up there and made a moon out of it so you could travel at night. You could see the light.
So he done all that. So the job was completed. So the next morning, the sun came out
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over the mountain, it was up higher. So they done their job. [Laughter] That was legend.
So, it was told to me.
Well, the Indians, they get together. It’s a get-together. On a big holiday, like that. So at
the Indian Colony up in Elko, they had this hand game going. And the womans play
cards, and Round Dance every night. And they’ll four days, four-five days, and that fair
going on. And lot of people, they came in from different areas. And Fourth July, people
do the same. They came over to Owyhee. And they do the same thing. Hand game, card
games, races, rodeo here. And a Round Dance.
Well, if you work on a ranch, you go with the boss. They usually haul the workers in for
holiday. But if somebody had a car, you jump in with them. To Owyhee, if it’s short
ways. Like if you work in WP, or Flying H Ranch [23:34]… But other areas, the boss
go to town, and jump in with him, and come back to work with, to the ranch with him.
Yeah, there’s Indian celebration going on all the time. And there’s some singers. You
know, they call a Round Dance? People take turns singing a song, about… Singing
Indian song is telling a story. Instead of telling a story, you put it into singing. So… And
that’s whats it’s all about, and people enjoy that as celebrations.
Everybody dance together, you know, you hold hands and… Women, old lady, young
kids… They just have all kinds of fun.
Yeah, that’s how I brought my drum and that. Maybe I’ll sing a one song. This is, my dad
used to sing that. I remember that. When I was a little kid, he always singing a song. So I
always, I pick it up when I was a young kid. So. he always sing a song. So. This talk
about a mountain. You know, that big mountain. How the mountain looked, it’s kind of
blue, all this and that. Put it into song, and he always singed it. It’s—he always say, “In
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Austin, where I live, there was a big mountain. So that’s what my song about.”
[Laughter] He always say that! Never been to Austin, so I always remember what he used
to say. So this is it:
[sings in Newe at 25:19]
[song concludes at 26:32]
So that’s that Round Dance song. You could go over, I don’t know, two-three difference
in, if you’ve got a good wind here, because you sing it over and over about two, three
times, same wording. And people dance to it. When they like that song, they said, “Come
on, sing that song again!” Then you have to go over and over. And that’s a Round Dance
song.
Yes, I did, uh-huh. Made out of a elk hide. So I made that.
Well, you had to have a board inside, and soak the hide. After you scrape the hair off the
hide, then you stretch it when it’s wet, over this. Then they dry out like that. So got to be
tight. So, that’s what I made for a trip down Fort Hall. I made some. They invite me over
to tell a story, so wanted a, I thought I needed a drum to sing a song. [Laughter] I made
one!
Okay, um… When I was a young kid growing up, there was our neighbor. His name was
Stanley Gibson. He was cripple. He was in a wheelchair. And used to visit him all the
time. I’d carry water for him, he was real nice. He give us nickel now and then for candy.
Was growing up, and he’d do rawhide work. Sit in wheelchair and do all that. Talk to us,
and laugh, and then we push him out to the store in the wheelchair, and was good friend
of ours. So I learned little bit about rawhide from him. So… But as time went on, I
always want to work a rawhide because when you work on ranch, somebody know how
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to work rawhide. Cowboys, maybe tie a knot, maybe somebody working rawhide. And
they willing to teach you. But, as I was growing up, I hate to ask somebody. You know,
because they’re busy doing something, you hate to ask them. It’s so complicated. So,
what I did was, my brother-in-law have a ranch south of Elko. His name was Raymond
Darrough. I live one winter with him there, helping him, feeding cattle. So he said, “Well,
let’s make reata, we’re going to run horses.” Wild horses, mustang. So says, “I’ll show
you how.” So he taught me how to make reata. Slow process, and he’d braid it together,
and he use it. So, then he taught me how to braid and tie a few knots. Simple one. But it
was so complicated. I keep asking him. And pretty soon he get tired of me, and he said,
“Well, this is last time I’m going to tell you. You better pick it up!” So I went so far, and
that was it, I kept making mistakes. But later on in years, there’s a book called Cowboy
Horse Gear. It show how to tie a knot, and all the rawhide knots the cowboys use. So, I
learned how to tie knots from studying that. Kinda complicated at first. Then I learned
how to cut it, how to soak it, how to treat it, everything. Then braid, you do lot of
braiding. Hard on your hands, the knot-tying’s. You know, on that set arrange that, lot of
different knots I put on. And that’s the way I learned. Because whoever work rawhide,
they don’t want to waste time teaching you, because you’ll never learn in one day or two
days, or a week. Take forever! And the person that teach rawhide, they… You go to
school nowadays, I think they cost about, for six week, about $2000 to attend a class. Just
for couple hours a day. So nobody got no time to teach a person. So that’s where I learn
how to work rawhide, then. And I had some—I donated some to Elko Museum, my work.
And it was hanging at Stockman’s that one year.
�GBIA
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Jackson;
Page
12
Well, I wouldn’t say don’t count it, just... [31:12] I always say, “Forever!” [Laughter]
Because you braid it during the summer. You clean the hide, you braid it during the
summer. Cut the strings into fine—fine strings, all even. Then wintertime, you tie the
knots. Sit there at night through the cold weather. Slow process. Then complete it finally.
And then you’re happy. Then you want to look at it, then somebody come along and said,
“Hey! How much you want for it?” Say, “Nah, not for sale.” But I sell it all the time.
[Laughter] So… It’s a good art, because then people knew I, since I had my work
hanging in Stockman’s and people knew my, who I am and what type of work I done,
good rawhide work they say, so they want to order. They call me and said, “Hey, make
me one!” And I tell them, “Well, if I get around to it, I’ll make one, but right now I don’t
have any.” So that’s the way I got a clean up [32:22] with that.
Growing up is… I don’t know how old I was—well, maybe ten or something—but our
favorite pastime was hunting, fishing, riding horse, swimming during the summer, and
playing all the time. That’s all we did. Nothing much. But, I love to ride horse. My
grandpa let me ride a horse, I’ll ride a horse. My grandpa was real strict on the horses.
You can’t—he got to be with you, if you ride his horse. He always say, “Don’t run your
horse to death!” You know, when you’re young kid, you just want to run, run, run!
[Laughter] You don’t want to run slow! So, he said, “I got to be there!” So that was fun
part. And he took, grandpa took me fishing. I enjoy that. Go up the river to go catch some
fish. Trouts, usually.
[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
Ellison "Bombo" Jackson
Location
The location of the interview
Owyhee Hospital, Owyhee, NV - Duck Valley Reservation
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Transcript available: http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/ca19c29d24318e8927a3aa630ba1e8a3.pdf
Original Format
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DVD; VOB format
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:35:30
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
Ellison "Bombo" Jackson (01/27/2006)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral History Interview with Ellison "Bombo" Jackson, Western Shoshone from Duck Valley NV, (01/27/2006)
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Ellison Jackson was the son of Robert Jackson and Lena Jackson. He is best known by his Native name Bombo. Bombo tells us of his childhood growing up in a tent near the Presbyterian Church in Owyhee, Nevada. He also tells us of his experience at the Swayne School. Bombo also tells us about his buckaroo and cowboy days riding horses, and what his grandfather James Cavanaugh told him to expect. He also tell us a Shoshone tale about Coyote, the Shoshone, and the Paiute. Also tells us about another tale about the Sun, Brush Rabbit, and Cottontail.<br /> <br />Interviewed by Norm Cavanaugh</p>
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Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archive
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Great Basin Indian Archive, GBIA 003A
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
01/27/2006 [27 January 2006]; 2006-01-27
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
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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 © 2016.
Consent form of file administrator access only:
http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/2e823d76c4f4bd92f31936e2d966dcef.pdf
Format
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streaming video
Language
A language of the resource
English
Community
Crossroads
Duck Valley
folktale
GBIA
Paiute
ranching
Shoshone
Story
Swayne school