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Transcript of Oral History by Delaine Spilsbury [GBIA 036]
Subject
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Oral history interview with Delaine Spilsbury, Western Shoshone from Ely, NV
Description
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Delaine Spilsbury of Ely, NV discusses family hunting stories and experiences, as well as her work in engineering for Nevada Power.
Interviewed by Norm Cavanaugh, 28 May 2014, in Duck Creek, NV
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
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Great Basin Indian Archive - Western Shoshone Oral Histories - GBIA 036
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Great Basin Indian Archive
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28 May 2014
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Norm Cavanaugh (interviewer)
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Great Basin Indian Archives
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http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/items/show/77
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pdf file
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English
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Text
Delaine
Spilsbury
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
036
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
May
28,
2014
Duck
Creek,
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 036
Interviewee: Delaine Stark Spilsbury
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: May 28, 2014
S:
Hi. I’m Delaine Spilsbury. I’m Western Shoshone, Great Basin Shoshone as I choose to
call it, and I’m from Ely, Nevada. I was born in Ely during the Depression, and it was a
different type of life for the native people here in Ely than it was most anywhere else in
the West or in Nevada. We had no reservation, we had no place where all the families
lived. We had a tiny little colony that—I don’t know, what, it was federal, or state, or
even county—that some of the people lived, but not—just a very small. We still lived the
old ways with our families as we had when… We were hunting and gathering. We had,
our families lived separately in a different place, and it was just like we’d been out. Every
once in a while we would all get together, just like in the old days. And the primary place
that they migrated to for their ceremonies was now called the Shoshone Cedars in Spring
Valley. And there were, my mother was from Snake Valley, which is to the east. And my
dad, they’d go to Spring Valley, and—I think probably to marry off their people, and to,
there was a good place to harvest plants, and animals, and fish. It was a place of bounty,
with plenty of water. And then my dad wandered around and migrated. He was from two
valleys—three valleys west of where my mother was. And so, they eventually met
somewhere down the road, maybe even at Spring Valley at the Cedars, I don’t know. But
they compromised, and ended up living in Ely, Nevada, along with her sister and my
dad’s brother. And so they had quite a little family group, and all lived up on Seventh
Street Canyon, across the railroad tracks. When we were poor Indians. And I’d like to
interject that now that’s where all the rich people live! [Laughter] Not at that time. They
have four wheel drives and kick it up the hill. We had to walk in the wintertime. It was a
pretty hard life. I don’t remember a lot of being—I don’t remember being miserable or
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anything, because it seems like I was always kept warm, and I was pretty well fed. And
that’s lasted through my lifetime as you can see. [Laughter] We just… We had, dad
hunted. Dad and his brothers hunted all the time. And when, especially if they weren’t
working, during the summertime, the spring and the summer, they seemed to have plenty
of work. I went with them to the sheep, up at the sheep camps. And the men—my dad
and his brother, and—I’ll have to put a little more family information in here, now. My
mother’s two sisters, my mother and her sister were from Snake Valley. My dad and his
brother were from White River. And since my mother and her two sisters were from
Snake Valley, their brothers were also. Well, those two brothers married two other
sisters. [Laughter] So it was quite a small family there. I mean, a small few families for a
lot of kids. But—
C:
What was your father’s name? Of what family did he come from?
S:
My father was from, his mother was at Duckwater. And she had married a gentleman
who was half—he was from Salt Lake City, probably a white Mormon, I don’t know. But
I know he wasn’t a Mormon because I know he drank. [Laughter] But, and his name was
Stark. So we don’t have an Indian name. And my mother’s name, mother’s family name
was Joseph. And anyway, we, they always hunted as a group, and worked as a group.
And they went sheep-shearing when they could. They had, my dad was a very ambitious
and very intelligent man. And he soon became a private, I don’t know what you call it, a
contractor. Just a one-man kind of organization. And organized for all the brothers and
whatever to go to the north to work at logging during the summertimes. And they started
here, they started logging just around the corner from where I live now, on the Schell
Creek Range. And they expanded upon that for a few summers, and I guess they did quite
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well doing that. And my dad had only one eye, so he really didn’t work any jobs that
were where he could hire on in town. So he also got into prospecting, and mining, and
whatever kind of thing that he could make some money at it. He did very well doing that.
We, so we had a childhood that wasn’t hungry and it wasn’t cold. I mentioned that
before, but that was quite an accomplishment when we were in abject poverty and really
had no place to live. He and his brothers, finally, he and his brother eventually built
homes for the families, adjacent to each other so the two sisters could be together.
Sometimes that was really good, but after they had kids, they did argue a lot. [Laughter]
C:
So were those homes built on the Ely Colony?
S:
No, they were not. They purchased some property up that canyon that I mentioned up
Seventh Street, and they built on their own property. And that property is now owned by
one of the rich people in town who’s building a beautiful home up there. We thought it
was a long way from town, and it was on the other side of the tracks, but I enjoyed the
train as a kid. Putting pennies on the rails, and just, kid things. And when we went sleigh
riding, we’re not supposed to go across the tracks. And so we’d sled just as fast as we
could so we’d think we couldn’t make the turn, and if we didn’t go over the turn, then we
could go over the tracks and down the hill even farther. [Laughter] But… with the wild
game they gathered, and harvested, anyway, they had my great-auntie, Lizzie—Lizzie
Lee—had a place in White River, which is where my dad was when, where he was born.
And she raised potatoes. So the boys would take her a leg from their venison, and she’d
give them a sack of potatoes. So we always had meat and potatoes, and even though it
was Depression, and it was in a very poverty area—poverty situation, we always
managed to have something to eat. And then, when the World War II started, the big
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thing for individuals to do, families, was to have a victory garden. So once we dug the
victory garden and found out how easy it was—for the kids, anyway! [Laughter] But, we
didn’t have any running water where my dad built. And eventually, the adults did dig a
water line down to the Ely water main, and brought water into the reserv—not the
reservation, into our homes. Reservation was not there. And so, we had a much easier life
once we had running water, because we had always hauled it prior to that. But the kids
got to help with that, too. Because they got to backfill the ditch. So, we worked pretty
hard. My dad and I had a—we were kind of a little bit separate from my mom and my
sister, because my sister’s four years younger than I am. And I used to go out into the
hills with him, to go prospecting, and mining. And I got a big thrill out of that when we’d
blast. [Laughter] It’s just one stick of dynamite, but to me it seemed really exciting. And
we’ve always, I gathered the, got the habit of carrying all the rocks home that I could.
And, because that’s what my dad did, take all his ore samples home. And at one time, we
mined turquoise over by Austin, Nevada. And we took a lot of samples home, but we had
investors and whatever that’d come in from LA and look at the rock, and say, “Well, I’m
going to take this home and have it analyzed.” But we never really sold much of it. But I
got in a real love for that turquoise from that period of time when we were mining. And
that extended into what I’m doing now, too. My dad and I were pretty much buddies. We
were hunting and fishing all the time, because that’s what fed us. And the rest of the
family fished, too, when it was summertime. But at that time, my younger, my sister was
too young to go with us, so they eventually became kind of two partnerships. My sister
stayed with my mother, and I went with my dad. And he hunted until, oh, until his death.
He took up bow hunting when Nevada determined they would have two hunting
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seasons—hunting with permits: one for bow, and one for rifle. And so, dad decided he’d
like to—and as did a lot of other guys—like to learn to shoot a bow, too, so we could get
more venison for our table. And I eventually took up bow hunting with him, too. That
was a lot of fun. And very, very tasty, I’d have to say. So I went to school in—
C:
So what kind of animals did you guys hunt—or your dad hunt, or you and your dad?
S:
Uh, primarily, we hunted venison. We hunted deer in season. However, there’s a little
story to tell about that, too. The, a lot of the locals convinced my dad and his cousin—
Bill McQueen, and my dad’s brother, Elmer Stark—convinced them that Indians could
hunt at any time of the year. So, they went out hunting, and ended up in jail. They had an
animal, and they went to jail for feeding their family. And found out that they, Indians
don’t have any special rights to hunt and fish. Not out here. They do on the reservations,
but not out here in the non-reservation world. And I guess I probably should say a little
bit more about my school life. I’ve been very fortunate all my life. My dad had a friend
who lived up in the canyon behind us—and he was very knowledgeable, very intelligent.
And he took to me, too. And I spent many, many hours with him. He taught me, he was
my—he taught me all the necessary things, like math and writing and, oh, just, spelling…
My alphabet, to begin with. But by the time that I went to public school, I wasn’t old
enough to actually go the year that I went. But, this friend of my dad’s took me in to
school to talk to the principal. And he said, “Okay now, Delaine. Write all this that I tell
you to write.” And—oh, first, the principal said, “Can she say her ABCs? Does she know
her ABCs?” Well, yeah! And he said, “Now write something for him.” And he said,
“Now, I’m going to ask you, I’m going to have some math questions.” And he said,
“How about reciting your times tables?” and things like that. So, I was able to get into
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school a year early. [Laughter] Which helped a lot later in life. But I just had mentors all
along the way. I don’t know if it’s luck, or what. But, it’s been a really good life because
of those mentors. Excuse me. [Crying] I forgot all about him until this! [Laughter] But,
let’s see, to go back to the school, I went to Ely Grade School, which was a really good
experience. I had a good friend that lived across the tracks from us, and we’d spend a lot
of time out in the hills together. And my cousins were near, and we’d go picnicking up in
the hills. And one time, there was a big fire in a bar downtown. And my cousins came
home with a lot of whiskey, we didn’t know what kind. And since we lived at the
railroad, I lived above the railroad cutoff, we went down in those cliffs and cut holes in
them and buried all our whiskey. And then we sold it to the drunks for about a year. That
was pretty good money! [Laughter] We were just little kids, so it meant a lot to us. The
school, Ely Grade School, was a very good school. I had a lot of really good teachers who
helped. And I had some who were, actually, probably I’d have to add them to my list of
mentors. I only had one school teacher that made life tough for me. I tried to be a grade-A
student all the way through grade school, and I was really proud of myself when I had
one year of spelling where I only missed one word in the entire year. And I still—now I
know how to spell “squirrel”: with two “l”s. [Laughter] But, I had some great help along
the way. And then, when we had our graduation, there were three of us students. They
couldn’t decide who was the valedictorian, and who could be the salutatorian. But since
these other two people were guys, one of them became the valedictorian, and we had a
dual salutatarian ceremony, which was pretty exciting for me. And I’d have to mention
that just about all my life, all of my friends except for that one girl that was my friend that
lived across the street, all my friends were boys. Because that was the kind of interest that
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I had. I went to a few birthday parties where I was the only girl there, and I usually had
fun with the mom. [Laughter] Along with the guys. So, it was a very special, very
different life for me, than the other kids. And I attended high school here in Ely part of
the time. By that time, my dad had moved to Vegas and become a building contractor.
And so, he would take contracts in Vegas in the wintertime, when the weather was nice,
and then when it got too hot he’d take contracts up north. And he built some, a few
buildings in Ely. The Armory that is no longer, now I think it’s the Jailhouse. There was a
grocery store in between, and a motel, and some other things around Ely. And then we
took contracts in Wyoming, and did some work for the mine people and their workers.
And that was an interesting life, too, because I made friends with the people who lived
there, and everything was provided for them. They had a swimming pool, and all sorts of
things that we didn’t have around here. But that’s because the mine did all that, and we
could go into the store and get whatever we wanted. All my friend had to do was sign.
Because the paychecks from the miners went directly to this company store, and nobody
ever had any money. And it was a pretty interesting thing to learn, and to experience.
And we did a lot of hunting in Wyoming. We went out every night after rabbits. And they
had rabbits and hares, and whatever. And because by that time, we had a really good taste
for that. Plus, we were always saving money. And that seemed to be a way of life for us.
We were very thrifty, because, when I went to Vegas, and went to high school there, my
mom always used to buy my clothes at—I guess they’d be called “flea markets” now, but
they would just have the, put their clothes out on Main Street, or whatever they had to
sell on the weekends, and we’d buy our clothes there. And they were always out of the
style. If it was a short skirt, mom sewed a strip of velvet—two inch or four inch,
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depending on what the styles were that year—velvet ribbon on the bottom, to make them
acceptable. I wouldn’t get slapped in school for having too much showing, I guess!
[Laughter]
C:
So where was your experience in going to school? Did you go to school here in Ely, or
was it a public school, or…?
S:
No, the—just, I went to Ely Grade School, and White Pine High School. Off and on. I
would start at White Pine, because we were—that’s what I was starting to tell you, and I
lost my train of thought there. That was when dad was moving back and forth with the
seasons. We would start in White Pine High School, and—wait a minute. I started doing
that when I was in third grade. And then we’d move to Vegas, and I’d spend the rest of
the year—or, part of the year, and then come back to Ely to finish the year. So, it was a, it
was—I think, I didn’t like it at the time, but I think I learned a lot more by doing that. So
I did that all the way through high school. I finally—I think it was the last two years in
high school, I did, stayed in Vegas. And I had an advantage there, also, by going to the
school later in the year. One year, I couldn’t have, they didn’t have any sophomore
classes. That was a required class. And so they put me in the junior class. And so it was a
little tougher, but I think that was good for me. And the other thing that helped, is when I
was in Vegas, and I tried to get a drafting class, they wouldn’t let me take drafting
because I was a girl, and they thought that I would be—I have to back up and say why I
wanted to take drafting. My dad by then was a building contractor. And he was having—
a lot of his expense was having drawings made for the building so he’d get a building
permit. And so he said, “Why don’t you learn to do this?” Because I kept working with
him in the building industry. And I no longer paint walls, because when I was such a little
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kid, and I was working with him, that was all I could do was paint the walls! [Laughter]
That and climb up on the roof and lay some sheathing. But I’d had enough painting for
the rest of my life. [Laughter] So, it was, I’m losing it again—I was, okay, so I went to,
tried to take my drafting classes, and they wouldn’t let me into the class because they felt
it would be too distracting to have a girl in the class. And so the next fall, when I came
back to Ely, I asked for drafting at White Pine High, and they said, “Sure.” So when I
went back, when I transferred back, and I need to transfer to a class, they, I guess they
felt they couldn’t refuse me. But they did put me in a back room where I had to work on
my own. The teacher had to come back, and then work—when he had everything else
done, if he had a little extra time, Mr. Portinier. He would come back, and see what, and
help me with what I was doing. But I took to it so well, and I did so well at it, that he
became a mentor also. And by the time I was a senior, which wasn’t—I’d only been in—
well, I’d gone to the Las Vegas all four years, but not full four years—I was hired. They
had a program that if you had a job, you could get credit for the job. And they gave us the
afternoon off. So I became a professional draftsman when I was a senior in high school.
[Laughter] And it paid well, too. So, that just kind of, all that kind of thing just carried
through, pretty much most of my life. And I attended Nevada Southern in Las Vegas for a
few years, but I was, always had such a good job and made so much money, and mentors
would take over and teach me all they could, I finally just felt that I was doing well
enough on my own—not my own, but the results were—that I did quit school. But it
didn’t seem to hinder anything that I did. They, at that time, they didn’t actually require a
degree just for an interview. I did get turned down on a lot of jobs because they said, “We
don’t hire women.” And that was it. You know, they wouldn’t even give me an interview.
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But so I started in, started off with government jobs. I worked for the county, and then I
was able to get a job with the city, and I found a really good mentor there. And from then
on, I had a reputation, so I didn’t need anything more. And that carried through. I
eventually—the one thing that did happen that I didn’t like so well is, somewhere along
that way I got married. And every time they had a layoff, because of a depression or a
recession or something, they would, everybody in the industry, I think—or even
everywhere else, but that’s the only, engineering is the only industry I know—they
would, if there were a couple working, the wife always got laid off, because they felt that
the man was the breadwinner and all that kind of thing. So I got laid off a couple times.
And the last time I got laid off, I said, “You know, I think I’ll do something I really want
to do.” Which, well—other than get laid off, I loved the work. So, I was kind of set back
a little bit, and that’s when I got my training in Indian arts and crafts. My mother tried to
teach me everything that she knew, and I eventually ended up with an Indian arts and
crafts business. And it just, everything has just been—I don’t know if kids have those
opportunities these days.
C:
So in those places you worked, you mentioned, where was it in part of the country?
S:
Oh, all my engineering life was around Las Vegas. I worked for the county, I worked for
the city, I worked for Nevada Power for a number of years, and long enough to get a few
promotions and a few raises and things like that. So each time I changed jobs, it was a
step up. And then, my final job was kind of by accident. I got laid off at Nevada Power—
or fired, or whatever in the heck it was. I think that time, I think that time was the time I
got dumped, and it was all, had a personal beef for—my chief engineer didn’t see things
the way I saw it, and so I got dumped there—and was collecting unemployment
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insurance. And at the time, my dad was alive and well, and very… I can’t think of a word
for it, he was, he was going fishing all the time, and he had a boat, and we’d go to all the
lakes around there—Lake Mead, Lake Mohave, and, depending on what kind of fish we
were fishing for. And I said to him, I said, “Dad, I think I’m just going to go fishing with
you.” And we did that for—it was spring—for quite a long time. And then, at that time, at
the end of unemployment, you had to go in and talk to the man, and they would ask you
if you had been looking for work. And of course, I always said I was, because I always
had applications in places that I didn’t think would hire me—right off anyway. And I go
in one day, and this employment guy says, “They need someone like you at the telephone
company.” And he said, “Will you go for an interview?” And I said, “Sure!” Because I
had to. [Laughter] And doggone, when I went for that interview, if the supervisor, the
minor supervisor, which I was to work for there, was a guy that had worked for me
someplace. And when he saw me, he said, “Oh my God, Delaine! We need you! I’m so
glad you’re available.” And that put an end to my fishing. [Laughter] So I stayed with
them for a very short time. It was a good company, they had a good company policy, but
our senior supervisor was just a picky-picky-picky, and I couldn’t handle that. And that’s
when I went to the Test Site. And I stayed there for quite a number of years. The Nevada
Test Site, out of town. So all my engineering career was in the Vegas area.
C:
So you were a pioneer, as a woman, in that field, when there wasn’t very many women in
it.
S:
There were very few women in that field. I did work with one other woman who was a
right-of-way engineer. And she was, she had been at Stanford, and she was quite a bit
older, but… She was a good friend of mine. But I think that’s, those are—I don’t ever
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remember having another woman on the job anywhere I worked. Not in that line. We had
secretaries, and that sort of thing, but… I don’t remember any other women. Once I got
into the Indian arts and crafts business, I became really enchanted by all kinds of
handmade stuff. And a lot of stuff in my house is handmade, and, this particular chair, the
gentleman is still alive. And for one reason I can’t remember his name, and he is in Ely.
And they had these chairs in an art gallery in Ely, oh, probably 10 or 12, 10—oh, some
years ago. I’ve lived in this house now for over 10 years. And during that time, a friend
of mine from Vegas was visiting, and we went to the art gallery. And this chair looked
small enough and nice enough that I said, “Gee, that’s nice. I’d better try it out.” And I
really loved that chair. But I walked away from it and went on with what I was doing.
And on my following visit to Vegas, when I walked in to my friend John’s house, there
was my chair. Waiting for me. So, but I guess I stopped visiting him enough, because he
said the chair was getting lonesome, and he brought it up to here. And it gets used every
day up here. [Laughter] The only horse I’ve ever ridden is, well, the one that my dad had
that wasn’t very sound, we found out. Because he decided to sell it. And it was
“Helldorado,” which was a big rodeo time, big Western days in Las Vegas. And he
bought all the black, I guess it’s called “surge.” He looked like Roy Rogers all decked
out in his black pants and shirt, and black hat. He was showing off his horse. He had
advertised it as sound and gentle and all that sort of thing, and the guy was—there where
we lived in Vegas, there was, out on the edge of town, as usual, and it was all alkali dust,
alkali dirt, which is totally white. And for some reason, that horse stumbled, and my dad
rolled in the white alkali. [Laughter] So, we were never permitted to ride that horse again.
I think he had a bad back, I think that’s what it was. He said it stumbled, but I think it had
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a bad back. And a few stable horses or whatever, when I’ve gone up into the mountains.
I’ve ridden some really wonderful horses when I’ve gone on some packing trips for when
I’m hunting big game with my bow. And I’ve loved some of those animals. But that’s the
extent of my horsemanship.
C:
But the saddle—
S:
The saddle. Back to the saddle! [Laughter] Would you…?
C:
It says, “25th Annual Treaty Days.” Was that a rodeo, or…?
S:
That’s in Oregon. It’s a big rodeo. It’s an all-Indian rodeo. And my cousin Mel Joseph,
who is, was my, one of the uncles that lived in Snake Valley, his son. And he was a real
tough little kid. So he really excelled in what he was doing. He got his first job when he
was 12 years old, and moved to California. He was a horseman on one of those greenhorn
trips that I was mentioning that I took when I went hunting. And so, he became a pretty
good rodeo hand. He’s been a clown and everything all the way up, and he and his
brother just last year won a national championships at the Indian National Finals in
Vegas. So he went the full gamut in rodeo, and that ended up at my place. I let him visit it
once in a while. [Laughter] I mentioned earlier that I eventually ended up in the Indian
arts and crafts industry. And I have a very nice wholesale business going on now. I’ll
probably work until I can’t work anymore. And those items are some of the items that I
carried when I was in Vegas, and had a bigger clientele. And I sold pottery rugs. The—I
had all kinds of artists that I had access to. And I really enjoyed that. It was nice to really
be able to get to know them, and to know them well, and that’s been another, really fun
part of my life, is… and the beauty of the Indian work, the Indian handcrafts is just, it’s
still hard for me to believe how they manage to do these things. I did a lot of traveling,
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and went to a lot of shows and whatever with these people, and I became, I was on the
board of directors for the Indian Arts and Crafts Association, which is a national
organization that guarantees quality and authenticity. And the artists were just
unbelievably talented. They weren’t “talented,” they were inspired. It has been a great,
great experience.
C:
And that necklace you have on? What’s that?
S:
Well, that’s actually Shoshone. And it’s, it’s kind of a, real special, this is made with the
old number 13 cuts, which are the ones that the artists, the beadworkers that really like to
work with beads, and they’re almost impossible to acquire. The supply house that
everybody got them from in New York was—they were imported from Italy, the beads
themselves—is no longer there, and so, I treasure it. It’s got bone, and crystal beads. As I
mentioned before, my dad took up bow hunting when he could hunt for two seasons. And
when I finally got big enough to shoot a bow, they didn’t have all the kinds that they have
now. Had to be pretty strong to pull a bow back in those days, they were pretty much
longbows. There’s one behind me that—this one’s a Mongolian bow—that’s pretty much
along that design. And the new ones have all kinds of wheels and whatever to make them
much easier to pull, so now they even have really efficient children’s bows. But I had to
wait until I was old enough, big enough to actually be able to handle a bow. And we, that
ended up being a great, a real fun part of our life, too, because we—when we moved to
Vegas, we got into the Archery Club, and competition, and that sort of thing. And my son
was, had won a state championship or two. And I won the women’s division, the bow
hunting division, for a number of years. Dad did, was real pretty good with his bow, too,
and we just had a lot of fun in archery. We even had a range, an archery range, on some
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of the land that my dad had invested in, in addition—well, when he had, could no longer
be a contractor, I guess it just was too much pressure, because his doctor told him to go
fishing. [Laughter] And he started investing in land, and he always felt that land was a
good thing to have. So he had quite a lot of acreage on the outskirts of Vegas, and we
built an archery range on one of his properties, and everybody that was involved had a
great time. We organized and built our own targets, and would have our own
tournaments, and whatever. So anyway, along the way, of course, you know, dad was
always hunting, and I was always hunting with him. But I finally discovered that when I
did become pretty good at shooting a bow and hunting, I had to forget everything that he
had taught me. [Laughter] And start again! So I’ve been pretty much hunting, oh, most of
my life. I’ve always, well—small game, of course, is the most available. And a lot of fun.
And I love to eat it. Rabbits and that sort of thing. I was able to harvest a couple of birds,
too, which isn’t that easy with a bow. Especially when you cut their head off, let’s not
ruin anything—but that was a missed arrow. [Laughter] But I’ve been hunting around in
Nevada for a number of years, and I ended up, one of the guys that—oh, it’s, I decided
that I wanted to go javelina hunting. And over the years, I became acquainted with,
because of my business, I would always work the trade shows that were connected to
archery. I met people that—movers and shakers in the archery industries, manufacturers
all over the country—and got into some, got invited to some great things. I got invited to
go javelina hunting with Doug Walker, who published the National Bowhunter
Magazine. And he eventually asked me to write for the magazine. And a part of that, we
didn’t get paid much, but he took us on hunts. And he took us, I think the one that I had
the most fun, and had the most game was at Chudwayo [42:09] Ranch in Texas. And
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they have a lot of exotic game. It seems like the grandfather, the one that started the
whole hunting thing, had an opportunity to buy some game from one of those countries
that had a new sultan or whatever. And when they come in and take over the country,
they always just kill all of the animals that the prior ruler had. And put in their own. And
they had some animals down there that were extinct other than on that ranch. And that
was—the only fence it had was on the very out—the perimeter fence, and it was, I don’t
know. I can’t tell you how many square miles it was. It’s just a huge, huge ranch. And the
only fenced part they had, was inside, he had some really special animals. But they
weren’t, you couldn’t hunt those. There were a couple of giraffes, and all kinds of exotic
game. But the ones that were free-roaming, we could hunt. And we did. And we went
there for a number of years. And one year, I had a big thrill when rock star Ted Nugent
came hunting with us. I think I’ve been hunting with him about three times now. So that
was a highlight. [Laughter] Not that I think he’s so—I don’t agree with his politics, but I
sure like to hunt with him! So, and then, some years ago, I was lucky enough to draw one
of the rare elk tags—it was probably about thirteen or fifteen years ago—here in Nevada.
It’s a tremendous—some people apply all their lives and never get a tag. And I was able
to get a tag and hunt it just around the corner from here, for the elk that I have here, that
at the time was the largest elk in the record book—for one year. It isn’t my bow that does
it, it’s me! [Laughter] Actually, I’ve been shooting with a bow that probably a lot of
people would say doesn’t work, because I shoot forty pounds. But a well-placed arrow is
a lethal arrow.
C:
So is that the bow up there, that you have mounted?
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S:
Those are some of them that I’ve shot over the years. Actually, one of those is my dad’s,
and one’s my son’s. They’re sentimental, so they kept theirs. I sold all mine. Except for
the one I’m using now. And eventually, after I got too many years on me, too many
miles, years and miles, I did have to go to the compound bow that I shoot now. But I still
shoot it the same style that I shot the recurve and the long bow. And that’s with no sights,
and no mechanical release. Just Indian fashion. Ind’n fashion. [Laughter] And it’s, some
of these animals here are the animals that I harvested in Texas. There’s different kind of
deer: fallow deer, sika deer. All very tasty.
C:
So can we begin with the white-collared deer above your head, and then just move
around the room?
S:
Okay, that’s a white fallow.
C:
And that was harvested in Texas?
S:
Yes, the next—all four of these.
C:
And the one next to it?
S:
That is a sika. I can’t really remember what kind of sika it is. But it’s different in breed
from the other one. And the chocolate is the brown deer that has the moose paddle and
has the Ted Nugent signature on the paddle. That doesn’t show from here—it shows from
here. [Laughter] And then, the other, the next one down is also a sika. And that one, I
shot with other people present, and it just dropped. But that’s because I missed. I hit it in
the backbone, instead of the sweet spot. I was shooting uphill, and at a longer range than I
normally do. And the next one is a nice mule deer from Black Rock Desert, that my son
and I worked on. And the two antelope are from around here, and Spring Valley. Both of
them are from Spring Valley. That’s out by the Shoshone Cedars. And the little piggy
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over there is a javelina. And Ted Nugent was on that hunt. I have a little photo of him in
my trophies over there, of Ted and I. And this, the one on the floor, the full-body mount,
is an axis deer. First time I saw one, I thought it was the biggest fawn I’d ever seen,
because of the spots. [Laughter] And this is probably the tastiest one of all.
C:
So where was this deer harvested, in Texas?
S:
That one’s from Texas also. And all the taxidermy on those was done in Texas.
C:
And then, can you tell us about the mountain lion?
S:
The mountain lion is from an old friend of mine who’s no longer with us. He’s passed on.
And he was the best gardener in Ely. Had a huge garden. And everybody was welcome to
come in and take what they wanted, but his son was jealous, because I’m the only one
that his dad would harvest the vegetables, and even wash them, before I got them.
[Laughter] Everybody else had to dig their own. And the bear, on the floor, is from
Alberta, Canada. There’s a good picture behind it if you can catch the picture. That was, I
had a picture of the group of us who all got bears, and that one was the biggest of all.
C:
And you shot it with the bow?
S:
Oh, it’s all bow, yes.
C:
Ah.
S:
When I got—Rick, my son, was with me when I got the invitation to go along. And I
said, “Yeah, I’ll go bear hunting!” And when he got me alone, he said, “Mom! What
were you thinking? You’re going bear hunting?” [Laughter] And that was an exciting
trip, too. I had another bear fall in love with me, but that’s another story. That was not
fun.
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I forgot to tell you that when I was out mining and prospecting with my dad, that I
actually worked in those mines with a real shovel. Not like today, with a huge scoop
shovel and a big truck, but we actually got in there and dug holes to plant the dynamite,
and then we dug the muck out by hand. When I was a kid. And I think dad did it on
purpose so I would get an education. [Laughter]
This is a picture taken at Mount Moriah, which is just east of us here. Over—that’s by
Spring Valley, too. That’s why Spring Valley was so sacred to the Shoshone people,
because it was so full of, just, game, and fish, and food, and shade. On the bottom, where
the Shoshone Cedars are, it’s the bottom of the valley. And these cedars had been—
they’re actually Rocky Mountain junipers, and they’d been pushed in there by an ice age,
and it was the only place around where there was really good shade and grass, and all the
people that wandered around these valleys here all ended up there for their ceremonies, a
number of times a year.
The drum is just a part of my collection, it had an elk, and it was a Shoshone artist. And
it’s signed, but I don’t remember who it is. I’ve had it for so long. And I don’t even know
if it drums anymore, but it’s just something I like, so, that was—and it’s something I
acquired.
C:
And the baskets up on top?
S:
The baskets, the ones on each end are Mono baskets that were made by Julia, Julia—boy,
I can’t remember her name! She’s still alive, and I met her somewhere on the powwow
trail, and she had baskets for sale, and since my aunties are Mono, I thought that was a
great idea. I do have miniatures that my aunties gave me when I was a kid.
�
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Well, there came a time when we lived in Vegas when there were drive-by shootings and
that sort of thing, and the only time I could go anywhere was from 10 o’clock in the
morning until 2 in the afternoon, because the traffic was so bad that if you did go to the
freeway to get across town—which you’d almost have to because it’s so huge—there was
so much free parking out there in the middle of the summer. Free parking on that
freeway, in the 120 degree heat, that I decided it was time to go back home to die,
because that’s kind of what our people do. We, we’re so tied to the land that we want to
be back home when it’s time. And so I shopped around up here to get some property.
And in the interim, I was a partner at the Idaho Heritage Museum on Highway 93
between Hollis—no, it’s at Hollister, between Jackpot and Twin Falls. And my partner
there gave me a call, and he said, “These logs are available.” This mill—I guess they’re
called millers, the guy who owned the log mill, the saw mill, had some logs that he
wanted to get rid of. And it was a good price. And probably less than I’d have to pay for
material to build a house. But I didn’t realize there were so many, because I wasn’t
intending on a place this big. But when I did find this place, and saw the possibilities of
berming into the side of the hill for the insulation value, and the logs combined—because
this is cold country, here—that I decided to have a house the way I like to live. And that’s
why it’s all free and open with the kitchen island in the middle. And I was lucky enough
to find a contractor here in Ely who could do it. However, my partner, who was also a
cement—he was a contractor, also—started the place. He did all the groundwork, and he
put in all the foundations and that sort of thing. And he got arrested for supposedly
digging one arrowhead—I mean, that’s the conviction that they had on him, but I think it
was a trumped-up charge. Because the stuff he had, pretty much the museum all had
�
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certificates. But, I don’t know. Anyway, I had to hire another contractor along the way,
and I was lucky enough to get a local guy who’s honest and talented and worked for a
decent price. And we’re still good friends. Matter of fact, I—if you see the picture of the
fishing over here, under the sika deer, and those are salmon on the Kenai Peninsula in
Alaska. I’ve gone fishing with him up there twice now. And the 65-pounder is mine. And
the little fish on the end is my buddy’s fish. [Laughter] The little silver salmon. But
we’re—and we’re still friends, even after that. Even after that fishing trip.
So, I understand we’re going to be closing now, and from all you’ve heard, I’ve had just a
wonderful time, a great life. Everybody has just been absolutely great to me. If I do have
things that are, that I think are wrong for me and bad for me, I just remember all the good
things. And how lucky I have been. And I’d kind of like to talk directly to younger
people now. And I know it’s hard to get out in the outdoors now, when we have all this
electronic stuff, and screens, and whatever, that keep you all tied up, and keep you from
getting any activity. But I would encourage you, if you have somebody in your family or
something that goes for these outdoor things—maybe you can talk them into introducing
you to what is, what was our Newe way of life. Being on the land, living with the land,
and preserving the land. Right now, I’m in a big battle with a bunch of people to try to
keep the Great Basin water in the Great Basin, instead of being pumped away for where it
will never recycle into the system again, and that, the Great Basin Water Network, I’m on
their board of directors. And I would encourage you, our native people, our native kids,
to get to know the Earth Mother. She’s kind, she’s generous, and she needs protection.
And we can do it. I know we can. We’re having problems with climate change, and it’s a
good time to be able to extend, do something, learn about what’s out there, and always
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have faith in yourself, and always look at the bright side. There’s always something good
in everything. And ignore that other stuff.
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
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Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
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GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
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2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
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Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
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Delaine Spilsbury
Location
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Duck Creek, NV [residence of Delaine Spilsbury]
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<a href="/omeka/files/original/aff4ca802ba8f057e9f294ca28cc1a1e.pdf" target="blank">English transcript available as pdf file</a>
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00:58:10
Dublin Core
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Title
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Delaine Stark Spilsbury - Oral History (05/28/2014)
Subject
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Oral history interview with Delaine Spilsbury, Western Shoshone from Ely, NV, on 05/28/2014
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Delaine Stark Spilsbury is a Western Shoshone, or as she says a Great Basin Shoshone, from Ely, Nevada. She was born in Ely, Nevada during the depression, and attended school there as well as Las Vegas. Delaine speaks about her ancestors and how the hunted and gathered within the area as well as their family groups. She gives us an account of her family’s lineage and their vocations. She also speaks of how she hunted, fished, and mined with her father. She then goes on to tell of her hunting adventures, including some with Ted Nugent, and how she got into drafting. She finishes her oral history by leaving a message for the youth.<br /> <br />Interviewed by Norm Cavanaugh</p>
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Great Basin Indian Archives
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 036
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
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05/28/2014 [28 May 2014]; 2014 May 28
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Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; Scott A. Gavorsky [GBC Virtual Humanities Center]; 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): http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/477
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English
arts
Community
crafts
Crossroads
depression
drafting
Ely
gathering
GBIA
hunting
mining
Shoshone
Story
White Pine High School
Women's History
-
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fb217aed52a2c8e7ce73f0b11a61b133
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/038a57d31acf75ccaa2678a571009392.pdf
6a1fb3a765f744a062679c71b2abd529
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Title
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Transcript of the Oral History of Laura Stark Rainey (GBIA 035)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history interview with Laura Stark Rainey, Western Shoshone from Ely, NV
GBIA 035
Description
An account of the resource
Laura Rainey of Ely, NV discusses wild plants, climatic changes, and growing up in rural Nevada at Cave Lake State Park, as well as her work in surveying, design, and underwater mining. Interviewed by Norm Cavanaugh, 28 May 2014, at Cave Lake State Park, NV
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
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Great Basin Indian Archive - Western Shoshone Oral Histories - GBIA 035
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Great Basin Indian Archive
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28 May 2014
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Norm Cavanaugh (interviewer); Scott A. Gavorsky (GBC Virtual Humanities Center)
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Great Basin Indian Archive
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<a href="/omeka/admin/items/show/78">Oral History - Laura Stark Rainey</a>
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.pdf file; 16 pages
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English
PDF Text
Text
Laura
Rainey
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
035
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
May
28,
2014
Cave
Lake
State
Park,
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 035
Interviewee: Laura Stark Rainey
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: May 28, 2014
R:
Good morning. My name is Laura Stark Rainey. I’m from the Ely Shoshone Tribe in Ely,
Nevada. We’re of the Western Shoshone Nation. Today we’re going to be filming in the
Cave Lake State Park area, which is just outside Ely. My family and I used to come here
when I was young. We’d come fishing, rabbit hunting, gathering berries—sour
squawbush, currants, chokecherries, elderberries—and everything to last through the
winter. We also gathered pinenuts up in the mountains here, which we gathered every
year. This area is very rich. This year, it’s a little dry. [Laughter] We’ve had a drought for
several years. But it still looks pretty good here in the spring. This is the Steptoe Creek, it
feeds the Cave Lake. And there’s a lot of good fishing here, still. And it’s just beautiful
weather. We used to get some watercress along the streams. I don’t know if there’s any
today, we’ll see if we can find some. But the fishing is always good. And the willows are
just starting to leaf out, although it’s the end of May, it’s a little slow coming around this
year. But it’s a wonderful area, and it’s good to get out, away from town, and be amongst
the wild America again. We love it here. I bring my grandson out here fishing, and he
always has a grand time. Of course, most of the time I beat him! [Laughter] But we
always catch our limit. It’s a good time. Then we go home and have a good fish fry, and
he loves it—he started cleaning fish when he was eight years old. And he’s twelve now,
and he’s still cleaning my fish, and I’m so glad I don’t have to do it anymore.
C:
So how old is your grandson?
R:
He’s going to be thirteen the end of June. One more month. [Laughter] Then he can really
do—I had him helping me make frybread this weekend. He was mixing, helping me mix
the dough. He rolled it out, and he fried it. I showed him how to turn it away from him so
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he wouldn’t burn himself in the grease. And then he dressed the Indian tacos, and he
says, he says, “I’m multitasking!” [Laughter] He says, “I’m getting into the family
business now.” So I hope he keeps his, keeps up with me.
C:
Okay. So what do we have there, Laura?
R:
Okay, this is what we call the sour squawbush. In the spring, it gets little red berries, and
they’re hard. You pick them—we’d pick them and put them in a paper bag, put in some
salt, shake it up, and eat them that way. And it’s better than eating popcorn. [Laughter]
C:
Huh. What time of year does it, is it ready for harvesting?
R:
In the spring.
C:
In the spring? Like, what time?
R:
Uh, June, maybe July. Depending on how cold the spring is—you know, how long it
takes the winter to go away.
C:
Does that bush have any berries on it?
R:
It doesn’t yet. And this is rose bush, the wild rose bush. And they have the rose hips that
come in after the roses go away. And those are edible, too.
C:
So what are the rose hips, or rose parts—
R:
See, these are coming into blossom, the sour squawbush. Up here on the top. That’s
where the berries will form.
C:
Ah. Now, what color are the berries?
R:
The berries are red, the flowers are yellow.
C:
Okay. So how big does the berries get?
R:
About the size of a BB. [Laughter] You have to collect quite a few of ‘em!
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C:
Oh, I was going to say, yeah. Huh. Okay. So we’re just early in the spring here looking at
it, and it’s got a couple months before they begin to produce any berries. We’re in a
really beautiful spot here, Laura. And these are—
R:
Can you get the cold in Cave Rock up there? On the horizon?
C:
Yeah, we’re taking a shot of the area here. And there’s a Cave Rock up there in the
mountains, Laura called it.
[Break in recording]
C:
Okay, Laura. Now where are we?
R:
Okay, we’re up above the state cliff. It’s Cave Lake State Park, in the Schell Creek
mountain range, on our way up Success Loop. Over here, there used to be a dance hall
way back in Prohibition days. And of course, with the whiskey and [__inaudible at
5:40__] this was way out when I was working, [__inaudible at 5:43__].
C:
So Laura, can you tell me about this groundhog that’s sitting up here in the rocks? What
the Shoshone people did with them, or—?
R:
Yeah. We call them yaha. And we’d have a gathering when we get several yaha then.
But, usually only the elders get to eat those. Now, maybe I can eat some. [Laughter] I
always used to be too young.
C:
So how do you prepare the yaha?
R:
Well, just roast—do just like a prairie dog. Take out the—cut a little slit in the side, pull
out the entrails, and stick the hind leg in the hole, and then bury ‘em in the coals. Let it
roast, and then, when it’s done, you take it out, and then peel off the hide. That takes all
the charcoal and everything off. And the meat is just delicious and juicy.
[Break in recording]
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R:
Okay, we’re in the Schell Creek Range, just outside Ely. Up here you’ll see the caves
behind me. Indians used to stay in these. You’ll see they’re facing the east, so that they’re
out of the wind, out of the cold north wind. And snow, whatever came. And they’re high
enough to see the deer, so they could get the deer that they’d harvest sometimes. There
are elk here now. And of course, the yaha that we saw down below.
C:
So what time of the year do you think the Shoshone people used these caves?
R:
Okay, the—we would be down in the valleys where it’s warm in the wintertime, and the
spring and summer we’d come up here in the mountains where it’s cool. And if they
came out early, and we had late spring storms or something, they could go in those caves.
And of course, if it was raining, they had to have some protection. Also, the summers,
we’d be up in the mountains here.
C:
How many were in a band, or in a group that would travel together or camp together?
R:
Well, usually, a normal family, tie two families together, something like that. But in the
fall, when it was time to pick pinenuts, they would get several families together, and
gather out at the Swamp Cedars in Spring Valley. And then they would, we would all go
out to gather pinenuts. And that way, we would make sure that everybody had enough
pinenuts to last the winter.
[Break in recording]
C:
Okay, Laura. You were starting to tell us about the—
R:
Yeah. When the cavalry came through here, when the president sent out the directive to
kill all Indians, they came from the Ruby Valley, over there across into this—this is the
Duck Creek Basin. Came in through the Duck Creek Basin, and across the mountain—
well, not the mountain, but through one of the passes [Laughter]—over to Spring Valley,
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where the Swamp Cedars are. That’s where all the Indians of this area used to gather in
the fall to go picking pinenuts. And a cowboy or somebody came riding by on horseback,
and he noticed all the campfires, so he hurried in—no, this is another story, sorry! The
cavalry went into Spring Valley, and they were going to kill the Indians. But it was
swampy, and the horses were floundering in all the mud in the swamp. And they couldn’t
get to the Indians, and they got away. And it was later on when the local militia went in
there and massacred all the Indians when they were gathered to pick pinenuts. And there
were only two little girls and one little boy who were able to survive that massacre.
C:
So was there a name for the massacre, or was it called any—?
R:
We just call it the Spring Valley Massacre—the last Spring Valley Massacre. But the
local, we call it the Swamp Cedars Massacre. And my grandmother was one of the little
girls who survived that.
C:
And how old was your grandmother when she survived it?
R:
We figure she was around ten years old. It happened about 1895.
C:
Huh. So about how many of the people in the camp were killed, would you say?
R:
I would say there were probably 30 or 40 people in the camp. And just three survivors, so
that’s 10 percent. One day I was out there hunting deer, and I came across an arrowhead.
And I told my husband, I says, “This could have been my grandfather’s”—or, my greatgrandfather’s arrowhead. But, who knows? It’s all BLM land now, and they’re building
the windmill farm right next to it. The wind farm. So…
C:
So is there a marker or anything to indicate…
R:
There isn’t, we have one planned. I don’t know if we’ll ever get the funding for it, but we
do plan to put maybe a rest area or something there. Like your state highway markers
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with the historical markings. We haven’t succeeded in getting that done, but I’m working
on it. I think we possibly could get some help through the Great Basin Heritage Area. It
covers the Esmeralda County and White Pine County. The route, Highway 50 there, has
been designated as the Great Basin Heritage Area partnership.
[Break in recording]
C:
So can you tell me where we’re at, at this point on our trip, Laura?
R:
Okay, we’re on the Success Loop, we’re on the north side of the summit, head down into
Duck Creek Basin. This is a quaking aspen grove, with some lodgepole pine mixed in.
And some, a lot of small quakies, they’ve got other pine trees. And there’s natural
meadowgrass. It’s just beautiful here. Usually, you see a deer or two. I think we’re too
late in the day, though.
C:
So do the, our Shoshone people use quakies for anything?
R:
You can use some for your artifacts, for handles. If you cut the quakie when it’s green, it
will keep its bark, which is really attractive. If you cut a dead piece, in time the bark will
fall off. They’re nice and straight, so they make good handles for tools. Like tomahawks,
or rattles. Ceremonial objects.
[Break in recording]
R:
When the cavalry came through from Ruby Valley to the west, they came through
Steptoe Valley, and through this break here into the basin, Duck Creek Basin. And
proceeded through this area, and you can see the—between the mountains up there,
there’s kind of an opening, it’s where Timber Creek comes through. And they went
through there, and on over into Spring Valley. And that’s where they had planned to
catch the Shoshone, at the Swamp Cedars. They had intended to massacre them all. And
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that’s where the horses got mired down in the mud, and they were floundering so much
that they had to turn back. That time, they didn’t get as many Indians as they had
planned. And you can see the pipeline that goes—the Consolidated Copper Company
built from Duck Creek, and it takes the water all the way around the mountain, and up
over the other side, to McGill where they had a smelter set up. [__Inaudible at 12:53__]
west of Ely. Then it was brought down by the train to McGill, and run through the
smelter, and then that’s where the pure gold was taken from there. Or the gold nuggets
made.
C:
About what time of the, or about when was that, in terms of years?
R:
Okay, first story of the cavalry, probably about 1890-something. Early 1890s. And when
the Consolidated Copper, this was about the 1920s or [19]30s. And then just at the mouth
of the valley here, there was a sawmill that they also used the lumber for building things.
[__Inaudible at 14:39__] Not much left there nowadays. Though this is big wide-open
area, and when the cavalry were coming, they were following the water sources. You
know, that’s why they came through Duck Creek. And right now, the Schell Creek
[__Inaudible at 15:01__] we have the largest national park in the state of Nevada. Lot of
hunters in this area up here, which does help our economy, and bring some money in.
But if they build that water line down to Las Vegas, eight foot diameter pipe, they’ll drain
all the water from this area, then everything will die. We won’t have any more fishing,
and no more hunting to offer. Everything’s going to be dead. I hope we can—we’ve been
fighting the battle to keep our water, but it’s been a hard battle and I don’t know if we’ll
ever win. I hate to see this country go to desert, but it may some day. It’s wonderful land
right now. And in every canyon, there’s a stream, in this area. There’s Bird Creek, Berry
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Creek, Timber Creek, Duck Creek, East Creek, Kalamazoo—every one has a creek
[__Inaudible at 16:13__].
C:
And you said at one time, you could just drink right out of the creek?
R:
Oh, yes! If I was a [__inaudible at 16:21__] some fishing or hiking, whatever, if there
was a creek, you just lay down on your belly and get a good drink of water. And now you
can’t go on the mountain and drink the water because they said that there’s giardia in the
streams and [__inaudible at 16:34__] Shame. We’re just polluting our world.
[__inaudible at 16:43__] Well, this is the time to do it. I’m 72 years old, I got a deer tag
again this year. [Laughter] So, I’ll be out in the fall. Make good use of it while I can.
C:
So what all parts of the deer do you use for, you know, craftsmanship, or…?
R:
Okay, the feet. I always tie them back and make a like gun rack or pole rack. Mount it on,
mount the feet on the board, and then they hold those, hold your gun or whatever. Your
pole. Or they make good coat racks, hat racks. Some of them I keep, I put them straight
so when they harden, they’re stiff, and I use those as handles for knives. My husband
makes several obsidian knife blades, and I usually put antler handles on those. Antler
handles or deer feet. And the dew claws, I use those for the rattles on my turtle rattles. I
fasten them on a piece of leather, drill a hole through the turtle shell and fasten the dew
claw, and then when you twist your wrist, the dew claws rattle against the turtle shell.
Used to use those in rituals, medicine man’s rattle. But we make them now to sell as
artifacts to tourists. And I’m a silversmith, and this ring I made, that’s a stone from my
father’s mine near Hamilton. Austin/Hamilton area. And my dad passed away, I still have
some of his stone left. And I still bring some out. Also, I make rings and necklaces out of
the garnets from Garnet Hill there. The garnet is a naturally faceted stone, and it makes a
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really wonderful ring, or necklace, or earrings. I’ve done all those. I plan to do a whole
line of that type of jewelry and sell it this summer. Still like to do my crafts, even though
I’m getting old. [Laughter] My eyes are getting bad, but I’ll keep on going. And I do a lot
of beadwork, traditional beadwork. And this is last winter, I made my first—no, my
second—willow cradleboard. And this one turned out pretty good, I think I may have to
make some more. People like those. And I’m just trying to get back to my roots, and
there are more things I need to teach younger people before I move on or can’t teach
them anymore. I teach—I’ve taught certain silversmiths, I do a lot of beadwork classes,
and buckskin working. And I did, I have done demonstrations on brain-tanning deerhides.
And I just try to keep our traditions alive. And I’m doing, I’m trying to make a gourd
dipper, for dipping water. The gourd is used in the ceremonial—or, the official
sweatlodge ceremonies. And I’m trying to duplicate that. [__inaudible at 20:03__] But a
lot of people really like the white buckskin for wedding dresses. I make those for ladies.
C:
So are these, what you’re talking about, was this passed on to you from your mom or
family, or—
R:
I’m learning this however, wherever I can, you know, from elders. It doesn’t even have
to be the Ely Shoshone, just all Shoshone around, wherever I can get the information, I’d
like to get it passed on. That’s just as I was saying, for the cattails, when they’re first
coming out in the spring, when they first break through the water, they can be collected
and they taste like fresh asparagus. And after they grow up and start forming the cattails,
they can be collected and eaten. And they look just like little ears of corn. And they taste
that way, too. That’s, uh—you know, there’re so many things that can be used just right
off the land out here. It’s just such a rich area, fertile. And just about every kind of berry
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you can imagine grows out here. Just have to know which one to pick! [Laughter] And,
uh, there’s just all this information I’d like to be able to pass on to the younger people. So
it doesn’t die. [__inaudible at 21:28__] and my mother was 97, and passed away a year
and a half ago. And there are a lot of things that went with her that I wouldn’t know. But
we’re, we’re hoping we can have something that’s carried on.
C:
So is there a group of youth, or young people that you’re working with to pass the
traditions on to, or just family members, or whoever’s interested?
R:
I was trying to build a cultural center. My husband passed away, so now it’s, I don’t see
how I can get it accomplished by myself. So I’m just teaching people who are interested,
whether they’re native or non-native, young, old, doesn’t matter. If they have an interest,
I’d like to try to pass it on to them. Because if somebody gets a little bit, you know, they
can pass it on to someone else. And that’s the, that’s the only way we’re going to keep
our traditions alive. They—our preschool has a native Shoshone class in language. They
teach them some of the construction of teepees and things like that. So the younger
people are getting that. It’s the older ones, the high school age, who’ve kind of been
skipped. [__inaudible at 22:44__]. And of course, [__inaudible at 22:48__] had visitors
from out of state, even out of the country, that are interested in these things. And I can go
through and give them instructions [__inaudible at 22:59__] to see how these things are
done. I didn’t give classes, I just did demonstrations.
[Break in recording]
R:
Hi, we’re at East Creek right now, in the area where a lot of gathering—there’s a lot of
fruits and seeds. The ricegrass looks good this year. Hope there’s a good pinenut crop.
This is where the local Indians used to come gather a lot of things, the edible things we
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loved. And back when, in the 1800s, when the sheepherders used to come through this
area, and the cavalry, the Indian ladies would be out gathering berries and roots and all
kinds of things. And it was kind of a sad thing, because the young girls, if they were
caught out in the open like this, the sheep herders or soldiers would grab them and rape
them. And so, they learned that when they were out in areas like this, alone, or their
mothers taught them to find—if they couldn’t outrun their pursuers, they would just sit
down in a sandy wash and fill their cavity with sand. And that way, if the men tried to
rape them, then it would hurt them too badly, and they’d leave them alone. This, there’s
always trout in these streams, so there’s plenty to eat. It’s always nice to be out among
nature. We hope to get some more pinenuts this year. Last year they were just in small
spots. But we had quite a bit of snow in November and December, so maybe we’ll, if we
get some spring rains, we should have good pinenut crop. We’re all hoping for that.
When I was growing up here, we spent a lot of time in the mountains, shooting rabbits
and gathering pinenuts and things. And that was fun. And when I started to go to high
school, we moved to Las Vegas, because my dad wanted us to have a good education.
And he was going where—there was more work down in Las Vegas than there was in
Ely. We moved there. First time we moved down there was 1946. And then every
summer, we came back to Ely until I think it was about 1950, and then we moved down
to Las Vegas for good. And I went to Las Vegas High School there. And I got into
engineering—which, they said it wasn’t for a girl, but I got into it anyway, because my
dad wanted my sister and I to draw plans, the house plans for him because he built
homes. And two years I tried to get into the drafting class, and they kept telling me, “No,
that’s for boys. That’s not for girls.” Well, I finally got into drafting, and I did very well
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with that. And I continued on. I worked for the Planning Commission, for Clark County.
And I learned planning and zoning. And I married my husband. He was in the Air Force,
and we went to Vandenberg Air Force Base. And I worked for a surveyor down there. I
learned subdivision design, and designed several subdivisions. In fact, I designed
subdivisions in Las Vegas. And it’s kind of neat when I fly into Las Vegas and I can look
down and I say, “Oh, there’s the East Gate subdivision that I designed! Looks just like it
does on paper!” [Laughter] It’s a good feeling. And I worked—my husband being in the
Air Force, we traveled all around. I was in Guam for two years. That was during the time
we were bombing Vietnam. That was very interesting, there. And the B-52s taking off
every day, night and day. And went to Glassberg, New York, and I worked for an
architect—a professional engineer there. And I got deeper into the architecture. I
designed a million-dollar factory building, some apartment houses, and a store. And then
we were transferred to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. And I just did
my crafts there. I went to Virginia and worked for the Newport News Shipbuilding. And I
worked on the design—the piping system for the nuclear aircraft carrier, Nimitz and the
Eisenhower. And then I worked for this deepsea ventures company—it’s been so many
years ago! [Laughter] And we were doing undersea mining for these, they were these
nodules that roll around on the, collect on the sea floor. The nucleus is a shark’s tooth.
And then it rolls, it gains magnesium. And so these were—or, manganese. They were
very rich in manganese. They were nodules. And it seemed every time we’d get a
shipload full, the pirates would come and steal our cargo, and we would have to go back
to mining again! But it’s been a very interesting life. And now I’m trying to continue on
with my traditional things. Building artifacts, and making the buckskin dresses and things
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like that. Because I’d like to pass this knowledge on to the younger people, so our
traditions don’t die. And I would like to, I hope, build a cultural center so I could have
classes. I don’t know if I’ll make that happen or not, because I’m 72 years old now, and
don’t know how long I can keep going! [Laughter] But I’m going to try. But for young
people, you know, you can do whatever you want to do with your life. You can start from
nothing and then build to everything, or, or if you just don’t want to do anything, I guess,
you can do that too, but it’s not very interesting. And when I was in Nebraska, we rented
this old farmstead, and so I was able to raise my three boys, teaching them how to take
care of the—we’ve had little bucket calves. We fed calves and rode horses, and raised
chickens and pigs, and had our big garden. And believe it or not, one year, I made fifty
gallons of dill pickles. [Laughter] Our garden really did well. We had—we fertilized it
from the hen house. We cleaned the hen house, put that on the garden, and oh, everything
just flourished. It was great. And then, when I moved out to, back to Las Vegas in 1980,
and went to work at the Test Site, and worked there for ten years. And then I, my first
husband passed away, and I married my second husband, and we went on the road going
on the powwow trail, going to shows all around California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona,
and Colorado. Did that for three years, and then back home to Pahrump. And then finally,
I decided I wanted to come back to Ely. I just missed the mountains and everything. And
so we came. About seven acres, and moved up here. That’s where I had planned to build
my cultural center and museum, but my husband passed away four years ago, so I don’t
know if that will come to fruition or not. But I’m going to do everything I can to go down
those roads. And it’s just—it feels so good to be back to this mountain country and to
Ely. It’s home. [Laughter]
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[Break in recording]
I would like to encourage people to do more things with their hands. I realize now, with
the technology we have, everything is done on computer. You don’t have to do anything.
But people still need to keep their minds busy and their hands busy. If you could do more
hands-on building things, rather than just doing it on the computer. I know the computer
models work great, they’re great for architects in showing, like, this way and that way,
but in my drafting background, I draw little blocks to be able to move around on the
drawing, so you could see what rooms could go where in your building. Where you can
do that with the computer. But when you have a hands-on feel, I think it’s a, you get a
deeper concern about the program—about what you’re doing. And it gets, I think it gets
people thinking out of the box. I think everybody should have drafting because, boy or
girl, because when you’re drafting you’re thinking of how something is built, and if it’s
turned around, you can turn it in your mind, and you don’t have to depend on the
computer to do it for you. It gets your thinking, your brain, engaged. Because it was hard
for me to get into a drafting class, but as I got—I think it should be a required subject for
all students. Because it gets your mind working. And you can tear something apart in
your mind, because you need to know how to put it back together. And it’s—that works
even in cooking. Anything you do in life. To be able to dismantle something in your mind
and put it back together, I think, is very important to everyone. And that’s—that has
helped me. So…
C:
And then, for educators that might—?
R:
The educators, that too. I think they should have programs where the kids can have a
hands-on, doing things. The other day, I found a tick on my dog. It was huge—almost as
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big as my fingernail. And, well, got it off, put it in the jar, you know, says, “Oh, it’s
dead.” And then I found, this friend of mine told me, that they live, they like the carbon
dioxide. So I took off the lid, blew in there, and put the lid back on, and pretty soon his
little legs started moving. And so I shut the bottle, and he went upside-down. And it’s
kind of like the ballast tanks in a ship. You could see where he would evacuate a section,
and pretty soon he got it so he could roll over, and he was back on his feet. And I blew
some more carbon dioxide, put the lid on there, and his feet came out, and pretty soon he
started walking around. And you know, for kids to have something hands-on, rather than
the imaginary things on the computer that you see—if educators can provide things like
that. The nature things. I think it would just, everybody could connect better. And you
wouldn’t have so many shootings in the schools! [Laughter]
C:
Yeah, that’s unfortunate.
R:
Because, I think those terrible programs they have on the monsters and things have a lot
to do with the shootings. But, that’s my thought. And educators could do more field trips,
take kids out among nature—amongst nature. They could get a better grasp on where we
are in this world.
C:
Well, I’d like to take this opportunity today, Laura, and thank you on behalf of the Great
Basin Indian Archive for giving me the opportunity to, you know, see things out in
nature, and experience the backwoods country in Ely that I never knew existed.
R:
You bet. A lot of people think, “Oh, Nevada is desert.” But it’s not! [Laughter] And
thank you for inviting me.
C:
So this concludes our field tour—throughout the backwoods, I guess, if you want to call
it—of Ely. And there’s so many very beautiful wildlife—plants—and… this is probably
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the best time of the year to experience everything, so… It’s so green. And in bloom. And
Laura knows so much about everything out here, that it’s made this tour very interesting.
And once again, I just want to thank you, Laura.
R:
You’re very welcome. Thank you.
[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
Laura Rainey
Location
The location of the interview
Cave Lake State Park, NV and surrounding area
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<a href="http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/038a57d31acf75ccaa2678a571009392.pdf">English transcript available as pdf file</a>
Original Format
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DVD, AVI, and MP4 Format
Duration
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00:35:52
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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Laura Stark Rainey - Oral History (05/28/2014)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history interview with Laura Stark Rainey, Western Shoshone from Ely, NV on 05/28/2014
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Laura Stark Rainey is a Western Shoshone from the Ely Shoshone Tribe part of the Western Shoshone Nation. Laura took us on a tour of the Cave Lake State Park and surrounding areas describing the hunting and gathering practices of the Western Shoshone. She also tells us of the U.S. Calvary and the Spring Valley or Swamp Cedar Massacre, as well as other interactions with the Shoshone and the government. And in extension how much of the land has been taken into BLM or federal hands. She also speaks about her ambition to start a heritage center devoted to the Shoshone. She ends her oral history by telling us about her life, her husband, and her education in engineering.<br /> <br />Interviewed by Norm Cavanaugh</p>
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Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 035
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
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05/28/2014 [28 May 2014]; 2014 May 28
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; Scott A. Gavorsky [GBC Virtual Humanities Center]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah [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/475
Format
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MP4
Language
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English
Cave Lake State Park
Community
Crossroads
Design
gathering
GBIA
heritage
hunting
plants
Ruby Valley
Shoshone
Spring Valley Massacre
Story
Swamp Cedar Massacre
U.S. Cavalry
Women's History
-
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52eb60106423a6a54d681fb1e57972f6
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/bbeb032fe8ebb86c442aad5cdb9c0a5c.pdf
f50daebef208967dd3f9fde127c661e5
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
Transcript of Oral History - Delaine Stark Spilsbury and Laura Stark Rainey (GBIA 037)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral History interview with Delaine Stark Spilsbury and Laura Stark Rainey, Western Shoshoni from Ely, NV
GBIA 037
Description
An account of the resource
Delaine Spilsbury and Laura Stark Rainey discuss their childhood experiences growing up in Ely and family stories. Interviewed by Norm Cavanaugh, 28 May 2014, at Duck Creek, NV.
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Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
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Great Basin Indian Archive - Western Shoshone Oral Histories - GBIA 037
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Great Basin Indian Archive
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28 May 2014
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Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; Andrew Moore [GBIA]; Scott A. Gavorsky [VHC]
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Great Basin Indian Archive
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<a href="/omeka/admin/items/show/id/84">Oral History - Delaine Stark Spilsbury and Laura Stark Rainey</a>
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pdf file (21 pages)
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English; Shoshone
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Text
Delaine
Spilsbury
&
Laura
Rainey
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
037
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
May
28,
2014
Duck
Creek,
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 037
Interviewee: Delaine Stark Spilsbury and Laura Stark Rainey
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: May 28, 2014
S:
Hello. Delaine Spilsbury here, and I’m a Great Basin Shoshone from Ely, Nevada.
R:
I’m Laura Rainey. I’m a member of the Ely Shoshone Tribe, of the Western Shoshone.
S:
Okay, since I asked to speak first, I’d like to ask Laura, who is four years younger than I
am—and since I was mostly away from her most of the time, even when we were in
grade school—I’d like to know a little bit about your experiences at Ely Grade School.
To see if they were the same as mine.
R:
Well, we still had a lot of prejudice at that time. I remember a lot of times, white kids
chasing me across the railroad tracks, throwing rocks at me. When I was at school, they
picked on me on the playground. But—normally, I didn’t fight back. I would just run and
go away. I didn’t, I didn’t fight with anybody. I guess I just allowed them—allowed them
to do it to me! [Laughter] The teachers were good, though, and the education was good. It
was just the peers teasing me all the time.
C:
What kind of things did they say to you, or…?
R:
Oh, just, like “dirty Indian” and stuff like that, and throw rocks. And they didn’t want me
to be around them. And if there’d be two white girls talking or something like that, I’d go
up to see, and they’d say, “Oh, get away from us, we’re not talking to you!” And just,
you know. Kids still do that nowadays.
S:
How about, you know, you spent all your high school years in Las Vegas, did you not?
R:
Yes, I did.
S:
And how was it there?
R:
It was pretty good. Only the Mexican girls befriended me. The white girls didn’t, really.
We were all, the dark-skinned were just kind of outcasts. It took me three tries to get into
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the drafting class, because they kept telling me—first time, I signed up in my freshman
year. They said, “No, girls—that’s not for, drafting is for boys.” And they put me in the
typing class. The second year I put in for drafting, and they said, “No, drafting is for
boys,” and they put me in Home Ec. My third year, I finally was able to take the course in
drafting, which got me in my engineering career. And the boys, most the boys were okay,
but a lot of them kind of tried to ignore me. And when I did win an award from Ford
Motor Company on one of my drawings, in the newspaper they put “Larry Rainey”
because they knew there were no girls in drafting. [Laughter]
S:
That reminds me of when I was in high school in Vegas, and I had a chemistry class. And
like I said, I never did live the life of a girl. And there was something about chemistry. I
was a straight-A student at the time. I was a straight-A, and my partner in the chem lab
was one of the top, the, well, she was just well-known and well-liked around the school.
And she was a top student. And to say that she was a straight-A student also, and wellknown. And I liked her. And I worked so hard at that chemistry class so we could keep
our straight A. But the only thing I can explain—my self-explanation on it is, chemistry
was so much like cooking I think I just rejected it. Because we never did get an A as long
as I was the lab partner. [Laughter] Sorry, there! Okay, that was the end of my questions.
And except for, is there, what are your primary interests now that you’re retired, and…?
R:
Well, my primary interests now are—my goal, my desire for many years, was to build a
cultural center so I can teach the young Native Americans, and also non-natives, some of
our cultural heritage before they get lost. I’ve had several beadwork classes and
leatherworking classes, and I’ve taught a few people silversmith. And I’d like to go ahead
and continue, because our youngsters are—there aren’t going to be any teachers left
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pretty soon. You know, all the elders are kind of dying off, and there’s not going to be
anybody to teach them anymore. So, I would like to continue to—I’d like to get a cultural
center where I can teach, like, a class instead of the one-on-one as I’m doing right now.
However, one-on-one works quite well. They seem to pay attention more, and maybe get
more from it.
C:
What type of cultures would you like to teach? I mean, like, you mentioned beading. Are
there other things besides beading?
R:
Also, well the handcrafts. Making the artifacts, replicas. The old, you know, the old way.
Like, with the knives I make, they’re hand-chipped obsidian blades, in a deer antler, and
they’re wrapped in rawhide, and they’re set in pine resin. You melt the pitch, and it’s just
like epoxy. It works really well. I’d like to teach them the old ways of doing things like
that.
S:
And my goal with the youngsters is to—I mentioned it on another video—that I would
like to teach the, have the young people know more about the Earth Mother. I think it’s
probably the most important item of our time, because we’ve overused all our necessities.
They come from the earth. We’ve sullied the water, we’ve sullied the earth. We’re trying
to poison everything that we need to have a good life. To even have a life. And I’m heavy
into environmentalism, and I’d like to—like, if the kids could learn more about what the
earth has to offer, what Mother Earth has to offer, then I think perhaps they might think
and be a better part of that picture. And most people say, “Well, I’m only one person. I
can’t do anything about it.” Well, we’re all only one person and we can’t do anything
about it. But as a unit, if we all band together and try to make something happen, there’s
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a chance we can do that. And no, we can’t do it on our own. I don’t know if I have any
more questions. Do you have any?
R:
Mm… Not really.
S:
Well, I do have something I’d like to talk to you about. I’ve had a lot of success in my
life by being frugal. It was something I learned from my dad. I was born in the
Depression, and we didn’t have anything. So when we did get something, or if we got
something of monetary value, or even money itself—which was pretty rare—we looked
at it, and found what would be our best option, what we could do to get the best out of
what we had. And we didn’t spend it on, just because it was Sunday—or whatever, the
stores are closed on Sunday here. We actually thought about everything we did, and we
never—I know people like to just do things on the spur of the moment. But we always
considered it, and considered the alternatives, and I’ve done that through my entire life.
I’ve saved, and it’s worked out really well for me, and I don’t know if it would work in
today’s economy, but at least we’d have something other than waiting for our next
paycheck. Because that next paycheck is what’s happening in society now, and with our
politics is, paychecks are becoming scarcer. So we need to learn to be more frugal, and
to—we can still live well. We don’t have to deny ourselves everything. But I, having the
newest model of anything that everybody has, I don’t think is the answer to happiness.
Happiness is inside us. Happiness is in our lifestyle. Happiness is in—for me, it’s getting
out and being able to enjoy the outdoors, the fresh air, the clean water, which is
something that if we all band together, I think we can protect.
R:
Another thing: I think we need to go back to our basic living, or style that the natives had
years and years ago, about not wasting anything. I’ve noticed nowadays so many people
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waste water. If they take an animal, they take only the best parts, and they don’t use the
entire body. You know, you need to use everything, and just not waste.
S:
And don’t let your tap run when you go into the other room! [Laughter] Take a little
shorter shower! Shower with someone! [Laughter] And it’s all, it isn’t hard to be, to save
a little on this, that, and the other. And then, when you go to town, and if you have to
drive or whatever, try two or three errands on each trip. Try not to just, and I shouldn’t
have to tell anyone to try not to waste gasoline now that it’s over four dollars a gallon,
but I’ll say it anyway.
R:
That’s right. And always make a list so you can make sure you hit all your stops!
[Laughter]
S:
And kids, you know, you don’t just have to have everything that your friends have. You
have everything inside you. And you need to take a look at yourself. Think what you
want to do with your life. And it’ll probably include getting a decent education, because,
as I mentioned in the other video—I’m 76 now, and when I was out into the world, I had
all of the knowledge and the talent and whatever I needed to get a decent job. And once I
proved to people that I could do it—I did go to college, but I didn’t get a degree—proved
that I was excited, you know, that interested, and willing to work for whatever pay they
wanted to give me. Because once you learned from that job, you could always move on to
the next one, with more knowledge. I just, I didn’t—what I’m trying to say is, I didn’t
need a degree at that time. But now, in this day and age, no one can even get an interview
without a degree, and oftentimes there’s hundreds of people applying for that same job.
So, you need to dig deep within yourself and be determined that you want to do
something. And whether it’s for you, or your family, or for the world, or just because you
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enjoy doing it. And that’s one thing that we don’t have an opportunity to do much
anymore, is to enjoy what we’re doing. And when I was a youngster, we had music
classes, we had drama classes, we had literature that we studied… I’m thinking. Even in
P.E. we had dancing, and games, and things. It wasn’t all contact sports and challenges
like I see in today’s world. And artists are so valuable to our society. In our old society,
artists were always supported by the rest of the tribe. If we had a basketmaker who did
beautiful work, everybody worked to feed her and clothe her, and whatever needed, and
all her needs were met, just so she could produce art, because people have always
appreciated art. And it’s same with the music or any other part of our culture that we
want to develop. And don’t just do what the other kids do.
R:
What I’ve found, too, in my career: a woman in a man’s job, they always get paid less.
And have to work twice as hard to show a good job. So girls, don’t get discouraged if you
can’t earn as much money as a man, because that’s the way it’s been, and I think it looks
like it’s going to stay that way. But don’t get discouraged, and just keep working harder.
And you’ll do well.
S:
Especially if you like what you’re doing. [Laughter]
R:
That’s for sure! [Laughter]
S:
Or only if you like what you’re doing. I’d have to say that. Find something else if you
don’t like it. Because it is a lifetime, and lifetimes are getting longer.
R:
That’s right.
C:
So in terms of what you both fell into doing, in your lifetime, how did you fall in to
being—both kind of falling into drafting. Or, what prompted that interest, and what took
you there?
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S:
I’ll lead this one. [Laughter] I didn’t fall into it. As I mentioned before, my dad was in the
construction business, and he needed someone to draw his house plans for him, so he
could—his house, building plans, whatever—so he could get his building permits. You
can’t just go and pay for a permit and build whatever you want. You have to have, there’s
all kinds of specs, they’re specifications—we call them “specs” in the indusry. And they
had, all these drawings had to show this. And he was so frustrated one day when he was
trying to scoop up the money to do the next project he had. And he said, “Daughter, why
don’t you learn how to do this?” And since I’d been building with him for all that time,
and working with him, and knew a little bit about it, I said, “You know? Why don’t I?”
And I was going to go into architecture. I started when—I did do some freelancing while
I was in school. And I got paid quite well. But the problem I had with architecture is,
once people got the drawing, they always wanted to change it, but they didn’t want to pay
for the time to change it. They felt all the changes should come with the original job. And
that didn’t work for me. And it’s a good thing I didn’t, because it’s a tough—it’s really a
tough field. And not many people really make it in architecture. Unless they have
something totally different, which at that time I didn’t know, have any totally different
ideas.
R:
Well, nowadays, with the computers, it does all the work for you. So.
S:
Well, yeah, but you still have to have original ideas.
R:
Ideas, right.
S:
Have you heard of the Lou Ruvo medical building in Las Vegas? It is the most unique,
off-the-wall, crooked, upside-down kind of building I’ve ever seen. And it just, it’s a
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smash for the businesses there. People go there first. It looks like it’s built on a sidehill,
and it’s flat. Haven’t you seen—
R:
I haven’t, no.
S:
Well, that’s what architecture is. And now, of course, big structural buildings, pretty
much that is all the same now. They have the standards, and like she said, the drawings
are already there. So, there’s…
R:
And you have the certain specifications for earthquake and things like that. Which they,
you know, you have to build it to those specs, you can’t do something different, because
this is what they’ve determined will withstand an earthquake—or, halfway, anyway.
[Laughter]
S:
And it’s really, the building codes are really tough for a lot of people who like to be
inventive, and, like all the people who have tried to build the homes that don’t need the
heating, out of things like old tires, and hay bales—and my son wants to do one out of
adobe like it’s been around for hundreds of years. And it lasts hundreds of years. But
none of that will pass the building codes, so that’s why we don’t have that kind of
structure. So, if you like architecture, go for it. But don’t do it to make money.
R:
That’s right. But, the thing is, if you start something, stick with it. Don’t get discouraged
halfway through.
S:
And don’t let some guy tell you you can’t do it because you’re a woman, because I do
everything better than they do! [Laughter] Well, maybe not everything.
C:
So, in terms of our culture, the Western Shoshone culture—you know, I know you were
both, you mentioned you grew up on the Ely Colony. And that you had parents that had
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experiences that convinced them not to teach you to speak the language and practice our
traditional native way of life. Can you reflect on a little bit of that?
R:
Yeah, both our parents were sent to the Stewart government school, the Indian School, in
Carson City. And there, they cut off their hair, they couldn’t, wouldn’t let them wear their
regular clothes, they took their moccasins away and put them in regular shoes, just totally
changed them to the, you know, European-type dress. They couldn’t speak their
language, they couldn’t say their prayers. Everything had to change. So, our parents had
such a hard time, went through such turmoil there at the Stewart Indian School. Dad ran
away three times. He finally, when he was thirteen years old, they didn’t catch him, and
he was able—he went hopping freight cars, freight trains, down in California picking
grapes and strawberries, whatever. And he just kind of hoboed, because, you know, that’s
the only way, the only means he could support himself. So when he met my mom and
they had us, he told my mom, he says, “We’re not going to let our daughters suffer the
way we did. So, there will not be, we will not speak any Shoshone in the house. It’ll all
be English. And we’ll just leave our traditions and teach them to be able to get along in
society as it is now”. So, we missed a lot of that background, which both of us are trying
to recapture if we could. We’re getting what we can. And this is the reason I have the
goal of trying to have the cultural center, to be able to teach younger kids the way we did
things before, and the way things were done. And our Tribe has a language class that
people can attend. So, we’re just… trying to do best we can, since we lost a lot.
[Laughter]
S:
I have to correct you on one thing, on that last time that dad ran away from Stewart. He
had a buddy in California who was from California. And they left Stewart in the middle
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of the winter, and walked over Donner’s Pass. That’s how much he wanted to get out of
that school. And as far as the traditions, we always kept up the traditions of hunting and
fishing, and the pinenut gathering, and all the survival skills we carried on from the time
we were little kids. When I was in, probably, first or second grade in Tonopah, I can
remember picking pinenuts so I could buy my school wardrobe. And we’d take them in
and sell them to the markets. But we did make a—we used those. And then, we used
pinenuts all year long. Cooked with them and ate them. And, like we were talking about,
we did a lot of hunting. We actually lived off the land for a number of years. And
throughout and then the late Depression. And then World War II stopped all that.
R:
Yeah, we ate a lot of rabbits. Now, they are good, I still love my rabbit! [Laughter]
S:
But as far as ceremonial things, and gather[ings]—what some people call “powwows,”
we didn’t participate in anything like that.
C:
So in terms of rabbits, were you guys ever aware of any people making, like, the rabbit
blankets that are talked about, you know, by, people mention that nowadays.
S:
Yes.
C:
That our Shoshone people did rabbit blankets.
R:
Yeah. My mother was telling me how they made them. When the rabbits were fresh, you
skin them—because the inside of the skin is kind of sticky. And as you take it, cut it in
strips, and roll it on your hand, on your leg like this. And it would make these long strips.
And then that’s what they would tie together to make the blankets so that you have fur on
all sides. It’s—you know, like, a bear skin rug, you’ve got hair one side and skin on the
other. With the rabbit blanket, you had the fur all the way, because it had been rolled and
stuck together like that.
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S:
I’m the guy who shot the rabbits. She made the blanket. [Laughter]
C:
So do you happen to know how many rabbits it would take to make a blanket, or…?
R:
At least 60 for a small one.
S:
Yeah. But we even, we had rabbit drives, too. We had the whole, big extended family I
was talking about. We’d get the kids and everybody out there in the wintertime, and we’d
harvest—we’d harvest.
R:
They’d put a big net up, and then beat and make noise going through the bushes. And
then all the rabbits would run into the net, and then that’s where you’d capture them.
C:
So were those jackrabbits?
S:
Yes.
R:
Well, jackrabbits and cottontails. Either way. They’re all good. [Laughter]
S:
Jackrabbits were bigger; there was more meat on them!
R:
Yeah, bigger hide, too! [Laughter]
S:
And I can remember what—I was the skinner. And I shot two or three with my .22, but
mostly I was the skinner, and I can remember there were so many, we’d be skinning for
at least half a day. But it was wintertime, and we could put the rabbits out in storage in
the garage, and that way they would freeze and they’d stay that way. So… Nothing was
wasted, not even on the rabbits.
C:
Is there much rabbits around here anymore?
R:
Uh—
S:
There’s quite a few cottontail, here. I don’t see many jackrabbits anymore.
R:
This year, there haven’t been too many. They kind of, every seven years, they kind of
fluctuate. They kind of disappear, and then they start building up again. And I think
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maybe this year is probably time for them to start coming back. We do have a lot of
coyotes around, though, so they take care of a lot of them. [Laughter]
S:
I don’t remember as many coyotes as when I was a kid.
R:
I don’t either. But… Oh, and the pinenuts that she was mentioning, that we’d eat on all
year long. There’s two ways of gathering; they’d go out, the Indians would go out, and
pick the cones off the trees in about September.
S:
Early in the season.
R:
Yeah.
S:
Early, be—
R:
Yeah. They’re ready, but they’re not falling out of the cones. Pick them up, and they’d
take big baskets full. And build a big fire, and scrape all the coals after it’s burning, and
cook the coals out because the ground is nice and hot. Dump the pine cones in there, and
then cover it all up and put dirt on top so you don’t see any steaming coals coming out or
anything. And let them bake for, roast about an hour, was it?
S:
I don’t know.
R:
I don’t know how long. Our dad would dig one out, and open up and see if they’re ready
yet. [Laughter] So then, everybody would sit around—
S:
That was always a big, big, big party. To eat.
R:
Yeah. A lot of people, it’d take a lot of people to do this. And then they’d scrape out
burrs, and everybody’s sitting on their chair with a rock. And you beat that cone upsidedown, you know, right on the top of it, on that rock, and it’d come open. And then you’d
shake all the nuts out. And oh, they’re just delicious when they’re cooked that way!
S:
And your hands would get all black—
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R:
Oh, everyone’s!
S:
So would your face, because you’re eating one—save one, eat one; save one, eat one.
[Laughter]
R:
And the other way that we’d get them, too, was, after the first frost, the cones will pop
open on the tree, and then we’d go crawl around under the tree and pick them up there.
And that way, they’re not so pitchy and everything. And then collect them. And then, of
course, the guy with the big stick will beat the tree to knock the ones that are still up there
in the cones, and make them fall down so we can pick them all up.
S:
He beats them first, so you don’t have to pick up twice. [Laughter]
R:
Yeah.
S:
And we still do that. We still gather pinenuts that way—when there are some. But, it’s
been bad, bad. They call it a drought; it’s a permanent change, and I don’t know if there
will be any more pinenuts. Pinenuts have to have—well, they have to have water in the
winter so they can start. But then they need those summer monsoons in order to finish
their maturing. And there’ve been many years we’ve had a summer crop but it didn’t
mature, because we don’t have the summer monsoons. And when I was a kid, you knew
that it was going to rain either the Fourth of July or two days later. And that started the
monsoon system, and we had, just, acres and acres of pinenuts then. And very few now.
R:
And another thing: now there are so many commercial pickers, and they go out and get
them when they’re still in the cones. They take the cones and all, just strip the trees
completely out. There’s nothing left. Then they ship them, and run them through
machines and water bath and everything, and crush the cones, get the nuts out. Float them
on the water, and then package them. And sell them to the stores. So… Last year, I had to
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buy my pinenuts out of the store, because I couldn’t get any out of the woods. But, who
knows?
C:
So what do you think is attributing to the loss of the water, or the moisture, in our part of
the country?
R:
Uh—
S:
Go ahead.
R:
There is, one lady was telling me, there is a contributing factor. With the earthquakes
we’ve had, it’s kind of knocked the earth off its axis a little further, and so we’re not
getting the climate that we used to have. And—well, look at Greenland. All the ice is
melting there, because our earth is tilted, and they’re getting more sun, more heat. And
so, everything is melting. I think, with that last earthquake, I think we’ve gained a second
a day. Or something like that. And if this keeps continuing, our axis is going to keep
turning and turning. So the places where it’s been cold, it’s going to be warmer—with the
ice cap melting—and all that’s going to cause the oceans to rise. They’re saying that, I
think, Florida, most of it’s going to go underwater because of the ice cap that’s melting.
S:
Do we have a climate change denier here? [Laughter]
R:
Well now, that’s not the only thing that’s doing it…
S:
I think, I think our prime reason is because we’ve polluted the skies so much that we’re
just changing with, the, that everything is just changing. The system cannot work the way
it did before. And I don’t blame the climate change on droughts, because… I really don’t
know what to blame droughts on. But with the air so changed with the carbon layer, the
carbon air—the air is so thick with carbon. And some places, even Salt Lake City, people
can’t breathe. I have a friend who’s leaving Salt Lake City in a few weeks—he stopped
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by for a visit the other day—he said, because he just can’t breathe in Salt Lake City. And
in China, they wear masks. I don’t know if they do any good. But, with the sun not being
able to get to us, it has to make some kind of a difference. I’m not a scientist, but I know
it takes sun to make a tree grow. Sunlight, not just the sun staying up there and not
getting to it. And the trees are… There’s so much about the Earth Mother that I don’t
know, other than I know that at one time, it stayed in balance. When the natives were in
charge. And they didn’t disrupt the rhythm of the Earth Mother’s heart the way we’re
doing now. And I am not a denier. I know something has to change for the better. And I
think the young people can do it. Because we can see that the seniors are only in it for the
money. And I think the young people—and they’re trying. They’re trying to stop a lot of
things that are happening. And I think that there should be more of us natives that are part
of this. They did have a cowboy—what did they call that? The Cowboys and Indians, that
marched on D.C. a short time ago, and they went in and set up their lodges. And the
cowboys brought their horses. I don’t know if it had an effect, but it distilled, it brought a
lot of knowledge to a lot of people who didn’t have it before. And that was just last
month or a couple of months ago. And I don’t know—I’m not sage enough to have—I
guess I’m not old enough to be sage enough to have the answers. [Laughter]
C:
So, in terms of your, I guess the lifestyle you both have lived, what would be some of the
things that you think young people should know or have some knowledge about, in terms
of—not living on the Colony or living on the reservation, but surviving out there in the
mainline of society?
S:
Oh, I thought you were going to say “surviving out in the wild.” [Laughter] I might be
able to do that. Surviving in mainline society, ooh… For one thing, I know you need an
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education and a degree to even interview for a job. I can’t say that enough. I’m
wondering how our entire nation is going to be able to survive in the society we’re
developing now. I mean, we’ve lost the middle class. People are—it’s getting rapidly
toward the point where there’s going to be really rich people, and really poor people. And
not just here. Number one, you have to believe in yourself. I think that’s really important.
So, making every effort to be the person that you want to be, not peer pressure about
what you think they should be, or where you should go, or what you should do. Be true to
yourself, because you’re going to need that strength unless something really major
changes.
R:
And when you do be yourself and do what you want to do, as long as it doesn’t interfere
with someone else or hurt someone else.
S:
I’ve been—had a request to tell folks what I did with my two boys to educate them about
our heritage. I had a lot of help in my efforts to get those two kids grown—which one of
them I didn’t. [Crying] And we were always living near my parents. And by that time,
my dad was retired. And he lived a really good retirement. He worked hard, he made
enough money that he was able to go do things while he was in his older years. He spent
a lot of time on a lake in his boat, fishing, and in the mountains, camping and hunting and
prospecting. And the things that he really loved to do. And he included the boys along
with him when they went to the mountains, and they learned to love the outdoors. And
Rick was even bowhunting when he was old enough to get a tag, and he did get a small
deer the first year he was hunting. And of course, Grandpa made him clean it himself and
all those things. [Laughter] Field dress it, and butcher it, and whole thing. And so, I had
excellent help in that way. And I brought them to Ely so they could get acquainted with
�
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the elders, and we spent a lot of time doing the things that we did when I was a kid, like
living as much as we could off the land. And I do have to tell you about an experiment I
did one time. My buddy and I decided that we could live off the land for a week. And all
we had were our bows. Oh, we took some, we took sleeping bags and things like that, we
didn’t sleep on the ground or anything. It wasn’t that tough. But, we were getting up
early in the morning to gather wood to get the fire going, to do this, to do that. And just
carrying water, and the very necessary things we had to do. We had very little time left to
go hunting, and then that was one of those years when we didn’t get anything except for a
couple of rabbits here and there, and maybe a grouse. And that was a pretty hungry week.
And it was at the top of the season, it was in early fall. The weather was perfect. The only
thing that—we did take ice with us, in case we did have something to eat, because I don’t
know how our ancestors survived in the summer with no refrigeration. I mean, because
they had live game. And I know they jerked a lot of it, but… there’s only so much you
can do with that. And I know they didn’t waste it, because it’s too hard to kill. If you—
and they had a lot of mouths to feed. But we were what I would say is a total failure. We
didn’t survive it—and it was peak season. There were berries, there were wild onions,
and it got too hungry out there for me. I quit. So, I don’t think I would have done well in
those earlier times. I’d have had to be a lot tougher than I am now. [Laughter] And I have
no idea how they could survive out there in the wintertime. I see pictures, and their
clothing is pretty meager. Especially when they’re pushed off their land. I don’t know
how they survived when they were put out in the—out into the cold. Literally. And I have
all the respect for my ancestors, and that’s carried on to my son.
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R:
Yeah, I raised my boys out hunting and taking care of animals. And when—my husband
was in the Air Force, so we spent a lot of time in cities, but every time we had a few
minutes, we would always go out in the country. Like when we were deer hunting, the
first deer we got, we would take the head, and after breakfast, we’d bury it in the coals
where our fire pit was. And then when we’d come back at lunchtime, after we were
hunting, we’d dig out the head, and my dad would—we would skin it, and then eat the
meat off that head. And it’s the, the jaw meat and everything is just wonderful. It’s tender
and tasty and all. And that was the way that our ancestors, you know, would prepare a
deer head. And so, my boys learned—well, I showed them how to do that. And they liked
to eat rabbits, too. We’ve always had rabbit. And I taught them how to camp and fish.
And, oh, they love fishing. And dressing them and eating them and all. So, the outdoors
is very important to all of us. And the respect for everything. You know, you don’t waste.
And we used to get the watercress—well, I still do. And that’s wonderful in a salad. My
mom used to take the watercress cut it up and scramble it with eggs and brains, you
know, from the deer head.
S:
That came out of the campfire, too.
R:
Yeah. The brains.
S:
With the head, they cooked the brains and everything, and we used the brains. Instead of
using to tan hides; we had wool. [Laughter]
R:
Yeah. So anyway, my boys have had the knowledge of living in the outdoors. And I
think—I don’t know if we could survive out there with nothing, with only, you know,
trying to live off the land. But my mom told me how the old people used to get the
anthills and dig them out, and the little, the eggs in there, they would scoop those out and
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cook those, you know, eat those. And it was called ant pudding. And they cooked them
in—I guess they’re very nutritious. But you don’t—you just had to eat whatever you
could find. But there’s a lot of the wild onions and the sego lilies, you know the bulbs on
those are very edible. And they grow around this area.
S:
Did. [Laughter]
R:
No, I saw on my property a couple years ago. [Laughter]
S:
Okay.
R:
But if we, if it keeps getting drier, we’re not going to have any growing. It’s getting, a lot
of things are dying. The elderberry bushes are dying because of not enough water. And…
S:
Well, I told my kids about what we did when I was a youngster, was we used to gather
the cicadas for the elders. And they would put them on their—
R:
Winnowing basket.
S:
I’m trying to remember what the Shoshone word was—
R:
Kwono. [Usually, Yantu]
S:
Yeah, the kwono. And they’d put hot coals in there and cook them. And they wouldn’t
share with the kids because they weren’t good enough for kids. And we used to go out
and—the kids got to carry the buckets full of water, and the little, they’re not prairie
dogs, but…
R:
Ku’umbe.
S:
Yeah, I know. But what’s an English word? Anyway, those little, little groundhogs.
R:
Little ground squirrels, yeah.
S:
Little ground squirrels. And my dad would get at the other hole, and we’d pour water into
the hole, and when they’d come out he’d grab that. And he’d take those home to the
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elders. And that was too good for kids, too, so we didn’t get to taste it. [Laughter] So, I
could not tell my kids how delicious it was, but when I told them about the cicadas, they
didn’t think they wanted to partake. And that’s about all. So, there’s a lot of things we
couldn’t share, that we learned. And as far as, we just told them to be fair, and to take
care of the old ones, and always share. And it has worked for Rick. He’s very good about
that. But I know that every time we had, not necessarily extra, but I know that we shared
that with my aunt and uncle that lived up there. They were from the family, same family
as my dad. It was my dad’s sister. Because—
R:
His aunt, it was our great-aunt.
S:
But we… okay. Our parents, my mother was orphaned when she was quite young. And
my dad was not quite orphaned, but he had an errant father who felt that booze and wild
women were more important than his kids. So they really didn’t, weren’t raised into the
culture with parents and grandparents like is traditional for our people. So there’s a lot of
those things that we, that they didn’t have the knowledge, we didn’t get the knowledge.
The only skills that we got and were able to pass on are the survival skills.
R:
That’s what we were—
S:
Do you have anything to add?
R:
Yeah, that’s what we were taught.
S:
And the grandparents, I didn’t know any grandparents, except I did see that one
grandfather. My dad’s father. He came to the house one time with a gift for me. And he
didn’t stay long. He left the gift, and smelled of booze at the time, and he was gone.
That’s the only time I ever saw him. So… That was… we weren’t involved in the
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generations. But we did get involved in our family, to my mom and dad’s families. So
we…
R:
But we didn’t know our grandparents on either side.
S:
Either side, yeah.
R:
Passed before we were around. So… These kids need to really be happy if they have
grandparents, too. [Laughter]
S:
Yeah. To love. [Laughter]
R:
Mmkay.
S:
And respect your family, take care of your family as much as you can, because they’re all
you have. Them and you. You are the one that, nobody can help you. You have to do it
yourself.
R:
And as long as you’re conservative with everything, you will be able to live well, and
your kids can live well. Like, especially don’t waste the water. That’s very important.
S:
Stay out of the casino. [Laughter]
[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
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Interviewer
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Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
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Delaine Stark Spilsbury and Laura Stark Rainey
Location
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Ely, NV [Delaine Spilsbury resident; Duckwater Reservation]
Transcription
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<a href="/omeka/files/original/bbeb032fe8ebb86c442aad5cdb9c0a5c.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Transcript available in English with some Shoshone [pdf file]</a>
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00:48:28
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Delaine Stark Spilsbury and Laura Stark Rainey - Oral History (05/28/2014)
Subject
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Oral History interview with Delaine Stark Spilsbury and Laura Stark Rainey, Western Shoshone from Ely, NV [Duckwater Reservation], on 05/28/2014
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Delaine Spark Spilsbury and Laura Star Rainey are both Great Basin Shoshone from Ely, Nevada, part of the Western Shoshone. They began this oral history by speaking of their experiences going to grammar and high school as well as growing up during the Depression. They both spoke about the challenges of making a career in engineering while you’re a woman. They go one to speak about the traditions such as hunting and fishing that were practiced by Western Shoshone people. They also spoke about how their parents’ traditions were diffused by Stewart Indian School. The ended their stories by telling the audience about their sons up-bringing and speaking to the youth.</p>
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Great Basin Indian Archives
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 037
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
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05/28/2014 [28 May 2014]; 2014 May 28
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Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; Andrew Moore [GBIA]; Scott A. Gavorsky [VHC]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America
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http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/483
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mp4
Language
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English; Some Shoshoni
Community
Crossroads
Duckwater
Ely
family
gathering
GBIA
hunting
school
Shoshone
Stewart Indian School
Story
traditions
-
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41bb2d55d06e6fbe935bdd07b5fd42a3
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83e1fd9398700c0aa3a9ba7a47600d39
PDF Text
Text
Nevada
Penoli
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
006
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
April
26,
2006
Elko,
NV
Great
Basin
College
•
Great
Basin
Indian
Archives
1500
College
Parkway
Elko,
Nevada
89801
hCp://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/
775.738.8493
Produced
in
partnership
with
Barrick
Gold
of
North
America
�GBIA 006
Interviewee: Nevada Penoli
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: April 26, 2006
P:
My name is Nevada P. Penoli, and I have been here for 74 years. And I was born here,
and I’m raised here, and probably I’ll die here. And I’ll just give you a small story,
because sometime I like to talk too long. And I think I’ll just talk about getting ready to
go pinenutting. That’s interesting part. Continue?
C:
Uh-huh.
P:
Does that sound all right? Okay. First of all, when we get ready, Grandmother would get
everything, tell us, “All right, time to get ready, go pinenutting. Who wants to go?” So
everybody wants to go. So we start getting our cans—five-gallon cans to put our water
in—and small buckets to put our pinenuts in when we start gathering. And she would get
her a long pole to shake down the pinenuts, pine trees, and then she would make a hook
to put on the end. And then she’d get our boxes for our clothes, and our groceries, and a
heavy cast-iron cooking pots, and coffee pots, and everything would just go in there, put
on the wagon, and get the horses ready to take us up there onto the mountains. The
mountains were not very far away from us. Maybe about four or five miles, and there’s
pinenuts there. And we gather them as much as you want to. But we just want to go
gather a large amount, and once we get up there, we’re going to start finding a place to
camp. And every one of the people that’s going up, young and old, they know what to do.
And of course, the children like to run and play and look the area over to see what they
can play with. But then they had to come back in and start work. The mens, they start
putting up the tents, and find a good place to put their tents and sleeping blankets and
stuff. And then, the part that had to be dug for the main part of the pinenuts, because
there’d be large amount of pinenuts going into that big hole, after the fire is started in
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there. Well, then we all settled down for a supper. The womens, they would all prepare
the meals, and gather everythings up, and then the mens would go gather some wood, so
that we could be ready for the next day. My grandmother sure liked to make the Indian
bread, what we call the ash bread. She always had to make one big ash bread to go with
our meal. And usually it’s deer meat stew, and everybody likes that. Then the big pot of
coffee on the fire. And they don’t have the, I don’t know what you call it, but it’s the
thing that you hang over the fire so the water would boil, and the coffee would boil, and
everything would be just perfect. Many times, people would come back in, or have cup of
coffee, and sit there long into the night and tell stories. Sometime it was grown-up stories,
and sometimes short stories of different animals, how they acted. Sometimes they would
hear laughter, because we would have to go to bed early. And sometimes there would be
jokes of all sorts. So then, after, they’re talking about we’re going to do it tomorrow,
Grandma say, “Oh, shut up, you guys! Go to sleep.” But we’d all laugh and do what we
were going to do, and my Grandma and the other ladies, they’d talk to each other what
they’re going to do. And they had their bandannas to put over their heads, to go out to
look at the trees, because the pinenuts usually falling on their heads, and the pine, um—
it’s sticky. Yeah, pitch, on it, and then land in their hair and be sticky. And so that’s why
they wore bandannas. And then they had gloves to wear for their hands, because their
hands would be sticky and everything. So we’d all get up and have breakfast. And they
would, the men would all go out with their poles, and they had long willow poles. And
look for the pine trees that had nice, good-looking pinenuts, pinecones on them. Then
they’d knock them down, and the womens, they get their baskets and pick up the sticky
pinenut cones and put it in the bucket. And when they fill up with that, they take it back
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to the campground, and that guy there would be ready to throw it in when we get enough.
And then, they’d set fire in that pit. It’s just like a barbecue pit. And then, when they get
enough in that pit, then they would cover it up with fire, and then they’d put some dirt
over it, and they’d let it steam. So then, after that, people would sit around that day and
talk, and have their lunch. And then they’d wait until the, they know just about what time
it would be when the pine nuts would be ready, and the pitch. And when they do it, they
always took one out as they took a shovel and got one out of there, and they said, “Here,
you try it!” So then, they said, “Okay.” They took the pinecone and turn it, put it in their
hands—with their gloves on, because it was hot—and they twisted it different directions.
And then when it was easy to twist, and they said, “It’s ready!” So then they all start
getting shovel, and all start digging up the pinecones in the pit. And then it would be hot.
And then, after a while, they would cool off, and then they would, the womens, they
would gather a spot where they’re going to sit, and they would have their pinecones in
front of them. And they start twisting the pinecones in order to get the nuts out of there.
And then, they’d use their thumbs and their fingers to start digging the pinenuts out of
there, and shedding the nuts so they get them out of the cones. Then, they would put it in
the buckets, and throw the pine cones, the old pine cones away, and then they’ll be doing
that all afternoon until it’s all done. And then, they would, the mens, they would go out
for some more trees to get some more pine cones off. And that goes on for until we get
maybe two, three bags of pinenuts, cones that had been shelled. And then, they would go
out, take some raw pinenuts, and put them in a gunnysack, and take them home. For their
own use. And the ones they already cooked in the barbecue pit would be cooked, and that
one needs to be selling. Sell it to the people outside. And that’s how that was done with
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the pinecones. But the gathering of all the things to work with is very tedious, because
they’d have to go up with the proper wood to use for the poles, and the hooks on the top
of the poles, and the canvas to put under the trees after they start knocking them down.
And the children, they liked to pick up the pine cones, and each throw it at each other.
But then, they would be all sticky with pitch. But then—they all had their old clothes on,
but other than that, that’s where the pinenut story ends, there.
Many a times, when I’m sitting by myself, I remember the times my mother would talk
about old days like wagons, horses, and bridles, and reins, and everything getting all—
horses hooked up to the wagons, so that when they drove, traveling, that’s all they would
have is the wagon. Because they never had no cars, or anything to use to go traveling.
The horses was the main thing for the Indian peoples to have in them days. So that
would’ve been in the 1860s, somewhere in there. And so, then she would watch the TV
shows that had Lonesome Dove on it, and the chuck wagon was main thing that caught
her eye. She says, “That’s just the way we used to do it, when we got ready to go
somewhere!” Wagons and the food, it all goes together. And everybody knew what to do.
Nobody ever got on the wagon without knowing to take care of something. Horses had to
be taken care of, and sometime they’d have a chicken. They would take that along, too.
Because of the eggs they’d have to have. And then Gram, she would gather up her
children, and put them all in the wagon, where they would sit and have their blankets
there, because sometimes they’d drop off to sleep. Mom would do the same. She would
be the oldest member of the family besides her sister, and they would know what to do to
tend to the children, and all those things that girls do. No one had time to play or
anything. So that every hand on that wagon had a job to do. There never was an idle hand
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on there. And lot of times, Mom would tell us, “If you only was there when I was a kid,
you would probably just sit down and cry, because that time was real hard. We didn’t
have nothing to do our work for us. And you guys got it real easy!” And the children
nowadays, if they were always doing their work with their grandparents, and their
mothers and dads, they would know how to handle themselves, and respect their own
lives as we had did then. So, on our wagon trip down through the countrysides, when our
horses was get tired, we’d stop and rest ‘em. We’d always find a spot to be cool, by some
willow trees or by water. And then, when the horses got rested, then we’ll start again. But
most of the time, we keep going, keep going, ‘til we found a place where we could camp.
And that would be a place with some trees. And then Grandfather, he would get his gun,
and then go out and get some rabbits, or a deer, or maybe a bird. Some kind of sagehen, I
think he would get. But other than that, that’s all he would get. Bring it in, and then the
womans, they would prepare the meat by scraping the deer hide, and taking care of the
hide, and the meat. And that is another story. And so then—I won’t go into that, because
it’d be another long story. And after everything was prepared for, the meat was prepared,
then Gram would take the meat and put it over the fire, and we’d have fresh meat over
the fire. And everybody would really like that. And then she’d have her ash bread, and
she’d give us all a piece of ash bread. Sometime we’d want more, but then she’d say,
“No, if I do that, then we won’t have enough for breakfast! Oh, well, go ahead. I’ll fix
some more tomorrow.” So then we had some more bread to eat, and we all went to bed
with our tummies full. I told mom that time, “Did you know you had a very good
childhood? Because you was, all you did was just go around. There was no fences, no
gates to open, and nothing to—nobody said, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that.’ You just
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went.” And she says, “Well, that’s because you guys all knew what to do.” So then, I
just—that’s sad, because I didn’t have that kind of childhood. And that’s all I’m going to
say.
C:
Uh-huh. So what parts of the country did you guys travel?
P:
They traveled from O’Neill, O’Neill down this way, along the Snake River, down to
Jackpot, and all the way down this way, because there would be fishes in there. And then
they would gather the fishes, and they’d dry them, and prepare them for getting dried up,
and then they’d have dry fish, and then they wouldn’t spoil. And then, down here, about
10 miles, 20 miles out of Wells, there would be the deers. And they’d probably get a
young doe and bring that in, because at that time, if they got a deer, they just didn’t
mutilate it. They just brought it in, took care of the meat and the hide, and dried the meat
like jerky. And everything was fine. And then brought everything in. Nothing was
wasted. Because Mom and Gram, they took care of the meat real good. And Grandfather,
Chief Jones, would have hanging up the deer for them to work with. And then they
would go down into Wells, and then they’d take that down the edge of the Humboldt.
Right up where Ogle’s Ranch is now. They’d be camped right there, where many of the
peoples who was on wagon trains would travel through on horses. They would stop there,
also, and refresh their horses, and go on their way. That was just like a water stop where
the peoples nowadays, they stop at the cafés and places to eat. And that’s why I build that
gold oval samote [15:50] water over here, is place where the people can rally around and
camp, and enjoy their rest time. They traveled then, they’d either travel south to Ely, and
then west to Elko, and then east to Salt Lake, because that’s the poor travels way.
Highway 48, and Highway 93, both north and south. And east and west.
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C:
How many days did it take to travel, like, to these places?
P:
It would take probably about—a steady drive would be about two, three miles a day.
They would stop and camp, and then they would, to Elko, mom told me it would take two
days just to settle down in the night, and then get up early and go in the morning to Elko.
By the time they got to Elko, it’d be about noon. And from here to Ely, maybe it would
take about three days, three to four days. And then, that’s the only trip they ever took. But
that’s travel by wagon and horses.
C:
How many horses pulled the wagon?
P:
Sometime four, sometime two. If it got light, it would be two. But they always had, Mom
would be the wrangler. She was the, she liked the horses. She always was a horse woman.
And she always took care of the horses. So she had one horse she always had, and she’d
ride it bareback. So, she was quite a lady.
C:
Where did they get their horses from?
P:
Oh, they were from the ranches where they worked. They’d buy it and work for the
ranches. Then they would buy the horses. Or he would, Grandfather would break wild
horses. That’s how they got their horses. Because there were wild horses around here.
C:
So, was there a lot of mustangs in Nevada at that time?
P:
Yeah, down by Currie. That was the area where they had the mustangs. Wild horses in
Butte Valley, Odger’s Ranch and around in there. But you could look there now, there’s
not too many. The horses are all getting down now. At the time, when the horses were
here, people respected them. But now, they’re killing them, and I don’t think that’s right.
The horses have a right to be on earth as much as we do. And that’s all I can say about it.
C:
So did the Indians back then use saddles, or did they ride them bareback, or…?
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P:
They had saddles, and they had—Mom rode on hers bareback. She didn’t like saddles.
And Grandpa, he always had a saddle when he rode broncos. And he had his reins and
everything. Even made his own lariats and rawhide. And his bridles. Many years ago,
when my mother and her mother settled down in a place where they were going to work,
with Grandfather and the rest of the family, usually there’s about three, four hands along
with my grandfather. My mother Ruth, and her mother Gimma, knew just about how they
were going to prepare their tepees. Their tepees and tents. [__inaudible at 19:42__] tepees
are pointed places, and a tent is like a room. And that’s what they used. And then they
would cook outside. And they would live like that all summer, and then, in the
wintertime, when they were getting ready to move out of there, and get ready to move out
to the ranches where they were going to settle and spend the winter, then they’d have to
find a place where they could live. Sometime it’s a shack, or sometime it’s just a lean-to
with willows, a willow bows to hold a canvas over their other, regular tents. And it
wasn’t too easy, either, for them people. And I look around when she tell me that, and she
says, “You know, people are very lucky to have homes like they have now. They can go
in and open their doors, and they have stoves in there. And all we had in our places was a
tub to make our fire in and cook on. And people nowadays really don’t take care of what
they have. I really like my stove. Because I have a cookstove now, and I have that. And
we have that in our tent. But we had to watch our tent, for the roof of the tent, because the
chimney would go through the tent, and sometimes that stove fire would get hot, and
would burn the canvas around the tent. And when that started, our tent would start
leaking, and we would have big holes there, and we’d have to run around looking for a
piece to put in there, which wasn’t very easy. Because we’d be way out there, and, the
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men would have to get an old blanket and put it on the sides. So then, while they were
doing that, we was fixing our place where we were going to eat, and which, we ate on the
floor of the tent because we didn’t have no table. So we’d put our blanket, or our canvas,
down so we could sit there and eat off the floor. But we was always clean people. Some
people would say we weren’t—because we always washed our hands before we ate. And
then, we settled down, get that all down, then we start getting ready for night. And then,
next day, when we’d have to do the same thing all over again. Until the boss, the white
man who Grandpa was going to work for, came and saw the family living like that. He
said, “We’ve got a bunkhouse up there you guys can use.” And boy, my grandma was so
happy, that she’d put everything on the wagon just as it was, never even took care of
whatever. She just threw ‘em all up back of the wagon, hooked up the horse, and away
they went up to that bunkhouse, and unloaded ‘em up. And in there they had a stove, and
a place to put their water. And everything was really nice. They had a table. So, that’s the
way they lived in white man’s place when they went up working in the hay fields. And I
think all them people around had lived that same way. And every man, again, they would
go hunt for deer. Deer, and then they would get their meat. Sometimes, the rancher would
have some beef for them. And usually it’s the ribs, and parts that they wouldn’t use, and
they would give it to the family, and they would make use of it. Make soup and stews.
And which is better, because meat that time, you’d have to eat it right now, but the soup
would last a long time. And they always had a good time, preparing their meals, and their
homes. Once they chinked up the holes in their log cabins, sometime used the logs to
make their homes, and it was done with mud so that they would chink up between the
logs, so the wind wouldn’t come through. And that’s what we liked to do was play with
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mud. So that was the job that children did. Chink up the holes in the walls. And that,
mostly all the children liked to do that. And when I grew up, we didn’t have that. We had,
our homes had walls in. So we didn’t have very much hardship then. But I always think
about mom, how her hardship. And I feel sad for her. I feel sad for all the old people at
that time, had to live like that. Now, I see the people in the overseas, how they’re living.
They just live like we did then. It’s just not fun. So, the children should respect where
they live. Take care of their homes and their families. That’s what I like for all the
youngsters to grow up loving their families, as the kids love their families now. That’s it.
C:
Where did they get the water…?
P:
From the well, and the river. Streams.
C:
And so was the water good for drinking then?
P:
Yeah.
C:
And the streams?
P:
Yeah. Water was good everywhere. ‘Til now; it’s been all contaminated with all these
things floating on the air. And every stream was always running. It was good. Of course,
you always ask Gram when—when we went out to go fishing, she’d taste the water,
because there’s always been a dead cow above it, or a deer or something. A horse died in
the water. And then you’d tell Grandpa or one of the guys to go up and see if there’s any
animal dead up there. Because there’s always, sweetwater, they call it. So when they’d
come back down, they said, “There’s nothing dead up there. It’s clean.” So that’s where
we’d get our water. It was clean.
C:
So what kind of fish was in the streams back then?
P:
Mountain trout.
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C:
Mountain trout?
P:
Uh-huh. I like them. They’re real sweet and delicious. I don’t like the trout from the
lakes. They’re no good. They don’t taste good. Now, I’ll talk about the deer hides. The
deer hides was intended for the wearing items. Pants, shirts, gloves, hats, moccasins.
Nothing was wasted. Nothing. Bones were made into needles. And spoons. And things to
do the stirring the food with, and eating the soups and stuff. Things that—anything that
they could think of. Nothing was wasted. The Indian people always used everything. And
mom and them, whenever they got a deer hide come in, a deer, they take the hides, and
scrape it and stretch it out, first thing. And make sure it doesn’t have too much holes in it.
Because sometime, like a shot, they’d have holes in there. And then sometime there’d be
one big deer, sometime they’re little ones. Sometime they’re bucks, and they’d be heavy
hides to handle, and so then, first thing Gram would do is take the head off and then put
that aside, and then cut the neck off, and strip it down. And then she would take the legs
off, and set the legs aside, because she used that for purposes of her own. I could not say
what it was. It was her special ways of tanning the legs of the deer. And the tail’s also
special thing to handle, women to handle. And I can’t talk about that either. So, they took
the part of the deer, and they’ll make jerky out of it. And then they make stew meat out of
it, and dry it, and make sure that everything is just right. So when that’s all done, then in
the meantime, when that was being done by the younger woman, Grandma’d take her
deer hide out, and get some water in the tub, and put the deer hide in there. And get some
rocks and put on top of it. And that would sit for about three weeks in the water. Tub of
water, and then every day she would go check the fur of the hide that’s in the water
soaking. And she’d turn it, and handle it just right. And then she’d take the fur of the deer
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and pull it. And if it comes off easily, it’s getting close to where she can take it out of the
water and put it over her log, which she’s going to use to scrape the deer hide on. Then,
when the heavy part of the deer hide, by the shoulder, the fur would come off of there,
then it was ready. So then she’d take the—it was a wet job when she took the hide out of
the water, and she put it in that bucket, and she’d take it over there where she had her log,
and stretch it on top of that, take—her scraping knife would be a bone. I think it was a
horse bone, rib. Something. Either a horse rib or a cow rib, to use. And then the shin of
the deer was also an implement for scraping. And it’d be a certain bone. And then she’d
use that. And then she had a knife—a draw knife, she called it—and I’d see her standing
back there, humped over that log and that deer hide, scraping that heavy deer hide, and,
boy! I’d go back there from school, and she’d, “Come here,” she says. “Give me some
water.” And just, I’d go there and give her some water, and I says, “What are you
doing?” She goes, “Scraping the deer hide.” I said, “Pretty soon we’ll get some money
and buy some potatoes.” So then, we’re so happy because money was coming. So, one
time, one day when I came back from school, I went back in where she was, and
somehow that hide didn’t smell good. And I said, “Pew, what is that? What are you
doing?” She said, “It’s a deer hide. It got a little wild for me, and I’ve got to hurry and get
it done.” So I kept saying, “Pew!” to it. And she says, “Well, pretty soon you won’t say
‘pew,’ because we’ll have some money and we’ll buy some good stuff.” So then she said,
“Help me move that deer hide around.” And so then, so I grab ahold of one leg, pry its
leg and move it around. And it was heavy! And I don’t know how she ever managed to
use that big deer hide, moving around on that pole. So then, because she was a 5-foot-4
woman, and she wasn’t too strong, didn’t look too strong, but she was strong. And she
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moved herself around really good, and got her deer hide working right again. So then one
time, I tried to use a draw knife on it, and she told me, “Leave it alone! You’re going to
put a hole in it.” So then, that’s the time that I never bothered the deer hide. And I grew
up not knowing how to scrape. But I know how to sew the deer hides together. Because
she showed me how to do that. And when she was ready to take the hide off, I helped her
take it off, and the same with Mom. She always, I always helped them both. But I was a
little girl at that time, too. But I was always there. I knew just about what to do for them.
And then, come tanning, same thing. I helped them get some wood, and you had to have
certain wood to smoke them. Have a certain place to put the deer hide to hang up after
it’s been dried. Because it’s lot of work to get those deer hides to where they could be
pliable to work with. Because I missed one spot, one item, is from the scraping to the
stretching of the deer hide, to make it soft and pliable, they had to work with it. They had
to put brains on there, smear the brains on the underside, and on the top side, in order to
soften it up. And that was a job, too. If you didn’t have the right kinds of brains, it
wouldn’t soften. It’d take long time to soften. So, Grandma’d always hurry and do that,
and stretch it up on the wall, leave it up there and let it dry that way. Or put it on the
clothesline. And if the dogs don’t get it, she was fine. But if the dogs come around and
tear it down, she has a fit. But you have to watch it all the time. So then, when that’s all
done, then she’d soak it again. I don’t know how many times she soaked that deer hide in
water in order to get it all softened. And she’d put it on a tree stump, and tighten it up
then. Wring it out there, and let it stand on that, wring it out on that post until it’s dry.
And then she’d shake it off, and then she’d work it. Stretch it this way and that way. It
was a time to do that. And I asked her, I said, “Don’t you ever get tired of doing that?”
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She said, “I’ve got muscles! I don’t get tired.” But she did have muscles. So, then when
she got all through doing that, then the smoking started. Now, it was vital to do that. The
two ladies would take care of the smoking. They’d have to have just the right color, and
use the right kind of bark in order to smoke the hide to make it smell good. The
sagebrush is strong smoke. And cedar is good smoke. The fire would make the cedar
smoke, smell good. And so that they would use that. But then, you leave it in too long,
it’s just too dark. And Grandma’d always say, “Go check it! Go check it!” So I’d go over
there and peek at it, where she has her hole. We’d have to put a cloth back in that hole.
So then I told her, “Okay, it’s yellow.” So then she’d go over there, and pull the bucket
out, and take the hide off that’s hanging there, and turn it inside-out, and it was just right.
So the hide turned tanned, that’s how they tanned their hide. It used to be a very hard,
tedious job. But I wouldn’t want to do that. I can’t do it now. But it was enjoyable to
watch them ladies do that. Which I know I’ll miss as time goes on. And I hope
somewhere along the line that somebody will pick it up. They get the gloves ready to
sew. And then they have a pattern. A woman’s pattern, and a man’s pattern, they’re all
different sizes. She know the size of a man. Says six, size six, seven, eight, and she’d
make a—a six is a small one, and a seven is a medium, and a eight is a large. And then
the buckaroos, they come around for their gloves to her, because they already ordered
them, and so then, when she’d get ‘em all ready, she’d send the kids out, tell them that
their gloves were ready. So, as time went on, she’d do that every day. And she’d sit there,
afternoon until night. And all she had then was an oil lamp. And they’d have a whetstone
to sharpen their needles with, and a buckskin thread to use that would be a heavy number
3 thread. And then she’d run out of that, and then she would go get some more, and add
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wax, beeswax. She’d have to go find her own beeswax. And sometimes she’d get bit by
the bees. That was quite a hard job for those ladies. And I’m sad for them, and I’m proud
of them, because they knew what they were doing, and how to do it, and how to get
things ready for everybody. And I don’t think none of the womens could do that
nowadays. Because everything’s prepared for them. And I hope somebody picks it up
from here on. Like I said, I hope some, or a lot of the ladies will pick up the sewing of the
buckskin, because it is very tedious job, and you poke your fingers, and then you run out
of thread, and run out of glove wax, and needles. You break many needles. But it’ll be
four-pointed needles to work with those buckskins, to push the needles through the
buckskin. And a good sharp scissor, and a good steady hands, and good eyes, and
uninterrupted work. And then, what was that?
C:
How much did they sell it for?
P:
Oh, the buckskin, the gloves—you either had to have the working gloves, they would be
heavy buckskin. That’d be the buckskin that would be heavy, in order to work on the
field where they had to fix the fences. And they either had a short gauntlet for the
working gloves, and for the long gauntlets, they had that for dress-up. And the long
gauntlets used to have beadwork done. And fringes on there. And Grandma liked to fix
the fringes and beadwork on them. She was an avid beadworker also, as well as my mom
was. And that’s all they ever did was just beadwork, all, from noon ‘til night. And sit
there, and sit there, sit there… “When you guys going to bed?” somebody would say.
“When I get this rose done.” “When I get this leaf done.” And always something like
that. And I know somewhere along the line that there are still beaders out there, and
buckskin workers, and womens, they’re out there doing buckskin scraping. And I hope
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that they would teach their youngsters to do it right now, before it’s too late to even teach
them. Like they done to me. They was always chasing me away when they were making
deer hide, scraping the deer hides, because they thought maybe I might put holes in it. So
I never did actually learn how to scrape deer hides. But I watched it. Then I beaded with
them. But the gloves, at that time, they sold for ten, nine dollars. And then the cowboys
and the buckaroos, they’d come and look at it. And always would look at the thumb part,
because that’s where most of the heavy part of the work of the glove is done, by the
thumb. And so they’d look at that, and they says, “Good, that’s what we wanted!
Something like that so it won’t split open.” So they asked my grandma, “How do you do
that, Gimma? You know, you’re the best buckskin glove makers that I’ve ever had.” And
they’d always come back to her, every year. Before the seasons of gathering the cattles
in. That was it for her. Mom was the same.
I have a grandson who was five years old when he started powwowing. And he danced.
And his name was José E. Salazar. E is for Edward. And I put him in the, made a
costume for him for the parade. We always had parades here in Wells, Nevada. And
every summer, I’d make a float. We’d go out and make a float, and put all the kids on
there. All native children. We’d make costumes for them, and dress them up with feathers
and everything. Faces and whatever. So then, grandson, he’d want to learn how to bead,
and to work with, sew the buckskin. So my mother and I, and Ruth Jones and me, would
sit there and show him the needle, and how to thread and everything. And the beads. And
we told him, “It’s going to be hard! It’s going to be hard on your eyes!” So he’s 26 years
old now, and he’s glad that he had learned how to bead, and work with feathers, and
respect the feathers. And people are proud that he had learned how to do his dances. He’s
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a traditional dancer. But right now he’s working for the white man world. And he doesn’t
[__inaudible at 42:32__] powwowing. But when he does, he goes out. But he’s working
now to get his own regalia ready. And when he does that, when he gets it finished, he’ll
go out and dance again. Which I’m proud to say that he was a good little dancer, from
five years old up to twenty years old or so. And he bead his own beadwork on his
headdress, and his roaches. I got him a roach, and it was for a little boy. He said,
“Grandma, that’s too little for me! We got to get a bigger one.” And his, I call them
“tailfeathers.” He said, “No, they have word for that!” So I just call ‘em tailfeathers, the
big old plumes and feathers behind him. And he said, he start laughing at me. And so
then I said, “Okay. I won’t say ‘tailfeathers’ anymore.” Mom made his moccasins. She
made several moccasins for him. He outgrew ‘em, because his foot got long. And then,
now… [Crying] now she’s gone. So then I’ll have to do it. But I’m proud that I had
taught him all these things. Because my mom doesn’t no more.
C:
Yeah, tell us how you got your name, Nevada, and how that came about.
P:
Many years ago, when I was born, it was in December, and my grandmother and my
mother both worked for a family that was known as Agee-Smith family here. They were
quite rich people, I’d say, because they had cattle and everything. And they lived up in
the Ovin Hill area. That’s where they originated. That’s where my mom and my
grandmother used to go up there and work up there in the field, in the hay field with my
grandpa. So, in December, in the [19]30s, my mom was expecting me, and I was born the
15th of December. And so, when they got back down here, they made a moon house, her
and my grandma, because my mom couldn’t go in the main house, because there was
mens in there. And boys. You can’t go take the womens in there like that. As most of the
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older people know, that there’s a taboo for the women to go in the main house when
there’s mens in there. So, my mom and I, we lived in this little house, what people call
“moon house.” And my grandma fixes, prepared a place for her to sleep, and cook, and
have water and stuff. Eat. And have me in there. So this one night, mom was getting
ready to give birth, and I was born there in that little tiny shack behind, right where I’m
living now. Where my mom was living. So it’s a time of naming the baby—me—Gram
had went to work that day for this lady’s daughter. And so, this lady’s daughter told her,
“What are you going to name the baby? Did you name it yet?” And she said, “No.” And
her mother, Mrs. Agee was standing there, she says, “Why don’t you name her Nevada,
after my daughter, Nevada Smith?” Nevada Agee, and then as time went on, she became
Smith. So then, I became Nevada at the time. So the white lady gave me the name of
Nevada, after her daughter. And so I’ve been Nevada ever since. And my last name was
Kamassee. But, my dad came from Idaho. So, every time I give my name to people—
they ask, “What is your name?” I said, “What state are you in?” As time went on I said
that. And they stand there thinking, and they says, “Nevada.” I says, “That’s my name.”
And then they start laughing, says, “Really?” I said, “Yeah.” “You’re just kidding me.” I
said, “Nope. That’s what my name is: Nevada Ellen Kamassee.” And they say, “Oh,
how original! That’s so authentic, that’s such a beautiful name.” I said, “I know it is! It’s
a beautiful state, too.” So that’s how I got my name, from another lady was named
Nevada by her mother, Tressa Agee. It’s been just like family name. I been with this
family forever, ever since I was born. And that’s my name: Nevada.
C:
Huh. That’s good, Nevada.
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
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GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
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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
Nevada Penoli
Location
The location of the interview
Wells, NV [Penoli residence]
Transcription
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http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/447
Original Format
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DVD; VOB format
Duration
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00:48:28
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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Nevada Penoli - Oral History (04/26/2006)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral History Interview with Nevada Penoli, Western Shoshone from Well, NV, on 04/26/2006
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Nevada Penoli was born in Wells, Nevada, and has lived there for 74 years. Nevada spoke about growing up in the area pine-nutting with her Grandmother and the rest of her family. She illustrates how her family lived back when she was a young girl. She also talks about how she use to travel around in wagons drawn by horses, and how they would camp along the way when traveling to distant locations. Nevada also speaks about how her Grandfather would go hunting and how the women in the family would take care of the deer, rabbit, or birds that were gathered. She tells us about her grandfather, grandmother, and mother and their experience with ranching.</p>
Video Pending <br /> <a title="Nevada Penoli Oral History Transcript" href="/omeka/files/original/03d093eb7d9d2699409e60ba3cc01c37.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read Nevada Penoli Oral History Transcript [pdf file]</a>
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 006
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
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04/26/2006 [26 April 2006]; 2006 April 26
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English
Community
Crossroads
gathering
GBIA
heritage
hunting
ranching
Shoshone
Story
Wells
-
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309a02d076f1a46ff9c4b5792dca2eb2
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PDF Text
Text
Beverly
Brazzanovich
&
Harold
Miller
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
010
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
October
12,
2006
Reno,
NV
Great
Basin
College
•
Great
Basin
Indian
Archives
1500
College
Parkway
Elko,
Nevada
89801
hBp://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/
775.738.8493
Produced
in
partnership
with
Barrick
Gold
of
North
America
�GBIA 010
Interviewee: Beverly Brazzanovich and Harold Miller
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: October 12, 2006
M:
My name is Harold Miller. My Indian name is Pattsinokwah [0:46]. I am from the
Walker River reservation, Schurz, Nevada. And I was born in Mason Valley, at a little
town off the railroad track there in Mason Valley. They call it Nordyke. And that’s where
that old man used to perform these Ghost Dancing songs. And we used to play around his
house when we was up there, when we was children. I think there’s only two of us left
now that remember him, when we used to see all of his rituals that we seen when we was
childrens up there. And that’s how I become to get acquainted with a lot of things like
this. And he had taught me lot of things that we boys supposed to do. And he’s kind of a
silly guy. He jokes about a lot of things. But sometime, he talk about something that, you
know, that’s real serious, and he’d bawl us out. And his wife was same way. But he was a
real good as a ritual artifact leader. Doing lot of things in our neighborhood in Mason
Valley. And people probably know him, because his name was Wovoka. Wovoka, means
in Paiute, is, he was all tied up with a rope all the way around his waist. Next morning,
there was pieces of ropes laying around all over. And that’s what they call him, by that
name: “Wovoka.” He wovoka that rope. Tekuppe wovoka [2:20]. And that’s how we got
to know him pretty good. And when I left there, right around about that first part of the
Depression, around 19—well, the Depression was around 1900—and my dad came after
me. When he used to work on the ranches. He was kind of a cowboy guy. And he used to
break horses for the ranchers when you’d—no machine—wagon, or something to pull
teams for those ranchers. And so, when he got enrollment in Schurz on a ranch, with his
mom and his dad, and he moved back into Schurz, and then from there, he went to
Stewart. And he met my mom over there. And they graduated—them days, they used to
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graduate from high school at ninth grade. When you finished ninth grade, you graduated
from high school. So they both graduated from there, and later on they was schoolmate
sweethearts, and after a while they got married. Then, mom, she stayed around here, and
took working in the ranches, doing a lot of the ranch work. Picking potato, and picking
onions, and doing lot of household chores on ranches. And they stayed there on the
ranches. Lot of Indians used to live at the ranches, and they’d do lot of work for the
ranches. Did everything free. And I think the wages was, about two and a half, or
something like that, a month. And that was lot of money for those people, to be working
for wages like that. And since then, that time, when I was first born—I was born 1927,
and I grew up with my moo’a [4:07] and my tokko [4:08], my grandfather and
grandmother, mother’s side. And on my other side, my grandmother, father’s side, he
stayed in Schurz, and I’d go back and forth. We didn’t have no transportation, anything.
And we used to travel by foot from here to Smith Valley, or Schurz, or wherever. But
there was certain places where we’d camp. That’s where we’d go around to make our
rounds, to live one place to the other. We traveled by foot. And I never forgot that. And
when I was about eight years old, I had to go to school. And all I did was speak Paiute
language, and learning my culture with my grandparents. And then, when I did go to
school in Schurz, this whole place was got rounded up and went school. And they keep
day school for the government in Schurz. And they haul us in the little tiny dog catcher’s
wagon, got screen all the way around. That was the kind of bus we had. And either that,
or you hitchhike a ride to school, from lower part of reservation to upper part of
reservation. And in the school, everybody talked Paiute. But we had lot of Shoshones on
our reservation, because Depression time was hard times, and lot of Indian people come
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to Schurz, because they was making the Band, and then they moved the reservation from
the reservation here out to where the reservation is now. And from there, we went to
school, and we all talked Paiute and Shoshone. And when they made Yomba Reservation,
all those Shoshones got moved over to Yomba Reservation, Reese River Valley. So all
our Shoshone friends disappeared. And sometime, we used to go up and visit them
horseback. And come together, and put on a little powwow sort of thing. I remember they
had powwows getting out over there at Reese River. But they don’t, they had lot of
Shoshones working there, because there was lot of irrigation canals, and moving the
fence lines, and everything, around Schurz. And that’s how come I got to be pretty well
acquainted with my culture and my native-speaking language. And now, at this time, I’m
disabled. I fell down last December 26th, when I fell off of my porch, on a snow porch.
And I hit the ground with my knee and elbow, and I ruptured my back. Three of my
vertebraes are cracked now. And up to then, I was teaching native language at the high
school day care and Head Start in Pyramid Lake, Nevada. And I worked for Reno-Sparks
Colony, as a native teacher in culture and language. And from there, I transported to
Pyramid Lake, and I was employed there for about two and a half years, until I was hurt.
And I’d like to go back, but I don’t think I can go back to work anymore, teaching the
language. So, what I am doing with this gentleman here, we’re trying to get together our
little programs to talk about our language and our history. And that’s how come I’m here
today, that I was chosen to be with this gentleman, who takes these pictures about our
culture, of our peoples, our way of life. And also, my caretaker here, Beverly
Brazzanovich. Maybe she can tell you her part of—her age, and where she was born, and
all of that. Go ahead, Beverly.
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B:
Well, my name is Beverly Brazzanovich. I’m a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute
Tribe. And I have a long history of, my grandfather came from Secret Valley, north of
Susanville, Honey Lake. And he was Pit River. And my grandmother was a member of
the Pyramid Lake Tribe. And at that time, our family was—our clans, they call them—we
were the Kammentekkates [8:32], the rabbit-eaters. Mainly, in our ancestries, they were
like nomads. They traveled a great circle in Secret Valley, into, like, Alturas, and to Fort
Bidwell, or Cedarville, and back into Long Valley, and into Leadville, and into Granite.
And that was a big circle, and back into Smoke Creek. Then that lead to Honey Lake, and
they also, at the end [__inaudible at 9:00__] at Pyramid Lake. And when my
grandmother and my grandfather met, they were like nomads, and traveled that route.
And so I had a long teaching, as I was partly raised by my grandparents. And we went,
we lived on a ranch, which was a homestead—was like homesteading, the ranch, up north
of Pyramid Lake. And it was called Potato Patch. And that’s where I was raised. And my
grandmother, my great-grandmother, and my grandpa, they raised potatoes. And they
used to travel by wagon, and come all the way into Nixon. And they had to load the
wagon full of potatoes, onions, and vegetables. Then they asked them where they got the
potatoes. They said they had a potato patch way up north. And that’s how that’s named
Potato Patch Ranch.
M:
How far is that from Nixon?
B:
It’s about 28 miles north of Nixon. And then, after that, my ancestry on my grandfather’s
side, where we come from, north of Gerlach, from the Granite [Peak?] area. And they
come into Pyramid Lake at the north end of the lake. And they would trade their rabbit
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blankets, and their deer jerky, their tanned hides from the deer, and they would trade it
for the fish that is famous from Pyramid Lake. Cui-ui. And—
C:
What did you call that fish from Pyramid Lake?
B:
A cui-ui or cui-yu.
M:
Cui-yu.
B:
Uh-huh. And it’s a, that’s historic fish. And we no longer can fish that fish. And after
that, I was raised in Potato Patch most of my life, but I was schooled to the third grade in
Nixon, at the old school. And then I was, my mother married to a man from Fort Bidwell.
And so therefore, we traveled north of California and Nevada, back and forth in the
summer, but we’d always come home to Potato Patch.
C:
So, was Nixon—that school you talked about, was it a tribal school, or BIA school, or…?
B:
A tribal, it was a tribal school. And—
M:
Government school, yeah.
B:
A government school at that point. But I went to school there.
C:
Uh-huh. How big was the school, and how many students, would you say?
B:
It was a two-story, two or three story—because the restrooms were at the basement. Then
the next floor up from the basement was the kitchen, the dining area. And then the level
way up, this third floor, was all the school rooms. And it was the first—at that time, we
didn’t have kindergarten. Just first grade up to the third grade, and then it was another
classroom from third grade up to the—third grade, fourth grade, and then just, it escalated
up. And after you finished the 8th grade, then you was transported to—7th grade, actually.
6th grade. Then you were transported to Wadsworth, which was 18 miles south of Nixon.
And they had another school there, and I went to school there in the 7th grade, until the
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year I moved to Pyramid Lake, back to where my mother was working out at the Bear
Ranch, north of—northern part of California. I went to school in Eagleville, California. It
was just a two-room school. And I went to school in Fort Bidwell, which is a historical
spot now. The school is no longer there, but it’s all boarded up, and it’s fenced around it,
because it’s considered historic. And then I think that we came back to Cedarville to go
to school. And then, from there, I moved back to Nevada, and I stayed in Reno almost
twenty years. Then I moved to Pyramid Lake, and I’ve lived in Pyramid Lake for about
28 years. But I wasn’t raised around Pyramid Lake, just at Potato Patch there. I’d just
come for the summer. But I went through all of the, growings up of the cultural that we,
as a woman, when become a woman. We were not to live in the home, in the house. We
were taught to live across a ditch. And we had a special house across the ditch where we
stayed when we became a woman.
C:
At what age would you say that begins at?
B:
That would be around, in the early [19]50s.
C:
Uh-huh. But I mean, what age were you when you—
B:
I was seventeen when I become a woman. My first steps of being a woman, was sixteen
and a half, seventeen years old.
C:
So was there like a cultural pr—
B:
Procedures that you make.
C:
—that you go through?
B:
We lived away, we had to make our little house across the ditch, away from the main
house. And we had to stay there for ten days, and we could not eat red meat. We could
not eat any—and play with the boys, or eat, or be associated with any of that male
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members of the family. And Grandma would come over to visit us to bring us our food.
But we weren’t allowed to eat red meat. We had to eat just vegetables, or whatever,
berries that was dried, or—that was prepared for us, in soup manner, or a cake, or a dried
fruit made into a cake, like a patty-type. Patty. But we were not allowed to eat the red
meat, or any types of meat, because it would bring bad luck to you at that time. To the
male who hunted that animal. And then, because of the red meat, has blood, red blood,
just like red blood that flows through a woman. And each month, the woman would have
to expel all her waste. So we were not allowed, because it would make the man sick, the
male sick, or whoever hunted that piece. And we were taught that we couldn’t eat it,
because it would make him sick. But it could bring him bad luck in his next hunting
adventure. And plus, releasing the blood from our own body, and the waste would bring
on cramps—bad cramps—and make us hurt even more during that period. And after that
period, we finished, then we would have our little, we would have to go and bathe ourself
in the ditch, and cleanse ourself, and be blessed by our grandfather, by the medicine herbs
that he—sagebrush and cedar—and he would bless us. And there, after we would finish
that, then we were allowed to come back into home. But at that time, we weren’t. Well,
ten days, we were allowed to stay away from majority of the house, or anybody that—
you couldn’t go out and play. Then, after that, we’d have to, like, run—during that period
while we’re on, the, releasing the waste, we would have to race and climb a mountain,
while we’re on our menstrual. And that would show the endurance, of how we were
going to be. Were we going to be lazy, or we were going to have the endurance to live a
long life, provide for our families, and be a strong person. That we could handle all the
stress or the hardship. And that was the teaching that we had to go through to become a
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woman. And every month, we had to move across the ditch, and stay away from them,
the whole entire rest of the family. And I would do that.
M:
And my, my story about that—when I was growing up, they told us, “Don’t play with
girls.” And said they had bad disease, because they bleed every month. And in that way,
we was taught lot of things about our culture, about one another’s life. The boy’s not
supposed to play with the girls, and the girl’s not supposed to play with the boys. And lot
of things they teach you about. The hunting, and what you gather, and you can’t be
around the place where girls are cooking. You can’t be messing around. Only time you
congregate is at the table where you’re eating. And when the girls are cooking, you don’t
hang around there. And like if you’re grinding pinenuts, or some kind of wild seed, make
flours, or something to eat, we had a little round rock. And it’s flat, and you get that natta
[19:56], and you get your tusu [19:57], and you get all kind of, different kind of seeds.
We have, there’s lot of different places we travel, we get different kind. Like, we go up in
the mountain, get pinenuts. Then we come down off of the mountain, we go down there
and get sandgrass, they call it kuu’ha [20:15]. In that way. And we’ll grind all that up to
make different kind of cereal, and grind it up and make flour. That’s the way we preserve
our food. And us boys, we just do the harvesting, and the girls prepare all of that for our
cooking, so we can eat in the day. And when we do that, we’re not supposed to be
hanging around the girls, and the girls aren’t supposed to be hanging around us when we
are skinning a deer, and curing the meat. They’re supposed to stay away from us. And we
do all the, work the jerky, and do the fishing, and they do all the cooking. And lot of
things they teach about how to cook. How to do it, when it’s time to prepare your food.
And they teach a lot of things, those old people. Because we don’t have much time to
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explain lots of things about—we just go to seminar four nights a week. [__inaudible at
21:17__]. And the things that we are not supposed to do, and do—like when they’re
playing games. Certain games we’re allowed to play with the girls, in front of the
grownups. But we can’t be playing with them in the dark or anything like that. We’re real
careful. Everybody goes to bed just at sundown. And you’re supposed to be in bed, no
noise. Because when they teach, old people teach you to be quiet, because in them days,
lot of people come around and invade your camp. Like, the white people come by—or
even Indian people, other tribes come around at night and steal your children, the babies.
Like, some of them can’t have babies, and they’ll steal your children. And you have to be
real quiet at night so you won’t give your position away where you’re camping that night.
And things like that, they teach you be quiet. And then, that big man. White man call him
a Bigfoot nowadays, but in our language, we call him Pa’aitso [22:24]. He’s a great big
Indian guy. And he goes around collecting little Indian kids, and put them in his, in this
willow in back with spikes in it. He drops you back in there, and he takes you to his
house, and he’ll cook you and eat you. So that was one thing they teach us: don’t be
running around late at night. So that that story has stayed with us for many years. And
then, when I grew up to that way of life, I remember all of the things that them people,
old people, taught me. What’s not to do, and what’s right, what’s wrong. And they tell
you, be nice to older people. Be nice to other tribes. Don’t be doing things. Because
nowadays, our children is growing up, and what they are doing now, they’re doing lot of
things backwards from what the old people taught us people when we was young. And
nowadays, our children is playing with foreigners—different nationality from different
country. And they have different way of life. And our children’s getting into that
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category, and they are going out of boundary. But as native people, supposed to be
teaching our native people. And now it’s getting to where, like me, I look back on my
days, our language is going away, slow but sure. But not only our Indian people—
Paiute—but lot of other tribes throughout this country, the United States. Even the
Hawaiians have said they’re losing the language. The Alaskan Indians are losing their
language. And the Somoyans [Somoans?] out there in the Pacific, they’re losing their
language. And there is lot of native people in Mexico that don’t understand Mexican.
And they’re originally from Mexico. But a lot of them—I went to a native culture school,
around Tucson, Arizona, but they was very sad, some of them crying, because all their
children don’t understand their language, wherever they come from. And it’s very sad
that nobody is teaching our younger people the way our life used to be, when we was kids
and we had pretty rough life to grow up to. But nowadays, everything, the new modern
way, they say that you’re living in a fast lane. When you’re living in that fast lane, you
get hurt and get killed. And that’s what’s happened to a lot of our young children. And I
hope this things that we are trying to talk about, our children, I hope they understand
what we are trying to tell you, that things that we grew up to, is supposed to be real, real
strict with our life. And we listened to the old people say it, and that’s what we go by.
Nowadays, when our kids marry from another tribe, another country, and they lose our
language, and they losing our culture, they losing our way of life, and they’re doing
something else from some other country and way of life. And especially in foreign
countries, they use all kinds of medicine of different kind. But misuse it. Like tobacco:
we use our native way when we smudge each other, and bless the ground for our people.
This morning, we put tobacco there and we pray for them in our language, and we go on
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and continue on with our life. Because those people, they have spirits that goes through
the air, rest of the centuries. And you are supposed to pray for them. You see a whirlwind
out there spinning around, little tiny one; that’s a baby. He’s traveling someplace with his
parents. Or you see a great, big whirlwind over there, lifting tumbleweeds, coming way
up. That mean there’s some old people that’s going on a journey to another country to
powwow or see their family in another territory. You pray to that whirlwind, because he’s
somebody in that spiritual way. He’s some of your family, or some of your tribe member
that go to visit some other tribe way out in other territory than the country where they
come from. Maybe they go up to Yerington; maybe they go up to Nixon. Maybe they go
to Owyhee, maybe they go to Las Vegas. You see whirlwinds all over. Those whirlwind
represent something in our native way of life. But this, our people, travel from this
country, they’ll go over to another country. Maybe they’re going to go hunt rabbits,
maybe they’re going to pick pinenuts. Lot of things that they’re doing, those whirlwinds.
And you pray to them, that whirlwind when it’s going. That’s another thing that we were
brought to attention. And the different kinds of stars in the sky. A lot of different relations
that up there, that have passed on, way up there, watching you do whatever you do
wrong. And you’ll be punished for doing something wrong. You’re not doing the things
that they taught you, the old people from way back. And you’re doing something else.
And that’s why lot of our Indian people getting hurt. And you pray, you use that tobacco.
We don’t misuse that tobacco. We use that tobacco for a purpose. For offering to the
spirits. We either smoke a little bit of it, or we take the tobacco and roll it, and smoke it.
We bless the ground with it, or put it on the brush, or scatter it on the table where we’re
going to eat. And we do a lot of things like that. Spiritual way, with that tobacco. That
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tobacco is something really—is strong thing in our livelihood, of our Indian people. We
don’t misuse our tobacco. You see some people over there light cigarettes, one right after
another. But that guy, he’s going to be sick after a while. He’ll get black lungs and he’ll
die. That’s how the white people misuse our tobacco nowadays. And it’s not their fault
for doing that, because they get addicted to that smoke, and that’s what happens. And
things like tobacco, boy, that’s our main source of blessing each other, with that tobacco.
We smudge our bodies with that tobacco. We smudge our bodies with sage. There’s lot
of different kinds sage out there: blue sage, gray sage, and desert sage, and riverbottom
sage. You harvest any of those, and you dry it out and make a little packet out of it. You
can light it and smudge people with it. And you do that with your food, and smudge your
food before you eat. You pray with it. And that’s how it is, that sage. And that tobacco,
same way. And everything we do, we do the prayers to the Spirit, to protect us in our
travels, wherever we go. We use that sage to bless each other. And we all—when we go
to school, or a workshop, or do something in another country, we bless each other. I
remember one time, I was going to Elko down there. An old guy come along and bless all
of us. And he lit up his sage before we get on the airplane. He asked the spirits to go with
us so we’d be protected on our journey to our workshop, wherever we’re going to go.
Some of us went to, way back into Maine, to this Passamaquoddy Tribe. And we had a
little conference back there with different tribes of Native people of United States. So
those guys, you know, they did the same thing, too. And they sang us some songs with
their drum And the drum is something that’s sacred, too, in our history, in our life. That
drum, we use it for peaceful work. And we protect our body with that drum. And only
one supposed to use that drum is a male. Male child, boy, or a man, old man. He’s the
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only one supposed to use that drum. Nowadays, no teaching. We see lot of powwows, we
see ladies over there using that drum, and pounding the drum and singing. That’s not our
culture. Our culture, what the ladies are doing is they’re destroying our native food, or
our native hunting grounds, or something that we use, year-round. And the womens that
using the drum, they’re not supposed to use it, because they’re women. They have
different type of livelihood, because they menstruate every month. Every month they
menstruate, and when they menstruate, then all that bad poison come out of their system.
And they’re supposed to bury all of that thing in the ground when they get through out
there. After their grandmother or mother blesses them, then they come out of there. Their
home out of that, where they have a menstrual for that twelve days or whatever days it
take to be sick and leave the house. When the ladies use our drum, that’s why I believe,
nowadays, our pinenuts is drying up. Lot of our Indian food, especially our grass, the
ones we harvest for food, the seeds, they’re all dying out. But we are practically misusing
our culture by using the drums, because ladies supposed to stand behind the men to sing.
Not to use a drum. Because the women have a beautiful voice. And they’re supposed to
stand behind the men and sing. But they cannot use that drum. That drum is made by the
man, and he’s supposed to use it as a man to defend his country, whatever territory he
works at. And then what he’d do that—the culture, that it’s supposed to be taught by the
parents, the older parents: don’t do this, don’t do that, do this here, and do it that way.
Because we are growing up in a place nowadays where everybody goes and do whatever
they want, and like I said, our culture is slowly diminishing, because nobody teaches
children the old ways of life, the way we grew up. But we as children—I am 80 years old
now, and I remember all the things that my grandpa taught me, and a lot of ways that my
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grandmother taught me, too. What they say about the girls, and how to prepare our meat
and stuff like that for the next winter coming. And we do that with rabbits, and we save
their fur. We make the pelts into long strands. We hang around the eaves of the house,
cured by the womans under the roof of the house. In springtime, we’ll braid the rabbits’
fur pelts together and make a big blanket. I have slept many days, nights in rabbit
blanket. Just like sleeping in electric blanket. And they were pretty warm. We could sleep
on top of the snow with rabbit blanket. It’d be, it’s nice and warm.
C:
Harold, is there anybody that still makes rabbit blankets?
M:
That’s what I want to do this winter. I’m going to make one. I hear there’s lot of rabbits
around a certain part of the town back there, in Mason Valley, Smith Valley. So I’m
going to go out and harvest the rabbits. It takes about 95 rabbits to make a blanket. So
I’m going to go ahead and make me one. And I’ll hang it up in the museum out at
Pyramid Lake, out by [__inaudible at 34:11__]. Before it, like, holds a purpose. And
when I was teaching my language there at Pyramid Lake, in day care and Head Start, I’m
teaching kids the way I was brought up, and teaching them what’s wrong and what’s
right. Lot of our animals we call a “beast”—they are not beast, they are part of us. We
human beings at one time—now, we was animals, like the Coyote. In Paiute way, we call
him, Coyote is our uncle. We call him ha’atsi [34:50]. And the Bear, he is our aunt. We
call him pa’hua [34:56]. Someplace, some Indian got Bear to get the pelts off their fur
and make a different kind of rug for their house or whatever they, tepee, they got then.
Different kind of headdresses out of the bear’s head. And we have a Bear Dance up here
every year, around Susanville area. I used to go to them kind of Fandangos once in a
while, but I haven’t been going too much anywhere lately since I’m catching up in my
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older ways of life. Ever since I’m getting crippled now, I can’t hardly do anything. And
maybe one day, I’ll make a recording of the things, the songs, what they taught me about
certain kind of animals. And there’s lot of stories about these animals. We talk about the
bumblebee that lives in the ground. He can’t fly, but he crawls on the ground real fast.
But we call our great-great-great-aunt, or great-great-grandma. The wihimomoza [36:01],
we call them wiwihi. You probably see those little holes in the ground, about size of a
dime. That’s where they tunnel into the ground, and they disappear in. And that’s where
they live. They don’t fly. They look like big bumblebee. Lot of kind of little animals will
teach us something about our culture, what kind of relation they are to our Indian people.
And you’re not supposed to hurt them, just take care of them. Because they are one of
your people. Do not kill them. And see, we’ll come to town today, and see one of our
uncles laying side of the road. Somebody’d hit him, and drag his body alongside the road.
Maybe I go back tomorrow, tonight, and pick up his body and bury him. Because white
men, they don’t care about our animals. And he’s one of our relations, our uncle. So I’m
going to pick him up and bury him. And lot of other things that we talk about. Our
friends, the birds. All kinds of birds is our friends. The wild sparrow, he’s a
chickenhawk-looking guy, he’s a stool pigeon for our people. He’ll tell on you. He could
tell an eagle, “That guy’s bad guy.” Or he could tell a buffalo elder, “That guy’s good
guy.” Or, “he’s doing something great for his family.” The sparrowhawk—you can’t hide
from him. He’s always there, watching you do something. We call him the stool pigeon
for our tribal people. All over where the sparrowhawks live—that’s another thing, lot of
story behind that bird. And lot of other birds got a lot of stories behind it.
C:
Can you tell me about Wovoka, and what the Wovoka dance is all about?
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M:
Yeah, Wovoka, he got his name when he became to be an Indian doctor. They tied him
up in a rope, and laid him flat on the ground, on top of big pile of native grass. They call
it memmewahaaru [38:04], wild hay. Indians probably make their—they make mattress
out of it. And you leave it that way for the next party coming by, they’ll sleep on it. Well
that’s what they did to this guy. They tied him up with rawhide rope. And next morning,
in his spiritual way, somehow he was so powerful that he broke the rope into million little
pieces. There’s little pieces laying all over. And then them old people came over to visit
him by morning, see how he was—gone. He was gone! And just little pieces of rope all
over. That’s what them guys was saying. They said, “[Paiute at 38:42].” Said, “He broke
the rope into million little pieces.” That’s how he got his name, that man Wovoka. Lot of
people have different definition of saying that word “Wovoka.” He’s not cutting wood or
anything. The word means “Hey where’d he been, that he broke up that rope into million
little pieces?” Wowovoka hoka [Paiute at 39:03]. So that’s how that word, he got his
name. And we used to hear him sing at night, and sometime we hum—hum his tune, his
song. And when he’s Indian doctoring, sometimes he’d pick a kid to be his janitor—to
bring his sand and stuff like that into the patient’s room. Then he’ll take out his feathers
with a stick, and put that stick in the ground in those buckets, or little cans loaded with
sand, river bottom sand. And then one can was half sand and half empty. Way below—
maybe quarter sand, but in a can, yellow can. And that’s where he’d spit all of these other
things that the bad medicine—he’d do that. And that’s what the janitor’s supposed to take
care of in the morning. Have them clean all of that up, and then dig a hole in a place
outside, then dump all that sand in there. Then that’s up to the doctor to do what he is
supposed to do with that, with all that chemical stuff that he had regurgitated during the
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night when he’s doctoring the patients. And he takes his feathers out… He doesn’t fail.
He doesn’t leave the feathers all rolled up, he leaves them exposed to the daylight.
There’s things like that they teach you. And each feather’s got words named for them.
And that’s the spiritual way he doctored his patients, and there’s big feathers of different
kinds. Sometime he get chickenhawk feathers with pretty designs in it. And those mean
something—like I told you the first time, those birds have a lot of meaning, like our
relation, and all those related birds are supposed to be some kind of native relation to our
people at one time. And we are one of those animals that grew up to what we are now.
And we’re living in, where we live, buy hats—like I got my World War II hat on, and my
Goodwill shirt, white knight shirt. We don’t have no more buckskin clothes. We don’t
have no more war bonnets, and it’s against the law to shoot eagles in the sky like we used
to, years ago. But nowadays, we go around when they’re nesting, and we’ll pick up their
feathers from the ground. And then we’ll have to bless those feathers from picking up.
When they get them, put tobacco on the ground where they pick up the feathers. And
that’s our spiritual way of receiving our eagle feathers. And we don’t kill birds no more.
We don’t do that. So you pick up the ones that die from old age, and then you go to
certain ceremonies to pick the feathers off of that bird that died, or died from some cause
or way in his death. So everything is religious thing that we are to be taught in our way
and our life. And our children’s not learning that, and we’re supposed to do things like
that. And that old man, he used to sit down at night and hum his songs, and pretty soon
everybody’d be going to sleep. And I was younger one then. We’d get carried into our
tepees, or into our kamai [42:43]. Our little willow shed or whatever you call it, kamai.
And they put us to bed. Next morning, wake up, our storyteller’s gone. He’s over there
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sleeping in his little shed over there. Making lot of noise if he’s home. And quite a thing
that we do: everybody gets up early in the morning, before sunup. Our grandparents wake
us up. And we bless our head with water, and then we get some water in our mouth and
spit it toward the sun, spray it with our mouth. And we talk with the spirits for our
coming day to be protected by our way of life and the prayers, the certain way of the
birds, and animals, and whatever we do. Before we eat, we do that, do lot of our
ceremonial work before we eat. Do a quick job of praying, wash our head in water, and
then we drink water and bless toward the sun. Sun just coming up. That’s how we was
taught to do. And the old people, that’s the first thing they do. They outside, making lot
of racket, talking to somebody. Sound like lot of people, but it’s just really one person out
there, saying the prayers for the whole family. The old people, the grandfather and
grandmother, they the ones, the first ones up. They talking real loud to the spirits, pray
for all of us that still sleeping, our childrens. And the married couple, the father and the
mother, and the old people, they protect everybody. They pray early in the morning.
Sometime they take a bath in that ditch, too, when there’s ice in the water. I don’t know
how they do it, but they do it. Boy, I tell you, a lot of racket they make! And they’re
praying, swimming in that ice water. And I seen my grandma and grandpa do that, wash
and take a bath in there, and do a lot of talking in their native words. When they taking a
bath, they blessing each other with the sage, and they got a little pot with them, they go
in with that. Smudging it in there. Dry each other off, and they go about their business
like nothing happened. But they protect the whole family by doing that. And they
sacrificed a lot of things by what they do to protect us as growing up children. And
there’s lot of teaching to kids like that. And when we’d do that, we’d pray to our food,
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and we give a little offering. Maybe you see some old people got little piece of bread, and
they’d throw it out the door. They tell their spirit, “Eat. You travel with this.” And that’s
how they teach you, with bread or any kind of food, where they dunk a bread in the soup,
or coffee, or cereal, and throw it out the door. And we’d tell the spirits, “Eat.” Then you
travel and have a good day. They said all of that different things about our food when I’m
eating. And then when we get to eating, everybody picks up their plates or whatever they
eat out of, and they put it in a little pan so Grandma and Mother can wash the dishes. And
the boys go out the door, and they go about doing their hunting, or making arrows, and
bows, or help skin rabbit, or, doing lot of outside work. Making your little drums, or
whatever things they are allowed to do. And the girls are inside the kahni [46:21], they
helping the mothers cleaning up the inside, and shaking the blankets outside and hanging
them up on the sagebrush, airing it out for the day. And they do lot of work, the girls.
They do hard work. And do lot of cooking, teach the girls lot of cooking. And there’s lot
of teaching about that, seeing if they going be lazy, or be active when they grow up to be
a woman. And they teach them, they test them all different ways, those old people. And
they tell us, “That guy’s going to be a good man, they’d better go over there and marry
him. He’s from another tribe.” And the girl go over there and investigate. Sure enough,
that little boy, he’s working hard, doing lot of things, and that’s what she’s after. She
want a good provider, good man. So she can marry him and have a good family. That’s
what the old people teach you. You chop wood, you hunt, you do a lot of things around
the house, outside. And the girls go about doing their works, about making baskets, and
all different kind of baskets, and collecting rocks to grind the foods on, and all kinds of
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thing. Making the buckskin clothes. There’s a lot of teaching to that, all of that. This what
the old people had taught us to do.
C:
I see Beverly laughing. Did you want to comment on what Harold’s saying?
B:
Yeah. That was growing up—the early teachings, was when I was growing up, my
grandpa didn’t allow us inside to heat up water to wash our face. Had to go out to the
ditch and watch our face in that cold water, or the snow. And after we would wash our
face in the cold water or the snow, then my grandma would get the deer fat. And she
would put it on our face. And that was our lotion. Because we didn’t have no cold
creams, or any type of perfume-smelling lotion, or any of that when we were raised way
out in nowhere. So we had to put—so she would grease us up with the deer fat. And
that’s how she’d have a flour sack, or that sugar sack, for the deer fat. And that’s what
we greased our face with, and our arms. It would be all shiny! [Laughter] And that was
one of our teachings. And we didn’t—and I still abide by this. I don’t wash my face with
warm water. I always use cold water.
C:
What was the reason for the cold water?
B:
So you wouldn’t look old when you turned old. And that was, Grandpa says, “You don’t
want to be looking old when you get old like me,” he says. “You want to look good, a
woman’s still supposed to look pretty for her man.” [Laughter] Used to tell us, “And
don’t look at nobody else’s husband. Because you remember how you got him. Because
when he get tired of you, he’s going to leave you for another woman, better-looking than
you. So you have to stay pretty!” [Laughter] And a male, he stays with his mom until
he’s about six, seven, eight years old. So he learns how to cook, how to take care of
woman, how you’re supposed to protect. Because the teaching is, some day, you might
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marry a woman that’s lazy. Then you might have to do all the chores to provide for her if
you love her. So he says. And that’s what I tell my grandchildren. I says, “You’re going
to get where you’d better start learning how to cook, and this and that, because some day
you might marry a woman that’s lazy, don’t want to cook.” And that came to true with
one of my grandkids. So he gets up and cooks, wash diapers, and bathe the babies, and
this, that, and get them all ready for school. He makes sure everything is done. Because
the woman he married was this lazy—but she’s gotten little bit better now. [Laughter]
But that is part of the teaching! When the male stays at home, helping Grandma or Mom
with the chores, so he could learn how to provide and take care of his household in case
tragedy—death, his wife died in childbirth, or he marries a lazy woman. Because got to
take care of his family. And that was one teaching. And so we abide by that. I even teach
that to my children. Even now, I say that to my grandkids. [Laughter]
M:
Yeah, that’s funny thing now. When you stop back to think about the way the old people
taught you, and then you explain it to this younger children, and lot of them don’t
understand, because—
B:
Oh, they think you’ve got old ways.
M:
Yeah, they think you got old ways in your life. But actually, it’s true. And then, later on,
when they get—I got little grandkids, great-great-grandkids, that’s coming up now,
they’re about twelve years old, but they live up in Billingham, Washington. But they
know who I am. They come up to me and hug me, and hold me around the hand like this.
They know all of that now. And they, “Grandpa, why don’t you tell me—tell me about
that bird, what they used to do when you was my age, when you was growing up. What
did they eat?” “Well, they ate lot of things. All kinds of fruit. They go out and gather
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fruit. Just like they make nest in the tree. Go way out there and get something, a worm or
something, a seed, they’ll bring it back to their little babies. Feed them. Well, we do the
same way. We go out there and hunt for our family. We bring back deer meat, or we
bring a rabbit, we bring back some kind of a wild game bird, and we prepare our food
that way with our family.” And that’s what they were really interested about, different
kind of game, and how I grew up. And that’s what they were saying. And they wanted to
know. And I tell them. And then, they says, “Well, how old were you when you got
married?” “Well, it was about 22 years old when I got married.” Because my grandfather
used to tell me lot of things about women. And when we used to stay out on the ranch,
where we worked for my grandparents, my dad and mother worked, everybody, whole
family out there working. And every day, cut hay, breaking horses’ team for the
machinery to pull, and they do lot of work. And the ladies and the old people work inside
the big, huge cellar, underground cellar. They’d sort potatoes in their way. Selling
potatoes, the ranch would sell these potatoes, and load it in box cars, and ship it to
whatever town need potatoes. And that’s the kind of work that the old people did. The
younger people be out there either plowing, or breaking horses to pull the machine work,
or whatever they doing. And that’s the way was our life. And everybody had something
to do to take care of one another. Nowadays, our children should be doing same thing,
instead of staying at home, laying out flat in front of a TV, and telling their mother that,
“I want dollar.” “I want ten dollars.” “Give me money for my car to get gas.” That’s no
good. They should be out working, and help support their mother and father and
grandfather. So that to raise a child you’re glued to what they are doing now. And
nobody teach them. And that’s why they lay around front of the TV. And when sundown
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comes, they out the door, they going out to party. And we didn’t do that in our young
days. When we go out there to play, it’s daytime to play. Not at night. Because you get
hurt at night. And the big giant come and pick you up, and throw you in his basket. He’ll
take you to his residence, and he’ll try and cook you and eat you. That’s the way, the life
we grew up in. And so we was scared of that paiyitsoo’ [54:54] coming around and
jerking us up out of the playground, and take us to his house and kill us and eat us. That’s
the way we was taught. So everybody go to bed early. Right at sundown, you’re in bed.
You don’t fool around at night outside. Or went to go potty, and then you come back
right in, back into bed. With your grandpa or your dad. And the girls sleep with their
grandma or mother. We had separate beds. And the, when the mother and father goes out,
they sleep together away from the house, and nobody see them. Then they go visit, or go
visit somebody at a place, do some shopping out in town or something. That’s the only
time they sleep together. But other than that, they don’t sleep together in the house. They
always slept in the separate beds.
B:
And especially during the month that the woman is on her moon. She does not sleep with
her husband. She sleeps in another room. Or them days, she would sleep away from the
house. Maybe her, and the babies, and the younger ones, the girls, they all go sleep away
from the house. They stay away for about ten days. And then, when she’s finished, she
come and she bless herself in the creek or the cold water, and bathe herself in creeks. And
then she comes back in house. Because she’s on her monthly, the man has to provide and
take care of the rest of the children while she’s over there. And, but we don’t use that no
more. Now, the men sleep with their wives and whatever. And when we were growing
up, I was growing up, we had to sleep separate, we slept separate from our husbands
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during the time we’re on our moon. And that was one of the things that we aren’t
practicing now.
M:
And when you get married, you can’t do lot of things like when you’re single. When
you’re single, you can go hunt anytime, whatever you want to hunt. But when you get
married, and your wife’s pregnant, you can’t hunt. Otherwise the child be born and
crippled, or—
B:
Some deformed—
M:
—some deformation of the child. You can’t go hunting, you can’t go fishing, when it’s
almost time for delivery. You can’t do nothing. You got to stay close to the wife and take
care of her. Otherwise, you do something wrong, you go hunt a rabbit, kill a rabbit,
you’re punishing your child that’s in the womb. And you can’t do hardly anything.
B:
That’s part of the teaching.
M:
That’s part of the teaching. You want a strong child. But they got to stay close to the wife
and take care of her once her once she’s in pregnancy time of the child that’s in the
womb. There’s lot of stories, lot of teachings like that. There’s too much things to—
B:
So many, so we don’t even have enough time. There was lot more to be taught. A lot
more that must be taught. But then we don’t have that anymore. We’re losing it. Because
of intermarriage of different tribes—and not only different tribes, but married into other
races. Hispanic, or the tai’po [58:29]. We’re losing it.
M:
Yeah, if your wife is pregnant, and you’re out there in the field irrigating, and the storm’s
coming up, you’d better leave the field and get home. You can’t stay out there, otherwise
they claim that the lightning will come down and kill your child while she’s carrying
your baby in the mother’s womb. When lightning striking, you got to get inside, keep
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everything—pull the curtains, and shut the doors and windows, and stay by your wife so
the child be protected. That’s how—that’s another teaching, about the storm, the
lightning, and the thundering. And I think lot of people forget to teach their children that.
That’s why a lot of our children, some might deform. They’re born crippled, or mentally
ill somewhere. Or maybe, what they call it? Some kind of syndrome, where they lay in
the bed and they die. What do you call it? Crib death? Something of that nature. Lot of
things that can happen when you don’t follow the life the way the old people taught you.
And you do something else. And you punished your child or your family that way.
Supposed to be carried away the way the old people tell you how to live your life. And
that way wherever you go, you got to do the right thing. The thing to always do, to do
things you are supposed to do with the family, don’t run off and leave them. Take care of
them, provide for them. And that’s the way life is today. And even now today, our
grandkids, we have to prays for them guys, so they won’t be going off to another tribe.
And lot of our children nowadays, they living in fast lane, I said earlier, because nobody
give them the right teaching. The correctioned way of life. Nowadays, you see kids
writing graffiitis which we don’t understand. Things like that. They stay up all hours of
the night raising Cain out there with some other nationality of people. They don’t care
about their world or their life or the family. They growing up wild, they like wild beasts,
with no correction. Everything’s got to be taught. You got a dog over there, you teach a
dog. “Come here, poochie. Sit down. Eat.” You got to talk to them. Even girls got cat,
you’ve got girls talking to it, “Kitty kitty, oh you kitty, oh kitty.” We talk to the animals,
you got to teach them! Our children growing up that way. We have to be taught by the
grown-up. And don’t leave your children unattended. And always teaching your children
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the right thing. Not the wrong way. That’s our Indian way of life. But when we get old,
we’ll think about that on the way down to our grown-up way. And what our grandparents
and the old people have taught you, in the hair days of the life, after you grow up and
then you think back, “Gee, them people were smart. They teach me that. And now I’m
living through that life right now so I got to take care of my family.”
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
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Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
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GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
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2006-2015
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
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Beverly Brazzanovich & Harold Miller
Location
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Reno-Sparks Indian Colony [Reno, NV]
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01:02:40
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http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/534
Dublin Core
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Beverly Brazzanovich & Harold Miller - Oral history (10/12/2006)
Subject
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Oral history interview with Beverly Brazzanovich & Harold Miller, Northern Paiute from Eastern Nevada on 10/12/2006
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Beverly Brazzanovich and Harold Miller are both Paiute from eastern Nevada. Harold Miller was born in 1927, and whose native name is Bazinokwah, is from the Walker River reservation near Schurz, NV. Beverly Brazzanovich, on the other hand, heralds from the Pyramid Lake Tribe by Pyramid Lake, NV. Harold begins the interview by speaking about the Depression and how many natives worked on ranches, and how his parents met one another at Stewart Indian School and eventually married. He also speaks of his childhood, being raised by his grandparents, and going to the Indian School in Schurz. Likewise, Beverly was partially raised by her grandparents on a homestead or ranch called the Potato Patch. Both speak of the native Paiute culture including women’s rights of passage, hunting practices, religious teachings, taboos, folk tales, and harvesting practices. They both emphasize how the younger generations, by means of assimilation and contact with other groups, have lost many indigenous cultural practices including their native language.</p>
Video pending <br /> <a title="Beverly Brazzanovich and Harold Miller Oral History Transcript" href="/omeka/files/original/2f402f34e1f52f9732fbccbb9711634b.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read Beverly Brazzanovich and Harold Miller Oral History Transcript [pdf file]</a>
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Great Basin Indian Archives
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 010
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
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10/12/2006 [12 October 2006]; 2006 October 12
Contributor
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Norm Cavanuagh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America
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Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017.
Consent form on file (administrator access only):
Language
A language of the resource
English; some Paiute
Community
Crossroads
folktale
gathering
GBIA
hunting
Paiute
Pyramid Lake
ranching
Stewart Indian School
Story
traditions
Walker River reservation
-
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2ec11c23b9237c5d336c815cb990b554
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/e34fcae3740194b994ff8ad125af279e.pdf
2b6c2466fcce8f38c0a324f81a4b24e4
PDF Text
Text
Florence
Steele
&
Lee
Moon
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
015
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
December
6,
2006
Ibapah,
NV
Great
Basin
College
•
Great
Basin
Indian
Archives
1500
College
Parkway
Elko,
Nevada
89801
hBp://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/
775.738.8493
Produced
in
partnership
with
Barrick
Gold
of
North
America
�GBIA 015
Interviewee: Florence Steele and Lee Moon
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: December 6, 2006
C:
What do you guys recall about the Goshute Reservation—when it was first established,
and how did it come about?
M:
Let me go way back. When they first put the Indians on the land here, okay? This has
been passed down from generation to generation. The Indians were first put here on this
earth. This tribe here, Shoshone Tribe, neighbors, the Ute Tribe towards the east, some
more Shoshones up north, Southern Paiutes down south, and other tribes way up and all
kind of around them. They always using Coyote as a character in [__inaudible at 2:18__].
He was a—well, and his brother, had a big pot of all the different tribes in there. Told his
brother Coyote, don’t look in there, they’re not ready yet. Take them over there. The
Coyote was curious all the time. He got curious, and looked in there. And all the tribes
scattered out.
S:
He—a nice-looking girl came over here, on this, kind of. He was looking for Coyote’s
brother. He had a name—“white”-something. Tosapitte. He was looking for him. And
she couldn’t find him. And then that Coyote, Itsappe, when he—she asked him about
this, the person she was looking for. And he said, “I’ve never heard of that name. Not in
my life. I’m the only one who lives around here. I’m the only one.” So. So she said, “I
guess you will do. You will have to mind me. We’re going a long ways from here. I want
you to mind me, what I say. You listen to me.” So, and they left. They left, and they
walked for long ways. And she kept telling him, “Don’t go running around.” You know
how a kid is; you know, they run around, and come back, and run. And that what he was
doing. So, they came to a big water, edge of the water. And she told him, “We’re going to
go across this water. They said it was like a land. There was nothing you could see. As
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far as you could see, there was water. So he kept running around on the edge of that
ocean, or whatever it was—sea. So, she told him, “Let’s rest here for a while. And then
we’ll go. We have to cross this water.” And he asked her, “How we going to cross this
water?” She said, “You will know, but we’ll see tomorrow after we’re rested.” And they
got up, and he made—her hand like this, and when she made a sign like this, and the
water came to this way. Yeah, it came splashing this way, and this way. And there was a
path where you could—she told him, “You run. You run fast as you can. And when you
run, don’t look back. That water’s going to close. The road you just passed, it’s going to
close right behind you. And you just keep right on running, don’t stop until you get to the
edge of the water. There’ll be no more road. That road’s going to be closed.” And so
that’s what he did. He was so tired once he got to the edge of the other side of the water.
And that is why that lady told him, “You get rested. Don’t be running around. You’ll
need your strength.” And he didn’t listen. That’s why he was very, very tired when he got
to the edge of the water, because he was just running and running and running. And when
they got to the edge of the water, she wasn’t there. And he said, “What am I going to do
now?” He didn’t know what to do. He kept running around the edge of that water. “Shall
I go this way, or shall I go this way?” But he didn’t know the land. And pretty soon, the
lady came over, and came flying across the ocean as a duck. And she landed right by him,
and it was that lady. She came over as a duck, she came flying. But Coyote didn’t know
that. So they walked and walked. They walked, and they came to this little hut. And there
was an old lady, when he got in there. She was weaving a basket, and the Coyote asked
the lady, the girl, what the lady was doing, the old woman. And she wouldn’t tell him. So
he just watch. And the the lady—the girl go away somewhere, but she didn’t know
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where. In the evening, she will come back. And she told Coyote, “You can go ahead and
go out, but don’t stray too far. You come back, or you gonna get lost. You come right
back to this camp.” And he did. He was so curious why that lady was weaving a basket.
The basket was getting bigger and bigger. And she—the young lady told the Coyote, she
said, “You should go over and go see what the lady is doing. She will tell you what to
do.” And she said, she told him, “You spend the night here with me, tonight. You’re not
going back to her. You’re going to stay here with me.” And that night, the old lady told
him, “You’re going to sleep with me.” And Coyote didn’t want to, because she was kind
of old, and he’d rather go for the young one. But he stayed anyway, and they were in bed,
and she told him to—you know, to—“Go ahead and have sex with me.” And Coyote
wouldn’t do it. And I guess towards morning, he decided, “What is she up to, anyway?”
And he did what he was asked, and then he went back. He went back to the young girl.
And that young girl asked him, “What did you do?” And he told her. “Is that why she
asked me to go over there and stay at her camp?” And she said, “Yes.” And she said,
“You’re going to be doing that for several nights. You’ll be going over to her hut. And
she’ll still”—she was a weaving a basket, making bigger and bigger. And that old lady
told him, “You’re going to try it. You’re going to do it with the young girl this time.”
And he did. They stayed together that night, and when they were making their love, he
wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t do anything with her. She was too small, he couldn’t do
anything. So he gave up on her. And he tried for a few nights. And he said, “What shall I
do with her?” He said, “I can’t do anything with her. She’s too small.” And soon, he
killed an antelope. And I don’t know if she saved the backbone or she saved the neck part
of the bone. And when they were together, he went after that piece of bone he saved. He
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came back with it, and then stuck that into the young girl. And the young girl cried and
screamed so loud, her breath went out of her. And he took that bone out of her, and he did
that to her. He made love to her. This time, he got her. And she was still unconscious.
And the next night, she was all right. So, he slept with her for I don’t know how many
nights. And then, that old lady told the young lady, “I think we’re ready. We’re ready,”
she said. “Now, you tell that guy, whoever he is, that he’s going to take this basket across
the water, and take it on the other side of the water, ocean. So the young lady told the
Coyote what the old lady asked of him. And he said, “Am I going to walk over that
water?” “No,” the young lady told him. “You’re going to go through just like the way
you did, but this time, you’re not going to run. You’re going to walk with this on your
back.” He wondered how he’s going to get that on his back, because that basket was big!
But anyway, that lady did the same thing to the water like she did before. And she told
him, “You’re going to go walk through this water road.” And he did, to the edge of the
water. But that girl was already at the other side. And she helped him pull the basket to
the edge of the water. And when he looked back, there was no road. There was just water.
Except when the water came back together, said it just splashed real big, like that. Like it
was standing into Heaven, and it came back and settled again. And this scared the
Coyote. So she told him to “Take this basket, and take it to a certain place—but don’t
fool around with that basket. Just keep on carrying it on your back until you get there.”
But Coyote was curious. It got heavier and heavier. And he said, “What did she put in
this basket? She was weaving and weaving, and it got bigger. And then they wanted to
have sex with me. Why?” He said, “I’m going to look in there.” He took the lid off, and
when he did that, he said that the—something pushed the lid. And he tried his best to put
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the lid back, but something was forcing the lid back. There was people coming out of that
basket. Coming—they were going this way, and this way. Trying his best to hold the lid
back, but lot of them came out. And finally, he put the lid back on. But he would hear
people in there then. At first he didn’t hear anything. That’s when he got curious and
looked in there. There were people in there. Then he stood there for a while. And them
people were—they were not all the same. They were all different people. And he named
all the Indians now that are living in this United States. He said, “You’re going to be
there, and you’re going to be called So-and-So.” All those tribes, he named them all.
“That’s where you’re going to stay. You stay, you’ll be doing this and that.” And then he
took the basket again. He traveled for a long time, until he got very very tired and
couldn’t go on anymore. So he said, “We’ll let the other people take the lid off and see
how many is in there. Who’s all in there?” And he did take the lid off. They said there
was not that many people in that basket. But they went here and there, but not too many.
And so he named them, too, the kind of people they were going to be. And the names.
And I guess that’s it. Those two duck ladies put those people in that basket. That was the
Ducks’ and the Coyote’s children in that basket. And then they told him to take it to—
must’ve been United States! [Laughter]
C:
So, was the Goshute tribal members in there?
S:
Yeah, the Goshutes, there were Goshute.
M:
He was carrying the basket. He wasn’t supposed to look in there.
S:
Yeah.
M:
Because—and he was told it wasn’t ready!
S:
Not to look in there.
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M:
Take the lid off yet, it wasn’t time.
S:
And see, if it was—his brother, that young girl was looking for, he wouldn’t have looked
in there. But, this Coyote did, because he was not the other guy.
C:
Uh-huh. Was his brother the Wolf?
S:
Yes, uh-huh. Pia Isa. He’s the one that she was looking for.
M:
The Wolf.
S:
Mmhm. And the Coyote said that, “There’s no one by that name. I’m the only one person
that lives around here.” [Laughter]
M:
That’s why everybody leave. Because it wasn’t the time to take the lid off and let them
out. That’s why other Indians aren’t like the white people. Them scientists, they know
everything. They’re real smart. Maybe that’s why the Indians are like that now. Because
they weren’t ready when they were let out. Other words, we would have been like them.
All those scientists, they know everything now. Our Indian people would have been like
that if they was ready when they take the lid off. But it wasn’t time. I think that’s what
happened. That’s why Indians are the way they are now; because we weren’t ready!
S:
It’s the Coyote’s fault! [Laughter]
C:
So the Coyote was a trickster. He didn’t listen, huh?
S:
No. And we had a old guy by the name of Commodore. Indian. Used to live with us. He
was blind, and very old. And he said, “It’s been told that that basket and the lid is
somewhere down there.” He said, “There is a hill that formed around it. It turned into a
rock. There’s a water coming out of it.” He said it’s still there.
C:
Where at?
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S:
He didn’t know. He said it just down south. But he didn’t know—he don’t know the
place, but it has been told that that basket is down south from here. And he said there’s
got a hill behind it, and it turned into a rock. And the lid is still by it. I know he said that
the spring water coming out of it. But he didn’t know where.
C:
What is Goshute—“Goshute,” is that an English word, or is that a Indian word, or what
does that mean?
M:
Kusiotta.
S:
Kosiutta.
M:
Like a “Goshute,” ash paint.
S:
There’s a water down here at the lane, and there’s a two big ditches. The one is coming
this way, and one is coming this end, and they all go together alongside of the road. And
in that one creek, there’s an, it’s always kind of gray. Like, when you would make a paste
out of a flour, you dump that into the water, and then it’ll be flowing white. That’s how it
is, that water. Always gray. Because there’s a—somewhere, underneath that water,
there’s a form of white rock. It’s somewhere down here. He said he’s seen it. Where they
used to get that powder, and they paint their faces with it. War paints.
M:
Aippin.
S:
Aippin. Aippin. And that kind of rock is underneath that water. That’s where it’s always
flowing, and kind of grayish color.
M:
Aippinpah.
S:
Aippinpah, uh-huh.
C:
Aippinpah, uh-huh.
S:
Because that powder is called “aippin.” And water is “pah.”
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C:
So, what is the aippin used for?
S:
That’s what they use it for. To paint war paints, paint their faces. It comes off easy, just
like a powder. Off of that rock. That’s why they called it that. Kosiutta.
C:
So is there other stories about the Goshute Tribe here, or culture, or customs, or games
that you guys played as far as, you know, tribal activities, or cultural activities?
M:
Basically, it’s probably the same as the Shoshones and neighbors. Indians like to gamble.
Handgame, and race—footrace, you know, that.
C:
Did you have any famous runners that you could remember that were a racer or ran for
the tribe?
S:
No. But my aunt used to tell me that all these Goshutes, there was, when they form like a,
they were dancing in the fall? She said “We never used to tell everybody around then.
There was enough Indians to do the powwow themselves. There was a lot of Goshutes
here.” There was no other tribe among us. And she said, they went away somewhere.
They were—the food was getting scarce. They have to go far away, and some of these
people that live outside, they’ll get into fights because of the food. They have to drive
them back. And she say “I don’t know what happened after that.” Said it was told from
time to time, but that’s what she heard.
C:
What kind of food was here at the time? Was there—what type of animals—?
S:
Ooh. Oh, there was, I guess, deer and rabbits, and all that were kind of getting scarce
because there was a lot of people. And seeds and berries. And that’s when they started
roaming out, because of the food, was scarce.
C:
So, like, with the rabbits, and the deer, what did they use? Did they use any of their hides,
or hair, for—?
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S:
Yes, they did.
M:
They used everything, even the bones in needles and things like that. They didn’t waste
any of it.
C:
What were some of the things or tools they made from it?
M:
From the bones?
S:
There are certain bones in the deer that they use.
C:
And what did they make with it?
S:
Oh, anything! They make a needle out of it. Then, the deer—it goes from the back of the
deer—is it the tendon, or what is it? And they used that for thread. They’d dry it up, and
they use it for thread. Because it started from here, and it runs clear down to the back.
[Goshute at 27:57] Tukuintt’an entaampo.
C:
Ah. Like, the tendon.
S:
The tendon, yes. That’s what they used for—and then, to scrape the hair from the hide,
they use the shoulder bone. They use the shoulder bone. This part of the leg, I think, or—
it’s kind of sharp. They use that to scrape the hair from the hide. And use the brain, and
spread it on the hide until it’s dry, and it’ll soften it.
C:
What did they use to scrape the hair off the hide?
S:
That’s what I said, they used the deer bone. Certain part of the bone. Shoulder blade and
the leg, leg bone.
C:
And how long does that take to do that?
S:
To do what?
C:
To scrape the hair off the hide.
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S:
It depends on how they have to [Goshute at 29:27] ossoittai. If they don’t soften it the
first time, then they put more brains on it. Then they have to do it the same thing all over
again.
C:
What are some of the crafts that the Goshute Tribe is known for? Make baskets, or—?
S:
Make baskets.
M:
Willows.
S:
Out of willows. And some of those small—I don’t know what it’s called. But mostly, I
think it was out of a willows.
C:
How about for, like, medicine? What did the tribe use for medicine before healthcare
came about, in regards to antibiotics and the stuff that we use nowadays?
M:
I’ve forgotten lot of things that I was taught when I was a boy. At that time, you don’t
listen. Now you wish you would’ve listened! Yeah, there’s some herbs there that could be
used for certain illness and all that. And I have forgotten even what—the names, even. I
guess they’re still there, I guess.
S:
I think that totsa is another one. I don’t know what they use it for. Whatever you call the
totsa. You got some in Elko, up in the hills, [__inaudible at 31:18__].
M:
You know totsa?
C:
Yeah, uh-huh.
M:
And that’s up on Adobe Summit last year.
C:
Does it grow on the ground? You dig it out? Or how do you get it?
S:
Yeah, it’s like a potato. They were in the ground. Most of them were small. Some of
them real big. To dig it out, you really had to use a stick or what was available.
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C:
So as far as the Goshute reservation here, what can you guys share with us today about
what goes on here? What do people do nowadays for—?
S:
Now? Well, there used to be ranchers, but now they’re gone. The people that used to own
these lands, they’re all gone. The young ones just don’t care to take care of them.
C:
How big is the reservation? How big is the Goshute reservation?
M:
You’ll have to ask; I’ve forgotten just how many acres. How many acres is the Goshute
reservation?
U1:
Hundred and eighteen thousand.
C:
Hundred and eighteen thousand acres? Uh-huh. What does—do you have elk here? Deer,
antelope? I seen antelope today, coming in.
M:
Elk?
C:
I didn’t see elk, but I seen antelope coming in today. So is elk native to this—
M:
No, it was transplanted here in 1988, I believe. Done pretty good here. It multiplied pretty
fast.
C:
So is it that tribal members use the elk, do they hunt the elk to eat the meat, and do they
work with the hide of the elk like they do the deer? Or is it harder to work with?
S:
It’s harder to work with, I heard. I guess they have to cut it in two to work it. Unless you
take it to the tannery.
C:
How about for wild turkeys? Do you guys raise wild turkeys here?
M:
Yeah. They was also transplanted here not too long ago. Maybe ten years back.
C:
Oh. How they doing?
M:
I don’t know how many there is now.
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S:
I’ve seen some here and there, through the summer. I just think they do survive the
winter, because I’ve seen little chicks. So far, there was seven of them little chicks, over
in Spring Creek. Rabbits. And cottontails.
C:
Does anybody still make the rabbit blankets out here?
S:
[Laughter] I don’t think so!
C:
No?
S:
My mom used to make it. We do that, lot of the rabbit hide, to make a blanket.
C:
Did you help her when she made those?
S:
No, I didn’t, I just watched her. [Laughter] And she made it wide enough for a single bed,
and cover it with a blanket. Or she used a Levi’s like this and cover it, make cover for it.
C:
Do you remember how she put them together? Did she sew them together, or twist them
together, or how did—
S:
She made the—because, the way she made it, it was kind of a web. And she put a, she’ll
tie a stick about this long [indicates a stick roughly 10-12” long], so she could twist
that—tie it to the end of the hide, I think. She stretched the hides, they’re about this wide
[indicates a few inches in width], and then she start twirling the stick, and it make a rope
out of that hide. And she made a big line of the hide, and then make a ball out of it. And
then, when she gets ready, then she’ll tie them together with the old rags, just tie them
together this far apart, I think. [Indicates a space of 2-3 inches] They were all this far
apart, both ways. And keep on tying it, until she think it’s big enough for blanket.
C:
Were they pretty warm?
S:
Yeah, they were pretty warm!
C:
How do you use the pinenuts? Is there anything special made with pinenuts?
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S:
They just cook and eat it, and then they make a gravy out of it.
C:
And how’s the gravy made?
S:
Well, they smash the—they cook the pinenuts, and they smash the shells, and make sure
you don’t break most of the nuts in there. And then you grind them up with charcoal. I
guess, long time ago, they use that winnowing basket. You could put the nuts in there,
and then put charcoal on top of it, and then start. There’s a, you know, certain way to
shake it so the charcoal don’t touch the willow basket—winnowing basket. And you
better do it quickly, too! Fast. That just to dry up the pinenuts, so it’ll—it’s a better to
have it dry, and then they, whatever they have that those—ground rock and put the nuts
on them and start the—
M:
Grind.
S:
Grinding. Oh, what do they call that? A tusu. Those little rocks. And then poto, the round
thing. Round, flat rock about this [indicates a rock a few inches thick]. That’s to make
gravy out of it.
M:
And it took a lot of skill to make a pinenut gravy.
S:
Yeah.
M:
Just had to have everything just right. Otherwise, gravy wouldn’t come out right.
S:
Or they’ll make a stew out of it, like you would a beans? You have to cook it for a long
time. And it’s kind of gray, the nuts. And you boil it, and then pour the first one out, and
then just boil it with the second water. And you put dry meat in there. I guess some
people will dry deers—the ears—and they put that in there. And make pinenut stew.
M:
You can bake in ground.
S:
Probably can do a bake like the beans. [Laughter]
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C:
Does the Senior Program here cook any of the Native foods for you guys?
S:
No. They don’t know anything about Indian food. [Laughter]
M:
Wild onions, probably, that the people still use around here.
S:
Yeah.
M:
There’s potatoes.
S:
Yeah, they still have wild carrots up in them canyons, and wild potatoes. They’re not big,
though. They’re, potatoes are about this big, though. [Indicates about an inch.]
C:
So when’s the best time to harvest those?
S:
In the—the potatoes, you see them in the spring, in the late spring. You start digging
them before the leaves are drying up, because they dry up fast. Before the carrots. The
carrots you dig around the end of summer, when they’re about this tall. [Indicates roughly
knee height.] And they have a clusters of white flowers.
C:
Of what? Of white flowers?
S:
White flowers, yeah. A cluster of them. That’s how you can tell where they’re growing.
And they grow deep—about that deep [indicates somewhere between 8-12 inches]
M:
Going back to the pinenuts, the people long time ago knew when the pinenuts was ready
by the rabbit brush. It will turn real bright orange or yellow if they’re ready.
S:
Yeah, they’ll watch that. They watch for it real closely. You call it rabbit brush—they
call it, what was it? What is it?
M:
Sipappin.
S:
Yeah, sipappin! Tapashii [43:15].
M:
And the, how do you say that?
S:
Yeah!
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M:
Wild rose.
S:
Yeah, well, it’s the berries that were—
M:
Had red berries. They get real ripe at about same time pinenuts are ready.
S:
Ready to pick.
C:
So the berries of the wild roses. Are they used for anything?
S:
Mm, I don’t think so. Never heard of anything.
C:
So is there any ceremony that the tribal members do before picking the pinenuts, or
how’s that go?
M:
Long time ago—when was the last time they had, like in those mountains? And pinenut
dancing in the fall days, I think. In them days, when I was going there.
S:
I think so.
C:
So how, what kind of dance do they do for the Pinenut Dance?
S:
Do round dance.
C:
The round dance?
S:
The round dance, yes.
M:
Circle dance.
S:
Circle dance.
M:
This, and then Bear Dance come. And the Southern Paiutes, they come over here—
S:
I think they come from the Ute, the Bear Dancing.
M:
They had the Bear Dance songs that they—the Goshutes only had the circle dance songs.
S:
Yeah.
C:
Why do they call it the “Bear Dance?”
M:
I don’t—
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S:
It came from the Ute. That’s where it came from.
C:
Did they—
M:
I guess it—
S:
I heard here and there that the Utes say that they have a Bear Dance in the spring. That’s
when the bears come out of their den, or wherever they were staying all winter. And they
go, they have a trees that grow on the mountain, I guess, and I guess they’re laying in the
den for so long, their hair start coming off, and I guess it itches. That’s when the bears
start rubbing their body on that tree, and I guess it makes a sound. A certain sound. So
they have this Bear Dance, they have an old tub, and they put those—they have a stick
about this long [about two feet], about this wide [an inch and a half in diameter]. And
they did, they put notches in there. I don’t know how many notches in there. And they
rubbed that when they started singing the Bear Dance songs. Maybe that’s how it sound
like when the bears are rubbing their skin onto that trees. Makes a sound. That’s why they
dance to that music. They have a song for it, too. But not over here, that’s what I’ve
heard, that’s what I’ve been told. Come from the Utes, out that way. Oh—there’s another
thing that Indians used to eat during the summer—when the chokecherries are red. And
they’ll take a lot of chokecherries, and they kind of squish it, and they make patties out of
it. That’s going to be the winter food, and that’s how they dry the chokecherries. Make
patties out of it.
C:
Okay. Well, I want to thank you both for sharing today, these stories and the creation
story. And this will be preserved. And once again, I want to say thank you to both of you.
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
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
Florence Steele & Lee Moon
Location
The location of the interview
Ibapah, NV [Goshute Reservation]
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.)
00:48:07
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
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
A name given to the resource
Florence Steele & Lee Moon - Oral history (12/06/2006)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral History interview with Florence Steele & Lee Moon, Goshute from Ibapah, NV (Goshute Reservation), on 12/06/2006
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Florence Steele and Lee Moon are Goshute from the Goshute Reservation. Florence and Lee start their oral history by telling the creation story of Coyote, and how Coyote brought over the Native Americans to the North American continent. They also refer to the Goshute as Gosciuta (Go-see-oot-ta) which roughly translates to ash paint which in extension refers to the aivee (white chert) in the water. They also speak a little about the traditional foods and that were hunted and gathered. Florence also speaks about how her mother made rabbit blankets. They end their story by speaking about the Bear Dance and how it came from the Utes and why the Utes performed the dance and songs as they did.</p>
Video pending <br /> <a title="Florence Steele and Lee Moon Oral History Transcript" href="/omeka/files/original/e34fcae3740194b994ff8ad125af279e.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read Florence Steel and Lee Moon Oral History Transcript [pdf file]</a>
Creator
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 015
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
12/06/2006 [06 December 2006]; 2006 December 06
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017.
Consent form on file (administrator access only): http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/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