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Clara
Woodson
&
Gracie
Begay
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
005
Oral
History
Interview
by
Joe
Duce=e
March
16,
2006
Elko,
NV
Great
Basin
College
•
Great
Basin
Indian
Archives
1500
College
Parkway
Elko,
Nevada
89801
hBp://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/
775.738.8493
Produced
in
partnership
with
Barrick
Gold
of
North
America
�GBIA 005
Interviewee: Clara Woodson and Gracie Begay
Interviewer: Joe Ducette
Date: June 20, 2006
W:
Well, I was born in Battle Mountain, Nevada, June 20th, 1920. I lived with all my
grandparents. And my grandfather was alive, too, at that time. And he was the only male
in the family. The rest were all widows, or divorcee, or whatever you call it! [Laughter]
And, but I lived with all of them. And I lived with my great-great grandmother for 12
years, because I was 12 when she passed on. But I lived with the rest. After she passed
on, I lived with my great-grandmother, Mary Horton, that you see in the picture. She goes
to work every day for the Horton family in Battle Mountain. And where she got that
name of “Horton,” she worked for a Jim Horton that had the grocery store, dry goods
store, right there in Battle Mountain where the Owl Café is, and casino. That used to be
his store. So, my great-grandmother Mary worked for them for all these years. But I
didn’t see this part of it, I just heard this one. They told me that Mr. Horton told her that
she’s been in his family for so long, that he was going to give his name to her. So that’s
how she became Mary Horton. Whether there had been any papers drawn, or anything
like that, I don’t know. That part I don’t know. So, she became Mary Horton. So, she was
Mary Horton until the day she passed on. And she worked for these people all these
years. She was already in her hundreds, when she used to go to work, about a mile and a
half each way. And she was active. And never stopped for anything. When she gets
started, she just walks until she gets there, and walks until she gets back. And she worked
there for many, many years—until I grew up, and then when I grew up, I took over her
job, because she got to the point where she couldn’t work anymore. So I worked there for
quite a few years, too, after that.
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I’m from Shoshone, in Battle Mountain. And at that time, our chief in Battle Mountain
and Austin area was Tutuwa. And he was the chief on that side, whereas Te-Moak was on
this side. And so he’s been a chief for all those years, and he, that was his responsibility,
was the area on that side.
D:
And then, did you have a nickname as a child, or…?
W:
Waiyu. Wai-yu. I don’t know what it means. Do you? [Laughter] Yeah. Waiyu.
D:
What was life like growing up?
W:
Wonderful. We didn’t know what hardship was, because we were just having too much
fun! [Laughter] We lived in the hills for many years, and we didn’t know what it was to
struggle because my grandfather was a good provider.
D:
What was your house like?
W:
We lived in tents. And sometimes, we lived in—
B:
Wikiups.
W:
Huh? What they call it? Wikiup, yeah. So, wherever we wanted to go, that’s where was
our home.
D:
Can you describe what a wikiup is like?
W:
It’s sagebrush. Just all built together. Together, and packed together somehow, I don’t
know. But that’s how it was. And then the tent was a regular tent that you buy from any
store. So we lived in that for years and years. And we had, my grandfather had plenty of
horses, and he had plenty of wagons, and we lived between Battle Mountain and Austin,
up in there, in King Creek area. And my grandfather was given some land up in that area.
I guess it’s registered in Austin, because Austin at that time was county seat. So, he was
given that strip of land back in there. So that’s where we lived for many years. So, twice,
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maybe three times a year, he makes a trip into Austin, or he makes a trip into Battle
Mountain, gets all his supplies. The rest, he grew. And he’d hunt. So we always had
plenty to eat. So, we were—and we were never sick. We never had to go to a doctor that I
would even remember. We never had taken any medicine, except an herb for a sore throat
once in a while. But we were never sick. And we were just happy as a lark! [Laughter]
D:
When—as children, what did you do for fun?
W:
Anything you wanted to do. You can go for walks, you can climb trees, you can go
wading, whatever. It’s there.
B:
Picking pinenuts.
W:
Yeah. Pinenuts, and berries.
B:
Berries.
W:
Everything, was just right there. So, whatever you want to do.
D:
Did you have any games that you played?
W:
Mmhm, yeah. Different kind of games that they taught us how to play. So, like, whatever.
D:
What kind, or don’t you remember?
W:
Well, one was kick the—what they call kick, they made a ball out of a rag, like a ball.
And then you kick it. No! You don’t kick it, you take a stick, you hit it with a stick.
Remember?
B:
Unnnhh, I don’t remember that part! [Laughter]
W:
Yeah, you hit it with a stick, and that was it. So… But, at least, whatever you wanted to
play, it was there. So. But, everybody was happy. Nobody, there was no fighting, no
nothing. There was no booze, so there was nothing like that. So everybody was happy.
When people stopped by, they know that my grandfather always had plenty of food, so
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whoever’s going through always stopped by for two or three days, and visit, and he gives
them enough food to go wherever they’re going to go.
D:
What kind of food did you have as kids?
W:
Whatever you—
B:
Whatever.
W:
Everything. Everything was there. We had wild potatoes, we had onions, we had carrots.
B:
Wild carrots.
W:
Wild berries, and...
B:
Pinenuts.
W:
Pinenuts.
B:
Jackrabbits.
W:
Berries. Jackrabbits, squirrels. You name it, it was there. Deer. Want to go fishing,
there’s fish. You name it, it’s there. And it was free. And you didn’t have to ask anybody,
or worry about anybody telling you you can’t hunt here or you can’t hunt there. And he
made, my grandfather made ropes for the ranchers. He made cowhide ropes, and
whatever the horses, they call it. What they, they’re on their heads. Conchos?
B:
Mmhm.
W:
Yeah, he made all of that. And made all kinds of stuff for horse. And lot of smaller ropes,
and bigger ropes for bigger wagons and stuff like that. But he did all of that. He took care
of all the horses for all those ranchers. So he worked several ranches down there. And
then, when his sons got older, they followed his footsteps, and so they did the same thing,
too. The grandparents—the grandmothers, every night is storytime. And like I said, we’re
up there in the open, in the tents, and there’s two, three kids all out there, and they all go
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to bed at the same time. So, that’s when the storytime comes. And what you do when
they tell you a story, you repeat what they say. And, so, she tells the story, and pretty
soon she only hears maybe five voices. And then she knows one’s down. And then she
keeps on telling, and then there’s three, and then there’s two, and then pretty soon there’s
no more. And that’s the end of the story. But you’ve got to remember where it ended,
because the next night it’s going to continue from there. So, every night, we have to have
stories before we went to bed.
D:
Do you remember any of the stories?
W:
God, it’s been so long, I don’t even remember! [Laughter] There’s a lot of those stories,
most of them was stories that they say how the world was made, and you know, about
God, and things like that. And how things originated, where they came from, and it’s
stuff like that.
B:
I was born in Austin, Nevada, in 1935. Have both my parents, the pictures. When I was
growing up, my—well, in the earlier days, my mom, when they first went to school, she
said that the superintendent came and they were all hiding in the sagebrush. They didn’t
want to go to school. And so they finally caught them, and some of them got sent to
Stewart, but my mom said she was glad that she went to school to the eighth grade. And
she was thankful for that, because she knew how to read and write. And she knew how to
count money. She was smart at math and all this kind of stuff. And so she was always
thankful that she went to school. But my aunt and them never went to school, and all she
had learned was how to write her name. That was Adele. And my mom used to work for
the Hiskys, when she was a young girl, like her grandma did. And she said she used to
save the soaps, you know, from when she was cleaning house, and from the bathtubs and
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stuff. She used to save all the soap. Then she’d take it home and make soap out of it to
wash her school clothes with. And she’d heat her own water and stuff. She told me all
about that, you know. And so, when she got—I’m getting way ahead of myself. My
grandma said that when they were, when she was a young girl, she remembered the
soldiers coming, she said. I don’t know where that was, by Reese River someplace. By
Austin. She said lots of soldiers came during the big flood, and she says they took them
in wagons. I guess that’s when they moved them to Austin. And she was, she said they
was giving them blankets and food and stuff. But she said lot of the people got sick from
those blankets and stuff. And she said, “They promised us money,” and she said, “We no
see no money.” That’s what she was telling us, you remember. “We no see no money.”
So…
W:
We still don’t. [Laughter]
B:
Yeah! [Laughter] Still haven’t seen it! So then she moved, we moved to Battle Mountain.
And in the, must have been the 19—I must have been six years—no, about three years
old. Maybe 1935. Or was it 1937? And there was a little school down here in Beowawe,
in Dunphy. Dunphy, Nevada, where my dad was working for the Hilltop Mine. And so
we moved to Dunphy, Nevada, in Ricksie’s, they used to call it. You know where I’m
talking about down here? There was a little school there. There was a store, run by Mrs.
Wallace, and there was a school there, and they had cabins. I think there was ten cabins.
That’s where I went to school in kindergarten. And my sister must have been in the first
grade, and my older brother Edward, I think he was probably in the third grade or
something like that. But we went to school in Dunphy. And I remember my teacher’s
name was Christine Cox, and she was, we went to school there. That’s the time the kids
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used to first make those rubber guns, you know, with the—wooden rubber guns? And I
remember one of the boys, young boys, got his eye put out with that rubber gun, because
it slipped, hit him in the eye. That’s when we were in Dunphy. Then we moved to Battle
Mountain, and I went to first grade there. And I grew up in Battle Mountain. My dad built
his own house, and he built—we had a well that he dug by his self, and he used to buy
watermelons, and bacons, and hams, food, and put them down in the well. And they used
to be nice and cool. We never had refrigeration, and we never had electricity. And, so he
made his own well, and he made his own—we used to have to go out and get the ice from
the railroad. Because he worked for the railroad, and they used to dump these big chunks
of ice from the ice cars. And we had, us kids had to go over there every morning and pick
up the ice with a wheelbarrow and wheel it back home. That’s what my mom used for her
iced tea, and they had a, like a swamp cooler, made out of gunnysacks and screen. Sets
up high like this on the—and that was our refrigeration. With the ice that we picked from
the railroad.
D:
What did you do for fun?
B:
Well, there wasn’t much fun in those days, because we didn’t live—we were in public
schools, and we didn’t live up on the Colonies. We didn’t live on the reservation,
colonies. We always lived downtown, and away from friends, really. And so we just went
to school, and learned discipline early. Not like it is today. We had to learn to be, get
home a certain time and all this, or there was the willow tree. And boy, you got willowed
if you didn’t mind! You know. Now, I remember Battle Mountain, too, and Clara’s, her
great-grandma. Mary Horton and Aggie and them. They used to make rabbit blankets, out
of the rabbit fur. Jackrabbit fur. And I can remember them sewing those blankets
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together. And they always had those rabbit blankets, remember they called them? Used to
put them down on the floor, and they used to sleep on them.
W:
Oh, there’s nothing like a rabbit blankets.
B:
Yeah! [Laughter]
W:
And that’s all you need, is one blanket. [Laughter]
B:
And I remember her doing that. So in my time, generation, I’ve known five generations
of people that lived past their hundreds. And I’m proud of that, because I can still
remember them.
D:
Who are they?
B:
Well, we had… I wrote down their, let’s start with Mary Horton—and her name was
Kangaroo, her nickname. And I didn’t know ‘til now where she got her name, the Mary
Horton, until I just heard it from her just now. And she was born in 1859, she died in
1974. And she was the mother of Aggie Jackson. No, wait a minute, I’ve got that wrong.
Mary Horton was born 1825, and she died in 1956. Mary Horton. Aggie Jackson was
born 1859, and then she died in 1974. Ida Blossom Long, a daughter of Aggie Jackson,
was born October 5, 1907, and she died July 5, 1988. Glenda Blossom Johnson was the
daughter of Ida Johnson, but I don’t have her death listed down. Harlan Jackson, son of
Aggie Jackson, died age 101 in Battle Mountain. Then you had Millie Cavanaugh,
daughter of Aggie Jackson, which is Clara’s mom. Then Jerry Jackson, son of Aggie
Jackson. And I’ve got Clara Blossom Woodson, daughter of Millie Cavanaugh. Then I
got Dan Blossom Cavanaugh down here, the son of Millie and Louie Cavanaugh. That’s
the generations. Then on my mom’s side of the family, I remember that Joe Gilbert—and
I didn’t write those down, I didn’t have time, really—but my grandma, and her great-
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great grandma was the same as my mom’s. Said she used to call it, little, oh, what was
her name?
W:
Josie.
B:
Yeah. You said it. What was her name? Jenny—not Jenny, um… You said that was
buried in Battle Mountain, at 117? That was Ton ti?
W:
Tii Tsosie.
B:
Uh-huh.
W:
Yeah. That’s little Peggy.
B:
Yeah! Little Peggy. Peggy, they called her. And, then my grandma died at 104 years old.
And she had sisters, they all lived into the hundreds. And I’ve known, from my
generation, the five generations, I remember them. Annie Dusain. She was a hundred and
something, and she was—used to walk with a cane. She used to walk real fast. They
always had apples when we used to go over to their house, and she used to say, “Oh, oh
oh! Little Grace! Oh, oh, oh!” She used to call me. She little old lady, who stood about
this high. But she grew to a little old age. And so that’s something to be proud of,
knowing in my lifetime, the generations. Don’t really—I don’t really know what they
wanted to have. But, I’m just going to try my best from the time that my grandma told us.
D:
Do you remember any stories from when you were young that your grandmother told
you?
B:
Well, she used to tell us about the—and which we don’t practice today—she used to
drink her Indian Tea every day. They used to call it, what, Indian Tea? And every day,
she drank a fourth of a cup of that. Every day without fail. She was not sick. She died of
old age. She only had little bit of arthritis in her neck. But that’s all.
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D:
And do you know what the Indian tea was made of?
B:
Pardon?
D:
Do you know what the Indian tea was made of?
W:
Tea. The Indian Tea. Mormon Tea [Shoshone at 20:29].
B:
Yeah.
W:
Mormon Tea, they call it Mormon Tea.
B:
They call it Mormon Tea. But it was the sage tea.
D:
So made from sagebrush.
W:
It’s made just like a sage—it grows like a sagebrush.
B:
Grows in the wild.
W:
It grow wild up in the mountains. Like, in Eureka. That whole mountain will just be
covered in the spring with that. You can see it right from the road.
B:
Purple flowers.
W:
Yeah. Just go out there, and—
B:
In those days, there was no diabetes.
W:
No.
B:
In those days, there was no heart disease. And they smoked cigarettes, and they smoked,
just—
W:
Indian—
B:
Indian tobacco. Indian sage. They got pinenuts. I remember, we used to have sacks of
pinenuts, sitting, you know, in the rooms. You don’t see that anymore today. You have to
go out and buy them because we can’t, just can’t get out and do it anymore!
W:
It’s so many pounds. You’re allowed so many pounds, anyhow.
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B:
Arthritis and everything else, we can’t, not active like our elders were. And we used to go
down to Twenty-Five Ranch and get the buckberries. Remember the weyem?
W:
Yeah.
B:
And that’s all closed off now. You know, to the freeway and stuff. So. We used to get
tubs of it.
W:
Everything is closed or locked up.
B:
Yeah, everything is closed, now. Everything.
W:
Gates are locked.
B:
Berries.
W:
Can’t go anyplace. Mm-mm.
B:
And that’s what I remember about growing up. And then, of course I went to school in
Battle Mountain, and all through my high school years. And my mom had nine children.
Two girls and seven boys. And we all grew up in Battle Mountain. But when we moved
to the South Fork reservation in 1952, there was no high school there. And I was a junior
in high school. So I never got to finish my high school. I never got to graduate. Because
we moved, and there was no high school where I went. And my brothers, same thing.
They had to—my parents had to board them out so they can go to school, because we
didn’t have no school in South Fork. Up to the eighth grade.
D:
Any Shoshone traditions that you can, want to pass on, or you can remember…?
B:
Oh… That’s what my kids always say. “Mom, where’s your traditions?” And I really
don’t know of any traditions. She probably knows more about that than I do, because my
dad was a Irishman. He was white, and my mom was Shoshone. She never talked to us
about things like that. But Clara grew up with all that stuff. I didn’t.
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W:
I do remember that Aggie—which is in that five generation deal—she told me ever since
I was a little girl, she told me, she says that she worked for an Indian agent here in Elko,
when she was a young woman. And she said that she did domestic work at the house. I
don’t know how long she’s worked for this man. And she says, one day, she says, he
came in, and she was doing some dusting in the living room, and—he had a office right
off of the living room. So he said to her, he said, “Aggie?” And she says, “Yeah.” He
said, “You see that great big trunk sitting by the window there?” She says, “Yeah.” [He]
says, “That trunk is full of things that you Indian people can have. It belongs to you.
Everything in there is about the Indian people. You people have so much money! If you
were to get this money, you would never have to work for anybody else. And you would
never have to sell your land to anybody else. If you can get your people together, we’ll
open this trunk, and I’ll give you all the papers.” And he says, “You can take that, and tell
the government you want this money. And when you ask for this money, after you get
together, what you call this money is, it’s called ‘Ancestor Money.’ Nothing else. When
you’re referring to this, you call it Ancestor Money, because that’s what the white settlers
put on it when they put that aside for destruction of your land, and what they have done
to your land, and how they ruined everything as they went through. Here they were good
enough to show them where to hunt, where to get their clean water. And when they left,
they put some stuff in it so that the Indian people can die from it.” And which a lot of
them did. And he says, “All this money was set aside in this great big pot. And this is
supposed to be your money, the rest of your life. They have to pay you for everything
that they have done on this earth, as they went through. It is your money, so it’s called the
Ancestor Money. It is yours. And there is a lot of it.” So all the time, when I was growing
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up, Aggie would tell me about this money. And she’d tell me and tell me. And she said,
“When you grow up, I want you to look into it. And I want you to get with your people,
and the young people, your generation, and see if you can get that money. Be sure you
call it the Ancestor Money.” So, anyway, this went on and on. All through the years. And
then, when they start having meetings about this land sale and all this, she would go to
that, and she would try to tell these young people that’s sitting behind a desk here, about
what this Indian agent told her. And all they do is brush her aside. They’d say, “Oh,
you’re old, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” That’s all they ever told her. So
she got to the point where she don’t say it any more. And the last meeting was, when they
had this Broken Treaty. She told them then. She said, “Get the Ancestor Money. You
don’t have to sell your land, just get the Ancestor Money.” And then, the day that she
died, that’s the last thing she said. “Please get your family and everybody together and
get this Ancestor Money.” But nobody ever listened to her. So that was her only worries,
is that nobody will ever get it. And so, today, they’re still fighting it, and they’re still
throwing that land deal in! Did you notice in the paper?
B:
Yeah.
W:
Always throwing that land deal. And he told her, “This has nothing to do with your land.
This is your money set aside for you.”
B:
Which we never got. Which we’re still waiting for.
W:
Well, it’s just like you told that lady: “Do you have the money, or not?” [Laughter]
D:
Any other traditions you remember?
B:
So, that was—mostly, a lot of that. Mostly, what she would tell us is the right—wrong
and right, in this world. How to live. What you do. What you shouldn’t do. How you
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raise your family. And just little things that, to give you an idea, you shouldn’t do this
and you shouldn’t do that. Mostly, for your own good, taught to raise your family. How
you treat your family. And mostly, to survive.
D:
Any stories like, with the, Mr. Coyote, or anything like that?
B:
Yeah—
W:
Yeah, lot of those stories, yeah.
B:
Itsappe.
W:
Yeah, Itsappe, Itsappe. Lot of those stories.
B:
They call—
D:
Got one you can tell us?
B:
Are we still talking, then? Should I—
D:
Yeah.
B:
Okay. They used to say, when somebody’s making a joke or something, they say, “Oh,
that’s the Itsappe. That’s Coyote, they’re acting funny.” They always use that itsappe
word, in Shoshone for coyote. The itsappe. “Oh, you’re being itsappe, they used to say, if
they thought you weren’t telling the truth, or joking, or something. But there are a lot of
stories about that, about the Coyote, if we really had the time now to—
W:
Well, there was two brothers. The older brother was the honest one. He did right by
everything. And his younger brother, he was all mischief. He’s always doing things, he
never does anything right. No matter what his older brother tells him, he says, “Yeah,
yeah, I’ll do it.” So, that’s why, now, when the Indian people refer to somebody here that
never tells the truth, they always say, “Ehh, Itsappe.”
B:
Yeah.
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W:
The young brother. [Laughter] But lot of that is kind of… not good to tell. [Laughter]
B:
Yeah!
W:
How it’s originated—yeah, you don’t want to hear that.
B:
But then, in them days, they used to have pinenuts and everything there. It’s not seen
anymore, because we don’t teach our young generations right way to go out and—
because they used to go out and hunt, and pick pinenuts, and put them up, and dig holes,
and put the cones in to roast, and they’d pack them up on their back, and go to another
camp, and pack some more. All winter long, they had the sacks of pinenuts in the house.
We’re always eating pinenuts, all winter long. Pinenut gravy, and the house always
smelled of pinenuts. We’re still trying to get our younger generation to try to find out,
and try to learn them how to go out and, do get the pinenuts, and show them that they
have to put an offering down.
W:
Oh, you never pick anything without an offering.
B:
Yeah, you always offer.
W:
Always offer. Always pray for whatever you—
B:
A nickel, penny, anything, that offering to the Mother Earth, for plentiful food. And you
always have food every year. Fruit off the trees and things. Until they started destroying
the trees. And I guess you’ve seen the Broken Treaty at Battle Mountain, which was very
sad. Makes you cry, when you see that. Every time I see that film, it makes me cry.
W:
[Shoshone at 31:30] Itsappe __
B:
Oh, the funny thing I could tell them about—
W:
California. California [Shoshone at 31:34].
B:
Do you mean tell about when they tell a lie? Call them Itsappe? I already said that.
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C:
Well, maybe some of the ones like, the handgame story? Itsappe [__inaudible at
31:46__].
B:
Oh, when they playing hand games?
C:
Playing hand games, yeah. He was ready to bet his mukua, [Shoshone at 31:54]. Maybe
you could tell that.
B:
Oh, I didn’t know about that.
W:
Well, he bet everything else.
C:
Yeah, he bet everything else.
W:
He bet everything else, he bet a lie, and to tell the truth, and all of that. And then when it
came to death, he said to his brother, he says, “I’m going to bet on death.” And his
brother says, “What are you going to bet?” He said, “Well, I’m going to bet, and I’m
going to say, ‘I think it feels good if we just die one time.’” You heard that one? Yeah.
And his brother says, “You’re going to be sorry! You’re going to get hurt one of these
days, and you’re going to be sorry.” And his brother said, the younger, mischievous one
said, “Nah, I ain’t going to be sorry.” And then right after that, his brother’s son got
killed. And then he came back to his brother. He says, “What did you say about wanting
to just die one time?” He start discussing that with his brother. And his brother was so
disgusted with him, he says, “I don’t want to talk about it. You said it’d feel good if we
died just one time.” He says, “No, I really didn’t mean that. I think dying twice would be
better.” And his brother says, “No. It’s already done. You lost it.” So he lost his son, and
his son didn’t come back. That was one of them.
C:
So before that, when people died twice, how long did it take before they used to come
back to life the second time?
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W:
Well, your—when the person—well, that’s only just a few years back. They only, if a
person dies, they keep you five days. They don’t bury you before five days. Because
there’s couple of times in Austin, I don’t remember which one it was, one of our relatives
died, and I think on the fourth day or something like that, they took him to the cemetery,
and they always have a last showing at the cemetery. And so, when he was, they open the
coffin and everything else, everybody praying and everything else, and he sat up in the
coffin. And he looked around, and everybody’s at the cemetery, and everybody is crying
and all that. He looked around, and he said, “What did I tell you? You wait five days for a
person, to declare them dead.” He says, “You never bury them before the fifth day.”
B:
I’ll be darned.
W:
Yeah.
B:
See, I never knew that.
W:
But he came to. And he says, “Let this be a lesson to you. You always leave the body for
five days. And you don’t bury before.”
C:
So that’s why the traditional Shoshones believed in not getting embalmed, right?
W:
Yeah. Mmhm.
C:
They kept the body, without getting the embalmment.
W:
And you kept it five days.
C:
And so after the second time they come to life, how long do they usually live?
W:
I don’t know about that part. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one. Of how long they
lived. But, there’s some strange stuff, too, that—like, Maggie, that she turns to a wolf.
B:
Oh! See, she knows things that I don’t. That’s why—
W:
Yeah. Maggie, you know, whatshername? Jean Joe’s sister?
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B:
Oh, Giannetti.
W:
Giannetti. Well, it was their grandmother.
B:
Elsie.
W:
No, Maggie.
B:
Oh, Maggie. Yeah.
W:
They say that there’s times that she turns to a wolf. And how they knew that was, they
lived in Letley, right out of Austin, just a few miles out of Austin. There is a place called
Letley, and that’s the territory that Tutuwa, that was his area. And so they were all living
down there. And I guess her husband beat up on her. So, she start running out, outside.
And the snow was so deep. So, her husband figures, “Oh, she ain’t going to go very far.”
Snow’s so deep, you know. So he waited. And then, after a while, he poked his head out,
see if he could see her, because all flat ground. And he don’t see her anyplace. And he
just kept looking and looking. Never saw her. So he was getting kind of worried. So he
went down to his buddy’s place there, and he told his buddy. He says, “Well, I did
something bad this morning. I beat up on my wife, and she took off. She hasn’t been
back, and you can’t see her. I’ve looked and looked, can’t see her anyplace.” He says,
“Well, let’s saddle up and follow her.” So, they start to follow her. Going towards Austin,
they saw her tracks, going to Austin. So they followed it and followed it, all the way. And
just a little ways out of Austin, it was the track of a wolf. He says, “Well, this is a wolf
track!” He says, “Are you sure?” He says, “Yeah! Get down here and look at it!” So they
looked at it, and they kept going and going and going, all the way into Austin. It was a
wolf track. And there used to be a Chinese guy there that had a laundry. And he was
married to one of our kinfolks.
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B:
Yeah.
W:
Yeah. Motti. Remember Motti? Yeah. She went to Motti’s house. And all the tracks went
clear down there, except to, pretty close to the laundry. Then was her footprints to the
laundry. So him and her husband knock on the door, and he says, “Is so-and-so here?”
“Yeah, yeah, she’s in here having coffee. Come on in.” [Laughter] But they say that’s
what she used to do.
B:
Fact of the matter is, the house that I was born in is supposed to still be standing. That’s
what Mary McCloud told me.
D:
You mean in Austin?
B:
Mmhm. And also, there’s a white rock, over there to the, Chauncey used to talk about.
She said there’s a writing on there in white chalk, on a rock. And me and Ida, we were
supposed to go find it, and we never did. Remember?
W:
Mmhm.
B:
We were going to take a trip to Austin and see if we could find that rock, but she said
that’s where the treaty was signed. The Tututwa treaty. We never followed up on it.
Whether it’s still there or not—I imagine it is, probably, but it’d take a researchers unit to
go up there. Maybe with the EPA people, we can go there.
W:
Oh, I know Vert Avery said it was in the courthouse. The original was in the courthouse.
And Tutuwa was given a copy. See?
B:
Oh.
C:
Well, in terms of other stories, do you guys know the pine nut story? Where the animals
got together and went after the pinenut? And that Itsappe was involved again? Can you
tell that one?
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W:
Yeah, the Itsappe is the one that in the Owyhee area, they were having that handgame.
He started betting all the food.
B:
Yeah, that’s what—the food.
W:
Yeah, he start betting on the food. He lost that.
C:
Can you go ahead and tell that story?
W:
Yeah. But I don’t remember just—
B:
She probably knows.
W:
What he was doing is, he was betting everything. And he was losing it. Was losing just
about everything. And they said something about the pinenuts. He says, “I’m going to bet
the pinenuts.” And he says, “No, you better not do that.” He says, “Yeah, I am.” And it
was something I can’t remember now, because—which bird has an extended tongue?
C:
The woodpecker?
W:
The woodpecker? Is that they say has another extension on the tongue?
B:
Oh, I guess.
W:
Yeah. And they said that they made him be the carrier of the pinenuts.
B:
Oh, I remember!
W:
Because they said that everybody tried to get that pinenut, and they said they couldn’t
reach it. They couldn’t get to the pinenut to take it away so that they could take it out of
Owyhee and come towards Beowawe, someplace in there. So they were going to bring it
this way. And so, they says, “Well, this one bird has that extension on his tongue.” So the
bird, they called him, ask him, if he can reach the pinenut that’s over here because they
already lost it in the handgame. So he says, “You can get it. Make your tongue go as far
as you can. You can get it, and then you can take the pinenut and go towards Beowawe
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area and through there. And so the bird went over there, and he says he put his tongue out
there, and he kept going way out there, and he finally got it, and he reached the pinenut.
And that’s how he took the pinenut out of Owyhee area, and brought it into Eureka. And
that’s why there’s lot of pinenuts in that area. Eureka.
B:
Oh, really? There is a lot.
W:
Austin and all that. And that’s where he planted it.
B:
And there is lot of pinenuts out there, too, really.
W:
Austin area and all back in through there is lot of pinenuts. Going towards Ely. And
going towards—
C:
So what type of food, or what type of dishes did Shoshone people make with pinenuts,
long time ago?
B:
Pinenut gravy.
W:
You mean the dishes?
C:
Like, the type of foods they prepared.
W:
With the pinenuts?
C:
With the pinenut, uh-huh.
W:
Well, I don’t know—what do you call it, willow?
B:
I don’t know, I think they put char—
W:
I think it’s involved with willow. It’s weaved in the willow. I know they used the jug for,
with the willow jugs. And it’s best drinking water, too. And make this great big
container, and they coat it with pitch.
B:
Pine pitch.
W:
Yeah. And it seals it all off.
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B:
They make their pinenut gravy in that.
W:
So, that’s how they keep the water.
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
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Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
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GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
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2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
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Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
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Clara Woodson and Gracie Begay
Location
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Elko (GBC Campus)
Transcription
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Transcript available: http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/429
Original Format
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DVD and VOB Format
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00:43:06
Dublin Core
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Title
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Clara Woodson and Gracie Begay Oral History (03/16/2006)
Subject
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Oral History interview with Clara Woodson and Gracie Begay, Western Shoshone from Elko and Wells, NV on 16 March 2006.
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Oral History interview with Clara Woodson and Gracie Begay, Western Shoshone from Elko and Wells, NV on 16 March 2006.</p>
<p>Clara Woodson was born in Battle Mountain. She tells us about her family and who they worked for, how they lived, and what traditions that they had. She describes the sociopolitical setup of the Great Basin region in relation to Chief Te-Moak and Tutuwa. She illustrates how her grandfather still used wagons and horses to get his supplies. She also explains what type of traditional food that they hunted and gathered. Gracie Begay was born in Austin where her family lived. She tells us of her families experience with school, and when the soldiers came into the area. They both tell us about where and how they lived in Battle Mountain. They also speak of some of the traditional Shoshone stories such as Coyote and the Hand game.</p>
<p>Interviewed by Joe Doucette for the Great Basin Indian Archive</p>
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 005
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
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03/16/2006 [16 March 2006]; 2006-03-16
Contributor
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Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America.
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Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2016.
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streaming video
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English
Battle Mountain
Chief Te-Moak
Chief Tutuwa
claims
Community
Crossroads
folktale
GBIA
Shoshone
Story
traditional food
-
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2ec11c23b9237c5d336c815cb990b554
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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
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DVD and VOB format
Duration
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00:48:07
Transcription
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http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/544
Dublin Core
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Title
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Florence Steele & Lee Moon - Oral history (12/06/2006)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral History interview with Florence Steele & Lee Moon, Goshute from Ibapah, NV (Goshute Reservation), on 12/06/2006
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Florence Steele and Lee Moon are Goshute from the Goshute Reservation. Florence and Lee start their oral history by telling the creation story of Coyote, and how Coyote brought over the Native Americans to the North American continent. They also refer to the Goshute as Gosciuta (Go-see-oot-ta) which roughly translates to ash paint which in extension refers to the aivee (white chert) in the water. They also speak a little about the traditional foods and that were hunted and gathered. Florence also speaks about how her mother made rabbit blankets. They end their story by speaking about the Bear Dance and how it came from the Utes and why the Utes performed the dance and songs as they did.</p>
Video pending <br /> <a title="Florence Steele and Lee Moon Oral History Transcript" href="/omeka/files/original/e34fcae3740194b994ff8ad125af279e.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read Florence Steel and Lee Moon Oral History Transcript [pdf file]</a>
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 015
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
12/06/2006 [06 December 2006]; 2006 December 06
Contributor
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Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America
Rights
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
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/9e975c4b50834c0ddeb8c9d653af3991.jpg
0badecae15dd241874b963514a0993b5
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
James Hedrick
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Katherine Blossom
Location
The location of the interview
Great Basin College (Elko, NV)
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Transcription in progress
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
MP4
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:40:45
Dublin Core
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Title
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Katherine Blossom - Oral history (07/10/17)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history interview with Katherine Blossom, Western Shoshone from Elko, NV on 07/10/2017
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Katherine Blossom addresses students at the Shoshone Community Language Initiative (SCLI) program at Great Basin College. Katherine Blossom begins her discussion by describing the benefits of learning the language. She speaks about how her mother and others were punished at boarding schools for speaking their native language, and as a result she was denied the opportunity to learn it growing up. She then goes on to sing a song on the hand drum. Afterward, she begins to speak about the different native plants and other materials that traditional Western Shoshones would use.<br /><br />Presented at the 2017 Shoshone Community Language Initiative summer youth program (SCLI 17).<br /> </p>
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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 060
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07/10/2017 [10 July 2017]; 2017 July 10
Contributor
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James Hedrick [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK
Rights
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Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017.
Consent form on file (administrator access only):
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
MP4
Language
A language of the resource
Enlgish; some Shoshoni
Community
Crossroads
Elko
GBIA
language
Shoshone
Story
traditional food
traditional medicines
traditional songs
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/2940302d759416db78c63de1fa5367a9.jpg
8ad6ba597233ef820b601335f37b6bc6
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
Evelyn Temoke-Roché; special guest Clifton Gardner
Location
The location of the interview
Ruby Valley, NV [Harrison Pass and Temoke-Rochés ancestral residence]
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Transcription in process [10 June 2015]
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
DVD and AVI format
Duration
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00:44:48
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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Oral History - Evelyn Temoke-Roché (09/15/2014)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral History interview with Evelyn Temoke-Roché, Western Shoshone from Ruby Valley, NV, on 09/15/2014
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Evelyn Temoke-Roche is a member of the Te-Moak tribe of Western Shoshone. She begins by discussing the land of her ancestors around Harrison Pass and Ruby Valley, and how they were known as the Wadda dikka clan (rice-eaters). She goes on to speak about the Union Soldiers and the atrocities brought to the Western Shoshone which occurred before, during, and after the Ruby Valley Treaty. She then goes on to tell about the Shoshone living near Cherry Creek, NV, and the types of food that were hunted and gathered by the Shoshone as well as the type of creatures living there. She also speaks of the ranching and homestead conflict her father went through in Ruby Valley. The oral history ends with Clifton Gardner relating what he knows of Medicine Springs, and of the traditions of the Native people in Ruby Valley.</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 009C
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
09/15/2014 [17 September 2014]; 2014 September 17
Contributor
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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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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/465
Format
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mp4
Language
A language of the resource
English; Shoshone
1863 Ruby Valley Treaty
Community
Crossroads
GBIA
Harrison Pass
Land claims
ranching
Ruby Valley
Shoshone
Story
traditional food
U.S. Cavalry
-
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https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/b0a680c1a28315a0ea8865ce952ac485.pdf
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PDF Text
Text
Judy
Moon
Glasson
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
045
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
April
9,
2015
Ruby
Valley,
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 045
Interviewee: Judy Moon Glasson
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: April 9, 2015
C:
This is going to be a story about a lady that came from Ruby Valley, and you can see the
Ruby Mountains in the background. And they’re just beautiful. So, you’ll be hearing
today about the story of the Western Shoshone people, and how they came from the Ruby
Mountains, and ended up here in Elko and throughout Nevada. And are still here,
presently.
G:
I’m Judy Moon Glasson. I’m from Ruby Valley, born and raised in Ruby Valley, and
came to Elko, Nevada to find a job here. And I moved here and went to college here in
Elko. And then I got married, and got my home here and live here since that time in—
forgot what year it was. I have four sisters and two brothers. One, the oldest brother, got
killed in World War II. And we all went to school in Ruby Valley, grammar school. And
I moved here to stay with my aunt in Elko, and I went to work here to make a living. I
worked in homes, and they paid, like, dollar an hour. Cleaning homes. And did I tell you
I went to high school here at the college, Elko? And then, I bought this house here. And
got married. And lived here since. After I moved here, then mine start people coming in.
That’s the first mine that I know of that started down there in Carlin. Then everybody, a
lot of people moved here in Elko to work at the mine. Yeah. There wasn’t hardly very
many people here before the mine started. The first thing that I remember about
traditional fall dancing, powwows and stuff, is my dad and mother used to go to Ibapah
and say they’re going to help out by dancing for the rain so the pinenuts will grow. Or
you know, it’s for the pine trees to have pinenuts. You know, the wet weather. So, that
way, we’ll have pinenuts in the fall. And that was the reason why they had these
Fandangos, to pray for the rain for our pinenuts, for it to grow every year, for our food.
�
GBIA
045;
Glasson;
Page
2
Yeah, that festival was for that reason, for the pinenut. And you know, for the food, any
kind that grows on this country. Well, they first pray before they start anything, for why
they were having this doings, first of all. For the rain, for our fruit, for the summer, for
the—every year. Every year, they have that Fandango. That, I remember, as growing up.
And yeah, start here in Elko, I start that rain and snow dance. [Laughter] Because nobody
talked about it, you know, older people. They never say anything about our rain for their
fruit, pinenuts, and everything. So, I—in Ibapah, people were doing that. Having those
Fandangos for that reason. So they’ll have fruit and everything for the year. So, I
remember that, and then I started that here in Elko. And we had it out to Lee first. You
know, we go camp out there, and we invited people to come from different places. So
there be lot of people that celebrate it. The people that have the games and the dancing,
and the person that pray for the doings. And so, they just get together and have fun. You
know, that’s our way of, in the fall, that’s when they pray for all that fruit and everything,
pinenuts for the summer. So, every year, they have wet weather, and let everything grow
for the year. In the evening, they have that Bear Dance first. And then, like, before
midnight, they turn into Circle Dance. And then, they have that Circle Dance all night ‘til
morning, and then another place they have handgames that going on. It’s just that fun,
you know? Fun in the fall of the year. People all get together and camp. And then, they
have a feast afterwards. Yeah. That used to happen in Ibapah. They get a deer for their
feast, and pinenuts, pinenut gravy, and things like that. So they all share that together
with their doings. And they have a handgames, and you know, just fun things. Everybody
get together. And then, there’s a songs for the Bear Dance, too. We used to invite the
people from Ft. Duschene down for that Bear Dance. I guess they still do it over there.
�GBIA
045;
Glasson;
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3
But they have the songs for that. And then there’s Circle Dance. These young people
now, they don’t know anything about it. About the Bear Dance, and the—they quit doing
those traditional things. Because nobody knows about it, except me. But the people my
age, they’re gone—that we all used to get together and plan it. So, I think I’m the only
one left. Well, we have it up here at the tribal building. You know, at the senior building?
Nobody comes, but we just, the people that comes down from the Colony. You know
how it is now. The older—they don’t know anything about it, so they don’t come. But
now, we’re teaching Shoshone language, too, now. And telling them what the Indian
people used to do long time ago. Thursday evening, I go teach for couple hours. And
then, ‘nother thing: I don’t think anybody’s interested in it, because I only have maybe
couple or three that comes! [Laughter] Yeah, and they’re learning. Yeah. They learn how
to talk Shoshone. Yeah. That’s the problem: nobody—the older people probably don’t
tell the younger people. I don’t know. But I tell my sister’s kids, and their kids, and they
know about it in our family.
Starting from Harrison Pass, there’s a ranches. People used to work at the ranches here,
sometimes. They have a homes where the ranch is where they work. Anyway, on
Harrison Pass side, there’s a ranch there where Frank Temoke and them lived. They had
house there, Frank Temoke and his wife, and Bronco Charlie and his older people. They
had houses there behind the ranch. And over there where we grew up, it’s—where the
Shoshones are, they had allotment lands there. My grandpa had allotment land, that’s
where we had our home. And so, people all lived there. Temokes, and Dicks, and us, and
Smith. They have their allotment land. And they lived there. And they moved off,
because they got older and moved to Elko so they can have their old age pension.
�GBIA
045;
Glasson;
Page
4
[Laughter] So, right now there’s only Temokes out there, and Dicks. And we have a
home out there, too. We have a allotment land. My dad had allotment land, so—way back
on Secret Pass side. Yeah. And we fence it up, and we build house on there. So we go out
there in summertime.
Well, they each have their own section. It’s a big Indian land, but they have their own
section. Allotment. They have so many yards. Yeah. And then we have our own—I guess
the government gave it to my dad long time ago, when he was young man. And he never
fence it, but when we got older, we went and fence it ourselves. So, we got allotment
fenced in. And I build a house out on there. It’s down toward Secret Pass side. That side.
C:
That’s really pretty country out there.
G:
Mmhm. Yeah, we go out, drive out there once in a while.
C:
So, do you still pick berries, and pinenuts, and so forth?
G:
Oh, yeah. There’s no pinenut, but you could go out across there on the mountainsides,
they have them. Not on the allotment land. Well, we do have pine trees on our allotment
land. Not very much, though. You have to cook your pinenuts, and then take the shells
off, and then cook it with coals. And then, after that, you grind it up. Then you make
gravy out of it, pinenut gravy.
C:
So, when you grind it up, do you use a grinder, or do you use a—like, the rock grinder
the old people used to use?
G:
Mmhm. Rock grinder. I got—
C:
Rock grinder.
G:
Yeah. I got one.
C:
So it’s actually ground into—
�GBIA
045;
Glasson;
Page
5
G:
Then you just grind it like this, to make it nice. Just a bare bread. Bread and pinenut
gravy, you just dip it in there and eat it like soup. But it’s a lot of work, and it’s good.
[Laughter]
C:
And then, what are some other types of foods that you still prepare?
G:
Like, if you kill a deer, you make jerky. You make jerky, and then you cut it up, boil it,
and make gravy. Put gravy in there, soup, and it’s good.
Well, from a deer hide, you have to scrape it up, and then you soften it, and then you tan
it with a smoke. And then you cut it up into gloves if you want gloves out of it, or
moccasin. After you tan it, it’s nice and soft. Yeah. That’s what you make out of deer
hide.
C:
So, do you still do that?
G:
I used to, but I’m getting too old for it. [Laughter] Yeah. I used scrape it out here. My
nephews used to help me. But the deer, they cut off and skin it real good. And they put it
in the oven, roast it. [Laughter]
C:
The deer head?
G:
Yeah, deer head. And it’s good! And then, the leg part, they put it in the beans, cook
beans. You know, they dried up this part.
C:
Shinbone area?
G:
I don’t remember. My great-aunt used to did that. But I never. My dad died when he was
young. My mother died when she was young. So I didn’t really have older people. Yeah.
C:
So, who raised you?
G:
My aunt did. My aunt, she lived here in Elko. Ever since she was young lady, she worked
here and saved some money, and she bought a lot of land up here on this street, going up
�GBIA
045;
Glasson;
Page
6
to the Colony. We worked in homes, you know. Clean homes, different ones every day.
And save our money. She would, she bought her home like that, save her money. And
after she died, well, my mother took over, and then her husband and my aunt, they split
up the money. Indian people lived here long, long time ago, when the railroad was still
through here. And they sold it to me. So, that’s how I made a down payment, and paid
my three payments.
Well, my dad worked all the time to—so that way, we’ll have groceries and clothes that
we need, you know? Or, we’re not having hard time. Because he’s always worked on the
ranch, that I remember. And he died, too. He had pneumonia. Young. He was still in his
early seventies. And my mom, too. She was still—she wasn’t even eighty. Like, almost
eighty. Yeah, still young. Yeah. I remember that. They were still young, yeah. They
didn’t retire. [Laughter] Yeah, my mother used to make beadwork. And I never did. My
young days, my age group, they never—you know, to sell, but they learned up at Karla’s
office. She’s teaching beading class, and Shoshone class, and different things. But she
don’t have too many students, either. One or two.
Well, stay with our culture. You know? Keep on with it. So that way, the white people
don’t think that we’re nothing. [Laughter] Stay strong with our culture. Have our fall
doings. Well, I think they should keep it up. You know, whatever we’re doing, the young
people. Learn about our culture, and our way of life. Yeah. Have powwows and
Fandangos, and, you know, keep it up. Don’t let it go. Our Indian way of life. Yeah. Go
kill a deer, make jerky! [Laughter]
[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
Judy Moon Glasson
Location
The location of the interview
Elko, NV [Glasson residence]; Ruby Valley Reservation
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/512
Original Format
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DVD, MP4, and AVI format
Duration
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00:21:54
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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Oral History - Judy Moon Glasson (04/09/2015)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history interview with Judy Moon Glasson, Western Shoshone from Ruby Valley, NV, on 04/09/2015
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Judy Moon Glasson was born and raised in Ruby Valley, NV and was one of seven children – four sisters and two brothers. She moved to Elko to find a job and ended up getting married. Judy speaks about how Elko use to be a small town until the mines opened up in Carlin, NV. She then speaks about the traditional practices of the Western Shoshone such as pine-nutting, Bear dances, Hand games, and Circle dances. She also enlightens her audience on some of the history of the Ruby Mountain area and moreover what the Western Shoshone people did therein. Judy ends her oral history by encouraging younger generations to keep up the Shoshone traditions.<br /> <br />Interviewed by Norm Cavanaugh</p>
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Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archives
Source
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 045
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
04/09/2015 [09 April 2015]; 2015 April 09
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Norm Cavanaugh [interview]; 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
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017.
Consent form on file (administrator access only): http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/items/show/340
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp4
Language
A language of the resource
English
Bear dance
Circle dance
Community
Crossroads
family
GBIA
pine nuts
ranching
Ruby Valley
Shoshone
Story
traditional food
traditions
-
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639586428ed786576fb218e346296f4c
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/2e116bef5d665b44867b522f1e77cd3e.pdf
7bd79c278de059e4a418f79703812f63
PDF Text
Text
Raymond(Yowell!
Great&Basin&Indian&Archive!
&GBIA!007B!
Oral(History(Interview(by(
Norm(Cavanaugh!
August(17,(2007(
Elko,(NV!!
Great!Basin!College!•!Great!Basin!Indian!Archives!!
1500!College!Parkway!!!!!!!!!Elko,!Nevada!89801!
hCp://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/!
775.738.8493!
Produced!in!partnership!with!!
Barrick!Gold!of!North!America!
�GBIA 007B
Interviewee: Raymond Yowell
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: August 17, 2007
Y:
My name is Raymond Yowell. I was born here in Elko on September the 23rd, 1929. I
was born over at the hospital that’s now torn down. Not there no more. My father was
Ray Yowell. And his lineage is into the Bill family. That’s the Bill family that’s around
here. And then, on my mother’s side, her lineage is into the Mary Hall lineage. And that
goes down into, now, into what’s know as the Dann family. But that’s my immediate
lineage. In childhood, I never really knew much about my mother. I guess my mother and
father were together just a short while. And I knew very, very little about her. And I
really didn’t know my father at all, as a child. I guess I was kind of taken care of by other
Indian ladies. Because when I was in my teens, these Indian ladies used to come along
and tell me that they took care of me when I was a baby. Of course, I don’t remember
nothing about that. But I ended up with my maternal grandmother. Sometime, maybe
when I was about two and a half, maybe three years old—I don’t remember. And she had
a half-sister that was down in Smoky Valley. And she made arrangements with her halfsister and her husband—their name was Frank and Annie Charley—to take me down
there. Now, apparently, they didn’t have any kids, and they wanted to raise a child, and
they were willing to take me. So this arrangement had been made, I guess, for several
months. And my grandmother prepared me well for that. She said that, “You’re going to
be living with them, that’s where you’re going to grow up at.” And Granny really
prepared me, because I remember when her and her husband took me down there, and of
course they stayed overnight, and of course, when Annie, when I first met her, she was
just like—it’s hard to explain, the feeling you get from somebody who really likes you.
And that’s what it was, she really liked me. And of course, I liked her instantly. And then
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 2%
the next day, when my grandmother left there, I didn’t cry. I was practically at home. So
my early years were spent in Smoky Valley. And got to know Eva Charley, and Elma
Charley, and Herbert Charley, and Doug McCann. And those were Shoshone kids that
was kind of around down there. And when I got to be of school age, I started school there
in Kingston. They had a school there, like an old country school. Used to be first to the
eighth grade. And I started school there, when I was probably six. Six or seven,
something like that. And it came about—I don’t know what happened, Frank and Annie
talked a lot about peyote. They were afraid of peyote. But I don’t know whether they
were sick, or they weren’t feeling good, but they tried to go in to the doctor, Indian
doctor. And then, we did come up here a couple of times. There was a Indian doctor here
by the name of, I guess his name was Dicey. Dyson. He’s related into the Coochum
family, the Coochum family that’s here now. But he was Indian doctor around here, and
one time we came up here, and he doctored the—and I can’t remember who he doctored.
Most of the times, he just doctored one or the other. I’m not really sure. And then we
went back to Smoky Valley. And then we came up another time, might’ve been a year
later, I can’t remember. And Frank had a sister here that lived on Elko Colony. And her
name was Mamie. She was married into the Dixon family. Mamie Dixon was her name.
And we stayed at her place. And we’d been there, I think, just one night—one or two
nights, I can’t remember. There was a rodeo going on at the time across the river over
here, across the Humboldt River right there. And coming over, I seen the rodeo grounds,
and there was a rodeo there. And we went over there to watch the rodeo, watch the
activities. But I can’t remember whether it was the first night, second night, that we were
there, Frank’s sister, early in the morning, about sunrise, this nice-looking man came in.
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 3%
And he had a puppy. Little puppy. And he talked with Annie, and for some reason I liked
him right away. [Laughter] I don’t know why, I just, just liked him, he was a nice-looking
man. And then, I was still in bed on the floor—I slept on the floor there, I was still under
the covers—he came over, he talked to me. And I can’t remember all he said, but he said,
“Do you want this puppy?” I remember that. I said, “Yeah, I want the puppy,” you know?
So he gave me a puppy. And shortly thereafter, he left. He sat and talked there with my
grandma, and he left. And so I was asking, “Who is that? Who is that man? Who is he?”
And she wouldn’t tell me. And of course, we went back to Smoky Valley, and over the
period of the next few weeks, I kept asking, “Who was that man who gave me this
puppy? Who was it? Who was it?” And finally, she says, “Well, that was your father.”
[Laughter] Boy, he knew he was my father, you know? And that was quite a thing. Now
that I think back, quite a thing. But anyway, like I said, they talked with that Indian
doctor, the nice Indian doctor, and they talked about peyote, they were afraid of the
peyote. But for some reason, they went to Fallon, and there was a doctor over there. And
I went with them, and this man doctored them. And there was a certain point in the
doctoring, and he gave them, as I recall, a white substance to eat. As I remember, kind of
slender, maybe the size of your little finger. And it was white, I remember. And he gave
this to them, and said, “Eat this.” And so they did. And I was kind of flabbergasted,
because I heard them talk, and how they said they didn’t want to eat any peyote. I thought
that was peyote. I don’t know if it was or not. But anyway, they ate it. And so the doctor
told them—I remember just a one-night deal. Anyway, he told them, he said, “Don’t do
anything. When you get back, rest. You know, don’t do anything hard, physical, just take
it easy.” And I don’t know whether he gave them a length of time or not. I don’t
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 4%
remember that. But it was in the fall, I guess, like maybe September, something like that.
Maybe in October. But when we got home, they had to get their winter wood in. And so
we lived out there, we lived where pine trees are. And so after getting the dead pines, and
when Frank would get up in the tree and shake it back and forth to make it fall, and then
he’d chop it up, and then drag it to the house, and then we’d cut it up there, chop it up for
wood for the winter. And of course, I didn’t know, I didn’t think about it, but he had told
them not to work. But they did all this hard work at that time. And then, it happened that
Barbara Ridley’s mother and father came down. They were part of the family, they’re
part of the Mary Hall family. And they came down for a visit. And they’d been there
about a day when Frank Charley got sick, and stayed in the bed, didn’t get out of bed.
And it went on several days, seem like it was about the third day, and then Annie got sick
around that time, too. So they were both sick. And I think maybe about the fourth day,
Barbara’s mother, I took her and her husband outside and I told them, I said, “I think
these people are getting worse. Why don’t you go down the valley here, and let his
relatives know?” Which is Winston Charley. That’s the father and Cleveland, and
Dalbert, and Herbert, and those guys. “Let them know that they’re sick.” And so, he
did. He took off in his car, and went down there, and I think—I think it was the next day
that all of the people arrived there. There were two cars that came up. And I think Frank
Bradley, who was a Shoshone who lived down there, and I think he was raised with
Winston Charley growing up. And I think Winston Charley came up. And as I
understand it, Winston Charley was probably the nephew of Frank Charley. I’m not sure,
but I think he was. And I remember the men dressed Frank, and he was crying the whole
time. And the women dressed Annie, and she was crying too. And they literally drug
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 5%
them to the cars. I remember then he was sliding back with his feet, and they were
dragging him, forced him in the car because he didn’t want to go. Annie same way; the
women were dragging her. They put them in two separate cars. And by that time, my
grandmother, who had taken me down there—my mother’s mother had, they had come
down. And so, when they left, they took them to Schurz, and of course, my mother’s
grandmother took me. And they entered them into the hospital over there. And the last
time I saw them was on the highway, when we stopped to rest to go about nature. That’s
the last time I saw either one. And then, we stayed in Schurz, I think for a day or so, and
then my grandmother had to get back up here, so they headed back up this way. And on
the way up, they left me at Beowawe, with the family of Barbara Ridley, which is related
back to Mary Hall. Because they were relatives and all. So they left me there. And of
course, I didn’t know them. [Laughter] They were strangers. But I was there for several
months. I guess this was maybe like in October, it might’ve been November. I’m sure it
was in the fall. And then on about January, sometime in January, this man and woman
showed up. And Barbara’s mother, when I came to the house, they said, “Come here,
come shake hands with your grandmother.” And again, I’ve never seen either one of them
before. I’d never seen them. And her husband, which was George. George Yowell. And I
didn’t know either one of them. Said, “This is your grandmother. Shake hands with her.”
So I did. And so they picked me up, and then brought me up here. And then, that night,
when [__inaudible at 12:28__], here’s this nice-looking man that I’d seen before, come
in. And he, in the meantime, had married another woman. My stepmother. And that’s
how I ended up back up here. And we were here, probably, until 1937, when South Fork
was purchased as a reservation. And we were one of the first families to move to South
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 6%
Fork. The first year, we wintered in a tent out there. And as I remember, the snow was
like two feet. Real cold, it was like 30 below. In them years, it used to get real cold. And
we used to have to get up early in the morning, and dress as quick as you could, because
it was cold! I sure used to hate to get out of them blankets! [Laughter] And then we went
to school out there, we started school there at South Fork. And there was just a few kids,
a few white kids, and the rest were myself, and Willard Green, Bennie Tom, and Perry
Hill, and Floyd Hill. And we were the ones that were going to school. And the white kids
was Bill Kane, and then Roy Henry—or Bob Henry. There were two white kids. And
then there was Leroy Horne, and his sister Kate Horne. And then Charles Down. But
they were the school. It used to be one-room school here. All the grades were taught in
one room. Had one teacher here [__inaudible at 14:02__]. You know, I mentioned the
Indian doctor earlier, mainly to explain a little bit on how that was done. There was a way
that you approached the doctor, which is not direct. He had a helper—he or she had a
helper. But he would go and make the appointment. Then the helper would speak with
the doctor, and then he would tell her, “Well okay, on this day, this place.” There was
money involved, but I can’t remember maybe, no more than five dollars, probably, or
three dollars. In them days, they had silver dollars. And usually that’s what they’d pay.
Now, I think Dicey, as I remember, doctored two nights. I think he doctored two nights.
And when he would start his doctoring, he would go through a process. He would sing
some songs, in Shoshone, his songs—what was revealed to him. I guess the way the
doctors come about is, in their youth—he or she—in their youth, they start to have
dreams. Maybe like twelve, thirteen, fifteen years old, somewhere in that time. Dreams
start coming to them, telling them to do certain things. And if they did those things, then
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the dreams would get more specific. And at a point, actually, the songs would be revealed
to them, for them to sing. Some of them had the eagle for a doctor, that was kind of the
image or whatever. Some of them had a bear. And there might’ve been other things that
I’m not aware of. But those are the two that I know about. I don’t know what Dicey’s
power was. Nobody ever said anything, you know. And these doctors, they were kind of
mysterious people to me, because they never said anything about their power. They just
performed what they were instructed to do, and they never talked about it. I was present
when Frank and Annie would go to the doctor, and the way they do it is, he would sing
some songs, and sit a lot with his eyes closed, and then he would sing songs again, and
sit a lot with his eyes closed. And then, at a certain point, wherever the ailment was—it
was in the chest area, or wherever the ailment was—he would just put his lips to that
place, where it’s at, and make like a sucking sound. [Makes a sucking sound.] Like that.
And he’d do that several times, maybe in different places, not just one. He’d kind of
move around. And then he’d sit back some more, and sing some more songs. And this
would go on maybe until about midnight. [__inaudible at 16:54__]. That’s how long it
took him. And the second act was almost a repetition of the first act. And I don’t know
whether that was painful, but I remember it would make welts. You would see the welts
where he made the sucking sound. In modern day, “monkey bites” they might call it
sometimes. But that’s what would show up. And sometimes, he would go outside. And I
guess, maybe, you know, throw up what he had taken in. I remember, one doctor out at
Lee, he had to be held outside. He couldn’t walk by himself. We would carry him and
take him in or he wouldn’t come here. And my grandfather, George Yowell, and I think
another person helped him out, outside. He went in the house there, and they helped him
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 8%
outside. I guess he threw up; I didn’t go [__inaudible at 17:53__]. That was his thing, you
kind of stay away from that. It was that sacred thing. And then, when he came back in,
then he came back in on his own power. But that’s how it’s done, basically, is they would
put their lips to where the disease is, and suck it out. It may sound skeptical, it might
sound like superstition, but those things actually worked. I’ve seen that work for the
healers, what they had done. And just not anybody, as I say, could be an Indian doctor. It
had to come through—got the language, with the Shoshone, it comes through the
language. Somewhere in the language is a doctor. And sometimes, it may skip a
generation, it may skip a couple generations. But someplace, it’ll surface again. And if
that individual listens to what his dreams tell him, then they get stronger and more is
revealed to him, like when he’s maybe eighteen—seventeen, eighteen, maybe nineteen,
somewhere in there. Then he’ll be told—in the white man’s terms, he can now start to
practice. [Laughter] You know, practice medicine. But they couldn’t do, like, operations.
They couldn’t do anything that white people do. That was not their power. But they had
the gift to take disease. Disease, I mean, I guess disease is actually a thing. Like, it’s in
you. And they had the power to be able to take that out. And like I said, it’s a sacred
thing. And I only knew two Indian doctors, and neither one of them talked about, you
know, about their power. It’s just something, I guess it’s sacred. Whether they were told
not to talk about it, I don’t know. But they just wouldn’t talk about it. Continuing on from
where I left off, going to school at Lee, in [19]39, then there was a lot more people came
to the reservation. A lot more families. And the Indians actually outnumbered the white
kids then, from then on. A lot of Indian kids that were going to school. And we grew up
there, and we helped the folks with the hay. The first few years, up until 1940, we didn’t
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have any cattle. And the hay was put up loose in them days. You know, buck rakes, and
we’d stack it by hand. We’d pile it in a big stack. And then around 1940, we got a few
cows. My dad and my grandfather got a few cows, and of course, you had to be on
horseback to run cows, and so we started to mess around with horses. Started to ride
horses, and by the time I was thirteen or fourteen, I was breaking colts. And that was a
wonderful thing for me to do: ride, and be out there, wandering free, and riding free. It’s
hard to explain that feeling that you get when you’re on a horse. And you’re out there,
and it’s your thing, your world, and you have a good animal under you, and it’s a
wonderful feeling. So that was the way my early childhood went. Being out with the
Mother Nature, what you might call. And seeing things come and go, winter, spring,
summer, fall, you know. And right about the same time, I’m twelve, thirteen, fourteen, I
started going with the men hunting deer. And deer was our main food. Not too much
money to buy food with, mainly just, like, for sugar, flour, beans, that kind of thing.
Coffee. And the rest you just kind of grew yourself or you hunted. You know, rabbits,
and squirrels, and groundhogs. And the deer was the main thing. And the Shoshone deer
season starts probably around—about now, up in this country, probably about the end of
August. When the bucks are fat. And of course, that’s the law. Bucks only. Didn’t kill a
doe unless you really had to on the way home. Come back empty-handed, then you might
kill a doe. But bucks only. And I stated, about twelve, thirteen, fourteen, then we started
going with my father in the mountains along with my uncles to hunt deer. And they
carried down the first just along there, aiming at things, and helped us where they
could. And then, at probably thirteen or fourteen, they start letting me fire the gun. And I
think I was fourteen years old when I killed my first deer. It was a buck. Of course, that’s
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a great event among Shoshones. In our youth, once you first kill one, it’s quite a thing.
The men that were there, it must have been Harry Tom, John Tom, [__inaudible at
22:49__], both my parents, you know, my grandfather and them. Andrew was there, they
all came up, and they’d kind of pat you down. You feel good, you feel good about it, this
is your first kill, and now you’ve really become a man. It’s quite an event. I remember
that. And then, some of the tradition that the Shoshones have. The rule was that you don’t
eat your first kill; you give it away. Went through that, and—
C:
So, what kind of a gun did you use to kill your first buck?
Y:
The first thing they let me carry was a .22 Long Rider. And it wasn’t a new one. Pretty
old. And it’s hard to believe now that a little bitty bullet in a .22 could kill this buck. I
had shot enough squirrels by that time to know where the bullet went, and how to aim.
But yeah, the little bullet killed this big buck. And it’s amazing now. And the funny part,
too, is—I shot him right here, and it went completely through the body, and ended up in
the thigh. And when my dad was eating a steak off the thigh, he bit into the bullet!
[Laughter] And I used to say, I had that bullet for quite a while. I don’t know, I don’t
think I’ve got it now. But it was quite a thing, you find the bullet on your first kill, you
know? I saved it. But that’s quite interesting that he bit into the bullet that I shot my first
deer through. And of course, later on, when I got up into the teens, and later, fourteen,
fifteen, sixteen, up into there, did a little work with white people and make a little money,
and bought a heavier .30-30 deer gun. And I started hunting, of course, with that, and that
had a little more range than the .22.
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 11%
C:
Raymond, you mentioned—the Shoshone way of hunting sounds like it was seasonal. So,
can you elaborate on the seasonal aspects of hunting various types of animals that the
Shoshone depended on for food?
Y:
Certainly. As I stated, in this country here, probably late August, maybe last week in
August is when the Shoshones start to hunt deer. Because that’s when the bucks were fat.
And it went on into probably, maybe the last week of September. And I don’t think they
went into October. I think it went into the last part of September, and that was it. That
was the deer season, Shoshone deer season. And the way the Shoshones prepared the
meat was they would dry it. They would jerk it, dry it what you’d call jerky. And they
would dry it, and keep this for the winter. And that was the main meat through the winter,
dried deer meat. And they’d prepare it in certain ways. Some of them boil it just as a
strip, just boil that. And there was another way that they’d make kind of like a stew out of
it, with a little bit of flour gravy, and then add some potatoes and a little bit of onions.
That was my favorite plate. And they would cook beans with that, that was a meal.
Beans, in the stew. And that was real, real good stuff. Tasted real good. And with the
squirrels, the squirrels, you know, they would hibernate. Like, they hibernate in the
beginning of June. They only come out for just a couple months and then they go back to
sleep. And then they come back out in late February, back up in this country. In South
Fork, they’d come out around late February. And the days that we were out there, we
used to drown them. Drown them out with water. From the, you could see their holes in
the flat. And you take water in a fifty gallon drum, and take a five-gallon bucket and
drown ‘em out, and catch ‘em as they come out. And when they first come out, they’re
still fat. After they’ve been out maybe a week or so, ten days, they lose that fat and get
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real skinny. So we would eat that first, that would probably be the first fresh meat in the
spring. And then, a little later on, about the end of March, then it came time to hunt the
sage hen. And again, it was the roosters. Roosters only. And at that time, the roosters
were breeding—what we call “dancing”—they had a big paunch in the front, it’s like an
air sac. And that was a delicacy. They would get—that’s why they hunted them. And
they would roast that up real crunchy, and that was a real delicacy. And that, sage hen
season probably only lasted about two weeks. Maybe about 10th of March in this country,
‘til maybe the 20th of March. And then that was it, they’re going. And then, after that,
probably the groundhogs—what they call “rock chuck.” They’re a good-sized little
animal, out in the hills, on the rocks. And that’s the next thing they would hunt. And of
course, they always tried to get the males. But a lot of times, you couldn’t tell the
difference. A lot of times, the male was the one they hunted. And they were huge,
sometimes. And there was a lot of fat in them. And they hunted them right in the end of
June—it varies, different places. And they’d get them there, you know, too. So that was a
big staple. And fish, in South Fork, in those days they still had the cutthroat trout. The
native cutthroat trout. And, oh, they were probably thirty-six inches long, end to end. And
they would make their spring spawning run about this time of the year, up through the
South Fork, and lay their eggs up in there and then come back. And a lot of times, they’d
get in the irrigation ditches out there. You’d hear them flapping around, and you’d go and
get ‘em. And that was another seasonal food during that time. And when they were
plentiful, before they got disrupted by the white man’s management, Indians had their
own stations out there. They used to harpoon them. Had harpoons. And this fish, as it
migrates, of course, it gets tired, and seek an eddie, and rest right in this eddie. And the
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Shoshones knew where these eddies were, and each family had their spot, in such-andsuch a spot. And so, they would harpoon these migrating fish. And again, they’d dry that,
too, and keep it for later use.
C:
So, what did they use for harpoons? Was it made out of willow, or was it metal, or what
was it?
Y:
Well, with the coming of the white man, of course they’ve got the metal. They actually
were made out of, just like a fish hook. But it was pretty big, about that size, you know.
But it had a barb in it; once it went in, wouldn’t come out. And there was an attachment
to a hard willow—what we call hathuunte [30:01], that’s hard willow. And then had that
wrapped on the front of the thing, and that’s what they harpooned with. And people, my
grandmother used to laugh that—Willie Carson had a spot up the road—the main bridge,
there, on I believe the main bridge, he had a spot up the road there. And I don’t know
whether he was in a precarious place or what, but when he harpooned this fish, the fish
pulled him under the river! [Laughter] They used to laugh about that! But yeah, every
family had their little place. And like I said, there was a lot of fish in them days. And we
were—now to South Fork in the [19]30s, they were in decline already. And the county at
that time planted brook trout. They had their own hatchery over there in Lee, and they
planted brook trout. And it was County Game Board. And then, with the deer, they—you
shoot only bucks. Bucks only. And there was a lot of deer. Lot of bucks. And lot of fish,
had a lot of brook trout. And then around 1949, maybe 1950, the Nevada State law:
couldn’t shoot no wildlife without paying the distance. And the first thing they did is do
away with the brook trout and add rainbows. And come to find out, the rainbow and
cutthroat were inbreeding, across. And that their offspring were sterile. So around 1956,
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1957, cutthroat was gone. And I don’t know whether they added fish later on, but that’s
what they did. You hear talk now that they’re going to bring cutthroat back, but if they
keep trying to replant rainbow, they’re not coming back. And again, that same fish was
up in the lakes in the Rubies. And they were huge, something like that. And George
Yowell talked about where, I guess in the [19]20s sometime, maybe in the teens, people
were up there dynamiting those lakes, and killed off all the big fish, and then planted
brook trouts. And I’ve seen pictures of, in town here, Sarah Billings’s documents in the
[19]20s and into the [19]50s where they were catching brook trout. They were big!
Maybe about that big, and about that thick. But shortly thereafter—see, a brook trout
won’t eat himself? It’s not carnivorous, not cannibalistic. And they ate themselves out
food available. And so then, from then on, you’d see fish that had a big head like that, but
a little tapered body. And that’s how it is now up there. Still see them like that. But the
cutthroat, the cutthroat is carnivorous. It’s cannibalistic. They’ll eat each other. It keep
itself down to what food’s available. They’ll eat each other to do that! [Laughter] And so,
that was a natural balance, you see. But that was upset. So all the fish are going out of the
Rubies. All the lakes they have up in there. And it’s unfortunate when I look back and see
that. You see talk they’re managing game and land up there, but I don’t know when to
take the deer now. It’s unusual to see a four-point deer. For me. I hardly ever see a fourpoint deer. Three-point, two-point. And some of them using bait. In my youth, when I
first started hunting, they were like this. Big! Huge deer. Big deer, big bucks, you know.
Of course, to a Shoshone, the bigger deer you kill, the better hunter you are. The big ones
are really smart. They’re really smart to be around a long time. And they never sit in a
place where they can be ambushed. They’re always in a place where they can look all
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 15%
around. [__inaudible at 33:37__]. Bound two jumps, and they’ve gone out of sight. I’ve
seen many big bucks that way, never get a shot at them. They position themselves in a
place that can’t be approached without him seeing you. And he’s got his escape path,
doesn’t matter which way you’re coming. A few bounds, and all you see is the horns and
a little of his back, and he’s gone. That’s the way it used to be. You don’t see that any
more.
C:
Raymond—
Y:
That was real hunting. In them days, that was real hunting.
C:
Raymond, you mentioned that the Shoshone only killed a male species, of, like the deer,
and the groundhog, and the other animals they ate for food. Can you explain why they
only killed the male?
Y:
Yes. It’s pretty simple, if you look at nature. The male, no matter what species, can breed
a lot of females. And so if you kill a male, I mean, you’ll be killing one. But if you kill a
female, then you’re killing the future production. No matter what it is, you’re killing
future production. So that was a law. You only take the males, and take one male, no
matter what the species. Going to breed a whole bunch before winter comes up. And so,
that’s how come we kept the game kind of, you know, in balance. And—the other thing
is, only take what you can use. Never waste any of it. Never leave a dead animal out
there. Always, if you kill him, you’ve got to take it. Don’t waste it. That was drummed
into my head since—Frank and Annie Charley drummed that into my head, you know?
No matter what is—if it’s a plant, take only what you can use. Never waste it. Always
leave some for the future. That’s Shoshone law. I guess, going on from there, as I grew
up, of course, the Korean War was going on. And they had the draft out. I managed to
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stay out of it for a while, and my cousin was gone, he was in the service. And I told the
draft board that my grandfolks needed help. I was the only young guy that could help
them with the ranch and stuff, and so I got out of it for a while. But then, when my cousin
came back, I got orders from the service. So they drafted me. And really, I didn’t think I
would pass the physical. I didn’t think I was physically able to serve in the armed forces.
And I went and took the physical in Salt Lake. I was surprised that I passed it. A
difference, really, between the army. I was really surprised that I passed that physical.
And so I came back, and they were talking to Dad, and I said, “I passed the physical. I
really don’t want to go in the Army. How about I go in the Air Force? I don’t want to be
knocked in a foxhole.” So I had seen enough of World War II to see what that was. So I
got up to there, and went to work over there. So, I went downtown here to the recruiter’s
office, and enlisted, and took another physical. Passed it, you know. When they were
getting ready to swear us in, the guy that came in, the officer came in there told us, “Did
anyone in here take the physical for the army? You better speak up, because if you don’t,
we’re going to come get you.” I said, “Well, let ‘em come get me.” I didn’t say nothing.
And they swore us in. You know, for six months I worried in the Air Force that they were
going to come get me! [Laughter] But after six months went over, I thought, “Oh, they’re
not going to come after me.” So I spent four years in the Air Force. Started out, after
basic training, ended up in what they call “turret system mechanic.” And what that meant
was you was only an aerial gunner. We didn’t know that at the time. You get to be a
turret system mechanic, that’s a step up to gunnery, air gunnery. And I ended up on B-29
as a gunner. And we were ready to ship out in Korea, and the Korean War ended. We
were going over the next month. And they were ready to give us our last leave, and when
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we come back, we were supposed to be the crew they’d end the war with. And then, of
course, everybody was in extended peacetime over there, and we ended up over here, and
I got an airplane, connected them for about a year in Topeka, Kansas. Then they started
the air refueling of the B-47s. B-47 was a big bomber, arm of the United States through
the Cold War, you know. And ended up taking training for air refueling, and that’s what I
did until I got out of the Air Force. Refuel the B-47s as they made their flight from the
United States to wherever they were going, over in Europe someplace. And as I gather,
they refueled them twice. B-47s never landed anywhere until they got to refuel them
twice. And usually, they were coming out of California. And one time, we were up in
Goose Bay, Canada, refueled them there, and then ended up flying over Iceland and then
they were refueling over Iceland. And I don’t know where they went from there. Maybe
into, down in Turkey, or wherever, different places. And that was quite an experience. It
was interesting to do that kind of stuff. And of course, they encourage you to stay in the
extended service. And put kind of the fear into you, “When you get out, and you don’t
find a job, you’re going to starve. Here, you’ve got it easy in certain ways, every year a
vacations, and [__inaudible at 30:10__] better now.” And they give you a talk about two,
three weeks before you’re discharged, try to tell you everything to re-enlist. “I could give
you a bonus,” you know, seven thousand dollar bonus. That’s all they did out there. And
my crew, my aircraft commander, he tried to get me to stay in. He had a special answer,
because he was married to an Indian. He says, “[__inaudible at 39:37__].” So he had kind
of like a special interest in me. And he tried to get me to stay, and I said, “No.” And I
said, “I’ve had enough of this.” Military life didn’t agree with me. And so, when I got
ready to get out, and I said my goodbyes, he said, “You’ll be back. And if you come back
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 18%
in three months, you go back in the same grade. Don’t lose any rank. And get your boss
in. You’ll be back.” I said, “Don’t hold your breath.” [Laughter] And when I left the
service, that was it. I never even dreamed of going back, I had had enough of that. And
then, the gas pipelines were the main thing going on. In Canada, and over in what is now
like Saudia Arabia and those places. They’re building these oil pipelines. They had a
deal, you could go to work for these companies for a thousand dollars a month. And at
that time, in the [19]50s, that was a lot of money! And then, you had to sign up for
eighteen months. Well, you come out of there, eighteen thousand dollars was a lot of
money. “Well, I ought to do that,” you know? So I took my G.I. Bill, and then
[__inaudible at 40:49__]. But I never did make it. Never did make it in there. Come back
here to Lee, ended up back in the cowboying and the ranching business, and kind of spent
most of my life doing that. The welding and the trade come in handy. Repair your own
stuff and things like that. So that can come in very handy. But I often wonder, had I not
come back here, and gone on those jaunts, or signed up for those tours over there, where
I’d have been today. Probably been totally different. Continuing on a little bit on the,
what you would call the ways of the Shoshone, going way back. Actually, they were very
religious people. The white people would call us ‘savages’ and ‘heathens’ and whatever
else, but really, in our own way, in our own laws, we were very religious people. And
nothing was done without prayer beforehand, and then prayer afterwards. No matter what
was going to be done, there was always prayer involved in it. If you were going to go to
war, there was a special ceremony—a sacred ceremony—that was performed. And then,
if you come back from war, everybody would sing to you, and then [__inaudible at
42:13__]. This was where the war dance comes from, which you see now in the
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 19%
powwows. It’s become a show. But that was a sacred ceremony, to us. To us Shoshone.
And I suppose to other Indian nations, too, but for sure, that’s the way it was done here. If
they went hunting, same thing: a prayer was offered, and safety was asked for during the
hunt, that you would be successful in the hunt. And then, when you come back, you give
thanks if you had a good hunt, you know. So, very religious people in our own way, from
what we understand. I guess the reason the white people say that we were not religious, is
because they didn’t see any churches, coming across the land. In the Indian ways, it’s the
whole earth, the whole outdoors, is the church. There is not a part of it that isn’t sacred.
So you’re always in our church. And that’s a concept that I think many white people
don’t grasp, is you have to be in a building to be in a religious ceremony. But to the
Shoshone, that was the church. And I want to make that known, because I think if you
look at the history, that’s not testified. The history that’s taught in schools. That is not
touched on, the sacredness that the Indians held everything in. Everything was sacred.
Nothing was taken without thanksgiving, and like I said, as always, you left enough for
the future. [__inaudible at 43:47__], no matter what you were doing, no matter what you
took. A little bit into the Shoshone bow. Old Billy Mose was a relation of my greatgrandfather, Elwood Mose. And my grandfather told told us when we was little guys.
He used to come down and visit my grandmother quite a bit. And he was probably maybe
104, 105, at that time. He was pretty spry. Had all his faculties. Hearing was good. Only
thing, his eyesight was a little bit dim, you know? But he used tell me—he’d come down
and visit my grandmother—he talked about a different part of his life. And as a kid, I
found that interesting. I would sit and listen. I didn’t take part in the conversation—I’d
just sit and listen. All done in Shoshone, you know. Listen to what he had to say. And it
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was amazing, as I think right now, he never repeated himself. Never told the same part of
his life. Each time he came, he told a different part of his life. It was like he remembered
it. But he always said—and one of the things that I found interesting was the way he
described the Shoshone bow, and the way it was made. And actually, in today’s terms,
it’s a laminated bow. And some way, they would straighten out the horn of a bighorn
sheep. And that’s curled, they would straighten that out. And in some way slice it, and it
was the back for the bow, the wooden bow, made probably from a cedar. Cedar is that
little juniper, you know, it’s the main thing that they—but some way, they would join it
in the middle. That’s a lost art, now. But some way, they would join it in the middle. And
if you think, when you bend something, they don’t give the same, because you’re pulling
it different ways, and so on and so forth. So, some way, they still kept that power, this
recall ability, that retains, even though it wouldn’t bend the same. Somehow, I don’t
know how did that. And he talked about that that’s the way the bow was made, and it was
a very powerful bow. And he said, the fighting bow is short, about that long. He said the
hunting bow was little longer, about like that. And they’re both made the same way. And
of course, arrows would be flint, flint, obsidian, or black flint or red flint, or the white
chert, which is buried in the north of Battle Mountain. That was one of the favorite
points. They call it Tosawihi. They call it “white knife.” But even in trade items with
another tribe, they traded that. Pretty prized piece of [__inaudible at 46:20__]. Now, the
favorite wood that he talked about to make the arrow was the rosebush. The long shoot of
the rosebush. Which if you’ve seen them, they grow very straight. And he said they
would straighten them with heat, as soon as they scrape that bark off, and the spines and
all that, then they would straighten them with heat. And the feather was the feather of a
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 21%
sagehen. And I don’t think they had three feathers; I think they probably had two
feathers. And from hearing him talk about that, I think, from what little I gleaned, I think
it only had two feathers. And now you see the white man add three feathers in some of
them books. But I think the Indian arrows probably just had two. And they tied them on
with sinew, deer sinew, the same as the arrowhead. Tied down with the deer sinew. And
then they string the bow, also deer sinew. And it was a very prized item when they
traded. The Indian nations traded before the coming of white men. They traded among
themselves. And whatever each nation had, they would trade, and put their own value on,
and actually barter portions of weapons for food, just a lot of trade. And it’s said that the
white chert that I mentioned north of Battle Mountain has been found as far east as St.
Louis. So you can see how far that item had been traded. And he had a very interesting
life. He talked about the first white man he saw coming on horseback, up there in Ruby
Valley. And he said he thought the man was on fire, because smoke was coming off of
him. And he went riding up there. He thought the man was on fire. Black beard, you
know? And he come to find later on, the guy was smoking a pipe. But he’d never seen
that before, khe thought the man was on fire. [Laughter] And then, later on, he got to
talking one time about the way that the Shoshones would go and, I guess you would
maybe call it a “war party.” But I don’t think Shoshones looked at it that way. It was a
way of going and proving yourself as a man, as a warrior. That was what they meant to
do with the war party. Proving yourself as a warrior, as a man. And one story that he
told, I remember it: they had gone east someplace. I don’t remember what Indian nation
they were in, but they wiped this village out. Killed everybody there. And of course, after
that, when they had killed everybody, then comes time to divide the spoils. Well, horses
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 22%
was a big thing. But that’s what they usually nabbed, was horses. And they say that these
two warriors, Shoshone warriors—the rule was that if you came up to a horse and hit
him, that was yours. Undisputed, that’s your horse. Nobody would challenge it. And so
these two warriors came to the same horse at the same time, and neither one of them
would relinquish his claim. And they argued for a little bit there, and then they actually
backed off and were going to shoot each other over that horse! And the leader of the
party, the leader of that group, ran up and shot the horse. And neither wins the argument.
[Laughter] I remember him saying that just like he said it yesterday. And then he said
those two guys, they looked at each other kind of ashamed, and probably very emotional.
And that was interesting that that happened, that that warrior, that leader had that kind of
a sense to gain way in the argument without doing anything else. And it did end the
argument. There was no argument. [Laughter] He talked about hunting buffalo. And I
thought that was interesting, from here. When I guess into probably eastern Wyoming,
and western Nebraska, he talked about where there’s no mountains. The amazing part to
me was that the Wind River Shoshone—of course, at that time, they were not in Wind
River, they were all over. Not been put on the reservation yet. And he called them people
by name! I was amazed that from here, that he knew those people over there by name!
That was an amazing thing that I remember. And then he described hunting the buffalo
itself. And he said that this one gentleman was calling the names that the—and he said,
“Your horse one day will be good here in this hunt.” He says, “I’ll give you one of mine.”
And he told him, he said, “Now, when we start this hunt here”—I guess they would run
the buffalo, they would start the buffalo maybe to naturally stampeding. When they saw
the horsemen there, the buffalo would run so that you could come alongside of it, and
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 23%
when you shoot the arrow, you shoot the arrow into up here, because there’s no bones in
the pouch, and it ended up in the chest. “And when that happens, when you do that,” he
said, “when you do that, this horse will leave that buffalo and go to the next one. So you
don’t have to worry about it. And you just take care of your arrows and your shooting,
and don’t worry about the horse.” And so he said they started things, got going up, and he
was in the last, because everybody rode off but him. And he said that he come around this
buck, well, he shot him with his arrow, and he says, “Sure enough, as soon as that horse
heard the twang of that bow, ran right alongside the next one, just right here. Right here
quick. Just had to lean over, and stick that arrow into his chest cavity. And of course,
buffalo would run away, bleed to death, and soon as they got done with all of them,
they’re on the road. And then, all of the people from the village would all come out and
help butcher it up. And of course, they dried it, and kept the hide for tanning and for
blankets and that. That was a favorite winter item, was that buffalo robe. Called buffalo
robe in place. I’m told now that the buffalo has 40,000 hairs per square inch. And that’s
how thick that hair is. You tan that, I guess it’s one of the warmest things there is. And he
talked about that. From Ruby Valley to that far away. It amazed me, the distances that
they could cover, just on horseback and that. It was very interesting, I would say those
are the two things that stand out. One other thing I’d like to mention is, in those days, the
Shoshones had runners. That’s how they kept village to village informed, throughout the
whole nation. They had runners. And from my best estimation today, I would guess they
would run 100 miles a day. From the distance they covered in one day. And the reason I
come up with that figure is, my grandmother’s brother, my maternal grandmother’s
brother, was one of those kind of people. And I don’t know whether it was a gift, like the
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 24%
Indian doctor, or whether they were trained from childhood to be able to do that, I don’t
know. But she talked one time—and she wasn’t talking to me, she was talking to
someone else, and I was sitting there listening—where they were camped around where
Brigham City is now. They had been away hunting, on the way back on a wagon. And
they might’ve had a saddle horse or two. The family was camped there, and the middle
brother, I guess, got mad at her. And he took off for Ruby Valley on foot. Wanted to go
home, and [__inaudible at 53:50__], and he left. And so they came back through, back
through, come to Salt Lake, and probably about six, seven days later, you know, as a
team. And he was there. He was there. So they asked the people, they says, “How long
have you been here?” “Oh, we’ve been here about four days.” So, during that time, I
figure he did about a hundred miles a day. It took him about a day and a half. And that
was it. And another story is, that he could go from Ruby Valley to what they call
Tonammutsa, which is Battle Mountain, in one day. And you have to think, the way he
went, all mountain ranges. All mountain ranges. And he’d do that in one day. So, those
people were very gifted. Very gifted people. Like I said, I don’t know how—again, this
might have been a power that given to them, from the Ape, from God; or whether they
were trained from childhood. I don’t know. But Shoshones had those sort of people. And
like I said, they probably run a hundred miles a day, or pretty close to that, maybe a few
miles one way or the other. And again, that’s something that we don’t have today,
because—I guess because of the influence of the white culture. We’ve got automobiles
now. Maybe that, there’s no more need for that. But that’s some of the old things that I
remember. I listened to the old folks talk. And I found that very interesting, to listen to
the old guys talk. In my childhood, what I got to remember, maybe 1934, 1935, in
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 25%
through there, what I can remember real good, the guys are alive at that time were
probably born about 1850, 1860. They were about in their seventies and eighties at that
time. And that kind of pre-white settlement in this part of the country, pre-white
settlement. And I don’t remember all the things I used to hear. Only some of the main
things I used to hear about that. And unfortunately, we didn’t have no modern devices
like today to be able to record that, because that would have been priceless to be able to
record that part of our culture and our history, the sacred part being talked about. It’s
unfortunate.
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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
Raymond Yowell
Location
The location of the interview
South Fork Reservation, NV [Elko, NV - TV Station]
Original Format
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DVD and VOB Format
Duration
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00:56:46
Transcription
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http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/452
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Raymond Yowell - Oral History (08/17/2007)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral History Interview with Raymond Yowell, Western Shoshone from South Fork Reservation, NV, on 08/17/2007
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Raymond Yowell is a Shoshone who was born in Elko, Nevada on September 23, 1929. He spoke of his birth and the eventual adoption by his relative Frank and Annie Charley from Smoky Valley. Raymond also spoke of traditional medicines, traditional practices and the Indian doctors who conducted the events and used these items. He also speaks of his travels as a child moving back into the Lee, NV area, and going to school there. He also tells us of the traditional hunting practices of the Shoshone as well as the types of animals that were hunted during certain seasons of the year. Raymond also entered the Air Force during the Korean War which he comments upon. Lastly, he tells us some traditional Shoshone history as told to him by one of the Shoshone Elders.</p>
Video pending<br /> <a title="Raymond Yowell Oral History Transcript" href="/omeka/files/original/2e116bef5d665b44867b522f1e77cd3e.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read Raymond Yowell Oral History Transcript [pdf file]</a>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archives
Source
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 007B
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
08/17/2007 [17 August 2007]; 2007 August 17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America
Rights
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Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017
Consent form on file (administrator access only): http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/items/show/317
Language
A language of the resource
English
Community
Crossroads
GBIA
heritage
hunting
Korean War
Shoshone
South Fork Reservation
Story
traditional food
veteran