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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
Elko Basque Festival Programs
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of the programs for the annual Elko Basque Festival, held annually on the July 4th weekend. The National Elko Basque festival began with a celebration that brought sheepherders and cattle ranchers into town for a day of celebration. The State of Nevada celebrated its centennial in 1964, and the Elko Basque Club decided to organize another grand scale Basque festival to commemorate the event. They invited all of the existing Basque clubs to participate and to send musicians, dancers, and athletes to Elko for the event. Because of the success of the activities, and the geographical centrality of Elko to other Basque communities, Elko assumed the position of the site of the annual National Basque Festival.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Elko Euzkaldunak Club
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Cassandra Stahlke [Elko Euzkaldunak Club]; Scott A. Gavorsky [VHC]
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Deposit Agreement on file [admin access only]
Relation
A related resource
<p>Collection: <a title="Memoria Bizia Oral History Collection" href="/omeka/collections/show/22" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Memoria Bizia: The Basque Diaspora Living Heritage Project</a></p>
<p>Web Collection: <a title="Intertwined: Basques and Americans Crossing Paths" href="/basques/neh_basques_generation.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Intertwined: Basques and Americans Crossing Paths</a></p>
<p>Exhibit: <a title="_blank" href="/omeka/exhibits/show/elkokoak">Elkokoak: The Basques of Elko</a></p>
Format
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.pdf
Language
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English; Basque
Coverage
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1964-present [collection incomplete]
Document
Documents such as transcripts, pdf files, legal documents, letters, etc.
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
2007 Elko National Basque Festival Program
Description
An account of the resource
The official program from the 2007 Elko National Basque Festival, held 29 June through 1 July 2007. This was the 44th year of the Festival. The Festival Theme was "Bakeam Eta Jaietan"--"Celebrating Peace and Freedom," and events recognized the sacrifice of American troops. The program featured the cover drawing "Tree of Guernica" by Anna Urrizaga.
Creator
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Elko Euzkaldunak Club
Source
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Scanned copy of original program
Publisher
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Elko Euzkaldunak Club
Date
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29 June 2007 - 1 July 2007
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Scott A. Gavorsky [VHC]
Rights
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VHC Deposit Agreement on file
Format
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pdf/a2-b; 20 pages
Language
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English; some Basque
Basques
Community
Crossroads
EEC
Elko National Basque Festival
Play
veteran
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https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/78f41864118130645a9e999fdce39237.pdf
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PDF Text
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Anthony
Tom
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
039
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
June
5,
2014
Lamoille
Canyon,
NV
Great
Basin
College
•
Great
Basin
Indian
Archives
1500
College
Parkway
Elko,
Nevada
89801
hCp://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/
775.738.8493
Produced
in
partnership
with
Barrick
Gold
of
North
America
�GBIA 039
Interviewee: Anthony Tom
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: June 5, 2014
T:
Morning. My name’s Anthony Tom. I come from the Te-Moak Western Shoshone band.
I live out in South Fork. Back then it was known as “Lee,” the Lee community. But yeah,
I was raised out there since I was a little kid. My dad and mom, they got assignment out
there in, what—1948, I believe. And that’s the year I was born. So we had that
assignment out there all these years, and I lived there. I don’t remember for sure, I think
they lived in Elko way back then, and then they moved out here. We weren’t, they
weren’t the original South Fork assignees, I don’t know what they call them. Anyway,
they didn’t have assignment out there. They got, it was little later after that. When they
got their assignment, and we’ve been there ever since. We’re still there today. My mom
and dad, they’re both gone now, but, yeah. Been out there as a little kid. And back in
those days, South Fork was more like a country community, you know? Like, it was—I
remember going from, there was no road by our house. There was no road. We had to get
our wagon and horses and go up to my grandma’s house to get our car, then we’d come
in to Elko. I remember that, riding on back of the wagon. Makes it sound like a long time
ago. [Laughter] But, yeah. And to go visit people around there, yeah, we’d be traveling
on wagons to go visit to houses and whatnot, because there was that much road out there
back then. And actually, back in those days, South Fork was a really nice, peaceful
community. The people were, you know, they worked together back in those days.
Because there was no—you had to. Because there wasn’t the money, the job like it is
now. Even the government money wasn’t there, the 638 contracts or whatnot. It wasn’t
there. And so they kind of depended on each other to live out there, putting up our hay. I
remember we used to help each other put up our hay in summertime. Cattle. Everything
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was all done together. I remember going out in the mountains to gather the cattle in the
falltime. Everybody was together. Everybody went out and got their cattle. And the
wives, the ladies, they’d all come out with food, to meet us out there and we’d have a big
old lunch. You know, coming back, bringing our cattle back. I remember those days.
Those were pretty cool days. Even what they call Association Field. That’s where all the
people got together, and they had a big feed, down right near where the administration
building is now. They had a big feed there, and we’d all get together and put up the hay.
And it would take about day or so to put the hay up. But I remember those days. We
don’t do that no more. That’s all kind of gone. Now, I think the equipment, I think, is
what really ruined it for us—that kind of lifestyle, anyway. Because everybody put up
their hay with horses. Horses and the buckrakes, and wagons and buckrake—or, raking
the fields with a team of horses. There was tractors out there that were just for mowing.
That’s all they used them for, was mowing. But that’s how they put up their hay. And it
was all summertime. Summertime job. It was like, lasted the whole summer, putting up
the hay. Nowadays, you know, they put it up within a week or so because of all the
equipment they have there now. It’s not like a whole summer like it used to be. And—
C:
So what type of hay did they produce out there?
T:
Just wild hay. Just wild hay. In those days, too, the people had gardens that they relied on
for their food and whatnot. And I remember Grandpa John, he used to have a—man, his
garden was fantastic. It was all kind of vegetables, and we sit down for lunch after being
out there all morning, putting up hay, and the home table would be filled with just lettuce
and onions, all kind of stuff, you know? And it was good. It was just like—it’s hard to
explain, because it was such a good time, actually. You know, just—and the hunting. I
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remember mom used to tell me about the old days, when me and my grandma, we used to
go out and go hunt. We’d be out there all day, and they never worried about us. Because
we’d be out there, and we’d hunt and shoot squirrels, rabbits, or whatever’s out there.
Fish. And cook it out there, just me and her. And she’d be cooking, making bread right
out there on the land. Like the old days, I guess, you know? [Laughter] But yeah, I
remember that. And we used to even travel all the way down to Battle Mountain, or up
towards on the other side of Wells, I don’t remember those places up there. But I
remember going up there. Yeah, we’d spend days up there. And mom—not days, but a
whole day out there, just messing around, hunting, doing different things. And those were
good days. And back in those days, we never really had cars, either, to go around. We
were always playing with, riding horses, you know, going, just riding all over, raising
heck with—on the community. [Laughter] First, I was talking about the good days in
South Fork. I wish it was always that way, but you know, as you grow up, things change.
But my dad had passed away, probably when I was—right in the summer when I was
seventh and eighth grade, right in between there. He passed away. And I think back about
it now, he was always the one that was kind of kept me in line, because I was afraid of
him. Even though he never hit me or nothing, it just, the way he’d talk to me. It always
kept me in line, I was afraid to do anything. I remember one time, he told me, you know,
like, “If you want to drink, bring it home.” He said, “I’ll drink with you.” See, my dad, he
used to drink until he got married, so I never knew him as a person that drank or nothing
like that. But he said, “I’ll sit down and drink with you if you want to drink. You know,
find out how it is.” But I was so afraid, I never did that. I was always afraid. But after he
passed away, it kind of opened doors for me to do all these bad things, and that, and I was
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kind of going down the wrong road for a while. And I went to eighth grade here in Elko.
And I was kind of, like I said, I was kind of like going down the wrong roads, drinking,
doing all these bad stuff that we all do. Well, not all, but a lot of the Indian kids, you
know, I was just following along with them. Going along, doing things that they were
doing. So after I finished eighth grade, we start talking about sending me away to school.
And my mom, she says, she told me one day, she says, “I don’t want you to go nearby,
because that’s where all your friends are. You might end up doing the same thing.” And
so I ended up going down to Phoenix Indian School. And I think about it now, that was
probably the best move in my whole life, is to get, just get away from here. And not
being around my friends. But that was kind of bad, because it’s like, they’re your friends,
you grew up with them, you know? But I had that opportunity of being away from them,
and going to a school that was just far away, and you didn’t know anybody. It was a good
thing for me. I think about it, my freshman year was a tough year, because, like, down
there, I was the only Shoshone down there. There was Indians from all over the country
down there. And so, you almost had to—not almost, you had to—prove yourself. You
know, I was always in fights, and doing all kind of stuff. And eventually, it got to where I
got to know people, and then the school start—it was a good experience for me. Like,
there was, I did things down there in Phoenix that I know I would have never done here. I
was involved in the sports, I sang at a Nativity scene, you know, for Christmas? I was
involved in speech contests, you know, down there, won awards in the city of Phoenix
itself, in the Indian school. That kind of stuff I would have never done here in Elko. It
was like—it was like opening the doors for me. Getting involved, doing different things.
But that’s what the Indian school did for me. And you know, there’s a lot of people that
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talk about how bad the Indian school was, and I think back about it, and I say that wasn’t
me, you know? Indian school, for me, was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.
Because like I said, I did things down there that I would have never done up here. Or
probably anywhere else. And then the friends you made down there, they’re like forever.
I still keep in contact with lot of my friends that I have down there. Or I’d meet them on
the road somewhere at a meeting or something. And we always talked about the good old
PI days, you know, Phoenix Indian days. And it’s like a fraternity, you know, like, it was
pretty cool. Yeah. And the teachers and everybody was just really nice. It was a boarding
school, I don’t know if you guys know what an Indian school’s like, but it was a boarding
school, and you just learn how to survive. You know, you ironed your own clothes, you
did your laundry and whatnot. So, that was pretty cool. And when I went to the service,
all these people that was in the service, they’re all homesick, and I was already gone from
home. So that was like great training for me, when I went into the service. So that was
pretty cool. [Laughter] And, yeah, I graduated, and that was probably one of my saddest
days of my life, when I graduated. Because I knew I probably would never see them
again, the students down there. I remember sitting there, waiting for all these people
loading up on the buses, they were crying and whatnot. So everybody had a good, you
know, same kind of reaction; you know, we probably never see each other again. But we
did. Eventually, I went back down to Phoenix, and they were still hanging around down
there. [Laughter] And it was pretty cool. It was like, I don’t know. It’s… And they come
back up home, it was—home was never the same. Once you leave home, it’s never the
same. It’s always, people grow up, it’s just never the same. And I remember coming
home back in the summer, like I was talking about earlier, about haying. I was out haying
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one summer, one day, and of course I was in town partying that night before. And I’m
talking about this because it was kind of like something that, one of those events that’s in
your life that you realize something’s changing, you know? And anyway, I was home,
and we were bucking bales, and it was right before lunchtime. And I was sitting there
sweating. All that dust, the hay dust, was all over me. And I’m sitting there thinking,
“I’m not going to do this all my life. I’ve got to start doing something else. This life is not
for me.” Even though, you know, yeah, when I was younger, riding horses and all that,
but things change. As you get older, you get more responsibility. Like, in the young days,
you didn’t have no care in the world, because your parents are always taking care of you,
you didn’t have to worry about where you’re going to get your money to keep going, to
live and whatnot. So, those kind of things kind of start, I guess you kind of start growing
up. Start thinking about, “I’d better do something.” Because those days, I didn’t even
think about what I was going to do. Or I hadn’t even thought about it. But, yeah. And it
was—after my dad had passed away, he was the one that, like I was saying, he’s the one
that taught me drawing, and got me interested in drawing. But once he left, all that was
gone. I never picked up a pencil or anything after he passed away. I was just, I guess just
wandering. Didn’t know what I was going to do with myself, or anything. And even in
high school, and I never really, you know, my friends that I have now, that I talk to, they
didn’t never realize that I even drew. Or that I was an artist. Because I never did nothing
like that. I was just doing different things. But once I graduated, I think it took a year
after I graduated, I ended up in the service. I was in the Air Force for four years. And
when I was about ready to get out, I started wandering—by that time, I was married. And
then I start really thinking about, what am I going to do? Because, like, in the Air Force,
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again, they provide everything for you. Your food, your lodging, everything. You don’t
have to worry about nothing, you’re just in the service, doing what you have to do. And
when I was going to get out, I start thinking, “What the heck? I’ve got wife, and I’ve got
couple kids already.” And I didn’t know what I was going to do. And I was in bed, I was
sleeping one day, or just laying there thinking about it, and I fell asleep. And I had this
dream. I had this dream, it was an eagle flying over the mountains. And it just kept
coming back to me, kept coming back to me. And I started thinking about, “You know,
maybe I should just draw this eagle.” And so I did. And I haven’t done anything like that
for years, by that time. And I went down to the store and bought me a big old paper, and
pencil and pen. And I started drawing this eagle. And I don’t remember how long it took
me, but by the time I got out of the service, I had it done. I was done. And I started
thinking about, you know, maybe I should start doing something along those lines.
Getting back into my art. And maybe art school. That’s what I was thinking. And so
when I got out of the service—I was living in the Bay Area then—I went to a junior
college for a couple years. And I was about ready to get out of there, and these
representatives from the art school, California College of Arts and Crafts, they came up.
And they were, I guess they were recruiting. And the art teacher, he told them about me,
so I was up there, and they were looking. And I showed them the eagle. And they thought
that was pretty cool. And they said, “You know, one thing unique about this eagle is,
you’re not just drawing the eagle, you’re looking right at him. So you’re up in the air.”
Because the trees and everything was like you were up in the air, looking down on the
mountains, with the eagle flying up. You know, like. And I never thought of it that way. I
was just drawing the dream. And so, say, “Yeah, you know what? Fill out your
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application, we’ll ship you down there to the drawing school.” And that’s how I ended up
over there. And that was probably a pretty good move, for me anyway, to do that. And I
was there for couple years. And I remember walking in there the first week, thinking I
was the best artist in the world, you know? [Laughter] And I walked in there, almost left.
Because, oh, the things they were talking about, and the students there that, you know,
their drawings was just… I don’t know, for me, walking in thinking I was the best, and
walking into the art school and finding out I had a lot to learn. And so I really kind of
buckled down and start learning about art. So that was pretty—and there were some
Indian students there. You know, so that was pretty cool. And I graduated from there, and
went to school, or went to work, over in the Bay Area. This Indian program over there is
called the OSIDA program. It was, they were looking for someone that has, well, they
were looking for Indian, anyway. They were looking for Indian. And what that job was to
do is go out and find jobs for Indian people. And they hired me, even though I never had
the experience, or even the education to do that. But I learned as I went along, and ended
up working there for years. And that was pretty cool. And I got to learn, there was
actually a lot of Indian people there in the Bay Area. And just the hardships that they
were going through, just to survive there. Because at that time, it was the Indian
Relocation Program, where the Indians, they were pulling Indians off the reservation and
sending them to the cities to get a trade, and get them away from the reservation. And
they ended up, a lot of people just ended up gathering at Indian bars, you know, and
that’s where they kind of hung out together, and that’s just the way life was, I guess, back
then. Just hanging around the Indian bars and partying it up. And gradually, I got
involved in that, too! [Laughter] I was there, you know—because, by that time, my
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marriage life was coming to an end. you know, we were breaking up, so… So that was
kind of a, I guess a bad point. But yeah, that was pretty—but it was all, everything I did
down there was always involved with Indian people. And it is always a learning
experience for me. Because when I moved back up here to Elko, I had that urban Indian
life background behind me. And when I was working up here, it really helped me out,
because it was kind of, you know, just kind of learn how to live off the reservation. And
that’s a whole different ballgame than it is here on the reservation. You know, that
experience I had in California was—working with Indian people—that was good
experience for me. But I’ve always, always, all my jobs always been working with Indian
people. And it wasn’t until I came back here, I started working with our own Indian
people, I guess. You know, like, the people around here. And what a difference it was
from the urban setting to reservation life. I got a job as a administrator out in South Fork,
and I think, you know, to me now, I look back at it: those were good times. I really
enjoyed working for the Tribe, and getting the projects—we had irrigation projects going,
and agriculture, and the whole bit. And it was cool. Because I knew that these projects
were for our people. You know, our own people. And hopefully, it was the betterment of
the South Fork reservation. You know, because I think back now, when I first looked at
all the irrigation ditches and whatnot, and the structures, there are some structures that
was there when I went away to school. You know, they’re old, old structures. And so we
had all them changed. And just different things. Seeding the agricultural land, where they
put the cattle out, just doing all these kind of things. And to me, it was a challenge.
Because I had no idea of what the heck, what agriculture—well, I had an idea what
agriculture was, but as far as putting it into planning, and putting into a project, and
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actually getting done? Never done that before. And it was cool. It was, like I said, it was
for our people. And I enjoyed the heck out of that. That was pretty cool. In those days,
too, I was drinking, so it was kind of—you know, I’ve been drinking since I was, what?
Before I went to high school, I started drinking. And so I guess I just kind of went along
with everybody, you know. And we go to meetings, and we’re partying, and all these
Indian things that they do, back then. [Laughter] You don’t see that as much anymore.
But, back then it was. I laugh about it now, but… All that time I wasted. All the moneys
that I, all the checks that I wrote in the bar, you couldn’t even read the dang checks,
because it was, you know, I just—they cashed it for me so I had money to drink with, you
know that? That was life then. I enjoyed my job, but partying and drinking was a lot, part
of the whole thing, too. And then, eventually I got into politics. I was a tribal chairman.
Te-Moak Tribal Chairman. And to me, even though that was a position of high standing,
you know, I didn’t really enjoy it as much. Because I felt like I wasn’t really doing
anything, because it was all the bickering that we were doing in back in those—you
know, they still do it today. But you just can’t really do anything, because everybody’s
fighting with each other. It’s not like the old days in South Fork, where, yeah, there was
fighting back then, but not like it is now. You just can’t seem to go anywhere, because
everybody’s too busy fighting with themselves. Or with each other. And so I served one,
what, four years? I think it was a four-year term, as Te-Moak chairman. I went right back
into tribal administration and did that. And I enjoyed that. More than being chairman.
And, but I know one thing, you got to travel, and when you’re traveling, you went down
to—I went down to Arizona, and the meetings and whatnot. And I ran into a lot of my
friends, from high school. They were there. And it was kind of neat, because you like to,
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you got down there, got to share your experiences with each other, and where you’re at
today and whatnot, and how it was in high school, and just where you’re sitting at. And
everybody’s the same. The Indian people down there, they’re just like us; they’re all
fighting amongst each other and whatnot, and they’re trying to get projects going and
whatnot. So that was pretty cool.
C:
—of the leaders that you ran into in Phoenix. Were they from the other reservations in
Arizona?
T:
Yeah. Yeah, they were, yeah, their leaders also, their work administration and whatnot.
Because it seemed like the Indian school, the students that went there, they went on to
school. I guess it was kind of a good school, because a lot of the kids, they went on to
college. Well, they kind of prepared them for college, you know, college education and
whatnot. I know when the Indian school first started, it was all vocational. They taught
them a trade. But the Indian school, Phoenix Indian School itself, they prepared you for
college. Your courses and whatnot all prepared you for college. And it was kind of a, I
don’t want to say simple for me to get into college, but it helped out a lot. You know,
my—I had, of course, my confidence was real low, being Indian and whatnot, and getting
into the whiteman world and going to college, it was hard to adjust to that. But once it got
going, it wasn’t that bad.
When I finished up my term as a tribal chairman, I was really dissatisfied with what I did
or what I didn’t do. Because of all the bickering and fighting that we were having, I just
couldn’t seem to get anywhere. So I went back into administration again. And like I was
saying before, I really enjoyed that. Because you’re actually doing projects for the tribe,
or for South Fork. But that eventually came to an end. And… About that time, too, I had
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a phone call from a friend of mine, down Arizona. And he was one of my partying
partners. You know, we always partied all the time, had a good old time down in
Phoenix, all over Arizona, whatever. We had a good time. And he calls me up one day—
or, he wrote to me. And he told me, he says, “You know, I got some bad news for you.”
He says, “Our partner, he was killed in a car accident.” He was one of our drinking
partners. And he said he was drinking one day, and he was going home, and he got in a
wreck, and he was gone. But—and he says, “And I haven’t drank for,” I think, three
months at that time. I think he said he hadn’t drank for three months. And I called him
up, and I told him, “Mike, you know what?” I said, “I been thinking about doing that, too.
Quit drinking.” But I didn’t know how to do it. And so we just start talking. And
eventually, I quit drinking, too. Because I looked at Mike, like saying, if he can do it, I
dang sure can. You know, like, because that’s all we ever did was we just partied all the
time. We’re partying and have a good old time. And I figure, if he can do it, I can do it.
So that kind of got me going there, and I just kind of quit cold turkey. Actually, sitting in
jail, I quit. Or I thought about it, and that was it. So after I quit drinking, I said, “Now
what?” And I start thinking, you know what? I went to school and all this, and think it’s
time for me to start getting back into my artwork again. So that’s what I was doing. I was
in town one day, and I saw the gallery there. So I walked in. Start talking to him, told him
my past, you know, went to school, blah blah blah, went to—and I didn’t know at that
time that the school I went to was probably one of the top schools in America. One of the
top art schools in America. And so they were all impressed, you know. And to me, it was
just an art school. [Laughter] So, I showed them my artwork, and they were all pretty
impressed by it, and so I got back into my artwork. And at that time, that’s what really
�GBIA
039;
Tom;
p.
13
helped me along with, you know, quit drinking. Because I had something to do. I was
able to concentrate on my art, and not thinking about drinking all the time. Then I went to
the, what is that, CBC? The junior college here?
C:
Great Basin College.
T:
Yeah, I took a drawing class there. It was a beginning drawing class, of all things. Well
you know, I figured I haven’t drew for years, so I’m going to start up again. And I took a
class over there with Sarah Sweetwater. And that got me going again into artwork, and I
got to know Sarah pretty good. We got to be good friends. And, so that got me back into
my artwork. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since, is doing artwork. And then I was
working little bit in administration off and on, you know, so I was doing a combination of
things, there. But I was getting back, getting back and getting pretty serious with my
artwork. And my artwork, I was introduced to colored pencil, in art school. And I always
painted. I was a painter. And I was dissatisfied with my art, with my painting, because I
could never get the detail that I wanted, and the color I wanted. And so when they
introduced me to colored pencil, that was it, you know. I could do all the detail, and the
color at the same time. And I never got away from that. I was always just doing, working
with colored pencil.
You know, I’m, after I quit drinking, I started thinking more seriously about my art, and
my future in art. But before that, when I was going to college, my sister in law, she was a
beader. She always beaded. And she told me one day, she said, “Try this. Try beading.”
And like when I was going to school, there was always that pressure on you to get your
assignments done, and all this, you know. And so I start picking up beading, and I found
that to be really relaxing. It was like, I was like in my own little world. It was like,
�
GBIA
039;
Tom;
p.
14
beading was, I really enjoyed that. And I still do that, still enjoy it today. To bead. Just
kind of takes me to another dimension, I guess. You just forget about time and all that.
Anyway, I started beading, and got to be pretty well known as a beader, actually. I’ve
sold things to people from New York, Oklahoma, all over United States. And all this
time, you know, my beading and my art, I start traveling to different powwows and
setting up. Got to meet lot of people. See how they’re running their arts and crafts, and
got to know a lot of people, and just the ideas and whatnot. And I always talked about a
store. Doing a, opening up a store. And that’s what I wanted to do, because I enjoyed that
so much. It was something that I really liked. And this opportunity came up. A friend of
mine, she—well, actually, the person I talked to when I first quit drinking and went to the
gallery. She was ready to retire, she wanted to get out, because she was getting sick and
she just didn’t want to do that no more. And so she calls me up one day, and she says,
“Are you interested in taking over the store?” And how much it would cost, and whatnot.
And that kind of floored me. I wasn’t really ready for that. Because it was pretty
expensive. But, and then she was so sick, she passed away. And so the, what do you call
that, the mall manager, she called me up and asked me if I wanted to—because I guess
my name was in the store. So she called me up. And made me an offer that, I just
couldn’t refuse, because the price had gone down. Because all she was looking for was
somebody to take over the store. So she didn’t have to move all that stuff out of there.
And that’s how I ended up getting the store. It was pretty cool. And that was, for me, that
was life. Because I didn’t have to worry about, you know, my boss looking over me. I’m
my own boss. If I mess up, that’s my fault. But if everything works good, hey, that’s
because of me. And that’s a completely different kind of feel. And I enjoyed the heck out
�
GBIA
039;
Tom;
p.
15
of that. And then with my past experience hanging around with the craft people, I got to
know lot of craft people, and so I kept in contact with them. And then my art, the Indian
artists that was going to school, I contacted them, they bring their pictures up to the
gallery. It was really a good time. Good time for me. Everything seemed to just kind of
work together. But unfortunately, then I got sick. And I had to closeit, close that place
down because I couldn’t handle the time, or couldn’t keep it in operation. Because what I
was doing was, I was framing. Framing pictures and whatnot. And I never at the time
trained anybody. And so when I got sick, I couldn’t keep it open, and so of course you
start losing business because you’re not there. And there was nobody there to kind of take
over for me or not. So I just kind of lost the whole thing. You know. And that was kind of
bad, but… Hey, you know, you got to keep going. You got to keep going. And that’s, I
guess that’s where I’m at today, is, I sit back and think of all the things that I couldawoulda-shoulda done, and things that I did do, and that’s what I’m trying to talk about.
All the bad things that had happened to me, or the things that I did, that, man… the things
that I lost. Actually, you know, lost, talking about the checks that I used to write, you
couldn’t even read them. There was a lot of money gone there, that was just thrown
away. All because I was drinking. And it’s sad, really. But you know, if you get a chance,
just to keep going, keep going. Because there’s always, something will come up. And it
always seemed that, you know, no matter how bad your road is, something’s always there
to kind of pull you out of that. Somewhere. That’s all I was trying to talk about when I
got the store, everything kind of just seemed to fall in place. And it was a good time for
me. Because like I said, I really enjoyed the job, because I didn’t have to worry about
�GBIA
039;
Tom;
p.
16
anybody watching over me or whatnot, you know? [Laughter] Yeah. And of course, I
was still doing my artwork.
Okay, I brought in a few pictures that, these were mostly done, probably after I’d quit
drinking. And like I was telling you, most of all of them were done with colored pencil.
Some of them were done with people around here. Some just done from books or
whatever, you know. I used to always like to add color to it. This one here was a white
man. He was a contractor. And he came up to me one day, and asked if I wanted to do a,
he wanted a portrait done for his kids. And I told him, I said—kind of joking with him—I
told him, “I never done a white man before. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out!”
[Laughter] Which was true, you know. I’ve always done just Indian people. And it’s, the
problems and complications of it, way different when doing a white person to an Indian
person. But it came out all right. And I think I named it, “For My Kids,” I think was the
name of that project. Yeah, and then these up here were pencil. This one here was the
first one I did when I got, when I started sobering up. Right here. And the owner of that
picture, I think, is one of the Gallaghers here in Elko. And then of course, the feather
drawing, I think that’s what most people know me by. The feather drawing, I think—let
me tell you a little story about that one. That one, although it’s just real simple feathers
coming down, that was done, or, the idea of it—when I was a little kid, my dad, we were
down near Smoky Valley visiting these old people down there. And I remember the old
man was telling my dad about his headaches. He had a lot of headaches. And he said he
came out the door one day, and there was a eagle flying above him. He prayed to the
eagle, and the eagle dropped a feather down to him. And that’s where that idea came by.
So I’ve always kept that in my mind, and just kind of put it into artwork. But that’s about
�GBIA
039;
Tom;
p.
17
all I got here. I don’t really have that much stuff, but the time we have to sit here and talk,
it’s actually pretty short. You know, I didn’t—and I kind of sugarcoated a lot of stuff,
because, you know, the things that I went through, in drinking and whatnot, were tough
times. Were tough times. And when a person comes up to me and talk about drinking and
whatnot, I really don’t know what to tell them. Because I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy it,
because I did. I liked my partying days and whatnot. But I just couldn’t—I don’t know
how to tell anybody, like, “That’s bad for you!” I don’t. I really don’t know how to tell
anybody that. But I can just relate to what I did. And all the time and the money that I
lost. I always think about that nowadays. Like, “Damn, you know what?” But, I have
grandkids. I have nine grandkids, and two great-grandkids. And one thing I can say is,
I’m proud to say they don’t know me as a drinker. They’ve never seen me drunk, or
never seen me touch drink, or anything like that. Because I had quit drinking before they
were all born, except for the oldest one. He was just a little baby. But they don’t know me
that way. And I can probably say that, like. They don’t know me that way. I’ve told them
stories about, you know, like, I was out partying, but they look at me like, “Yeah, right!”
You know? Because they just don’t. They just don’t know me. It was like my dad, you
know? I never knew him as a drinker, because he never drank—when I was around. He
had sobered up when he got married. Yeah. And that’s one thing in my whole life that I
feel real proud of, that I could do that.
C:
So how many grandchildren do you have, and where are they? Do you get a chance to
spend time with them?
T:
I have, what, nine grandkids, and two great-grandchildren. The two great-grandchildren
were just born not too long ago. One end of last year, one just about a month ago. And
�GBIA
039;
Tom;
p.
18
the grandkids, they’re, they live in Reno. There’s two back East, their mom’s in the
service. She’s been in the service over 20-some years. And they’re, shoot, they’re going
to college now. And actually, she’s an officer in the Army. She went in as a nurse, and
ended up being a minister. But she’s an officer. That was so cool; I remember talking to
her when she was getting her bars, and she says—and I told her, I said, “You know, your
dad went to the service, and barely made it out of there with a stripe. And here you are
being an officer!” [Laughter] Which was really cool, I thought that was cool. And then
the others, they live in Denver. Other grandkids, they live in Denver. They were, most of
them were here when my last grandkids, great-grandchild was born. They were all here.
Yeah, so I see them every once in a while. But they’re, you know, they’re all, they’ve got
their own life. They’re moving out. You know, and doing different things. Yeah. But
that’s cool, it’s always good to see them. And the house is all noisy. [Laughter]
C:
Sounds like you’ve had a full life, Anthony. And so what do you do now, yourself, to
keep busy, or just for hobby? I noticed you have a championship jacket on there. Can you
tell us a little bit about the handgame jacket or where you won it? Is that something you
do nowadays? Something you like to do?
T:
I almost forgot about that. When, after I got sick, I was put on dialysis. And I’m thinking,
okay. I’m just sitting home, being all depressed and whatnot, angry with myself for
letting myself get that far and whatnot. Lot of time to think. And I said, you know what?
I’ve been, all these years, when I was messing around, going around, I was always sitting
behind Uncle Nathan, listening to his songs. His handgame—he was a handgame player.
And I never played handgame. I always just listened to him, watched the game, and
whatnot. And when they, my cousin and her husband, she says, “Come on, let’s go play,”
�GBIA
039;
Tom;
p.
19
I said, “I’ve never played,” you know. And all the excuses about never played, can’t sing,
and all this. Hey: when I got involved—I still can’t sing—but when I got involved in
handgames, I got hooked on it. And this jacket I’m wearing is probably one of my
proudest jackets, because it was my first jacket that we won. We won in Duckwater. But
they had a tournament down there, and we won. And I felt so good. It felt so cool to win.
You know, win the jacket, and have a jacket that you can remember this thing by. And
everybody’s always asking me, “What’s a handgame?” You know? [Laughter] And so
you have to explain to them what handgame is. But yeah, that’s what I do now, is go out
and just play handgames. And it’s so… It kind of makes me feel like a—a Indian.
[Laughter] It does, you know? Because, like, it’s an old Indian game, you know, and it
just feels good. I’ve been away from just Indian life all these years, and just drinking and
whatnot, and the handgame kind of seemed to kind of pull me in, and you get to meet
people, get into the handgame crowd, and it’s almost like the powwow crowd. Everybody
comes together once a year, and they just enjoy powwows. It’s the same thing with
handgame. You come in, you see people once a year or so, and just enjoy it. Just a
weekend activity. That’s what I do now. [Laughter] I’m not that good at it, don’t get me
wrong! [Laughter] I just enjoy it.
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Anthony Lee Tom
Location
The location of the interview
Lamoille Canyon, NV [South Fork Reservation]
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
DVD, AVI, and MP4 Format
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:50:18
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/462
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Anthony Lee Tom - Oral History (06/05/2014)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral History Interview with Anthony Lee Tom, Western Shoshone from South Fork Reservation, NV, on 06/05/2014
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Anthony Tom is a member of the Te-Moak Western Shoshone and a veteran from the Air Force who lives at the South Fork Reservation, which he and others referred to as Lee, NV. He speaks about the South Fork community’s virtues, as well as, his experience growing up there and ranching. Anthony also talks about how and what he would hunt with his Grandpa John. He goes on to tell of his time at the Phoenix Indian School, and how it changed his life, an in fact led him to attend the California College of Arts and Crafts. He also informs his audience of the Indian Relocation Program, and the resulting aftermath. He also speaks about his time in Tribal administration, his time as an artist, and how he owned Picture This in Elko, NV. He ends his presentation by telling us about his time playing hand-games.</p>
<p>Anthony Tom Oral History Video pending<br /><a title="Anthony Lee Tom Oral History Transcript" href="/omeka/files/original/78f41864118130645a9e999fdce39237.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read Anthony Lee Tom Oral History Transcript [pdf file]</a></p>
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 039
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
06/05/2014 [05, June, 2014]; 2014 June 05
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017
Consent form on file (administrator access only): http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/463
Language
A language of the resource
English
artist
Community
Crossroads
GBIA
handgames
hunting
Indian Relocation
Phoenix Indian School
ranching
Shoshone
South Fork Reservation
Story
Te-Moak tribe
veteran
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/a6bd59bf0b2b391431fb1420db820571.jpg
772e30342394b447603a8a99aeb07b80
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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Virtual Humanities Center at Great Basin College - Records
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Repository of meeting minutes, memorandums-of-understanding (MOUs), and other organizational documents generated by the Virtual Humanities Center at Great Basin College in relation to managing the NEH Challenge Grant and related projects.</p>
<p>Access to specific materials may be limited by administrators for legal or human resources purposes.</p>
<p>Note: Archive deposit agreements are stored in the collections of the deposited materials, and administrator access is required.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Scott A. Gavorsky
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Virtual Humanities Center at Great Basin College
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
10 May 2016
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
All rights reserved. Use of any content only by express permission of Great Basin College © 2016
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Mostly pdf
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Dr. Gretchen Skivington
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Bryce Kimber
Location
The location of the interview
Elko, NV, USA
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Transcription pending
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
DVD
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
1:55:11 [sound problems at 40:00 - 55:00]
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
Bryce Kimber: Oral History Interview
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history interview with Elko Basque resident Bryce Kimber, conducted on 15 October 2015 by Dr. Gretchen Skivington.
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Bryce Kimber of Montello, NV ("Mr. Montello") is the son of Grouse Creek, UT homesteaders, W. C. "Bill" and Bertha Kimber. Born on the Kimber Ranch in 1929 he moved with his family to Montello, NV to attend school in 1939. He has lived in Montello all his life 1929 to present and was a most integral part of its history since he returned from service in Korea in 1948.</p>
<p>Topics he discusses include: the Montello Bar, & Montello Store (both which he owned), Pacific West States & Spring Creek subdivision projects (for which he contracted the road construction); the Gamble & Winecup Ranches (hay, fencing & livestock contractor); the SP Railroad and Montello history, UC Construction, the Montello Citizens' Committee and "buying" the town from SP; the Montello School (which burned down, rebuilt), people from Montello and the W.C. Kimber Diaries (1907-1972).</p>
<p>
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</p>
<p><a title="Oral History Interview with Bryce Kimber" href="http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/3nqxb" target="_blank;">Click here for direct access to video (if embed above is not functioning).</a></p>
<p>Interview conducted on 15 October 2015 by Dr. Gretchen Skivington.</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Gretchen Skivington
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Original Oral History Interview
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Virtual Humanities Center at Great Basin College
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
15 October 2015
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Scott A. Gavorsky [VHC]
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Memorial Bizia Oral History Consent Form on File:
http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/items/show/XXX [administrator access only]
Relation
A related resource
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Howard Hickson's Histories</span></p>
<ul>
<li><a title="Wilkins, Nevada" href="http://www.gbcnv.edu/hickson/Wilkins.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">"Wilkins, Nevada"</a></li>
<li><a title="Wagon Train Rest Stop" href="http://www.gbcnv.edu/hickson/HumboldtWells.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">"Wagon Train Rest Stop" </a></li>
<li><a title="Tobar, Nevada" href="http://www.gbcnv.edu/hickson/Tobar.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">"Tobar, Nevada"</a> </li>
<li><a title="Pocket Change Robbery" href="http://www.gbcnv.edu/hickson/AaronRoss.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">"Pocket Change Robbery"</a> </li>
<li><a title="Robbed Twice the Same Day" href="http://www.gbcnv.edu/hickson/CPRR.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">"Robbed Twice Same Day"</a> </li>
</ul>
Format
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streaming video [.mp4 file]
Language
A language of the resource
English; little Basque
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Key words:</strong> </span>Grouse Creek, Charles & William Kimber, Kimber Ranch, Grouse Creek LDS Church, sheep & hog raising, Kay/Merrill/Bryce Kimber, Montello Bar, Gamble & Winecup Ranches, Pacific West States Subdivision: road contracting, hay & fencing contracts, Slim Olsen's & Standard Oil bulk plants, Spring Creek road contracts, Montello Store, Southern Pacific Railroad leases, town of Montello, Montello Citizens' Committee, water rights, Montello School, W.C. "Bill" Kimber Diaries</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Names of People mentioned in/fom Montello:</strong> </span>William & Bertha Kimber, Barbara/Kay/Jack/Bryce/Merrill Kimber: Pete Ludwig, Norma Johnson, John Grandeen, Lucy Daz, Wallace Bettridge, Bill Hargrove, Pearsons, Allan Wilson, Bill Brooks, MW Johnson, Milo Craig, Ray Browning, Tolefson, Delaplian, Lee, John Ala, Mcfarlane & Holling, Gil Hernandez, Jim Thomas, Bill Addington, Jimmy Steward, Russell Wilkins, Joyce Palmer, Mary Jo Johns</p>
Community
Crossroads
Elko
Faculty
Story
veteran
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/4d39c7244ee9e08ada9c31a5b12fec1c.jpg
a1b76b4497e076bda2efcd725bb3b1a6
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Dan Blossom
Location
The location of the interview
Elko, NV (GBC Campus)
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Transcription in Process
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
DVD and VOB format
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:48:30
Dublin Core
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
Dan Blossom Oral History (03/27/2012)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral History Interview with Dan Blossom, Western Shoshone from Battle Mountain, NV on 03/27/2012
Description
An account of the resource
<p><img style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; height: 50px; width: 50px;" title="Shoshone Language Marker indicating Shoshone content" src="/omeka/files/original/79de1f8d7d9a264c3fb9973a5346a076.jpg" alt="Shoshone Language Marker" />Oral History Interview with Dan Blossom, Western Shoshone from Battle Mountain, NV on 03/27/2012<br />This oral history contains significant Shoshone language conversation, and is recommended for usage by community language teachers.</p>
<p>Dan Blossom (Cho Cho Kunn) was born in Battle Mountain (Dona Muzza), Nevada in 1924. His mother was Miley Jackson-Cavanaugh. He is part of the Jackson Clan. Dan Blossom describes how he grew up on the outskirts of Battle Mountain. He describes how he would hunt for food such as gomba (type of desert ground squirrel), and eat other foods such as deer, duck, etc. He describes how his grandmother Aggie Jackson and his family lived while he was growing up in Battle Mountain. Dan also tells us of his school experience, and how he was not allowed to speak Shoshone. He later describes his life while he was in the Army during the Korean War. He later tells us a traditional Shoshone Tale: Coyote and Wolf.</p>
<p>Interviewed by Norm Cavanaugh</p>
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<p><strong> </strong></p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archive
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 027
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
03/27/2012 [27 March 2012]; 2012 March 27
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; Aldun Tybo [community member]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2016.
Consent form on file (administrator access only): http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/items/show/id/308
Language
A language of the resource
Shoshone; English
Community
Crossroads
folktale
GBIA
heritage
hunting
Korean War
ranching
Shoshone
Story
veteran
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/db3ea557ef3992516cf9e33bfa8c3dc0.jpg
f4bea4965da781d01c5ba20fcb8b0e4e
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/83b8215251fdfddcb32887d17fede7f9.pdf
fba2492374b153c1d21414c352f2defc
PDF Text
Text
Floyd Collins
Great Basin Indian Archive
GBIA 050
Oral History Interview by
Norm Cavanaugh
June 2, 2016
Duckwater, NV
Great Basin College • Great Basin Indian Archives
1500 College Parkway
Elko, Nevada 89801
http://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/
775.738.8493
Produced in partnership with
Barrick Gold of North America
�GBIA 050
Interviewee: Floyd Collins
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: June 2, 2016
FC:
My name is Floyd Collins. I was born in Ely, Nevada, August 27th, 1937. My dad’s name
was Abe Collins, Sr. My mom was Della Small out of Bridgeport, California. They met
somewhere over in Stewart when he used to ride broncs. Broke his leg, that’s how she
found him. Couldn’t get away—couldn’t run. [Laughter] Yeah. So, grew up in Ely. We
moved around quite a bit. Spent one year in Elko, one year in Carson, half a year in
White Pine before I got eight-sixed out of there. [Laughter] Then I joined the Marine
Corps. Eight years in the Marine Corps, and come back, married Mary—Collins now.
Forget what her name was before. She was from Ely. Her dad used to be a shovel
mechanic up at Kennecott, in Ruth. If they worked; they stood around the fire a lot and
cooked pinenuts in the falltime. Yeah, then when I was growing up, we used to do lot of
deer hunting, lot of fishing. Rabbit hunting. Sagehen. Didn’t have any chukar yet. They
weren’t planted yet. Didn’t hunt elk, there wasn’t any yet. They didn’t plant them until, I
think it was the late [19]40s when they finally planted elk over there, up above Cave
Lake. Sometimes we lived on the Colony, other times downtown. And we’d go hunting
down in Cave Valley, up Spruce Mountain, up in Long Valley. Then, you could hunt
anywhere in the state; not like it is now, certain areas you draw for. No deer in one area,
you go up to the next area. We’d go up to Spruce mainly late in the season, because
you’d get the migrates coming out of Idaho. Bigger bucks. But then, the horns were a lot
bigger, too. Not them little willow horns like we got now. They used to be mainly all
four-pointers, which is—now all you see is two-pointers, even out here on the
reservation! Look at my grandson, he’s about ready to go get us one here, pretty quick.
Jerky time! I already got jerky shed made; wires are up. [Laughter] And the little one in
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there, the grandson, he wants to go fishing. He don’t need a license because he already
knows how to fish, he told me.
NC:
Going back to when you came back out of the Marine Corps, what’d you do?
FC:
Oh, I worked for the BLM for about four years as a fire control technician in Ely. And
then went to work for Kennecott, took a mechanic’s apprenticeship up there. Then moved
to Reno—after I got divorced in Ely, of course. And I run my own business over there
until I couldn’t afford the rent on the building. [Laughter]
NC:
What kind of business did you run?
FC:
Diesel mechanic. I just worked on the eighteen-wheelers. That, and went to air
conditioning/refrigeration school down in California, city of Industry, to work on reefers:
Thermo Kings and Carrier Transicold. Then I worked for Thermo King in Reno for a
while. And other trucking companies over there. And I went to work for an outfit called
Westran out of Missoula, Montana. They come and found me in Wadsworth and put me
to work. [Laughter] And I traveled around with them for about five years. We’d haul
asphalt, and doubles, belly-dumps, cement. Could pay—use them for cement hauling. It
wouldn’t leak out. And down in Phoenix; Ontario, California; Lovelock; St. George;
Tonopah; and a few other places I can’t remember. Yep. So that’s about what I’ve been
doing. ‘Til I retired when I turned seventy-five; I quit. Turned in my Tribal credit card
and said, “I’m gonna retire.” [Laughter] But I still do work for the Tribe. I still got to put
a motor in here soon’s they get one. They don’t have big enough tools to put motors in.
NC:
So how old are you now, Floyd?
FC:
Seventy-eight right now. I’ll be seventy-nine in August. Still a pup. [Laughter] I used to
go to Sundance up in McDermitt. Everybody had to have a pipe up there. So, you make
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your own. Get pipestone out of Minnesota. I got one piece left, and that’s about it. This is
how they looked when you get a wider one. But that’s basically the pattern you use. Then
you drill a hole down through the top, down here. Then you drill in this way with a
eighth-inch drill bit, to meet. Then you make a bigger one on the end, three-eighths or so.
And about a five-eighth hole in the top. And you can whittle these down with a knife.
Feels like talcum powder when it’s on your hand. But since I’m out of stone, I ain’t made
one. And for the stems, I’ll use chokecherry or cedar. And drill a hole through them all
the way through. Partner used to say it’s hard to train a termite to drill that one straight
hole through there! [Laughter] Then, me and my grandkids, we’ll sit around here and
make drums. Make them out of any old wood we can find. We got one up there, and one
over there. Sell some, give them away. Give some to the Tribe for their festival, so they
can raffle them off. Yeah. I make little rattle drums, too. Like this guy here, that’s a little
rattle drum. If it’ll come off from there, if I don’t lose everything else. I don’t know what
that guy’s doing up there. Yeah, they make them like that. Use sacred rocks in here:
whatever you find on the ground. [Laughter] Yeah, we make a lot of them. Donate them
or sell them; only get about fifteen bucks apiece out of them, but we use that new white
man’s wood in them, called “PVC”? [Laughter] And these here are bigger drum rings,
like that. Just smooth ‘em up, put a rawhide on ‘em, tie ‘em up; then they come out like
that one up there. Started my youngest—middle-age grandson, I guess he is—he’s
starting to do the painting for me.
NC:
So, what kind of hide do you guys use to make those drums?
FC:
This one here is elk hide. It’s a little tougher than the deer hide. And it lasts you a little bit
longer. Yeah, and we just tie them up in the back. Just—take rawhide across there, at
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least a quarter inch thick so they don’t break on you. It’ll only take you about hour to
make one. But it’s scraping the hide; you have to scrape the hair off, and the membrane
off. We got a scraper set outside. We don’t want no hair in here! [Laughter] It’s hard to
pick up! So, yeah. That’s what we do. Mainly wintertime, but then, we don’t do much in
the winter because our water freezes up out here. So, summertime—and now, we don’t
get no hides ‘til about falltime. We go into the butchers’ shops in Ely, because they’ll
process the wild game in there for these hunters. They do the skinning, so you don’t have
to worry about skinning them. Take them out and soak them in water and little bit of
lime, or the ash from your woodstove, the white, that’ll make a lime solution that’ll make
the hair and the membrane come off a lot easier. And then, just scrape them until they’re
nice and smooth, or make buckskin out of them. Because we make our own drum sticks,
too. We use—well, I use white buckskin for the outside, and then stuff them with buffalo
hair. One guy, he asked me, “Where you get your buffalo hair?” I told him, “Off a
buffalo! Where you think?” [Laughter] Then one guy asked me, “Where’d you get your
pinenuts?” “Took them off a pine tree!” [Laughter] I don’t know about some of these
guys out here. I think that was old Maurice Churchill ask me where I got my pinenuts.
That’s what I told him at lunch. “Off a pine tree!” [Laughter] And Jack Malotte asked me
where I got my buffalo hair. I usually get that from my nephew Shawn up there in South
Fork. He was raising buffalo, so he always had hair there.
NC:
So, is he still raising buffalo, your nephew?
FC:
The last time I saw him, he was. But I don’t know, I haven’t been up there for long time.
Since can’t play basketball no more, don’t have to travel! [Laughter] Yeah, we’d go play
Owyhee, Elko, Wells. Went to LA for their world tournament one time. Come out fourth
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in that, from Ely. We didn’t have very many Indians, so— And some tournaments we
went to, there was only five of us. We tell them our other car broke down with our subs.
[Laughter] Yeah, we go play in Fort Duchesne, up in Fort Hall. Reno. We go over there
and play Stewart every now and then. Play Elko in afternoon, Owyhee at night. Then
drive back home, go back to work. Moved to Reno, used to play softball with the Reno
Indian Athletic Association over there. We played that AAA fast-pitch over there. Then
go down California and play a lot over there in their tournaments.
[Break in recording]
Oh, I made that one when I was married over in Wadsworth. Then, when I got divorced
over there, I took my tools, and my stove, and my old pickup. That’s what I got away
with. Oh, some clothes, too. I didn’t leave all my clothes. [Laughter] But there was a lot
of them I left there. Couldn’t pack them all, I only had a [19]67 Chevy pickup, that was
my ride for a long time. I used to use that for my service truck, too. Up and down the
highway, working on trucks. Yeah. So, me and my grandson built this shop we’re in, and
it’s all out of scrap lumber from housing. [Laughter] Couldn’t throw it away, couldn’t
burn it up. Had to have a place to put the stove, keep warm in the winter. That’s drill
steel. I just welded the bottom, top, and legs on it, and made the door. Put hinges on the
door so we could open and close it. It keeps it warm in here. This sixteen by twenty. So,
it works all right in here. I got one sitting outside I made out of a fuel tank. [Laughter]
That’s when I worked for trucking. We had a shed up there that was cold, so I made a
stove and put it in there. Then, when trucking folded up, I went and got my stove back,
too. Yeah, I had a Ranger 8 welder, but Shawn, my nephew up there in South Fork was
building his buffalo corrals. So I says, “Take mine up and use it.” Never went and got it
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back; I don’t need it right now. If I need one, I go get one out of the shop over there. We
got a little buzzbox there, and we got oxygen, acetylene, so. Ain’t much we need in here.
Got beer in the fridge, so we’re in good shape. [Laughter]
[Break in recording]
I’m not much for their powwows; I go to one here in Duckwater. Now and then, to the
one in Ely. But, they don’t have much in Ely. They got no singers, no dancers, no drum.
Least Duckwater’s got their own drum; kids are singing out here. And they do have some
dancers. My grandkids quit dancing already, so. Don’t have to make any bustles now.
[Laughter] Yeah, we made all their stuff. My wife, she made all their outfits for them.
Sewed all them together, made the bustles, their moccasins. Just about quit making
moccasins, too. Don’t nobody need them now. None of the kids. I don’t make them to
sell. I don’t sell them. They’re just for the family. Grandson in Pyramid Lake, he’s got
one with all eagle feathers. Oldest one here, he’s got eagle feathers. The middle one, he
got hawk feathers in his. Not supposed to sell feathers from birds of prey. You can give
them away, but you can’t sell them.
No, out here, Boyd Graham from Duckwater does it in Ely. There’s hardly anybody in
Ely talks Shoshone, except the ones that moved in from Duckwater. The last ones in there
pretty well died off, that talked. And mainly, the ones in there that do talk the language
are mainly from Duckwater, some of their kids that’ve moved in. But the older folks,
when they started passing away, it pretty well died out with them. Because them days,
you couldn’t talk it in school anyway; you’d get whacked. So you, you know, even if you
had friends you could talk to, the teacher catch you talking, that’s the end of you. Oh,
they’d whip you! They’d actually whip you then, they had their own paddles in every
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room! [Laughter] Well, that’s just like Stewart, they couldn’t talk their language over
there, either.
I only made it halfway through my junior year in White Pine High School before I got
kicked out of there. Don’t know why I got kicked out, but I did, but then, there’s always
the Marine Corps, so I joined them. That was in 1955.
Oh, I spent a year in Japan, six months in Okinawa, Phillipines, Formosa, and a lot on the
ocean. Float around on carriers, mainly.
NC:
If you were to recommend anything for the youth of today, what would you recommend,
or what do you think is important?
FC:
I think, school: go to college. Get a degree in something, because every job you apply for,
you’ve got to have a college degree in something. And out here, what they hire, they
stipulate a lot of, you know, what you’re supposed to have before they hire you, but it
don’t work; they just hire whoever comes in. And none of them been to college that I
know of. Ely, same way: they don’t go to college. They go to work for the mine, then the
mines’ll close up on you overnight. You’re out of a job again! [Laughter] Oh, if you’re
living on a Rez, you need a trade school. Learn mechanics, welding, electricians. Because
out here, it’s a long ways from town, so you usually have to do all your own work. You
can’t afford to have a service man come out and work on your tractor for you. That’s why
I don’t work on them; they’re all broke. They pay you payday, but they never have a
payday! Yeah, so I don’t work on cars or anything like that; barely work on my own. But
you know, on a reservation, you’ve got to be able to take care of all your own equipment.
NC:
So out here in Duckwater, is it more of a ranching community, then?
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FC:
Yeah, most of them do have ranches, but they’re small. You’re not going to make a living
on them. So, you do have to have a job, too. And if you don’t work for the Tribe out here,
or down to the oil field, you don’t work.
NC:
So, is your family all here in the Duckwater area, or Nevada, or are they—they live
elsewhere?
FC:
Oh, they’re all buried at White River. We have our own family cemetery over there. Just
off the highway over there. My grandfather and grandmother used to own a ranch right
there. It’s up on the hillside above it. But, don’t dig the grave by hand unless you got
dynamite. So we use a backhoe now to get in there. But I got—my mom and dad are
there, and my grandfather, grandma, two brothers, one uncle, one aunt. And a whole
bunch of kids that my grandma and grandpa had that didn’t live past a year or two.
Nope. But some of these kids got to learn how to keep their crafts alive. Make drums,
pipes, moccasins. Tan hides—hardly anybody tans hides anymore. And you get a good
tanned hide, you can get about three hundred bucks out of them. But, you ain’t going to
sell them to an Indian, because they ain’t got three hundred bucks! [Laughter] Mainly,
that’s—you know, I see lot of people take them to, like, their powwows, because you get
a lot of white people around there that does have money, and that’s about the only ones
can afford to buy them. Indians got three hundred dollars, they’re going be drunk!
[Laughter] There, that’ll conclude it!
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Floyd Collins
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:20:53
Location
The location of the interview
Duckwater Reservation, NV [Floyd residence]
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/526
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
DVD, MP4, and AVI format
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Floyd Collins - Oral history (06/02/2016)
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Floyd Collins was born in Ely, NV on August 27, 1937. His dad was Abe Collins Sr. and his mom was Dellis Maul. Floyd speaks about living all around Nevada but mostly in Ely, and how he worked different occupations such as BLM, Kennecott mine, and West Tran to name a few. He also recants about the hunting him and his family take part in, as well as keeping up with traditional crafts such as creating drums and tanning hides. Floyd joined the U.S. Marine Corp in 1955 which he stayed with for 8 years. He retired at age 75 but still assist the tribe as needed. He also speaks about his time playing basketball and softball with the Ely Indian Colony. He concludes his oral history by suggesting to the younger viewers that they should keep in school and attend college.</p>
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qB5hNy_KZOg" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p>Interviewed by Norm Cavanaugh</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 050
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
06/02/2016 [ 02 June 2016]; 2016 June 02
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; Scott A. Gavorsky [VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017.
Consent form on file (administrator access only): http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/items/show/345
Language
A language of the resource
English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history interview with Floyd Collins, Western Shoshone from Duckwater Reservation, NV on 06/02/2016
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
MP4
Community
crafts
Crossroads
Duckwater
Duckwater Reservation
Ely
GBIA
hunting
Shoshone
Story
traditional crafts
traditions
veteran
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/4d129572a7284f980f63abd7e2bbebdd.jpg
cbf121362e9b5b69359a614c63800f27
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
Janey Blackeye-Bryan and Shasta Blackeye-Adair
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.)
00:59:30
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Janey Blackeye-Bryan and Shasta Blackeye-Adair - Oral history (08/01/2017)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history interview with Janey Blackeye-Bryan and Shasta Blackeye-Adair, Western Shoshone from Duckwater, NV, on 08/01/2017
Description
An account of the resource
<p>In Janey Blackeye-Bryan and Shasta Blackeye-Adair’s second presentation to the Shoshone Community Language Initiative (SCLI) program at Great Basin College they continue to talk about their history and the traditions of the Western Shoshone. They begin by singing a Shoshone Honor song that was created by their father/grandfather Willie Blackeye from Duckwater reservation, NV. Then they move onto express the importance of the language program and moreover how important it is to stay in school and stay strong like our ancestors use to.<br /> <br />Presented at the 2017 Shoshone Community Language Initiative summer youth program (SCLI 17).</p>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://cdnapi.kaltura.com/p/2096981/sp/209698100/embedIframeJs/uiconf_id/39808892/partner_id/2096981?autoembed=true&entry_id=0_mazdmku1&playerId=kaltura_player_1502219206&cache_st=1502219206&width=560&height=395&flashvars[streamerType]=auto"></script>
<p><a href="http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/6wwsx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">View oral history video in separate page if above player not working</a><br /> <br />Transcript pending</p>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 66
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
08/01/2017 [01 August 2017]; 2017 August 01
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
James Hedrick [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017.
Consent form on file (administrator access only): http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/items/show/407
Language
A language of the resource
English; some Shoshoni
Community
Crossroads
Duckwater Reservation
GBIA
Shoshone
Story
traditional ceremony
traditional songs
traditions
veteran
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/9c1caaf71c811a358d9861027e140347.jpg
3f9f0f637f243d6fb1352e76fcb2f34c
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/9543623c8550bc4198e22a5adaf9565b.pdf
b472f6f1a24ac7c96b2e674482f2148d
PDF Text
Text
Lester Shaw
Great Basin Indian Archive
GBIA 052
Oral History Interview by
Norm Cavanaugh
June 1, 2016
Owyhee, NV
Great Basin College • Great Basin Indian Archives
1500 College Parkway
Elko, Nevada 89801
http://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/
775.738.8493
Produced in partnership with
Barrick Gold of North America
�GBIA 052
Interviewee: Lester Shaw
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: June 1, 2016
S:
My name’s Lester Shaw Jr. I was born in Boise, Idaho, from my mom—Lester Shaw and
Lillian Thomas Shaw. We are enrolled Paiute, Shoshone-Paiutes, here on Duck Valley
reservation. I have two sisters, Karen Temoke and Adrianne Whiterock. And one brother,
Virgil Shaw, and one deceased brother, Irwin D. Ridley. They are all enrolled here on the
Shoshone-Paiute reservation. I remember I went to school here in Owyhee all my life,
when I was—from first grade, to twelfth grade. I finished my school in 1961. Younger
days, when I was growing up here on the reservation, my dad and mom had hay fields
down here. Had to put up all summer! [Laughter] And we learned, had to learn how to
run equipment, like the mower and the rake. And we had a buckrake. Because in them
days, we had to use horse-drawn mowers, and horse-drawn rake, and buckrake, and stack
hay—loose hay—stack it up there. And all of us had to get out there for help, anyway,
even when you’re little, all the way up to, until I got into—almost got to high school by
then, before we switched over to tractors, and stuff like that. But it’s something that we
had to do. And I enjoyed doing it, but it was hard work. We all got together: my mom—I
worked with my mom, she even went up there to be our cook and stuff, to get on the
fields. And we had to move from one field way down to another, and clear down to
Pleasant Valley, that’s where we put up hay last. But then, in the springtime, everybody
has to get out for branding, ride horses, and gather up the cattle, push them out on the
range. Branding, and then, yeah, pushing cows, then up on the mountains again. It was
just regular ranch work, but it was just pretty tough, hard work. Enjoyed that. During my
high school years, I played in the band, high school band. And I was the president of the
FFA. I played basketball, football, track, and I was in the rodeo club. We did pretty good
�GBIA 052; Shaw; Page 2
in the basketball, because we were undefeated my senior year, but we got beat out in the
zone tournament by the lowest team. It just happened that way, I guess. I’d like to talk
about my younger days when I was playing in the Indian basketball leagues. We had a
team here in Owyhee that, we’d travel all over to a different reservation to play in a
tournaments. Lot of our guys are all, they’re getting pretty old now, they don’t play
anymore, but I like to remember that, when we win that championship, or I used to like to
go to Fort Hall because it always has good tournaments up there. Or sometimes, just to go
up there and play, you know just the regular games. And participate in tournaments down
Schurz, and Reno, and Elko. We’d play all over. And up here. At here, at home, we used
to have about five tournaments a year, basketball tournaments. We’d have young men’s,
and old men’s. Now, we have—one of the older, we got a older league, thirty and over,
and now it’s forty and over. Fort Hall, I used to go up there and play in the thirty and
forty and over. Now, it goes clear up to sixty and over! That’s guys still playing ball!
[Laughter] It’s lot of fun, but now I can’t do it. Most of us are injured. All injured. But
we had lot of fond memories, it was lot of fun. After I graduate from here, I worked out at
Spanish Arts to make money to go to school. I went, the fall I went to Haskell Institute
in Lawrence, Kansas. That was through study of masonry and construction. And I was
there for, got out of there in 1963. I worked in Raytown, Missouri as a apprentice
bricklayer for six months. And then, I moved back to—I moved to California, I moved to
San Jose. And I couldn’t find any work for my trade, so I moved back to Reno, then I
found a—I got a job as apprentice bricklayer for L.A. Dunson Masonry contractor out of
Sparks, Nevada. And I enjoyed working there with older guys that would teach us. I’d
learn. Learning, I did all the—you start doing the dirty jobs first. So like, helping to carry
�GBIA 052; Shaw; Page 3
mud, and pack bricks and blocks. Yeah. Then I, they taught me quite a bit, lot of those
older bricklayers. Got to work with them, and I enjoyed working with them, because I got
to know them and got friendly with them, and then I was kind of scared first time. Like,
kind of, because of my race I guess. But they kept—encouraged me, and that’s what I
enjoyed: working as a bricklayer.
That was the love of my life, that masonry and construction, because you finish the job,
you look at it, and you could see, “Hey, I built that! Helped build that building!” And lot
of buildings in Boise that we completed, and I look back and when I go up there
sometimes, I look and, “Hey, look at that old building we built long time ago.” Like the
university, Boise State University, we worked lots on there: the student union, the
dormitories.
[Break in recording]
When I was young, I started out with three sixty-five an hour. [Laughter] It’s not even
nothing now. It’s probably up about—it’s about twenty-five, twenty-six dollars an hour
now, as far as I know. I don’t know, I haven’t been—what, real long time, since 1972,
since I done any kind of brick work, or block work, or stuff like that. It’s good, though. I
got drafted in 1964. July. And I went into the Army. I went to Fort Ord, California. I
finished my Basic Training in Fort Ord, and then I came home on leave, and then went to
my AIT training in Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. And I was there for another eight weeks, and then
I got my orders to go to Germany. And there, I spent eighteen months over there on
artillery, as artilleryman. We were on eight-inch howitzers. And when I was about ready
to get out, I re-enlisted and got sent back to the States. When I was about done, then I
spent five months at Fort Hood, Texas. And then, I got orders to go to Vietnam, Republic
�GBIA 052; Shaw; Page 4
of Vietnam, and that’s when I went to the Vietnam War. I was assigned to the First
Cavalry Division, Airmobile. And I was—our base camp was An Khe, Vietnam. From
there, I was out in the field most of the time on different landing zones. And then, I lasted
out there for five months, until I got wounded in January 3rd, 1968. We come under
hostile mortar attack and rocket attack, and we were about almost ready to get overrun. I
got wounded. I knocked out a rocket position with my squad, and then I received a
Bronze Star from that, for heroism. It was pretty tough over there. I don’t remember
getting loaded up in the medevac chopper, and next thing I know I was in Qui Nohn,
that’s a hospital there. Then there for short time, and then I was sent to Japan to see what
they could do to fix up my wounds. They couldn’t do anything for my jaw right there.
My jaw was disappeared, and knocked out all my teeth, and my left mandible was gone.
[Laughter] So, they sent me back to the States, to Letterman General Hospital in San
Fransisco. There I spent the rest of my tour, at the Letterman’s. I finally got out, and I
was home on convalescent leave about three times when I was in there. Until I had to go
back for more surgery, and then I finally got my honorable discharge. And then, I came
back here, home, here in Owyhee. I spent about a year just kicking back. I couldn’t do
much. I finally, after I got on as a bricklayer, apprentice bricklayer, in Boise Idaho, and I
worked there for the Local #2 Bricklayers’ Union, until I got my journeyman card for
bricklaying. Then I worked there until I decided to go on to school a little bit more, and I
went to Idaho State University vo-tech, and I got a certificate for furniture maintenance.
Trying to rebuild furniture, and upholstery and stuff. But I used it for about maybe five
months or so, but I decided I couldn’t do that, because the pay wasn’t too much, but it
was worth something—something I had to fall back on if I needed to. And then, from
�GBIA 052; Shaw; Page 5
there, I came back here to Owyhee, and worked for the BIA maintenance department.
Worked down there for, let’s see—I have ten years there, service, as a maintenance
worker. As a laborer first, then I moved up to a maintenance worker, and that I worked
for a while, then I finally worked for the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe as an instructor for the
AIT program. I worked there until I got hired at the Human Development Center as a
coordinator of events and building superintendent. Then I worked there for a short while,
and then I also worked for the U.S. Forest Service as a forestry technician, in Boise
National Forest in Idaho. And then, I transferred to Ruby Mountain Ranger District with
the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. After that, I finished there, then I decided to look
for something else, and I found work at the Owyhee Community Health Facility as a
maintenance mechanic helper. And that’s all my work I did so far. Plus, I worked on
various ranches. But I didn’t count that too much. [Laughter] That was lot of interesting
fun, though. The last job, that’s when I was injured on the job and I had to take a medical
retirement. So now, I’ve been laid up for—can’t do much for, oh, sixteen years now. I
was injured in year 2000. I’ve enjoyed going to powwows, watching kids play basketball,
and just staying home with my family. My wife is deceased. So I live here, but I have my
nephews and whoever come over and visit. I am a member of the American Legion, Post
48—Jack Hanks 48. And I’m Adjutant for them, and I belong to the Military Order of
Purple Heart. And Disabled American Veterans. And I enjoy working with the veterans,
keep it going here at home. And I like to go to their meetings, and we keep everything up
with our old post. We started after World War II, with Art Manning as our commander
and stuff. We’re down to about very many—oh, we had about seventeen when I first
joined. Now we’re down to about ten. [Laughter]
�[Break in recording]
GBIA 052; Shaw; Page 6
I was a teacher for, to teach these young guys around here how to lay blocks. So then
they started on a building, a shop down here that they built. Went up with my teaching.
They built it, they laid the blocks, all these younger guys here that learned that trade. I
enjoyed teaching them. Yeah, it’s something they can fall back—if they want to continue,
they have to go further up, though, to get their journeyman’s card and stuff for that.
There’s not too many, very many brick layers left around here I don’t think. Most of them
are either passed on or moved away. And they have to go to town, move to the city
mostly, to find good work. But you get in that apprenticeship program, you can start off
as a apprentice, bricklayer’s apprentice, or cement finish. Or then they—you have to get
indentured into, with a contractor. And most of them recommend to get into the union so
you can go to work, unless you know somebody that does that kind of work. You can
work for him, then work your way on up. It’s good. Good trade.
[Break in recording]
I like to see these younger people stay with their powwows and their, the Indian, Native
American language. They have to try to keep that up, because it’s going, we’re going to
lose it pretty soon if we don’t. There’s lot of—here at home, they have classes for the
Shoshone language, and Paiute, and to keep it up. You got to listen to the elders and try
not to—because it’s kind of getting lost now because of, they don’t listen. Nobody tells
you, the younger ones, what’s going on with our culture and stuff. It’s good to keep that
up. And I sure enjoy it, to watch these younger little ones out there, the peewees, clear up
to the golden age, that are still dancing. It’s good to see. And I believe in that eagle staff,
you got to watch our eagle feathers and stuff, we got to keep that sacred, and not to abuse
�GBIA 052; Shaw; Page 7
it in any way. Yeah, the eagle feathers are the main things I like that the—to me, that’s
what we respect. To our Mother Earth here, and our water, and our wild game, and the
fish in the water. And that’s what we survived on when we were little, and we ate rabbits,
and deer, and antelope, and elk, and—just keep up the language, that’s what I say. But I
want the younger generation to know that, just continue learning your language and
listening to the elders up here.
[Break in recording]
What I recommend to the kids of the younger generation now is to continue your
education, because it’s getting pretty hard to get any kind of employment. You got to
have education to find any kind of work, you know? If you go off the reservations, hard
to find work, a job or something—a decent job, anyway. Even here at home, it’s hard to
get on something like a—get trainings or something anyway, so you can have something
to fall back on to support your family. That’s what I recommend. I’ve been through a lot,
and I enjoyed every bit of what I did. Went through hard times and good times, and lot of
fun times. So, just think about that. Thank you.
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
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Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
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GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
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2006-2015
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
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Lester Shaw, Jr.
Duration
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00:20:40
Location
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Duck Valley Reservation - Owyhee (Shaw residence)
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http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/528
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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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Lester Shaw Jr. - Oral history (06/01/2016)
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Lester Shaw Jr. was born in Boise, ID and was son to Lester Shaw and Lillian Thomas Shaw. Lester currently resides on the Duck Valley Reservation where he attended school until 1961 and became president of the FFA and participated in various sports. During this period he helped out at his dad’s mom’s ranch pushing cattle, branding horses, and putting-up hay. After he finished High School he worked at Spanish Ranch to save up to attend Haskell Institute in Kansas until he was drafted into the military in 1964. While serving in the military he was sent to Germany and Vietnam during the war, at which time he received the Bronze star and was inducted into the Military Order of the Purple Heart. He also spent much of his life learning masonry which he taught to the youth which he advises to keep up their traditions and Native language.</p>
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MgUniui0jCQ" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p>Interviewed by Norm Cavanaugh</p>
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Great Basin Indian Archives
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 052
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Great Basin Indian Archives
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06/02/2016 [02 June 2016]; 2016 June 02
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Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; Scott A. Gavorsky [VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America
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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/id/172
Language
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English
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Oral history interview with Lester Shaw Jr., Western Shoshone from Duck Valley Reservation (Owhyee) on 06/01/2016
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MP4
Community
Crossroads
Duck Valley Reservation
GBIA
language
masonry
ranching
Shoshone
Story
traditions
veteran
Vietnam war
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/66b6fc509dca276ab6ed7bcdc1695976.jpg
31b6d9491a5b1a48569e52f697a5378f
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/8147344abcef332f0da62084ad199a6d.pdf
eed6bb3d5bc32ada6c6136ad23aabb25
PDF Text
Text
Lloyd
Hanks
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
033
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
April
16,
2014
Owyhee,
NV
Great
Basin
College
•
Great
Basin
Indian
Archives
1500
College
Parkway
Elko,
Nevada
89801
hCp://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/
775.738.8493
Produced
in
partnership
with
Barrick
Gold
of
North
America
�GBIA 033
Interviewee: Lloyd Hanks
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: April 16, 2014
H:
My name is Lloyd Hanks. And I’m a member of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe here on the
Duck Valley Reservation that’s located on the Nevada-Idaho border, about a hundred
fifty miles south of Boise, Idaho. And I understand this project is for the SYLAP
program, and my feeling is that all our youth need to know where they come from, who
their ancestors are, and where our languages are from. Your language, the Uto-Aztecan
Shoshonean language is a very big language group. Our group—our languages are related
all the way from Central America to the California coast, to the Great Basin, into
Wyoming, and into Oklahoma. So, it’s important that you know what your language
bases are. And if you don’t know it, you can study it. Look it up on the internet, and
you’ll find all kinds of information on the languages. So, what I’m going to be talking
about is, our Indian veterans here on the Duck Valley Reservation. And also, when I get
done with that, I’ll be talking about Native American veterans, and those in the military
from the time our country was founded to the present time. So, I’ll start by saying that my
mother came from the Paradise Valley area, which is about fifty miles west of here. And
my father, some of his people came from the Bruneau area, and my grandmother on my
dad’s side, I believe she came from around the Reese River area. But because my dad
passed away when I was very young, that—I don’t know a lot of the history on my
father’s side. But, being here—when I came back from the military— [Laughter] Oh,
well, I better back up a little bit, tell you that I’m retired from the Air Force. I served
about 34 years on active duty in the Air Guard and the Retired Reserve. And I was in for
34 years, and I retired as a master sergeant. And my military family side is my father,
Clarence Hanks, who our American Legion Post is named after. Our Legion Post is
�
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named Jack Hanks, and it’s named after two individuals from our community who were
killed in action in World War II in Europe. And one was my father, Clarence Hanks,
Private First Class serving with the 29th Infantry Division, and he was killed somewhere
around the Sigfried Line, in Germany. The other individual was Sidney Jack. He was
with the first infantry division, and he participated in the Normandy landing. And that’s
where he was wounded, and died from his wounds. And he was also awarded the Bronze
Star for his valor. So, that’s where our name, Jack Hanks, comes from for our post. And
we’ve had other military people from here who were killed in action. There was Gerald
Whiterock, who was killed in action in Korea. David Pursley, also killed in action in
Korea. In Vietnam, we lost two people from our community. Larry Parker, with the 173rd
Airborne Brigade, on his, probably second or third tour to Vietnam, he was killed in
action. Captain Eddie Molino. He was a green beret the first time he went to Vietnam. He
came back and went to helicopter school, and then he went back to Vietnam, and he was
lost in a crash, or he was shot down in Cambodia. But as a small community, we have a
very large number of veterans from all services, all eras of the service. We have probably
over 300 veterans on this reservation now. My own side of the family, my brother was in
the Navy, he served on the U.S.S. Cole, which was a Destroyer. My brother Roland, he
served in Fort Myer, Virginia, with a unit that’s called USASCAF. It’s a unit that
performs services to all the Congressional people and stuff. Big wheels in the
Washington, D.C. area. One of the high side of his tour over there in Fort Myer was he
got to drive in one of the inaugural parades. And my nephew, Garland Deppler, was in
the Navy, serving on the U.S.S. Ranger as an aircraft mechanic, the same as I was. So we
had a lot of good talks with him. My cousin, Bernard Rose, served in the Army. I have a
�
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grandson, Kendrick Owyhee. He’s been in the Army since 2000, May of 2000. And he
volunteered to be a cavalry scout. And what they do is, they operate Humvees and
Bradleys, and they go out and scout in front of the troops before they move in. And he
took his training at Fort Knox. Kentucky. And then after his training, he was assigned to
the Third Armored Cavalry in Fort Carson, Colorado. And then, after the 9/11, he went to
Iraq with the Third Armored Cavalry. And then he came back for a short break, and then
went back again. Back to Iraq with the same unit. And then he was selected to be an
instructor at the U.S. Army armor school at Ft. Knox, Kentucky. And after he finished
there, he went to the Thirteenth Armored Cavalry Regiment at Ft. Bliss, Texas. And he
went back to Iraq again. And then, after he got back from Iraq, he got assigned to the 4th
Infantry Division in Fort Carson, Colorado. And with the 61st Cavalry. And then he went
back to, went to Afghanistan. And then he came back, he was back about a year. And just
this past March, he went back to Afghanistan with the 61st Cavalry, 4th Infantry. So he’s
over there now in Afghanistan. So he had five tours, so that’s equivalent to five years in a
combat zone. But I’m proud of what he did, and also proud of all our young men and
women who are serving on active duty now. A lot of them are staying in and not coming
back because of the way our economy is presently. But we had a lot of people during
World War II. Almost all our male people were in the military. And this was a real
hardship to the families that were left behind. Because back then, everything was
rationed. And if your family member was in the military, you were issued ration cards.
And you used these cards to buy sugar, leather goods, tires if you owned a car, gasoline,
things like that. Because during the war years, everything was restricted. You couldn’t
just go out and buy them. And so, our people were all over in Europe, and the
�
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China/Burma area, in the Pacific, in all branches of service. And after they all came back,
some of them went on to school, and learned some trades. Others came back and started
ranching, and doing other things. And raising families. And a lot of them chose to be our
tribal leaders with our tribal government. And then Korea came about, and a lot of our
young men, some volunteered to go into the military. Others were drafted. And about,
probably 40-50 people from our little reservation here ended up in Korea. And Korea was
a bad place to be because of the real cold weathers they had there, where people couldn’t
fight good because everything was freezing. Their guns would freeze up. And plasma that
they tried to give to wounded troops would freeze. And things like that. But lot of them
came back, and like I said, we lost two people over there. And then, during Vietnam, a lot
of our young men also went to Vietnam. And some were wounded pretty bad. Two were
killed. And lot of them ran into each other at the different hospitals, like in Washington,
and in California. So, they all got together, and enjoyed their company. And then, after
that, Desert Storm, the first Gulf War came about, and some of our young men ended up
over there, also. And then, after 9/11, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq came about, and a
lot of our young men and women volunteered for the services, and ended up in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and other areas in the Middle East. And like I said, some of them are
choosing to remain in the military, and others came back, used their military training to
get jobs, like with the Border Patrol, working with the military, and teaching other
military personnel from the skills they learned in the military. So that’s pretty much what
our people have done with their service. And myself, I joined right out of high school,
because at that time, jobs were scarce if you didn’t have training. And back in them days,
there weren’t scholarships like there are now. So, the only option for me was to join the
�
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Air Force. So I joined the Air Force in 1957 when I was 18. I took my basic training at
Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, and then they give you all kinds of qualification tests
in the military. And I qualified to get into aircraft maintenance. So, they sent me to
Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas, and I didn’t know yet what I was going to get into.
Until I got there. And then after I got there, they found out what squadron I was going to,
and they said, “That’s where you go for jet engine training.” So I started my technical
training as a jet engine mechanic. After I completed there, I got assigned to Whiteman
Air Force Base in Missouri as a jet engine mechanic, working on jet engines on B-47
bombers. So I did that for about 2 years, and then I cross-trained over into jet aircraft
maintenance, where I worked on J-33 single engine jet trainers. And I was responsible for
everything on the plane, the engines, landing gears, and everything. And wherever that
plane went, I went. [Laughter] If it went into inspection docks where we had to tear it all
down and everything, and inspect everything, I had to be there and take care of all the
writeups, clear them. Some of the items we had to send to specialty shops like the jet
engine shops, electrical shops. And then when they all come back, we had to put them all
back together, and then get the plane back on the line, and the pilots would do a test hop
on it. And if everything worked, then I ended up back on the flight line with my plane. So
one of the highlights of my tour as an aircraft mechanic was, I was selected to be a crew
chief. Crew chief is the name of the person that’s responsible for the whole airplane. And
I was selected to be a crew chief for the general’s plane. So, the first general I worked for
was a one-star general, a brigadier general. And he left, and the other general that came
in was a two-star general. And then, while I was there, I was up at personnel one day—
well, let me back up just a little bit. No, that’s all right. I went up to personnel to do
�
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something, and I heard people talking that were saying that, “We need three volunteers
from the aircraft field to go into Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Program.” So, I went
back to the flight line and told two of my friends. So, we went back and we volunteered.
And my unit were saying, “We can’t afford to let you go, because we’re going to be short
of people, because people are getting out and they’re getting transferred to different
places in the Air Force.” And finally, we got orders that came down by name, rank, serial
number, and Air Force project. So then, we knew they couldn’t keep us from going. So
then I was reassigned to Forbes Air Force Base in Kansas. I didn’t know what kind of
missile I was going to be assigned to until I got there. After I got there, we found out that
we were going to be on the Atlas E [SM-65E] missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles.
That’s all we knew, we didn’t know what our jobs were going to be. So then, after we
were there for a couple of months, they sent us back to Sheppard Air Force Base in
Texas. And then put us in school, and I found out that I was going to be a missile
maintenance technician. And my job was going to be all the ground support equipment
that supports that intercontinental ballistic missile to be launched. And also, I had to
know everything about the missile itself. So it was a tough school, and I had to struggle
in some areas to make it. But I made it. And then we went back to our base in Kansas. I
knew I was a missile maintenance technician, but yet I didn’t know exactly what I was
going to do. Well, after I got back, they started picking missile launch crews—or, they
called them, “Missile Combat Crews.” They had, there was going to be: two officers; a
missiles combat crew commander; a deputy missile combat crew commander, which is
probably a captain or a first lieutenant; a ballistic missile analyst technician, who is an
expert in electronics, and he was responsible for all the electronics, ground support
�
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equipment, and electronics aboard the missile; and the missile maintenance technician,
which was me, and I was responsible for all the mechanical portions of the site and the
missile; and an engine power production specialist. Our missile sites were self-contained.
We produced our own electric power. Our own heating and cooling, air conditioning.
Everything that was on the site was produced right there. And the site was built so that
we were 25 feet underground, and then our missile was located about a hundred feet
away from us through a long tunnel. And the missile laid horizontally, and then, when we
got ready to launch, it would raise up, and then we would fill it up with rocket propellant
and liquid oxygen, helium, liquid nitrogen, and everything, ‘til it got to the launch point.
So we all had to be at our assigned positions during launch. And do whatever we were
assigned to do. And a lot of those things, we had to know right off of the top of our
heads, because if something went wrong, we didn’t have the luxury of calling in people
from the base. If we were in a launch condition, we had to correct the problem and get the
missile off the ground and on its way. And this is one thing a lot of people didn’t know:
that in 1962, we came very close to a nuclear war with Russia. This was what was called
the “Cuban Missile Crisis,” where the Russians were building missiles on the island of
Cuba, and these missiles were capable of hitting every major city in the United States,
with the exception of a very small portion, probably, up on the northeast part of the state
of Washington. And these were all nuclear weapons, which would have just wiped out
everything they hit. And our missiles carried nuclear weapons also. We didn’t know
where our targets were. That’s one thing that they never told us, we had a selection of
Target A or B. We didn’t know where they were. We didn’t know if they were
groundburst or airburst. So we didn’t know if they were going to, the warheads were
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going to burst before they hit the ground, or burst when they hit the ground. You know,
you’ve all seen what atomic bombs did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombs, atomic
bombs, that were dropped there were seven kilotons. This means they were about seven
thousand tons of TNT, or equivalent to that. And the one that was dropped on Nagasaki
was about 12 kilotons, or 12,000 tons, of TNT. Our warheads were rated at about 8
megatons. This is 8 million tons of TNT. And when they exploded on the ground from
point zero, which is the center of where the bomb hit, probably 25 miles out from that
point is going to be nothing. And from there on out, the destruction will be less and less.
But once the bomb explodes, then all that air that the bomb pushes out is going to go out.
Then it’s going to cause a vacuum. And then, that vacuum, all that air that got pushed
out’s got to go somewhere. So all that air’s going to come back in, causing more
destruction, and go on up. So. So it’s, it was very destructive. But we didn’t know exactly
how close we came to a nuclear war. Normally, on the site, we have one crew per site, of
five people on the launch crew and four security guards. During the Cuban crisis, they
doubled that. We had two crews, which is ten people, and eight security people, and they
doubled our length of tours, so we were on the site for 48 hours at a time. Both the
missile crews and the security guards. So, it got pretty crowded down in the missile sites.
But, if our President Kennedy wasn’t as strong as he was, there is no telling where we
would have ended. So, be proud of your relatives who served in the military. Thank them.
Because they, all of them, we owe our gratitude, our freedom, our way of life. To be here,
to practice our native ways, to practice our languages. So. And that’s, I want you guys to
be sure that you respect your people. Have respect for your elders. Respect your
language. Respect your Tribe. Know who you are, know where you came from. Know
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your language. You may not know it fluently, but learn it from elders. Be curious. Always
be willing to learn. So that’s some of what I’ve encountered. And the main thing I want
to emphasize on you is, stay in school. Because if you do plan to go in the military, there
are a lot of very good careers now. But you need a lot of schooling to get into them. Like,
there’s a lot of computer fields that are open to you, that, if you go through it, finish it in
the military, there’s lot of jobs on the civilian side that’ll be open to you, that you can
qualify for. There’s a lot of jobs in the military that you can qualify for. Good jobs in the
civilian world. Or they’ll prepare you to be, be ahead when you do come back and decide
to go to, go on to college or whatever you want to do. But the main thing is, develop your
interests now, and look at what courses are going to help you through your high school
years. And take those courses. And if I didn’t take Physics—I think that helped me the
most—I wouldn’t have got in to all the technical skills that I was able to get into. So
think about it. Think about it, about what you want to do. Now, and while you’re in
school. And think ahead, five or ten years down the road. So, let’s kind of move on to
what our Native Americans contributed to our country. And our Native Americans have
always been active in our military. For over 200 years, when our country was first being
developed, they sided with our frontiersmen against the British, and the French. And the
frontiersmen learned a lot of skills from our native people. How to fight. And lot of those
skills were passed on to the non-Indians, like the Rogers’ Rangers from the wars, early
wars. They used those skills of the Rogers’ Rangers, they handed them down to what’s
now our Special Forces, our Green Berets, our Marine Recon, our SEALs. Those skills
they learned were skills that were taught to them by the Native Americans. So, our Native
Americans played a big part in what our military is now. And our Native Americans have
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the highest enlistment rate of any ethnic group in our country. We have more Indians per
capita in the military than all the other ethnic groups, like the Hispanics, the blacks, the
whites. And our leaders appreciate that. And that’s because of our, the warrior traditions,
from all of our elders, and our different tribes, that were passed down to us. And what
that tradition said was that the warriors are to protect our people, our homelands, our
property, our way of life, our religion, and our game, and everything that Native
Americans survived on before the Europeans came. So those were things that they
learned, and those were passed down by our ancestors, down to us. And out of those
warrior traditions, to qualify to be in the military, you had to be brave, you had to be
dedicated, you had to have strength. You had to have pride—pride in yourself, pride in
your country. And that’s what our native people bring to us. The other thing that, other
thing that’s different with the Native Americans in the military is that, before they go in,
they go through ceremonies to bless them. And a lot of times, they are given things to
take with them to go to war. Little medicine bags to carry with them that may have
different things in them, or eagle feathers that has been blessed and given to them. Like
my grandson, he carried an eagle feather all the way through his deployments, that was
blessed by two combat veterans. And one time, he was telling me that him and another
guy, that they were on this Bradley, which is like a small tank, and an enemy fired a
rocket-propelled grenade at them. And there was just a small opening, there was no way
that two of them could get through that small opening, so they just stood there and
watched that rocket-propelled grenade coming at them. And before it got there, the
grenade disintegrated. And another time, his Bradley ran over a mine, a big mine, and it
didn’t detonate. So, he said that was probably because of what he carried with him. The
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eagle feather. That was to protect him. So, that’s how we are different from the nonIndians. Some of the other things that you have probably seen, is like the flag raising on
Iwo Jima. The marines raising the flag. And this was, the picture that was taken shows
the marines raising the flag. And that picture was taken by Joseph Rosenthal. That picture
was the second flag-raising. There was a first flag-raising of a smaller flag. And there
was a Native American marine that took part in that. And his name was Louis Charlo. He
was from the Salish tribe, of the Flathead Reservation in Montana. The second flagraising also had a Native American. And this was Corporal Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from
the Gila River Indian Reservation in Arizona. Of the five people that raised the second
flag, only three of them survived. Ira Hayes survived, John Bradley, a pharmacist from
the Navy—he was a corpsman—and René Gagnon, a Marine private. And after that flagraising, they were ordered to return to the United States, and they were put on a tour to
help sell war bonds. And that’s what they did. And Ira Hayes told the people wherever he
went, he said, “I’m not a hero. My heroes didn’t come home.” And that was his thought,
and that was the way he thought about his military. And that’s the way a lot of our people
who come back are. They don’t claim to be anything, they keep it within themselves. So,
I thought that was interesting that there was two Native Americans with the flag-raising.
The other contribution that came about was our code-talkers. In World War II, the
Choctaw were code-talkers, and they served in Europe. There was 12,000 American
Indians that served in World War I, although they were not citizens yet. Yet they served.
And one of those, you’ve probably seen the movie about—oh, what’s his name, he’s—
anyway, a guy from World War I who was a conscientious objector. He was from the
Southern states, a white guy. They made a movie about him, and he won the
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Congressional Medal of Honor, for capturing Germans. But one thing that was never
brought about or made known was, one of the Choctaw code-talkers, by the name of Joe
Oklahombi, also captured 171 German prisoners, and killed 79 Germans. But he wasn’t
awarded the Medal of Honor, he was given the Silver Star. And that was a fallacy of a lot
of not only Indians, but the Japanese, the blacks, and the Hispanics that did great deeds of
bravery, lot of them weren’t recognized like the non-Indians. ‘Til recently. But the codetalkers, the best-known was the Navajos. They—let me back up to the code-talkers in
World War I. There were code-talkers from the Cherokee tribes, the Cheyenne tribes, the
Choctaw, the Comanche, Osage, and the Yankton Sioux. Then I mentioned about one of
them who did a great deed. In World War II, there were Assiniboines, Cherokee,
Chippewa, Oneida, Choctaw, Comanche, Hopi, Kiowa, Menominee, Muskogee Creek
and Seminole, Navajo, Pawnee, Sac and Fox, Meskwaki, Sioux—Lakota and Dakota
dialect. And the most well-known was the Navajo code-talkers who served in the Marine
Corps. They originally recruited twenty-nine Navajos to develop a code to be used,
because the other codes that the U.S. used were being broken by the Japanese. So, these
29 original code-talkers developed codes, and they taught these to the other code-talkers
that came after them, in their own language. And they used their own language, alphabet,
different things that they talked to. Like for an ant, letter for ant was A, or for the Navajo
was wol-la-chee, and different things like that. And they had to develop words for things
that weren’t common to the Navajo language, like fighter planes. So they had to develop
something for them, so they called a fighter planes “hummingbirds.” And different things
like that, that they didn’t have words for. And they were assigned to every unit that went
to war in the Pacific. And not only that, they assigned Marines to watch out for them, to
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protect them. And not mainly to protect them from being captured; to protect them so that
there was no way that they could, to give out the code that they had developed. So if they
ever got captured, these people that were there to protect them, they had orders to shoot
and kill these Navajo code-talkers. My son went to a conference when he was going to
SIPI in Socorro, New Mexico. And a code-talker came in and talked to them. And he told
them, “We weren’t code-talkers by choice.” The marines told them that, “If you don’t
volunteer to be a code-talker, we know where your families live.” So a lot of them who
didn’t volunteer were made to be code-talkers. The other code-talkers that served in
Europe was the Comanches. They served with the 4th Infantry Division in Europe. And
they did the same thing. They used their own language, Comanche language, which is
related to the language that you guys are going to be studying while you guys are over
there. And they used the same languages to talk to each other. And they also developed
words that they could use in their own language. Like, for Hitler, they called him a “crazy
white man” in the Comanche language. It was, “Posa Taibo.” That’s what they called
him. Crazy White Man. But they had to develop words for things that weren’t common to
the Comanche language. And other tribes served in different places all over the world.
The Hopi people served in Europe with the Army Air Force, and they also did that, used
their language to talk about the missions and things like that. So, it’s been said that the
war would have lasted longer had it not been for the code-talkers. So, by shortening the
war, many lives were lost. Because if the Japanese didn’t surrender, the U.S. was going to
attack Japan itself, with great losses. So… So our people saved a lot of lives. And other
things that happened is that many Indians were decorated for their bravery during the
war. And the United States has a medal that’s called a Congressional Medal of Honor.
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This medal was established by George Washington, when he was the first president. And
awarded for bravery in all conflicts since then. And the criteria for winning this award is
very strict. Only 36,000 medals have been awarded, from all the conflicts from when
George Washington fought to our present conflicts. Prior to World War I, like during the
Indian campaigns, nine Indian scouts were awarded the Medal of Honor. In World War
II, seven American Indians were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. In Korea,
three were awarded the Medal of Honor. And three were awarded Medal of Honor in
Vietnam. And there again, some of these were late in coming. Like the award to a Sioux
warrior from the community of Sisseton, South Dakota. He fought in Korea and World
War II. And he was awarded, his actions for his valor in Korea. But there was no followthrough on the recommendations, or the recommendations were lost, and different things
like that, until some Congressional people and tribal people pushed it. And so, just
recently, they awarded him his Medal of Honor, but he had already died, so he didn’t live
to see that. In our little community here, we have veterans from all branches of service,
all eras. And when I came back from the service, I thought about, how can we honor our
people? They deserve some kind of recognition. So, I started working on a database, to
try to list all our people from here that served in the military in all branches of service.
And later on, after I developed it and other people saw it, I got more help, and we
developed more, and we even included people who have relatives that live here but
served in the military from different reservations. And we added them to our database,
and we keep track of all our people who are currently on active duty, where they’re on
active duty. And if new people join, the families let us know, and we add them. And we
also include employees from our organizations that serve our tribe, like the Bureau of
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Indian Affairs, Law Department, our schools, and all our different people that come here
to work with our tribe. So we add them to our database also. So, right now it’s pretty
complete. So we have a total of about 312 veterans living here in Duck Valley, and I
think I already covered how we got to name the Legion Post, and our casualties from
here. Every November, we have a Veteran’s Day Powwow. And the Veterans lead the
Grand Entry. And we have a eagle staff that we carry. And on that eagle staff, we have,
on the medicine wheel, two eagle feathers for the two people killed in World War II, and
two eagle feathers on the medicine wheel for the two that were killed in Korea. On the
staff itself are seven eagle feathers for the seven Native Americans from the state of
Nevada who were killed in action in Vietnam. And those are, those names on the staff are
read off as the Grand Entry comes in. So that is one thing that we make sure that we do,
every year. And another thing that we make sure that we do is that, we honor our veterans
who are deceased, while they are being buried. We always have a veterans’ group there
with firing squad, play the taps, and present the flag to the next of kin. We also plant
flags on all our graves on our five cemeteries. And that is an ongoing things that we
always want to carry on. So, that’s pretty much my presentation on how we honor our
veterans, both from here and all over America and other tribes. And I appreciate the
opportunity to talk to you people. And should you ever be in our area, or have questions,
don’t be afraid to ask me. And if you see a veteran or somebody in uniform, go shake
their hands and thank them. And they’ll appreciate it. In closing, I would like to say I
appreciate Norman Cavanaugh’s interest in working with the SYLAP program in
developing things to be presented to all the participants there at SYLAP, and I want to
thank him for his efforts in promoting culture here with our tribe. And while he was
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working for the Great Basin College. And I had the pleasure of working with Norman
Cavanaugh when I was working with the Indian Health Service, so I have known Norman
for quite a while, and I always appreciate talking to him. And I learn a lot of things by
talking to him. So he’s always pleasant to be around. And if you see him, you know what
I mean. So if you see him, if he happens to be there, just tell him thank you, and tell him
you appreciate his efforts. Thanks.
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
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GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
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2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Loyd Hanks
Location
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Duck Valley reservation (Owyhee, NV-ID)
Original Format
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AVI and MP4 format
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00:58:27
Transcription
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http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/624
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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Loyd Hanks - Oral history (04/16/2014)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history interview with Loyd Hanks, Western Shoshone from Duck Valley reservation, NV-ID, on 04/16/2017
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Loyd Hanks is a Western Shoshone from the Duck Valley reservation his family came from both Paradise Valley, NV and Reese River, NV. Loyd talks about how he became a crew chief in the U.S. Air Force as part of a jet engine mechanic crew, and how he also worked on a missile crew during the Cuban missile crisis involving Russia. He also speaks and honors previous Native American military men, and also pays tribute towards the different Native American code-talkers during the various wars involving the U.S. He also speaks about how the culture helped these individuals survive the turmoil of the wars, and moreover gives advice to the younger audience relaying that learning and preserving the culture is vital and worthwhile.</p>
<p>Video pending</p>
<p><a title="Read Loyd Hanks oral history transcript" href="/omeka/admin/files/show/624" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read Loyd Hanks oral history transcript</a> [pdf file]</p>
Creator
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Source
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Great Basin Indian Archives - GBIA 033
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archives
Date
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04/16/2014 [16 April 2014]; 2014 April 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
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/410
Language
A language of the resource
English
code talkers
Community
Crossroads
Duck Valley Reservation
GBIA
history
military
Shoshone
Story
U.S Force
veteran
-
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/4b93e8893cb31b0575fe8781ff4a2bb0.jpg
bf2ef1fe389def9c20b79bf47b05ed9e
https://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/files/original/1e307282699a2808a68b24ed0332bb7d.pdf
5cd017f315bac9ae33a8fc6aeae90a7a
PDF Text
Text
Ronnie
Dixon
Great
Basin
Indian
Archive
GBIA
043
Oral
History
Interview
by
Norm
Cavanaugh
November
5,
2014
BaBle
Mountain,
NV
Great
Basin
College
•
Great
Basin
Indian
Archives
1500
College
Parkway
Elko,
Nevada
89801
hDp://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/
775.738.8493
Produced
in
partnership
with
Barrick
Gold
of
North
America
�GBIA 043
Interviewee: Ronnie Dixon
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: November 5, 2014
D:
My name is Ronnie Dixon. I’m of the Western Shoshone tribe, of the Battle Mountain
Band, and I was born and raised in Battle Mountain, Nevada. And I always say I was
original inhabitant there, because I was born right on the Indian Colony in the little moon
house, and delivered by my grandma. And my parents are George Dixon and Elizabeth
Dixon. I was raised by my grandmother Annie and Jack Muncy, and the story of me
being raised by them—but I don’t know if it’s fact, but—my mother had twins, and she
wasn’t feeling too good. So, my grandma offered to watch me until she got feeling better.
We lived next door, and when it was time to take me back to my mother, my grandma
just decided that she was going to keep me, so she kept me and raised me. But, she was
quite the lady. And people said I was pretty spoiled kind of a guy. And I went to a Native
gathering called GONA this summer, and some of the elders were talking about some of
the history of Battle Mountain. And a lot of people there. And I was feeling pretty proud,
you know, being included in the discussion, and one of the elders told a story about how,
as a pretty-good sized kid—I must have been—she said, “Yeah, I remember you used to
run around in big old cloth diaper! You must’ve been pretty big, because, man, you ran
and played with all the kids!” [Laughter] You know, I had to laugh at that, but that was—
I said, “Well, that’s because my grandma loved me a lot.” You know, she wanted to make
sure I was okay. But, I remember some of the old elders there that lived around the circle,
and the original building of Battle Mountain, I believe, was, like, the early 1900s there,
and there was a circle. And my mother told me about where they used to live, and I
believe that they lived and were raised right around Golconda area. And I believe about
the time the Owyhee reservation was established, our family was supposed to go to
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Owyhee, but didn’t. Chose to stay there around Golconda area and Battle Mountain area.
And where they used to live was where there was, like, water available. Because in those
days, they had the artesian wells that ran all the time. So, if somebody would let them live
on their land, that’s where they lived. And they wintered out in tents. And they said that
when little babies got sick in the wintertime, they usually didn’t make it. But then, she
tells about when the Battle Mountain Colony was put up. She said a bunch of, that the
Indians from Stewart Indian School came and put those houses up. And they felt pretty
good moving into the new housing. But I remember as a young boy, being in there, and it
seemed a long ways to Battle Mountain—to town to Battle Mountain—because there was
nothing in there, in between there, but now there’s a lot of buildings and businesses there,
because it’s grown. But I went to school there in Battle Mountain, and it was told that my
grandma took me to school first day of kindergarten. Because we all walked to school,
and took me to school. And I kind of remember—when he left, I ran away and ran home!
[Laughter] And then, he took me back the next day, and he and the teacher marched me
into the schoolroom, and she shut the door so I wouldn’t run away. I was kind of like a
wild animal, I guess; not used to being around taipos I guess! [Laughter] But, I went to
school in Battle Mountain, and I remember, you know, it seems like it snowed more in
those days. And I remember going to school through the deep snow, and my sisters
would make tracks, and all us little guys would walk behind like little rabbits or
something. But, I attended grammar school in Battle Mountain, elementary school. I
remember some of the old teachers that were there. And years later, I worked in old
folks’ home in Elko, and the old principal was there. And I reminded her of the times that
she used to take us in her office and lift up our shirts. And man, she had a leather strap
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she’d whip us with. And I told her that—I didn’t mean to, but when I told her that, she
started crying, you know? She felt bad about it. But those days, school could get pretty
rough. And of course, us Indian kids, we’d get roughed up pretty good, too: get our ears
pulled, and our hair pulled. But I started high school there in Battle Mountain, and in that
small town, the high school was the Battle Mountain Longhorns, and, man, it’s like little
kids wanted to be a Longhorn, you know? That was the goal. And played football for
Battle Mountain, and really liked it. Really liked sports, sports kind of kept me in school,
because I wasn’t too keen on staying indoors, because I was always looking out the
window, and always wanted to leave. But it was pretty good experience. And my family
was, there were like nine of us, and my oldest sister passed away, and then my other
siblings passed away, and there’s like four of us left. And I remember later wondering
how my mother healed up, with losing all her children. And I realize she had a good faith,
and she had a good spirit. My grandma always says that she was like a mother sage hen,
where when her little kids were in danger, she’d lift up her wings and all her little kids
would run in under it. And my dad, he worked on the ranches. And he was gone. He
would go for months at a time, because in those days you expected to stay out there. And
we’d see him, and when he’d come to town, and he’d be happy coming to town, but he
had a drinking problem, too, so—you know, he’d go on a binge, and then they’d take him
back to ranch, and we didn’t see him too often. But I didn’t finish high school. I dropped
out my senior year, and didn’t connect it to drinking, but it was connected to drinking,
because on our school break, I was drinking with some older guys. I went back, and tried
again, and I wasn’t interested anymore. But after high school, worked on the ranches for
a while, and then I was drafted into the Army, and had some eye-opening experiences
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there, because, I mean, it was like I just come out of the brush. You know, small-town
boy. And we got our draft notices and caught a Greyhound bus up to Salt Lake. Whole
bunch of Nevada guys would get on that bus, and they eventually was inducted into the
Army. And I didn’t know what was going on, and these drill sergeants was shouting at
us, and, man! I was wondering, “What’s the matter with these guys? Why’re they mad at
us?” [Laughter] Because, you know, I hadn’t experienced that before. So, we stayed there
Salt Lake overnight, and caught a plane from Salt Lake to San Fransisco, California.
Never been on a plane in my life. And that was just quite an experience. And then, so, we
landed in San Fransisco airport. And that was towards the end of the [19]60s, and I got to
San Fransisco airport, and that was first time I ever saw hippies. And man, there was a lot
of hippies at the San Fransisco airport! So, I looked at them, and I just started laughing,
you know? I couldn’t help it, because they’re strange-looking people! And here I was,
with the big belt buckle on, and my tight jeans, and shirt, and they started looking at me
and pointing at me, and they started laughing at me! So we just kind of laughed back and
forth, back and forth, and then we caught a bus to Fort Ord where we’re going to do our
basic training. And man, we pulled up on a bus at one in the morning, and all these big
drill sergeants come charging at us! And they had those Smokey Bear hats, and they was
screaming at us, and cussing us, and it was culture shock, you know? God, I’d never been
treated that way in my life! But it was quite a shock. And the first thing, the next day, I
was just thinking, “God, I miss my mother, my poor old mother!” [Laughter] You know?
But I went to Basic Training, and then went to Advanced Training, and then spent a year
in Vietnam. And that was another culture shock, and experiences that were so different
from what I went through. And I had a drinking problem in Vietnam, too. I drank a lot,
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because a lot of things were allowed. So, returned to the States, and still had some time to
do, like six months, so I finished it up in North Carolina. My MOS in Vietnam was in an
ordinance unit, working an Ammunition Depot. And at that time, it was long bed, and it
was the largest ordnance storage depot in the world at that time. And so, I finished up in
North Carolina, and came back to Battle Mountain and started—well, at first I hired on at
the mines, because I had a good record with the military, and they hired me. And of
course, I started partying at the mines, and I didn’t last at the mines, so I started working
on the ranches again as a buckaroo. And a good experience was, that’s the most time I
had with my dad when he was sober. Because I worked on the same ranch he did, and I
got a different view and different feelings from him. Because people told me he was
pretty smart guy, talented guy, and I was able to see that because I worked a number of
years with him. So, I got to appreciate that. And at the time I started, there was still a lot
of the old-timers there. I mean, these guys were, man, seventy, seventy-five, eighty, and
still riding! And I remember not thinking of them as old men, because they were so
active. But I did that lifestyle for a whole bunch of years.
C:
Do you remember the names of some of those old-timers?
D:
Yeah, there was my dad, George Dixon. In fact, there’s Benner Wines from Owyhee,
and there was Jess Lazarica, and Ferguson Johnny from Fallon, and Tony Ormachea
from Fallon, cattlemen. And in those days, they—I remember leaving the main ranch in
March, and we didn’t come back ‘til July. We stayed out and we camped in the
mountains. But there was a lot of good teaching there, you know? Values. I remember my
dad would—that desert country, that was a different kind of riding than when I went up
north. Because went a long ways, and not much water, and I remember my dad telling me
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that wherever we camped, that was our home. And I remember, we’d be under brush, and
by a little water hole. Man, he’d tell us, “This is our home. We got to keep it clean. We
got to keep it good, and we got to treat it with respect.” And then, when I first started, it
was pretty good, pretty new, and then that’s all I wanted to do at that time. And I kept
doing it, and later I went to work for a place where I did a lot of living alone. I’d stay in
little cabins, and I wouldn’t see people for, like, two weeks at a time. Then I kind of got
so I didn’t socialize much with people. I wouldn’t talk very much. And I remember when
I came to town and started partying, that’s when I really talked and socialized, but they
didn’t like me around, because I didn’t really—I kind of forgot it, strange as it sounds.
But then, again, what I experienced out there was a good spirit. Good spirit, being out in
the open, you know? And felt a good freedom of movement. And the way those guys
treated the land and Mother Earth with respect and kindness, and they knew how to live
those ways. And a lot of traveling by horseback, too. But during those days is when I
went through a period of drinking, too. But I didn’t realize it, though, that I was picking
up some spirituality, and from the animals, that would come later in life, you know?
Come together. And then, so, those guys—unknowing people would say, “Well, if you
got married, you’ll settle down.” So, I did get married to a young lady who was really a
beautiful, good person. And we had three children. But it didn’t help me settle down,
because I kept doing my old behaviors and my old ways. And that went on for many
years, until she realized that she had to leave with the children. But one of the things my
mother told us was, regardless of what’s happened, we take care of our own, and we take
care of our own people. We stayed together for a while, and then left, and then— So, I
still would keep the part-time jobs, and work for a little while, and just kind of moving
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around, moving around the country. But, it was in 1988, after really having some
problems with alcohol, and I was a binge drinker, is where she had worked in a treatment
center, and then she used to tell me about the recovery. And I had reached my bottom at
that time, and it was like I had a lot of near-physical deaths, you know? And not just in a
lump time, but I’ve had, like, three airplane rides—life flights—and two helicopter rides,
and eight or nine ambulance rides, because I just, I guess I was accident-prone, and just
kind of do—even now, kind of doing some reckless kind of things. But I ended up in a
treatment center, and realized that what I was missing was the spirit. And what I was
really missing was the Native American—even the Native American spirit, and the
Native ways, our tribal ways, and our family ways. And I had drifted away from that,
basically, by drinking the alcohol. So it’s funny how in the treatment center, those
feelings started coming back to me. And the pride of being a Shoshone started coming
back to me, and one of the things that, in the treatment centers and the recovery circles, is
they really appreciate and like to hear the Shoshone stories, and the Shoshone ways, and
the Shoshone spirit ways. And the blessings of being the first peoples in this country.
And what a blessing, because I was able to come back to the sweat lodges, and now listen
to the Native teachings, and even, nowadays, I regret that there was so many years away,
in, like, I don’t know, a strange soul place, you know? But nowadays, it’s like—it’s a
wanting. Wanting to be around my people, and appreciation to being around my people.
Because presently, I’m employed here in Owyhee in the Behavior Health Department as
Substance Abuse counselor. But coming back to this country, and being around my
people, has been such a blessing, and spiritually uplifting. I’ve been here before, and it
just feels so good to be in the mountains. And I just recently moved from a little mining
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town, of Battle Mountain, and to be up here, and the air is pure—and like I say, I can feel
the spirits, you know? Feel the goodness up here. I can even see the water flowing, and
listen to the water. And a lot of my relatives are up here, and a lot of my friends are here.
But one of the things that happened to me during my sobriety—and it’s been over
twenty-six years now that I have had sobriety and the spirit, and a good soul feeling, and
closer to the teachings of the Shoshone people. And I’ve just experienced the closeness,
the closeness of the people. And getting at that, being an elder now, and listening to the
elders speak, and listening to them talk, they talk in a special way, in a good way, in a
quiet way, and can throw a lot of humor in there, and if you haven’t been around them,
you don’t know that they’re doing some humor. And they may not be smiling, but they’re
sure smiling aside to watch how you react. And nowadays, the storytelling is so
important. And I just think about, going back to my grandma, when I was a little boy, and
it was nighttime because we didn’t have any electricity, either. And then, so nighttime,
people went to bed pretty early. And I remember every night, she’d tell me a story.
Creation stories, when the little animals used to talk to each other. And in fact, I just
remembered, I had a dream last night or night before last. And I dreamed—this connects
with right here tonight—I had a dream that there was, like, a noise in the air. And I
looked up in the sky at night, but I could see this big, colored snake going across the sky.
A big, huge snake. And that’s one of the stories she used to tell me about when the
Shoshones were way out in the hills and the mountains. And she said it was different
those days, when there wasn’t any roads, and there wasn’t any white men around. When
you was out there alone, you were really out there alone. And there was a hunter out there
in a canyon, and heard a terrible racket up in the sky. And he looked up in the sky, and
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what he saw up in the sky was two big snakes with wings on, and they were fighting. And
it was a terrible sound. And finally, one of them fell to the earth. And the hunter went
there, and it was a big, long snake with wings. And they had been fighting. But she’d tell
me all kinds of stories. That, and how every little animal talked, and every little animal—
and everybody, they all got along. They all got along. And I called her Kakutsi, she’s my
kakutsi. So every evening, I’d say, “Kakutsi, tell me a story.” Because I got a story every
night. And every evening, she’d tell me a story. And I’d say, “Kakutsi, tell me a story.”
And she’d bawl me out every time. She’d say, “They’re not stories. They’re real! They’re
not stories.” And I’d listen to all the stories, you know? But every once in a while, that
feeling, that good spirit of the old folks will come back to me. And where I was living in
Battle Mountain, I was living in her old house. And man, the spirit felt good! Spirit felt
good in there, and you could feel the prayers of the elders and my old grandpa. And I just
remember some of his teachings. And he’d say it over and over. He’d say, “Boy, when
you work, work when you work, and when you go to school, go to school when you go to
school. When you play—play when you play.” And I didn’t get his meaning at the time,
and I’d say, “Oh, Grandpa, you always say that!” But I understand what he was saying,
you know? [Laughter] Focus on what you’re doing, and do the best at what you’re doing
now. And to go on about my old grandpa and grandma, in those days, nobody—hardly
anybody had vehicles, cars, you know? So my old grandfather, they’d just invite
themselves and go stay with somebody. Wherever—Elko, Winnemucca, wherever. And
he had bedroll, like the old buckaroos, canvas bedroll? And I remember it, we’d leave
early in the morning, catch a bus, and he’d throw his bedroll on his shoulder. We’d go to
catch the Greyhound bus, and we’d go up—uninvited, we’d knock on their friends’ door,
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and they’d let us in, and roll our bedroll on the floor. We’d—they’d stay there a week!
[Laughter] You know? Because that’s the way it was in those days. You didn’t have to be
invited to go in somebody’s house and just stay there. But there was some good times
being with old folks, and that was a blessing in those days. And now, I’m Grandpa, and I
have two grandchildren, you know? The blessing is, is I can—I do spend time with them,
and I’m able to teach them the good spirit ways. The good, kind ways, with the feeling of
being connected to the good spirit, and to Mother Earth, and to our Father. Our Father
above. And teach the eagle feathers, and teach the prayers—and feel the prayers more
than just the talk and chanting someplace. I just heard somebody talking the other day,
and they said, “Boy, when something gets hard—you got a task, you got a hard
experience—do it as a prayer. Do it in a spiritual way.” Which kind of takes me back to
when I did sober up, and was just really feeling that spiritual experience, and the miracle
that people talk about; the change. And I came from a mean, angry background. But felt
the softening of the heart, and the change within, the change of personality. And I started
listening to other people. And at that time, I was prejudiced. And I blamed the white man
for everything, you know? For just intruding on our people. And then, so, when I got into
the recovery for alcohol, I was told by an old Native American Indian elder, and he said,
“Alcohol and drugs haven’t been in our country very long, because the European hasn’t
been here very long. But they brought over that stuff. And they used it back there for
centuries and centuries, and they know how to use it, they know how to drink it. But
when it’s brought to our Native people, we’re just not made for it, and we just have a
hard time with it. We don’t quite understand it; even our medicine men, even our healers,
we don’t know how to work with the strange disease, as it’s called.” And he said, “Where
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you need to learn about it is, you need to sit among the white man. You need to sit at a
meeting, because they’re the expert on it, and they know about it. And what will happen
is, you’ll get to be a better-feeling person, and also you’ll get to be a better Shoshone.”
And sure enough, without it, it sure helps me keep in touch with my people and my spirit.
And one of the things I do, is I love sharing with my Shoshone people. In the recovery,
and in the spirit, and whenever I’m able to. But it seems like that’s when the real spiritual
experiences started happening, is when I got rid of that soul poisoning, and that spirit
poisoning. And so, as far as the good spiritual things that happened to me is, I learned
that it takes for me a spiritual way to stay in the recovery. You know, they call it, the
recovery program, “a power greater than myself, more than me,” something. Because I
tried so hard by myself, and other people tried to help me, but it didn’t work, until—there
was something within, and some people say we have that good medicine within ourselves
anyway. We have a good medicine, and when we start using that good medicine within
ourselves, good things start to happen. And good things did start to happen. And one of
the happenings in my recovery is, I went to working with horses, and I returned kind of to
the—well, I wouldn’t say I “returned,” because when I used to cowboy in my drinking
days, and meanness and my mean spirit, I used to treat livestock rough. I mean, I used to
fight them, you know? Fight a horse. But with the change in spirit and what I call the
good medicine is, I was able to now start to treat an animal, and everything around me,
and people included, in a good way. Because I was starting to treat myself in a good way,
too. And so, today, I believe in the horse spirit, and I believe in all the spirits that
surround us. Grandfather and the ways, and the sacredness, I believe is all around us. It’s
not just in a certain spot, or we don’t have to go to a certain spot, or I don’t have to go to
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a certain spot, anyway. But with my recovery and the spirit of animals, that’s what I do,
and that’s what I started, and that’s what I do now. But it’s just, I spend most of, a good
deal of my time working with horses. And I feel the good spirit, and I even—well, one of
the things that somebody told me, when you get ahold of yourself, and you know where
you’re at, you know what you’re doing, you have a balance with the world, and balance
with Creator, is, what happens during troubled times is a person loses traditions. And I
was told now, as we’re moving along, we give all up our traditions. We can develop or
hook onto our own traditions as we go along. And I notice that now, is traditions, every
once in a while, I hear somebody say, Norm or somebody, “That’s what they do! They do
this, and they do that. They go there and they do that.” Well, to me, that’s a tradition that
that person as an individual is practicing. Even when somebody says “Boy, that guy tells
jokes, and he smiles, and he tells stories, good stories,” to me that’s tradition, and that’s
being the blessing to be able to stand for something and live that lifestyle. But so many
things come from working animals. I even—my corrals are all built round, you know?
[Laughter] People ask, “How come your corrals are all round?” And I’m not saying that’s
the way it is, but to me, I like the circle, the healing circles. So I—because I use a lot of, I
use portable corrals, so I can put them around. So all my corrals are round. And I just
believe that our life is in a good roundness and in a good, spiritual, round way. Where are
day is in a circle. It’s not linear and a dropping-off place, it just keeps the good moving as
life’s cycle, it is in a good movement. So, I call my corrals my good spiritual circle. And I
say—and I tell myself and other people, we don’t go in there when we’re in a bad way,
we’re in a bad mood, or we’ve been doing something against our principles and what we
build on. But even careful to let somebody in there with what I call bad medicine. I know
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they’ve got something not right, not going too well in their lives, same as in our homes
and in our lives and in our spirit. I think when we have that good spirit, we’re aware of
protecting ourselves and our families and our friends, and those people around us, and to
me, it’s the warrior way. And a warrior to me means both a man and a woman. Because
there’s certain people out there that I know that they feel strong in a spiritual way, and
they feel good in a spiritual way. And I’m really attracted to them. And then there’s other
people that are talking like they’re in a good way, but I don’t quite have that feeling being
around them. But some of the blessings that I see these days is, I see our younger people
striving and going for an education, and higher education. And just from what I observe
is, with that higher education, they’re able to strive for their goals, and they’re able to
think, and they’re able to accomplish what they want to, and some of them are breaking
out of families that have never gone on to school. But, to me, their thinking also clears
their way to thinking, or return, or to become stronger in their Native culture. Because
they can think, and the kids can see that the way to—or the way to return. Because some
of the younger people that I am around, they are like my mentors, you know? And I may
not be real close to them, but I hear and see what they’re doing. And I can pick up some
good movement, and some good spiritual movement there. And what’s so good these
days is, the culture that’s coming back, and the language that’s coming back. There are
people here in Owyhee that I knew years ago that was starting to teach the language class
to ladies. And they speak pretty darn good now, you know? Because they kept at it, and
they kept at it, and they kept at it. And I think—where I can understand it perfectly, but
then when I go to speak it—which I don’t very often, I’m not around hardly anybody that
speaks it. I will to myself when I’m doing my prayer, and it’s kind of funny, I’ll be in the
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shower and I’ll be singing about, “Ne appe, ne pii.” [40:17] [Laughter] My relatives, and
I don’t have much words, but I kind of say those things over and over. It’s funny. I can
feel it, you know? I can feel the good feeling inside. Speaking it out, I had my old aunt
Jessie Lee, she—my mother passed away at ninety-three, and my aunt passed away at
ninety-six. And I remember those two old ladies, they’d visit my—and they’d visit all
day. And they’d talk in Shoshone all day long. And telling stories, and gossiping, and I
mean, it lasted for a good seven hours, seven-eight hours. But they had so much inside,
that good Shoshone spirit coming out. And I used to love to listen to them, and they’d
forget that I could understand them, and they’d be talking about something, and I’d
correct them: “No, that’s not the way it goes!” But it’s just, being around the Shoshone
people and being here is just so—such a good feeling. Such a good heart feeling. I told
somebody in Battle Mountain the other day that, I said, “Man, it feels so good up here.
The mountains are so pretty and so beautiful, and the air is clean, and boy, and I just feel
the good spirit of my people in a good way.” But the things that are happening nowadays,
I see more and more, they’re—great-grandfather, Creator’s way. Just learn to accept
things that are meant to be. Even coming back to here was meant to me, I had some
experiences connected with Owyhee that—I used to kind of blame Owyhee for some
tragedy, you know? I had—my brother committed suicide up here years ago. And that
was something that I never could handle. And it was kind of sad, because at the time that
they had his funeral, I was drinking, and during the funeral I was up here. And I just
thought of my mother, my poor mother; she must have really been worried about two
suicidal sons. And then, later, I was up here, and I was in the Miner’s Club, and I was
shot there. And nearly died there. Went through crazy, crazy experiences. But those were
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some of the things that I thought was, you know, “Man, that Owyhee’s a bad place for
me!” And then, so I had been working up in a treatment center in Salt Lake, Native
American treatment center, and by golly, got a call from Owyhee. And they needed a
counselor from up here. And I thought of that. I thought, “Man, should I go up there?” I
had years’ sobriety. And I kind of debated it. But I thought, “Well, I might as well go up
there.” And I came up here, and you know—and again, it was a blessing, and a spiritual
blessing to be here. Really started an inner healing process that, for whatever reason, our
Grandfather, our Creator, directed me to come here to Owyhee, Nevada. And really did
some healing, and realized that not only Owyhee, but wherever place that I blamed for
my own wasn’t—it wasn’t the problem, the problem was me. So, what’s neat about the
problem being ourselves and we identify it is, by golly, with the spiritual help and a
spiritual awakening, we can change that problem. Because we have the blessing to, like I
said, pull that medicine out from ourselves. But again, what is so important is the spirit,
and the spirit ways. And I talk to some of my friends, and we might be having some
problem with the dominant society and getting upset about this, but I always say,
“Remember, we are Shoshone.” We are what I call a natural people. That’s not to cut
everybody else down, but is, we have our place, and our place is in these mountains, and
besides these waters, and all this open country of northeastern Nevada, you know? The
Shoshone people were a movement people. And I think we learned to live the land, and
we learned to live the ways, and we had great respect for Creator’s blessing, and for
ourselves. And I just think that what’s some sadness is when the people were moved onto
the Colonies, the little Colonies, you know. On the reservation there’s more space, but
being raised in Colony, and even nowadays in my little hometown Colony, there’s lot of
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problems. There is problems with alcohol and drugs. But I still think, with the younger
generation that are coming up, and with the educational opportunity, man, there are some
good opportunities, and employment opportunities. Which gives the Shoshone people a
good chance to do some movement there. But I think it’s going to take what it’s going to
take now, with what’s happening right now. And me sitting here and being given the
opportunity to share some of my experiences and some of my feelings. But I think it
takes people like the program, Great Basin College, and Norm’s effort to reach out to
people. To reach out to people because I think within the Shoshone people, we have a lot
of talent there, we have a lot of spirit there, we have a lot of teachings. And sometimes,
we can be kind of a quiet people, and we don’t volunteer to speak, but when somebody
asks us to, we can talk pretty good. [Laughter] But, I appreciate being given this
opportunity, and of course there’s some things that I was intending to say, but I probably
will remember later when this is over. But again, I appreciate it, and to share my talk
from the heart. And bless all of the people, and respect all of the people, and you know,
for the young people, after you make your circle and do what you’re going to do out there
to return to the Shoshone way, and strive to keep our language, and strive to keep our
tradition and our spirit and our feelings. And respect each other, and talk to each other,
and smile at each other. Say hi to each other. And with that good feeling, because we are
really a good-feeling people. When you get a bunch of Shoshones together, there’s
laughter, and there’s good times, and there’s kidding, you know? Because we’re so
happy when we get together, and all our families. I’m related to a lot of people here in
Owyhee and Elko area. And one of the things I need to do and intend to do is take time to
visit. Go visit somebody, talk to somebody. Smile. Smile with somebody. And since I’ve
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been here in Owyhee, I’ve been eating a lot—because man, there’s a lot of food offered
in Owyhee! But this is a good place to be, and it’s a good day to walk this Mother Earth,
and the blessings of the Creator, and all the opportunities we have, I believe that’s a good
time. And that’s about all I have to share today, and thank you.
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Western Shoshone Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories of Western Shoshone elders collected by the Great Basin Indian Archive.
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories compiled
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Ronnie Dixon
Location
The location of the interview
Battle Mountain, NV [Battle Mountain Colony]; Owyhee [Duck Valley Reservation]
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/files/show/505
Original Format
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DVD, MP4, and AVI format
Duration
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00:50:35
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
Oral History - Ronnie Dixon (11/05/2014)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral History interview with Ronnie Dixon, Western Shoshone from Battle Mountain, NV, on 11/05/2014
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Ronnie Dixon is a Western Shoshone from the Battle Mountain Band, born and delivered by his grandmother on the Battle Mountain Colony, and was raised in Battle Mountain. He was also raised by his grandmother and grandfather. He tells us about the history of his grandparents, and how he went to school with his sisters and friends. Ronnie then goes on to tell about his times drinking, being a cowboy with his father, and how he was drafted into the Army during Vietnam. He tells us about his time in the Military. And then goes on to tell of his job in Owyhee as a Substance Abuse counselor, and his philosophy around spirituality and drinking.</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 043
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Great Basin Indian Archives
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11/05/2014 [11 November 2014]; 2014 November 11
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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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English
Battle Mountain
Community
Crossroads
Duck Valley Reservation
GBIA
Owhyee
ranching
Shoshone
Story
Substance Abuse
traditions
veteran
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Raymond(Yowell!
Great&Basin&Indian&Archive!
&GBIA!007B!
Oral(History(Interview(by(
Norm(Cavanaugh!
August(17,(2007(
Elko,(NV!!
Great!Basin!College!•!Great!Basin!Indian!Archives!!
1500!College!Parkway!!!!!!!!!Elko,!Nevada!89801!
hCp://www.gbcnv.edu/gbia/!
775.738.8493!
Produced!in!partnership!with!!
Barrick!Gold!of!North!America!
�GBIA 007B
Interviewee: Raymond Yowell
Interviewer: Norm Cavanaugh
Date: August 17, 2007
Y:
My name is Raymond Yowell. I was born here in Elko on September the 23rd, 1929. I
was born over at the hospital that’s now torn down. Not there no more. My father was
Ray Yowell. And his lineage is into the Bill family. That’s the Bill family that’s around
here. And then, on my mother’s side, her lineage is into the Mary Hall lineage. And that
goes down into, now, into what’s know as the Dann family. But that’s my immediate
lineage. In childhood, I never really knew much about my mother. I guess my mother and
father were together just a short while. And I knew very, very little about her. And I
really didn’t know my father at all, as a child. I guess I was kind of taken care of by other
Indian ladies. Because when I was in my teens, these Indian ladies used to come along
and tell me that they took care of me when I was a baby. Of course, I don’t remember
nothing about that. But I ended up with my maternal grandmother. Sometime, maybe
when I was about two and a half, maybe three years old—I don’t remember. And she had
a half-sister that was down in Smoky Valley. And she made arrangements with her halfsister and her husband—their name was Frank and Annie Charley—to take me down
there. Now, apparently, they didn’t have any kids, and they wanted to raise a child, and
they were willing to take me. So this arrangement had been made, I guess, for several
months. And my grandmother prepared me well for that. She said that, “You’re going to
be living with them, that’s where you’re going to grow up at.” And Granny really
prepared me, because I remember when her and her husband took me down there, and of
course they stayed overnight, and of course, when Annie, when I first met her, she was
just like—it’s hard to explain, the feeling you get from somebody who really likes you.
And that’s what it was, she really liked me. And of course, I liked her instantly. And then
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 2%
the next day, when my grandmother left there, I didn’t cry. I was practically at home. So
my early years were spent in Smoky Valley. And got to know Eva Charley, and Elma
Charley, and Herbert Charley, and Doug McCann. And those were Shoshone kids that
was kind of around down there. And when I got to be of school age, I started school there
in Kingston. They had a school there, like an old country school. Used to be first to the
eighth grade. And I started school there, when I was probably six. Six or seven,
something like that. And it came about—I don’t know what happened, Frank and Annie
talked a lot about peyote. They were afraid of peyote. But I don’t know whether they
were sick, or they weren’t feeling good, but they tried to go in to the doctor, Indian
doctor. And then, we did come up here a couple of times. There was a Indian doctor here
by the name of, I guess his name was Dicey. Dyson. He’s related into the Coochum
family, the Coochum family that’s here now. But he was Indian doctor around here, and
one time we came up here, and he doctored the—and I can’t remember who he doctored.
Most of the times, he just doctored one or the other. I’m not really sure. And then we
went back to Smoky Valley. And then we came up another time, might’ve been a year
later, I can’t remember. And Frank had a sister here that lived on Elko Colony. And her
name was Mamie. She was married into the Dixon family. Mamie Dixon was her name.
And we stayed at her place. And we’d been there, I think, just one night—one or two
nights, I can’t remember. There was a rodeo going on at the time across the river over
here, across the Humboldt River right there. And coming over, I seen the rodeo grounds,
and there was a rodeo there. And we went over there to watch the rodeo, watch the
activities. But I can’t remember whether it was the first night, second night, that we were
there, Frank’s sister, early in the morning, about sunrise, this nice-looking man came in.
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 3%
And he had a puppy. Little puppy. And he talked with Annie, and for some reason I liked
him right away. [Laughter] I don’t know why, I just, just liked him, he was a nice-looking
man. And then, I was still in bed on the floor—I slept on the floor there, I was still under
the covers—he came over, he talked to me. And I can’t remember all he said, but he said,
“Do you want this puppy?” I remember that. I said, “Yeah, I want the puppy,” you know?
So he gave me a puppy. And shortly thereafter, he left. He sat and talked there with my
grandma, and he left. And so I was asking, “Who is that? Who is that man? Who is he?”
And she wouldn’t tell me. And of course, we went back to Smoky Valley, and over the
period of the next few weeks, I kept asking, “Who was that man who gave me this
puppy? Who was it? Who was it?” And finally, she says, “Well, that was your father.”
[Laughter] Boy, he knew he was my father, you know? And that was quite a thing. Now
that I think back, quite a thing. But anyway, like I said, they talked with that Indian
doctor, the nice Indian doctor, and they talked about peyote, they were afraid of the
peyote. But for some reason, they went to Fallon, and there was a doctor over there. And
I went with them, and this man doctored them. And there was a certain point in the
doctoring, and he gave them, as I recall, a white substance to eat. As I remember, kind of
slender, maybe the size of your little finger. And it was white, I remember. And he gave
this to them, and said, “Eat this.” And so they did. And I was kind of flabbergasted,
because I heard them talk, and how they said they didn’t want to eat any peyote. I thought
that was peyote. I don’t know if it was or not. But anyway, they ate it. And so the doctor
told them—I remember just a one-night deal. Anyway, he told them, he said, “Don’t do
anything. When you get back, rest. You know, don’t do anything hard, physical, just take
it easy.” And I don’t know whether he gave them a length of time or not. I don’t
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 4%
remember that. But it was in the fall, I guess, like maybe September, something like that.
Maybe in October. But when we got home, they had to get their winter wood in. And so
we lived out there, we lived where pine trees are. And so after getting the dead pines, and
when Frank would get up in the tree and shake it back and forth to make it fall, and then
he’d chop it up, and then drag it to the house, and then we’d cut it up there, chop it up for
wood for the winter. And of course, I didn’t know, I didn’t think about it, but he had told
them not to work. But they did all this hard work at that time. And then, it happened that
Barbara Ridley’s mother and father came down. They were part of the family, they’re
part of the Mary Hall family. And they came down for a visit. And they’d been there
about a day when Frank Charley got sick, and stayed in the bed, didn’t get out of bed.
And it went on several days, seem like it was about the third day, and then Annie got sick
around that time, too. So they were both sick. And I think maybe about the fourth day,
Barbara’s mother, I took her and her husband outside and I told them, I said, “I think
these people are getting worse. Why don’t you go down the valley here, and let his
relatives know?” Which is Winston Charley. That’s the father and Cleveland, and
Dalbert, and Herbert, and those guys. “Let them know that they’re sick.” And so, he
did. He took off in his car, and went down there, and I think—I think it was the next day
that all of the people arrived there. There were two cars that came up. And I think Frank
Bradley, who was a Shoshone who lived down there, and I think he was raised with
Winston Charley growing up. And I think Winston Charley came up. And as I
understand it, Winston Charley was probably the nephew of Frank Charley. I’m not sure,
but I think he was. And I remember the men dressed Frank, and he was crying the whole
time. And the women dressed Annie, and she was crying too. And they literally drug
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 5%
them to the cars. I remember then he was sliding back with his feet, and they were
dragging him, forced him in the car because he didn’t want to go. Annie same way; the
women were dragging her. They put them in two separate cars. And by that time, my
grandmother, who had taken me down there—my mother’s mother had, they had come
down. And so, when they left, they took them to Schurz, and of course, my mother’s
grandmother took me. And they entered them into the hospital over there. And the last
time I saw them was on the highway, when we stopped to rest to go about nature. That’s
the last time I saw either one. And then, we stayed in Schurz, I think for a day or so, and
then my grandmother had to get back up here, so they headed back up this way. And on
the way up, they left me at Beowawe, with the family of Barbara Ridley, which is related
back to Mary Hall. Because they were relatives and all. So they left me there. And of
course, I didn’t know them. [Laughter] They were strangers. But I was there for several
months. I guess this was maybe like in October, it might’ve been November. I’m sure it
was in the fall. And then on about January, sometime in January, this man and woman
showed up. And Barbara’s mother, when I came to the house, they said, “Come here,
come shake hands with your grandmother.” And again, I’ve never seen either one of them
before. I’d never seen them. And her husband, which was George. George Yowell. And I
didn’t know either one of them. Said, “This is your grandmother. Shake hands with her.”
So I did. And so they picked me up, and then brought me up here. And then, that night,
when [__inaudible at 12:28__], here’s this nice-looking man that I’d seen before, come
in. And he, in the meantime, had married another woman. My stepmother. And that’s
how I ended up back up here. And we were here, probably, until 1937, when South Fork
was purchased as a reservation. And we were one of the first families to move to South
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 6%
Fork. The first year, we wintered in a tent out there. And as I remember, the snow was
like two feet. Real cold, it was like 30 below. In them years, it used to get real cold. And
we used to have to get up early in the morning, and dress as quick as you could, because
it was cold! I sure used to hate to get out of them blankets! [Laughter] And then we went
to school out there, we started school there at South Fork. And there was just a few kids,
a few white kids, and the rest were myself, and Willard Green, Bennie Tom, and Perry
Hill, and Floyd Hill. And we were the ones that were going to school. And the white kids
was Bill Kane, and then Roy Henry—or Bob Henry. There were two white kids. And
then there was Leroy Horne, and his sister Kate Horne. And then Charles Down. But
they were the school. It used to be one-room school here. All the grades were taught in
one room. Had one teacher here [__inaudible at 14:02__]. You know, I mentioned the
Indian doctor earlier, mainly to explain a little bit on how that was done. There was a way
that you approached the doctor, which is not direct. He had a helper—he or she had a
helper. But he would go and make the appointment. Then the helper would speak with
the doctor, and then he would tell her, “Well okay, on this day, this place.” There was
money involved, but I can’t remember maybe, no more than five dollars, probably, or
three dollars. In them days, they had silver dollars. And usually that’s what they’d pay.
Now, I think Dicey, as I remember, doctored two nights. I think he doctored two nights.
And when he would start his doctoring, he would go through a process. He would sing
some songs, in Shoshone, his songs—what was revealed to him. I guess the way the
doctors come about is, in their youth—he or she—in their youth, they start to have
dreams. Maybe like twelve, thirteen, fifteen years old, somewhere in that time. Dreams
start coming to them, telling them to do certain things. And if they did those things, then
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 7%
the dreams would get more specific. And at a point, actually, the songs would be revealed
to them, for them to sing. Some of them had the eagle for a doctor, that was kind of the
image or whatever. Some of them had a bear. And there might’ve been other things that
I’m not aware of. But those are the two that I know about. I don’t know what Dicey’s
power was. Nobody ever said anything, you know. And these doctors, they were kind of
mysterious people to me, because they never said anything about their power. They just
performed what they were instructed to do, and they never talked about it. I was present
when Frank and Annie would go to the doctor, and the way they do it is, he would sing
some songs, and sit a lot with his eyes closed, and then he would sing songs again, and
sit a lot with his eyes closed. And then, at a certain point, wherever the ailment was—it
was in the chest area, or wherever the ailment was—he would just put his lips to that
place, where it’s at, and make like a sucking sound. [Makes a sucking sound.] Like that.
And he’d do that several times, maybe in different places, not just one. He’d kind of
move around. And then he’d sit back some more, and sing some more songs. And this
would go on maybe until about midnight. [__inaudible at 16:54__]. That’s how long it
took him. And the second act was almost a repetition of the first act. And I don’t know
whether that was painful, but I remember it would make welts. You would see the welts
where he made the sucking sound. In modern day, “monkey bites” they might call it
sometimes. But that’s what would show up. And sometimes, he would go outside. And I
guess, maybe, you know, throw up what he had taken in. I remember, one doctor out at
Lee, he had to be held outside. He couldn’t walk by himself. We would carry him and
take him in or he wouldn’t come here. And my grandfather, George Yowell, and I think
another person helped him out, outside. He went in the house there, and they helped him
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 8%
outside. I guess he threw up; I didn’t go [__inaudible at 17:53__]. That was his thing, you
kind of stay away from that. It was that sacred thing. And then, when he came back in,
then he came back in on his own power. But that’s how it’s done, basically, is they would
put their lips to where the disease is, and suck it out. It may sound skeptical, it might
sound like superstition, but those things actually worked. I’ve seen that work for the
healers, what they had done. And just not anybody, as I say, could be an Indian doctor. It
had to come through—got the language, with the Shoshone, it comes through the
language. Somewhere in the language is a doctor. And sometimes, it may skip a
generation, it may skip a couple generations. But someplace, it’ll surface again. And if
that individual listens to what his dreams tell him, then they get stronger and more is
revealed to him, like when he’s maybe eighteen—seventeen, eighteen, maybe nineteen,
somewhere in there. Then he’ll be told—in the white man’s terms, he can now start to
practice. [Laughter] You know, practice medicine. But they couldn’t do, like, operations.
They couldn’t do anything that white people do. That was not their power. But they had
the gift to take disease. Disease, I mean, I guess disease is actually a thing. Like, it’s in
you. And they had the power to be able to take that out. And like I said, it’s a sacred
thing. And I only knew two Indian doctors, and neither one of them talked about, you
know, about their power. It’s just something, I guess it’s sacred. Whether they were told
not to talk about it, I don’t know. But they just wouldn’t talk about it. Continuing on from
where I left off, going to school at Lee, in [19]39, then there was a lot more people came
to the reservation. A lot more families. And the Indians actually outnumbered the white
kids then, from then on. A lot of Indian kids that were going to school. And we grew up
there, and we helped the folks with the hay. The first few years, up until 1940, we didn’t
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 9%
have any cattle. And the hay was put up loose in them days. You know, buck rakes, and
we’d stack it by hand. We’d pile it in a big stack. And then around 1940, we got a few
cows. My dad and my grandfather got a few cows, and of course, you had to be on
horseback to run cows, and so we started to mess around with horses. Started to ride
horses, and by the time I was thirteen or fourteen, I was breaking colts. And that was a
wonderful thing for me to do: ride, and be out there, wandering free, and riding free. It’s
hard to explain that feeling that you get when you’re on a horse. And you’re out there,
and it’s your thing, your world, and you have a good animal under you, and it’s a
wonderful feeling. So that was the way my early childhood went. Being out with the
Mother Nature, what you might call. And seeing things come and go, winter, spring,
summer, fall, you know. And right about the same time, I’m twelve, thirteen, fourteen, I
started going with the men hunting deer. And deer was our main food. Not too much
money to buy food with, mainly just, like, for sugar, flour, beans, that kind of thing.
Coffee. And the rest you just kind of grew yourself or you hunted. You know, rabbits,
and squirrels, and groundhogs. And the deer was the main thing. And the Shoshone deer
season starts probably around—about now, up in this country, probably about the end of
August. When the bucks are fat. And of course, that’s the law. Bucks only. Didn’t kill a
doe unless you really had to on the way home. Come back empty-handed, then you might
kill a doe. But bucks only. And I stated, about twelve, thirteen, fourteen, then we started
going with my father in the mountains along with my uncles to hunt deer. And they
carried down the first just along there, aiming at things, and helped us where they
could. And then, at probably thirteen or fourteen, they start letting me fire the gun. And I
think I was fourteen years old when I killed my first deer. It was a buck. Of course, that’s
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a great event among Shoshones. In our youth, once you first kill one, it’s quite a thing.
The men that were there, it must have been Harry Tom, John Tom, [__inaudible at
22:49__], both my parents, you know, my grandfather and them. Andrew was there, they
all came up, and they’d kind of pat you down. You feel good, you feel good about it, this
is your first kill, and now you’ve really become a man. It’s quite an event. I remember
that. And then, some of the tradition that the Shoshones have. The rule was that you don’t
eat your first kill; you give it away. Went through that, and—
C:
So, what kind of a gun did you use to kill your first buck?
Y:
The first thing they let me carry was a .22 Long Rider. And it wasn’t a new one. Pretty
old. And it’s hard to believe now that a little bitty bullet in a .22 could kill this buck. I
had shot enough squirrels by that time to know where the bullet went, and how to aim.
But yeah, the little bullet killed this big buck. And it’s amazing now. And the funny part,
too, is—I shot him right here, and it went completely through the body, and ended up in
the thigh. And when my dad was eating a steak off the thigh, he bit into the bullet!
[Laughter] And I used to say, I had that bullet for quite a while. I don’t know, I don’t
think I’ve got it now. But it was quite a thing, you find the bullet on your first kill, you
know? I saved it. But that’s quite interesting that he bit into the bullet that I shot my first
deer through. And of course, later on, when I got up into the teens, and later, fourteen,
fifteen, sixteen, up into there, did a little work with white people and make a little money,
and bought a heavier .30-30 deer gun. And I started hunting, of course, with that, and that
had a little more range than the .22.
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 11%
C:
Raymond, you mentioned—the Shoshone way of hunting sounds like it was seasonal. So,
can you elaborate on the seasonal aspects of hunting various types of animals that the
Shoshone depended on for food?
Y:
Certainly. As I stated, in this country here, probably late August, maybe last week in
August is when the Shoshones start to hunt deer. Because that’s when the bucks were fat.
And it went on into probably, maybe the last week of September. And I don’t think they
went into October. I think it went into the last part of September, and that was it. That
was the deer season, Shoshone deer season. And the way the Shoshones prepared the
meat was they would dry it. They would jerk it, dry it what you’d call jerky. And they
would dry it, and keep this for the winter. And that was the main meat through the winter,
dried deer meat. And they’d prepare it in certain ways. Some of them boil it just as a
strip, just boil that. And there was another way that they’d make kind of like a stew out of
it, with a little bit of flour gravy, and then add some potatoes and a little bit of onions.
That was my favorite plate. And they would cook beans with that, that was a meal.
Beans, in the stew. And that was real, real good stuff. Tasted real good. And with the
squirrels, the squirrels, you know, they would hibernate. Like, they hibernate in the
beginning of June. They only come out for just a couple months and then they go back to
sleep. And then they come back out in late February, back up in this country. In South
Fork, they’d come out around late February. And the days that we were out there, we
used to drown them. Drown them out with water. From the, you could see their holes in
the flat. And you take water in a fifty gallon drum, and take a five-gallon bucket and
drown ‘em out, and catch ‘em as they come out. And when they first come out, they’re
still fat. After they’ve been out maybe a week or so, ten days, they lose that fat and get
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 12%
real skinny. So we would eat that first, that would probably be the first fresh meat in the
spring. And then, a little later on, about the end of March, then it came time to hunt the
sage hen. And again, it was the roosters. Roosters only. And at that time, the roosters
were breeding—what we call “dancing”—they had a big paunch in the front, it’s like an
air sac. And that was a delicacy. They would get—that’s why they hunted them. And
they would roast that up real crunchy, and that was a real delicacy. And that, sage hen
season probably only lasted about two weeks. Maybe about 10th of March in this country,
‘til maybe the 20th of March. And then that was it, they’re going. And then, after that,
probably the groundhogs—what they call “rock chuck.” They’re a good-sized little
animal, out in the hills, on the rocks. And that’s the next thing they would hunt. And of
course, they always tried to get the males. But a lot of times, you couldn’t tell the
difference. A lot of times, the male was the one they hunted. And they were huge,
sometimes. And there was a lot of fat in them. And they hunted them right in the end of
June—it varies, different places. And they’d get them there, you know, too. So that was a
big staple. And fish, in South Fork, in those days they still had the cutthroat trout. The
native cutthroat trout. And, oh, they were probably thirty-six inches long, end to end. And
they would make their spring spawning run about this time of the year, up through the
South Fork, and lay their eggs up in there and then come back. And a lot of times, they’d
get in the irrigation ditches out there. You’d hear them flapping around, and you’d go and
get ‘em. And that was another seasonal food during that time. And when they were
plentiful, before they got disrupted by the white man’s management, Indians had their
own stations out there. They used to harpoon them. Had harpoons. And this fish, as it
migrates, of course, it gets tired, and seek an eddie, and rest right in this eddie. And the
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 13%
Shoshones knew where these eddies were, and each family had their spot, in such-andsuch a spot. And so, they would harpoon these migrating fish. And again, they’d dry that,
too, and keep it for later use.
C:
So, what did they use for harpoons? Was it made out of willow, or was it metal, or what
was it?
Y:
Well, with the coming of the white man, of course they’ve got the metal. They actually
were made out of, just like a fish hook. But it was pretty big, about that size, you know.
But it had a barb in it; once it went in, wouldn’t come out. And there was an attachment
to a hard willow—what we call hathuunte [30:01], that’s hard willow. And then had that
wrapped on the front of the thing, and that’s what they harpooned with. And people, my
grandmother used to laugh that—Willie Carson had a spot up the road—the main bridge,
there, on I believe the main bridge, he had a spot up the road there. And I don’t know
whether he was in a precarious place or what, but when he harpooned this fish, the fish
pulled him under the river! [Laughter] They used to laugh about that! But yeah, every
family had their little place. And like I said, there was a lot of fish in them days. And we
were—now to South Fork in the [19]30s, they were in decline already. And the county at
that time planted brook trout. They had their own hatchery over there in Lee, and they
planted brook trout. And it was County Game Board. And then, with the deer, they—you
shoot only bucks. Bucks only. And there was a lot of deer. Lot of bucks. And lot of fish,
had a lot of brook trout. And then around 1949, maybe 1950, the Nevada State law:
couldn’t shoot no wildlife without paying the distance. And the first thing they did is do
away with the brook trout and add rainbows. And come to find out, the rainbow and
cutthroat were inbreeding, across. And that their offspring were sterile. So around 1956,
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 14%
1957, cutthroat was gone. And I don’t know whether they added fish later on, but that’s
what they did. You hear talk now that they’re going to bring cutthroat back, but if they
keep trying to replant rainbow, they’re not coming back. And again, that same fish was
up in the lakes in the Rubies. And they were huge, something like that. And George
Yowell talked about where, I guess in the [19]20s sometime, maybe in the teens, people
were up there dynamiting those lakes, and killed off all the big fish, and then planted
brook trouts. And I’ve seen pictures of, in town here, Sarah Billings’s documents in the
[19]20s and into the [19]50s where they were catching brook trout. They were big!
Maybe about that big, and about that thick. But shortly thereafter—see, a brook trout
won’t eat himself? It’s not carnivorous, not cannibalistic. And they ate themselves out
food available. And so then, from then on, you’d see fish that had a big head like that, but
a little tapered body. And that’s how it is now up there. Still see them like that. But the
cutthroat, the cutthroat is carnivorous. It’s cannibalistic. They’ll eat each other. It keep
itself down to what food’s available. They’ll eat each other to do that! [Laughter] And so,
that was a natural balance, you see. But that was upset. So all the fish are going out of the
Rubies. All the lakes they have up in there. And it’s unfortunate when I look back and see
that. You see talk they’re managing game and land up there, but I don’t know when to
take the deer now. It’s unusual to see a four-point deer. For me. I hardly ever see a fourpoint deer. Three-point, two-point. And some of them using bait. In my youth, when I
first started hunting, they were like this. Big! Huge deer. Big deer, big bucks, you know.
Of course, to a Shoshone, the bigger deer you kill, the better hunter you are. The big ones
are really smart. They’re really smart to be around a long time. And they never sit in a
place where they can be ambushed. They’re always in a place where they can look all
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 15%
around. [__inaudible at 33:37__]. Bound two jumps, and they’ve gone out of sight. I’ve
seen many big bucks that way, never get a shot at them. They position themselves in a
place that can’t be approached without him seeing you. And he’s got his escape path,
doesn’t matter which way you’re coming. A few bounds, and all you see is the horns and
a little of his back, and he’s gone. That’s the way it used to be. You don’t see that any
more.
C:
Raymond—
Y:
That was real hunting. In them days, that was real hunting.
C:
Raymond, you mentioned that the Shoshone only killed a male species, of, like the deer,
and the groundhog, and the other animals they ate for food. Can you explain why they
only killed the male?
Y:
Yes. It’s pretty simple, if you look at nature. The male, no matter what species, can breed
a lot of females. And so if you kill a male, I mean, you’ll be killing one. But if you kill a
female, then you’re killing the future production. No matter what it is, you’re killing
future production. So that was a law. You only take the males, and take one male, no
matter what the species. Going to breed a whole bunch before winter comes up. And so,
that’s how come we kept the game kind of, you know, in balance. And—the other thing
is, only take what you can use. Never waste any of it. Never leave a dead animal out
there. Always, if you kill him, you’ve got to take it. Don’t waste it. That was drummed
into my head since—Frank and Annie Charley drummed that into my head, you know?
No matter what is—if it’s a plant, take only what you can use. Never waste it. Always
leave some for the future. That’s Shoshone law. I guess, going on from there, as I grew
up, of course, the Korean War was going on. And they had the draft out. I managed to
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 16%
stay out of it for a while, and my cousin was gone, he was in the service. And I told the
draft board that my grandfolks needed help. I was the only young guy that could help
them with the ranch and stuff, and so I got out of it for a while. But then, when my cousin
came back, I got orders from the service. So they drafted me. And really, I didn’t think I
would pass the physical. I didn’t think I was physically able to serve in the armed forces.
And I went and took the physical in Salt Lake. I was surprised that I passed it. A
difference, really, between the army. I was really surprised that I passed that physical.
And so I came back, and they were talking to Dad, and I said, “I passed the physical. I
really don’t want to go in the Army. How about I go in the Air Force? I don’t want to be
knocked in a foxhole.” So I had seen enough of World War II to see what that was. So I
got up to there, and went to work over there. So, I went downtown here to the recruiter’s
office, and enlisted, and took another physical. Passed it, you know. When they were
getting ready to swear us in, the guy that came in, the officer came in there told us, “Did
anyone in here take the physical for the army? You better speak up, because if you don’t,
we’re going to come get you.” I said, “Well, let ‘em come get me.” I didn’t say nothing.
And they swore us in. You know, for six months I worried in the Air Force that they were
going to come get me! [Laughter] But after six months went over, I thought, “Oh, they’re
not going to come after me.” So I spent four years in the Air Force. Started out, after
basic training, ended up in what they call “turret system mechanic.” And what that meant
was you was only an aerial gunner. We didn’t know that at the time. You get to be a
turret system mechanic, that’s a step up to gunnery, air gunnery. And I ended up on B-29
as a gunner. And we were ready to ship out in Korea, and the Korean War ended. We
were going over the next month. And they were ready to give us our last leave, and when
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 17%
we come back, we were supposed to be the crew they’d end the war with. And then, of
course, everybody was in extended peacetime over there, and we ended up over here, and
I got an airplane, connected them for about a year in Topeka, Kansas. Then they started
the air refueling of the B-47s. B-47 was a big bomber, arm of the United States through
the Cold War, you know. And ended up taking training for air refueling, and that’s what I
did until I got out of the Air Force. Refuel the B-47s as they made their flight from the
United States to wherever they were going, over in Europe someplace. And as I gather,
they refueled them twice. B-47s never landed anywhere until they got to refuel them
twice. And usually, they were coming out of California. And one time, we were up in
Goose Bay, Canada, refueled them there, and then ended up flying over Iceland and then
they were refueling over Iceland. And I don’t know where they went from there. Maybe
into, down in Turkey, or wherever, different places. And that was quite an experience. It
was interesting to do that kind of stuff. And of course, they encourage you to stay in the
extended service. And put kind of the fear into you, “When you get out, and you don’t
find a job, you’re going to starve. Here, you’ve got it easy in certain ways, every year a
vacations, and [__inaudible at 30:10__] better now.” And they give you a talk about two,
three weeks before you’re discharged, try to tell you everything to re-enlist. “I could give
you a bonus,” you know, seven thousand dollar bonus. That’s all they did out there. And
my crew, my aircraft commander, he tried to get me to stay in. He had a special answer,
because he was married to an Indian. He says, “[__inaudible at 39:37__].” So he had kind
of like a special interest in me. And he tried to get me to stay, and I said, “No.” And I
said, “I’ve had enough of this.” Military life didn’t agree with me. And so, when I got
ready to get out, and I said my goodbyes, he said, “You’ll be back. And if you come back
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 18%
in three months, you go back in the same grade. Don’t lose any rank. And get your boss
in. You’ll be back.” I said, “Don’t hold your breath.” [Laughter] And when I left the
service, that was it. I never even dreamed of going back, I had had enough of that. And
then, the gas pipelines were the main thing going on. In Canada, and over in what is now
like Saudia Arabia and those places. They’re building these oil pipelines. They had a
deal, you could go to work for these companies for a thousand dollars a month. And at
that time, in the [19]50s, that was a lot of money! And then, you had to sign up for
eighteen months. Well, you come out of there, eighteen thousand dollars was a lot of
money. “Well, I ought to do that,” you know? So I took my G.I. Bill, and then
[__inaudible at 40:49__]. But I never did make it. Never did make it in there. Come back
here to Lee, ended up back in the cowboying and the ranching business, and kind of spent
most of my life doing that. The welding and the trade come in handy. Repair your own
stuff and things like that. So that can come in very handy. But I often wonder, had I not
come back here, and gone on those jaunts, or signed up for those tours over there, where
I’d have been today. Probably been totally different. Continuing on a little bit on the,
what you would call the ways of the Shoshone, going way back. Actually, they were very
religious people. The white people would call us ‘savages’ and ‘heathens’ and whatever
else, but really, in our own way, in our own laws, we were very religious people. And
nothing was done without prayer beforehand, and then prayer afterwards. No matter what
was going to be done, there was always prayer involved in it. If you were going to go to
war, there was a special ceremony—a sacred ceremony—that was performed. And then,
if you come back from war, everybody would sing to you, and then [__inaudible at
42:13__]. This was where the war dance comes from, which you see now in the
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 19%
powwows. It’s become a show. But that was a sacred ceremony, to us. To us Shoshone.
And I suppose to other Indian nations, too, but for sure, that’s the way it was done here. If
they went hunting, same thing: a prayer was offered, and safety was asked for during the
hunt, that you would be successful in the hunt. And then, when you come back, you give
thanks if you had a good hunt, you know. So, very religious people in our own way, from
what we understand. I guess the reason the white people say that we were not religious, is
because they didn’t see any churches, coming across the land. In the Indian ways, it’s the
whole earth, the whole outdoors, is the church. There is not a part of it that isn’t sacred.
So you’re always in our church. And that’s a concept that I think many white people
don’t grasp, is you have to be in a building to be in a religious ceremony. But to the
Shoshone, that was the church. And I want to make that known, because I think if you
look at the history, that’s not testified. The history that’s taught in schools. That is not
touched on, the sacredness that the Indians held everything in. Everything was sacred.
Nothing was taken without thanksgiving, and like I said, as always, you left enough for
the future. [__inaudible at 43:47__], no matter what you were doing, no matter what you
took. A little bit into the Shoshone bow. Old Billy Mose was a relation of my greatgrandfather, Elwood Mose. And my grandfather told told us when we was little guys.
He used to come down and visit my grandmother quite a bit. And he was probably maybe
104, 105, at that time. He was pretty spry. Had all his faculties. Hearing was good. Only
thing, his eyesight was a little bit dim, you know? But he used tell me—he’d come down
and visit my grandmother—he talked about a different part of his life. And as a kid, I
found that interesting. I would sit and listen. I didn’t take part in the conversation—I’d
just sit and listen. All done in Shoshone, you know. Listen to what he had to say. And it
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 20%
was amazing, as I think right now, he never repeated himself. Never told the same part of
his life. Each time he came, he told a different part of his life. It was like he remembered
it. But he always said—and one of the things that I found interesting was the way he
described the Shoshone bow, and the way it was made. And actually, in today’s terms,
it’s a laminated bow. And some way, they would straighten out the horn of a bighorn
sheep. And that’s curled, they would straighten that out. And in some way slice it, and it
was the back for the bow, the wooden bow, made probably from a cedar. Cedar is that
little juniper, you know, it’s the main thing that they—but some way, they would join it
in the middle. That’s a lost art, now. But some way, they would join it in the middle. And
if you think, when you bend something, they don’t give the same, because you’re pulling
it different ways, and so on and so forth. So, some way, they still kept that power, this
recall ability, that retains, even though it wouldn’t bend the same. Somehow, I don’t
know how did that. And he talked about that that’s the way the bow was made, and it was
a very powerful bow. And he said, the fighting bow is short, about that long. He said the
hunting bow was little longer, about like that. And they’re both made the same way. And
of course, arrows would be flint, flint, obsidian, or black flint or red flint, or the white
chert, which is buried in the north of Battle Mountain. That was one of the favorite
points. They call it Tosawihi. They call it “white knife.” But even in trade items with
another tribe, they traded that. Pretty prized piece of [__inaudible at 46:20__]. Now, the
favorite wood that he talked about to make the arrow was the rosebush. The long shoot of
the rosebush. Which if you’ve seen them, they grow very straight. And he said they
would straighten them with heat, as soon as they scrape that bark off, and the spines and
all that, then they would straighten them with heat. And the feather was the feather of a
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 21%
sagehen. And I don’t think they had three feathers; I think they probably had two
feathers. And from hearing him talk about that, I think, from what little I gleaned, I think
it only had two feathers. And now you see the white man add three feathers in some of
them books. But I think the Indian arrows probably just had two. And they tied them on
with sinew, deer sinew, the same as the arrowhead. Tied down with the deer sinew. And
then they string the bow, also deer sinew. And it was a very prized item when they
traded. The Indian nations traded before the coming of white men. They traded among
themselves. And whatever each nation had, they would trade, and put their own value on,
and actually barter portions of weapons for food, just a lot of trade. And it’s said that the
white chert that I mentioned north of Battle Mountain has been found as far east as St.
Louis. So you can see how far that item had been traded. And he had a very interesting
life. He talked about the first white man he saw coming on horseback, up there in Ruby
Valley. And he said he thought the man was on fire, because smoke was coming off of
him. And he went riding up there. He thought the man was on fire. Black beard, you
know? And he come to find later on, the guy was smoking a pipe. But he’d never seen
that before, khe thought the man was on fire. [Laughter] And then, later on, he got to
talking one time about the way that the Shoshones would go and, I guess you would
maybe call it a “war party.” But I don’t think Shoshones looked at it that way. It was a
way of going and proving yourself as a man, as a warrior. That was what they meant to
do with the war party. Proving yourself as a warrior, as a man. And one story that he
told, I remember it: they had gone east someplace. I don’t remember what Indian nation
they were in, but they wiped this village out. Killed everybody there. And of course, after
that, when they had killed everybody, then comes time to divide the spoils. Well, horses
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 22%
was a big thing. But that’s what they usually nabbed, was horses. And they say that these
two warriors, Shoshone warriors—the rule was that if you came up to a horse and hit
him, that was yours. Undisputed, that’s your horse. Nobody would challenge it. And so
these two warriors came to the same horse at the same time, and neither one of them
would relinquish his claim. And they argued for a little bit there, and then they actually
backed off and were going to shoot each other over that horse! And the leader of the
party, the leader of that group, ran up and shot the horse. And neither wins the argument.
[Laughter] I remember him saying that just like he said it yesterday. And then he said
those two guys, they looked at each other kind of ashamed, and probably very emotional.
And that was interesting that that happened, that that warrior, that leader had that kind of
a sense to gain way in the argument without doing anything else. And it did end the
argument. There was no argument. [Laughter] He talked about hunting buffalo. And I
thought that was interesting, from here. When I guess into probably eastern Wyoming,
and western Nebraska, he talked about where there’s no mountains. The amazing part to
me was that the Wind River Shoshone—of course, at that time, they were not in Wind
River, they were all over. Not been put on the reservation yet. And he called them people
by name! I was amazed that from here, that he knew those people over there by name!
That was an amazing thing that I remember. And then he described hunting the buffalo
itself. And he said that this one gentleman was calling the names that the—and he said,
“Your horse one day will be good here in this hunt.” He says, “I’ll give you one of mine.”
And he told him, he said, “Now, when we start this hunt here”—I guess they would run
the buffalo, they would start the buffalo maybe to naturally stampeding. When they saw
the horsemen there, the buffalo would run so that you could come alongside of it, and
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 23%
when you shoot the arrow, you shoot the arrow into up here, because there’s no bones in
the pouch, and it ended up in the chest. “And when that happens, when you do that,” he
said, “when you do that, this horse will leave that buffalo and go to the next one. So you
don’t have to worry about it. And you just take care of your arrows and your shooting,
and don’t worry about the horse.” And so he said they started things, got going up, and he
was in the last, because everybody rode off but him. And he said that he come around this
buck, well, he shot him with his arrow, and he says, “Sure enough, as soon as that horse
heard the twang of that bow, ran right alongside the next one, just right here. Right here
quick. Just had to lean over, and stick that arrow into his chest cavity. And of course,
buffalo would run away, bleed to death, and soon as they got done with all of them,
they’re on the road. And then, all of the people from the village would all come out and
help butcher it up. And of course, they dried it, and kept the hide for tanning and for
blankets and that. That was a favorite winter item, was that buffalo robe. Called buffalo
robe in place. I’m told now that the buffalo has 40,000 hairs per square inch. And that’s
how thick that hair is. You tan that, I guess it’s one of the warmest things there is. And he
talked about that. From Ruby Valley to that far away. It amazed me, the distances that
they could cover, just on horseback and that. It was very interesting, I would say those
are the two things that stand out. One other thing I’d like to mention is, in those days, the
Shoshones had runners. That’s how they kept village to village informed, throughout the
whole nation. They had runners. And from my best estimation today, I would guess they
would run 100 miles a day. From the distance they covered in one day. And the reason I
come up with that figure is, my grandmother’s brother, my maternal grandmother’s
brother, was one of those kind of people. And I don’t know whether it was a gift, like the
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 24%
Indian doctor, or whether they were trained from childhood to be able to do that, I don’t
know. But she talked one time—and she wasn’t talking to me, she was talking to
someone else, and I was sitting there listening—where they were camped around where
Brigham City is now. They had been away hunting, on the way back on a wagon. And
they might’ve had a saddle horse or two. The family was camped there, and the middle
brother, I guess, got mad at her. And he took off for Ruby Valley on foot. Wanted to go
home, and [__inaudible at 53:50__], and he left. And so they came back through, back
through, come to Salt Lake, and probably about six, seven days later, you know, as a
team. And he was there. He was there. So they asked the people, they says, “How long
have you been here?” “Oh, we’ve been here about four days.” So, during that time, I
figure he did about a hundred miles a day. It took him about a day and a half. And that
was it. And another story is, that he could go from Ruby Valley to what they call
Tonammutsa, which is Battle Mountain, in one day. And you have to think, the way he
went, all mountain ranges. All mountain ranges. And he’d do that in one day. So, those
people were very gifted. Very gifted people. Like I said, I don’t know how—again, this
might have been a power that given to them, from the Ape, from God; or whether they
were trained from childhood. I don’t know. But Shoshones had those sort of people. And
like I said, they probably run a hundred miles a day, or pretty close to that, maybe a few
miles one way or the other. And again, that’s something that we don’t have today,
because—I guess because of the influence of the white culture. We’ve got automobiles
now. Maybe that, there’s no more need for that. But that’s some of the old things that I
remember. I listened to the old folks talk. And I found that very interesting, to listen to
the old guys talk. In my childhood, what I got to remember, maybe 1934, 1935, in
�GBIA%007B;%Yowell;%Page% 25%
through there, what I can remember real good, the guys are alive at that time were
probably born about 1850, 1860. They were about in their seventies and eighties at that
time. And that kind of pre-white settlement in this part of the country, pre-white
settlement. And I don’t remember all the things I used to hear. Only some of the main
things I used to hear about that. And unfortunately, we didn’t have no modern devices
like today to be able to record that, because that would have been priceless to be able to
record that part of our culture and our history, the sacred part being talked about. It’s
unfortunate.
[End of recording]
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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
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Great Basin Indian Archive, in partnership with Barrick Gold of North America
Source
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GBIA Oral History Collections
Publisher
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Great Basin Indian Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
2006-2015
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Norm Cavanaugh
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Raymond Yowell
Location
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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
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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
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Norm Cavanaugh [interviewer]; James Hedrick [GBIA/VHC]; University of Utah SYLAP [streaming video]; Great Basin College; BARRICK Gold of North America
Rights
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Non-commercial scholarly and educational use only. Not to be reproduced or published without express permission. All rights reserved. Great Basin Indian Archives © 2017
Consent form on file (administrator access only): http://humanities.gbcnv.edu/omeka/admin/items/show/317
Language
A language of the resource
English
Community
Crossroads
GBIA
heritage
hunting
Korean War
Shoshone
South Fork Reservation
Story
traditional food
veteran