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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
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06/02/2016 [ 02 June 2016]; 2016 June 02
Contributor
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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
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/345
Language
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English
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history interview with Floyd Collins, Western Shoshone from Duckwater Reservation, NV on 06/02/2016
Format
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MP4
Community
crafts
Crossroads
Duckwater
Duckwater Reservation
Ely
GBIA
hunting
Shoshone
Story
traditional crafts
traditions
veteran