Paiute Nation

The "Snake Indians" is a collective name given to the Northern Paiute, Bannock, and Shoshone Native American tribes that was used as early as 1739 by French trader and explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de la Verendrye when he described hearing of the Gens du Serpent ("Snake people") from the Mandans. This is probably the first written mention of the Shoshone people. The term "Snakes" is also used to refer the Shoshone by British explorers David Thompson and Anthony Henday.

This term was widely used by American immigrants on the Oregon Trail in the Snake River and Owyhee River valleys of southern Idaho and Eastern Oregon. The term "Snake Indian" later included the Northern Paiute tribes found in the basins between the Cascade Mountains and these valleys in Oregon and northern Nevada and northeastern California. These people were the opponents of the California and Oregon Volunteers and U.S Army, in the Snake War.

The Paiute (PY-yoot) tribe is actually many different bands distributed across a large part of the western United States. Paiute means "true Ute" or "water Ute." The Paiutes call themselves Numu, meaning "People." The vast desert area used by the Paiutes extends from central Oregon southward through Las Vegas Valley to land along the Colorado River in Arizona and Southern California and eastward to southwestern Idaho, one who continues to prove invaluable to Oklevueha Native American Church as we continue to flourish into the Warriors of the Rainbow.

Prior to substantial contact with non-Native peoples, the Paiutes led a highly mobile nomadic lifestyle. They ranged from the forested highlands of the Rocky Mountains westward to the Sierra Nevada Range, including the desert lowlands in between. The lifestyles of the various bands across this expansive region were largely determined by the particular foods available in the area where they predominantly lived. Most subsisted by hunting small game and gathering roots, seeds, and berries. Some Southern and Owens Valley Paiute bands used irrigation techniques and grew corn, while some Northern Paiute bands were fishermen. The extended family was the main traditional unit of social organization. Bands were composed of loose affiliations of families led by a headman selected for his abilities.

The Snake War (1864–1868) was a war fought by the United States of America against the "Snake Indians," the settlers' term for Northern Paiute, Bannock and Western Shoshone bands who lived along the Snake River. Fighting took place in the states of Oregon, Nevada, and California, and in Idaho Territory. Total casualties from both sides of the conflict numbered 1,762 dead, wounded, or captured.

The conflict was a result of increasing tension over several years between the Native tribes and the settlers who were encroaching on their lands, and competing for game and water. Explorers passing through had minimal effect. In October 1851, Shoshone Indians killed eight men in Fort Hall Idaho. From the time of the Clark Massacre, in 1851 the regional Native Americans, commonly called the "Snakes" by the white settlers, harassed and sometimes attacked emigrant parties crossing the Snake River Valley.

European-American settlers retaliated by attacking Native American villages. In September 1852, Ben Wright and a group of miners responded to an Indian attack by attacking the Modoc village nearBlack Bluff in Oregon, killing about 41 Modoc. Similar attacks and retaliations took place in the years leading up to the Snake War.

In August 1854, Native attacks on several pioneer trains along the Snake River culminated in the Ward Massacre on August 20, 1854, in which Native Americans killed 21 people. The following year, the US Army mounted the punitiveWinnas Expedition. From 1858 at the end of the Spokane-Coeur d'Alene-Paloos War, the US Army protected the migration to Oregon by sending out escorts each spring.

Natives continued to attack migrant trains, especially stragglers such as the Myers party, killed in the Salmon Falls Massacre of September 13, 1860. As Federal troops withdrew in 1861 to return east for engagements of the American Civil War, California Volunteers provided protection to the emigrants. Later the Volunteer Regiment of Washington and the 1st Oregon Cavalry replaced Army escorts on the emigrant trails.

As gold mining declined in California in the later 1850s, miners searching for gold started to move north and eastward into the upper Great Basin, and Snake River valley, they competed more for resources with the Native Americans.

They lived on the land longer and consumed more game and water. Many isolated occurrences resulted in violence, with the result that both sides were taking to arms. The influx of miners into the Nez Perce reservation during the Clearwater Gold Rush raised tensions among all the tribes. The Nez Perce were divided when some chiefs agreed to a new treaty that permitted the intrusion. As miners developed new locations near Boise in 1862 and in the Owyhee Canyonlands in 1863, an influx of white settlers descended on the area. Western Shoshone, Paiute and other local Indians resisted the encroachment, fighting what was called the Snake War from 1864 to 1868.

The Paiutes lived for many years near the ancient Pueblo peoples already settled in the area and adopted their techniques for raising corn. Eventually the Pueblo began to leave the area. Though their early contact with European hunters and trappers in the 1820s was friendly, hostilities between the Paiutes and non-Indian intruders grew over time.

Epidemics of smallpox, cholera, and other diseases swept through Paiute communities in the 1830s and 1840s. The limited contact with Euro-American explorers, fur trappers, and settlers changed abruptly when large-scale migration over the Oregon Trail began in the mid-1840s. Conflicts increased as more and more of the Paiute territory was claimed by whites. To the south, Mormons arriving from northern Utah began settling the best lands of the Southern Paiutes, including the Las Vegas Valley.

Also by the 1840s the Paiutes to the north and south had acquired horses and guns and began raiding white camps and settlements. The majority of conflicts with whites took place after 1848, when the discovery of gold in California brought a flood of settlers through the center of the tribe's territory. In 1859 a major silver strike occurred at Virginia City in western Nevada. The rapid influx of miners and ranchers into the region led to hostilities with Northern Paiutes, which escalated to the Pyramid Lake War.

Relatively large reservations for the Northern Paiutes were established at Pyramid Lake and Walker River in an attempt to maintain distance and peace between the Paiutes and the newcomers. However, in 1860 traders at a Pony Express station on the California Trail kidnapped and raped two Paiute girls. Tribal members responded by attacking the Pony Express station, killing five whites in the process of rescuing the girls.

The Paiutes then killed 43 volunteers sent to avenge the killings. After several minor battles involving an 800-man volunteer army from California led by Colonel Jack Hays, peace with the Paiutes was restored. Most Paiutes returned to the Pyramid Lake Reservation while others withdrew further north to southeast Oregon. The military established Fort Churchill in 1860 in western Nevada to maintain peace.

During the U.S. Civil War years, when government troops were busy fighting in the East, the Paiutes continued numerous raids on ranches, farms, mining camps, and wagon trains. Following the Civil War, U.S. Army troops returned in force to the West. In Oregon, the United States established military posts in 1864 at Camp Alvord and in 1867 at Fort Harney.

By 1866 the military took the offensive to end the Paiute resistance to white incursions. The escalating conflict became known as the Snake Indian War, since Northern Paiutes were often called Snake Indians by some settlers. Two war leaders, Paulina and Old Weawa, led the Paiutes in 40 skirmishes with the federal forces over a two year period before finally being forced to surrender in 1868.

A treaty promising a reservation in Oregon was signed at Fort Harney with three Paiute bands, but it was never ratified by Congress. The Paiutes were forced to relocate to other reservations located elsewhere in the region. To the south, the United States and Southern Paiutes signed the 1865 Treaty of Spanish Forks. Also never ratified by Congress, the treaty was designed to the place six Southern Paiute bands on the Uintah Reservation in northern Utah. The first reservation for Southern Paiutes, the Moapa Reservation, was finally created in 1872.

That same year, the almost two million acre Malheur Reservation was established in central Oregon by presidential executive order for the "free-roaming" Northern Paiutes of southeastern Oregon. However, the Malheur Reservation was returned to public ownership in its entirety following renewed, but brief, hostilities called the Bannock War in 1878.

The Northern Paiute population scattered to other reservations or small communities. Many Paiute bands refused to move to the reservations already occupied by other bands. Instead, they established settlements on the outskirts of towns, where they worked as wage laborers. Two Paiute communities grew on military posts abandoned in the 1890s, Fort Bidwell and Fort McDermitt, in Oregon.

Though several large reservations (Moapa, Pyramid Lake, Walker River, Duck Valley, and Malheur) were established for the Paiutes in Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho between 1859 and 1891, by the turn of the century tribal lands had been reduced to less than 5 percent of their original territory. The government between 1910 and 1930 extended formal federal recognition and set aside modest acreage, usually 10 to 40 acres, for many of the non-reservation Paiute bands. Typical of many reservations throughout the nation, the General Allotment Act of 1887 carved up tribal lands on the larger Paiute reservations into small allotments allocated to individual tribal members and then sold the "excess" to non-Indians. The Walker River Reservation alone lost almost 290,000 acres of its best land in 1906. Around the turn of the century, many of the Owens Valley Paiutes were restricted to areas far too small to support their former way of life as the city of Los Angeles acquired former tribal lands to control water rights to the Owens River.

On September 12, 1872, a presidential order by Ulysses S. Grant set aside the Malheur Indian Reservation in Eastern Oregon for the Northern Paiute. It was intended for "all the roving and straggling bands in Eastern and Southeastern Oregon, which can be induced to settle there." The goal was to reduce conflict between the Paiute, who were struggling to find enough food for survival, and the settlers, whose farms and ranches encroached on their territory.

About 800 Northern Paiute were living in settlements and at Forts Harney and Klamath in Southern Oregon, Fort Bidwell in northeasternCalifornia, and Fort McDermitt in northern Nevada.

Three bands went to the reservation, led by chiefs Weahwewa, Watta-belly, and Egan.

In 1875, Old Winnemucca of the Paiute, his daughter Sarah and son Natchez Winnemucca went to Malheur Indian Reservation.

In 1865 they had lost 29 of 30 people in a band in a raid by Nevada Volunteer cavalry, including the chief's two wives, one of whom was the mother of Sarah and Natchez.[4]

The reservation covered roughly the area drained by the South, Middle and North forks of the Malheur River. It comprised approximately 2,285 square miles (5,920 km2) or 1,778,560 acres (7,197.6 km2). At that time, salmon still migrated up the Columbia and the Snake rivers into the North Fork from the Pacific Ocean.

Almost immediately, European American settlers began requesting changes to the boundaries of the reservation in order to take over more land. In 1876, settlers asked for the exclusion of the Silvies River Valley and the Harney Lake Basin on the southwest edge of the reservation.

In January of that year, President Grant, under pressure from settlers, ordered the northern shores of Malheur Lake open for settlement. This was a blow to the Paiute, because that was an area where the tribe collected wada (Suaeda calceoliformis) seeds, which they gathered as food. (The Paiute around Malheur Lake were known as the Wadatika: the "wada-seed-eaters". Settlers along Willow Creek Valley on the eastern edge of the reservation also protested the boundaries.

The reservation straddled trails between then northern Grant County, where Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce had received orders to move with his people to Idaho, and southern Grant County. With the completion of major portions of the transcontinental railroad in 1868, cattle ranchers in the former Nez Perce lands had begun to drive herds along those trails to Central Pacific railheads such as Winnemucca, Nevada, for shipment to the East. In the high desert country of Eastern Oregon, the ranchers considered the streams and pastures along those trails as highly valuable for sustaining the cattle on the drives. But, the cattle consumed water and were pastured in lands that were reserved for the Paiute.

Fort Harney (1867-1880) - Established by Company K of the 23rd U.S. Infantry, on 16 August 1867 on the west bank of the Rattlesnake River, near the present town of Burns, Harney County, Oregon. It was first called Camp Steele, then changed to Camp Harney and then to Fort Harney on 14 Sep 1867. The fort was named after Brig. Gen. William S. Harney. Also known as Camp Crook.

In 1874 the fort was garrisoned by companies of the 21st U.S. Infantry and Troop K, 1st U.S. Cavalry. By 1877 the fort consisted of a headquarters; a commanding officers' quarters; five officers' quarters buildings; three log soldiers' barracks; kitchens; mess halls; four log houses for married enlisted men; a parade ground running north-south and other support structures.

Camp Steele was expanded in 1867 after a group of Chinese miners were ambushed by Indians en route to Silver City, Idaho.

When the Bannock and Paiute tribes surrendered at the end of the Bannock Indian War in 1878, all Indians were then rounded up and held at Fort Harney, regardless of which side they were on. In January 1879, over 500 Paiutes were loaded into wagons or ordered to walk to Fort Simcoe on the Yakima Reservation and to Fort Vancouver in Washington state. In knee-deep snow the men were forced to march, shackled two by two, while the women and children were later taken to Fort Boise.

The fort was abandoned 24 Jun 1880 and nothing remains at the old fort site other than the fort cemetery.

The outbreak of the Bannock War in May 1878 in Idaho led the Paiute to abandon the Malheur Indian Reservation and take refuge on Steens Mountain to the south of the Harney Basin. The mountain is a large block-fault formation, and its eastern escarpment rises almost straight up from the Alvord Desert, making it relatively easy to defend.

They were later joined there during the summer by the Bannock coming west from Idaho. When U. S. Army units under the command of General Oliver O. Howard began moving toward their positions, the united Paiute and Bannock decided to move into the Blue Mountains to the north of the Harney Basin. They raided isolated ranches as they fled northward, killing some settlers, and taking horses and cattle. In engagements with the Army, both Paiute and soldiers were killed, but casualties were few, given that hundreds of soldiers were operating on each side.

Near the Umatilla Agency on the Columbia River, the Umatilla saw that the Paiute and Bannock were not going to prevail against the U.S. Army, which outnumbered the Native Americans. The Umatilla allied with the Army. Under the guise of negotiation, some warriors entered an encampment of Paiute and Bannock, where they killed Egan, one of the principal Paiute war leaders, and a number of his followers.

After that point, having lost their leader, scattered bands of Paiute took refuge in the mountains, and many of the Bannock tried to return to Idaho. Ultimately, most Paiute surrendered. Together with Bannock prisoners, they were initially interned at the Malheur Indian Reservation.

In November 1878, General Howard received orders to move about 543 Paiute and Bannock prisoners from the Malheur Indian Reservation to the Yakama Indian Reservation, in Washington Territory, 350 miles (560 km) to the north.

Other Paiute and Bannock were scattered about Eastern Oregon, northeastern California and northern Nevada, working for settlers or engaged in subsistence hunting and gathering. More than a year after the war, most had not moved back onto the reservation, although the U.S. government had urged them to do so. Still others were interned at Vancouver Barracks in Washington.

Ranchers and settlers had started to graze their herds on the best meadowlands of the Malheur Indian Reservation, and the U.S. Army had been reluctant to remove the trespassers. In his annual report in August 1879, Agent W. V. Rinehart, who had fought in the West under General Crook and held negative views of the Natives, opined that the reservation should be discontinued, in part because the support for all agencies in Oregon was spread too thin to be effective. In October of that year, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs discontinued the agency.

The Snake War wound down after peace talks between George Crook and Snake chief Weahwewa had taken place. The Snake War has been widely forgotten in United States history. One reason was that the Paiute and Western Shoshone did not have notable reputations as warriors, unlike the Apache.

Few reporters covered the war, and Joe Wasson was one of the first. More significantly, much of the nation was concentrating on the American Civil War and its aftermath. Despite its being overlooked, the Snake War was statistically the deadliest of the Indian Wars in the West in terms of casualties.

By the end, a total of 1,762 men were known to have been killed, wounded, and captured on both sides. By comparison, the Battle of the Little Bighorn produced about 847 casualties

Today a small group of Paiute lives on a small allotment of 760 acres (3.1 km2), called the Burns Paiute Indian Reservation (or the Burns Paiute Colony) along the Silvies River, just north of Burns, Oregon. Other Paiute are federally recognized as distinct tribes on other reservations

The petitioner bands or tribe of Snake or Piute Indians mentioried in the preceding finding were deprived of their original Indian use and occupancy title to the lands specifically described in Finding 3 in January, 1879, by the action of the United States in forcibly removjng them from said lands to the Yakima Reservation in Washington and restoring such lands to the public domain without their consent and without the payment of compensation therefor.

Paiute v USA

The Paiutes were impoverished through the loss of traditional economies, suffered population loss from disease and violent conflicts, and were removed from emerging market economies of non-Indian communities. They were also largely ignored by the U.S. government through the first three decades of the twentieth century.

In the 1930s U.S. Indian policy dramatically changed again when Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Native groups began to form federally recognized tribes and gain access to grants and federal services. However, inter-governmental relations declined again after World War II. Federal recognition was terminated for four of the Southern Paiute bands in 1954.

This changing status discontinued health and education services vital to their well-being, in addition to the collective loss of over 43,000 acres from their land base. In yet another swing in U.S. policy, federal recognition status, as well as services were restored in 1980. Economic and cultural recovery for the Paiutes was difficult under such vacillating federal Indian policies.

Due to their location in the arid West, many Paiute bands were involved in water rights disputes throughout the twentieth century. For example, the Owens Valley Paiutes struggled to obtain enough water from the Owens River, a primary water source for the city of Los Angeles, to operate a fishery. The Paiutes of the Pyramid Lake suffered when the United States built Derby Dam as part of the Newlands Project in 1905 on the Truckee River, the primary water source for Pyramid Lake. The dam diverted almost half the river flow to a separate valley, the Carson Basin. As a result, the Pyramid Lake level dropped 78 feet by 1967, depriving cui-ui trout access to upstream spawning beds and significantly impacting tribal fisheries and waterfowl habitat on the Pyramid Lake Reservation.

The cui-ui, which are central to Pyramid Lake Paiute identity, were listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1967. This helped the Paiutes regain control over their lake and fisheries. Similar water diversion plans by upstream non-Indian users severely degraded Walker River Reservation resources as well. Litigation over water rights persisted throughout much of the twentieth century with frequently unsuccessful results for the Paiutes.

SETTLEMENT PATTERNS

The Paiute population is broadly scattered, living in numerous small communities and a few large reservations. The Northern Paiutes live in at least 14 communities including: Pyramid Lake, Walker River, Fort McDermott, Fallon, Reno-Sparks area, Yerington, Lovelock, Summit Lake, and Winnemucca in Nevada; Burns and Warm Springs in Oregon; and, Bridgeport, Cedarville, and Fort Bidwell in California.

Tribal memberships ranged from less than 20 individuals with the Winnemucca in 1992 to almost 2,000 with the Pyramid Lake tribe. The Owens Valley Paiute communities include Bishop, Big Pine, Lone Pine, Fort Independence, and Benton in eastern California. Their memberships in 1991 ranged from 84 at Benton to 1,350 at Bishop. Ten Southern Paiute communities include the Shivwits, Indian Peaks, Cedar, Koosharem, Kanosh, Kaibab, Moapa, Las Vegas, and San Juan. Their memberships are also small and ranged from 71 at Las Vegas to almost 300 at Moapa in 1992.

Though the three groups differed both culturally and linguistically, today most members refer to themselves simply as Paiutes. The name Paiute means "true Ute" or "water Ute," reflecting the group's relationship to the Ute Indians of Utah. Though relations were generally good between Paiutes and Utes, in historic times the Utes became very active in Many Native groups retain their ancient forms of completing tasks, such as this Paiute woman grinding seeds.

Another mis-justice suffered them was the slave raids on the Paiutes, trading abducted Paiute slaves to Spanish colonists in the Southwest. The Paiutes were also closely related to the Shoshone peoples of the Northwest. Though the Owens Valley Paiutes were culturally similar to the Northern Paiutes, they spoke the language of the Mono (or Monache) peoples that lived west of the Sierra Nevada.

The San Juan Paiutes, though living in fear of the Navajo to the east, actually adopted some Navajo customs regarding dress, housing, and some linguistic traits. Though generally considered Southern Paiutes, the Chemehuevi who lived along the lower Colorado River south of the Las Vegas Valley on the Arizona and California border actually shared more traits with Southern California tribes than with other Paiutes, such as floodplain farming and earthen house construction of the Mohave culture, than other Paiute cultural practices.

A fundamental aspect of Paiute religion is acquisition of "power," or buha among Northern Paiutes. The Paiutes believed in many supernatural beings that manifested themselves in elements of the natural world, such as water, thunder, and animals. In short,The Paiutes prayed to the spirits for Buha, which they believe could be acquired in dreams or at cave or grave sites.

Aside from healing, buha was sought to help control weather, sexual prowess, vulnerability in warfare, and gambling success. One powerful spirit was Thuwipu Unipugant, or "the One Who Made the Earth," who was represented by the sun.

Traditionally, the Paiutes lived on an economy of hunting, fishing, and gathering. Men hunted deer, mountain sheep, and antelope. Smaller mammals, particularly jackrabbits, were captured in communal activities using large nets. Waterfowl, such as American coots, at the various large lakes were also hunted. Fish were netted or speared. Women performed extensive plant gathering, including a wide variety of roots (tubers), berries, and seeds. Pine nuts were particularly important toward the south and camas bulbs to the north. To the furthest extent south, in the Las Vegas region, agave was a key food source. Also, in the far south of Paiute country, irrigation was used to grow corn, squash, melons, sunflowers, gourds, and beans.

The various natural food sources were gathered through the year in an annual cycle necessitating a good deal of mobility. Groups would break apart into families then rejoin again seasonally. Consequently, Paiute society consisted of economically self-sufficient and politically independent families who seasonally occupied "home" tracts. The families would unite semi-annually with other families forming a camp group of 2 or 3 families. The core family unit would continually expand or contract and the camp group also changed size and composition seasonally and through the years, often foraging together and pooling resources.

Like other Native American groups who could no longer continue traditional economies, the Paiutes experienced difficulties in securing sources of income for tribal members, as well as revenue for the tribes. After relocation to reservations, the Paiutes increasingly made a living by working for wages in nearby towns or ranches. In the Owens Valley, Paiutes worked as wage laborers in the local farming and ranching economy after the 1870s and later became involved in tourism and mining operations. Elsewhere, some Paiutes raised cattle. Pyramid Lake and Walker River Paiutes were able to keep fishing, selling fish in local town markets until the 1920s when loss of water due to river diversions lowered the lakes and disrupted fish runs upstream from the lakes.

The federal Indian allotment policies from the 1890s through 1910 hit some Paiutes particularly hard, carving up reservations and placing the more economically productive lands within reservation boundaries into non-Indian ownership. As examples, the Fallon Paiutes located on the original Stillwater Reservation lost 90 percent of its land base and the Pyramid Lake Paiutes lost a 20,000 acre timber reserve. Much of the retained Paiute lands suffered cattle trespassing and poaching of big game and fish resources.

In 1965, the Southern Paiutes received approximately $7.2 million dollars from the U.S. government in a lawsuit for almost 30 million acres of tribal lands wrongfully taken. Many bands, such as the Moapa and Kaibab, used the money as capital to improve living conditions and develop educational and employment opportunities. Also during the 1970s, five bands of Utah Paiutes formed a legal corporation, the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, and received a government grant to build an industrial complex.

Passage of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Act in 1974 stimulated economic development from the late 1970s into the 1990s. The act promoted Indian economic self-sufficiency through loan and grant programs. Monies from land claim settlements and federal loans led to various forms of development. Pyramid Lake, Walker River, Reno-Sparks, Las Vegas, and Fallon communities opened smoke-shops and mini-marts.

At smoke-shops on tribal lands, tribes could sell cigarettes to the public without federal taxes added, making them lucrative when located near well-used routes. The Pyramid Lake Paiutes also built two commercial fish hatcheries and received revenue from issuing recreational fishing permits for the lake. Attempts at developments such as business parks, as at Big Pine, had limited success due to the isolation of tribal lands.

Traditional crafts continued to prove to be a resource to the tribe also, and was among the last of the traditions held among the people as their assimilation continued separating they from their creed (traditional ways of living) to which the Kaibab and a few artisans became notably commercially successful.

In earlier times, the Paiute tribesmen often hunted and defended themselves with the bow and arrow. Some bands have relied on grazing livestock or issuing grazing leases, including Pyramid Lake, Walker River, Fort McDermitt, and the Utah Paiutes. However, many of the Paiute communities, including Fort Bidwell, Summit Lake, Burns, and Lovelock among others, have enjoyed few successes in establishing employment opportunities and revenue sources.

Still, by the latter twentieth century, most Paiute communities had successfully installed electrical and telephone services, plumbing, paved streets and built better housing. Economic plight led two Paiute bands to consider controversial projects in the 1990s. The Northern Paiute of the Fort McDermitt Reservation in Nevada discussed the possibility of building a storage facility for high-level nuclear waste on their lands, while the Southern Paiute of the Kaibab Reservation in Arizona debated whether to construct a hazardous waste incinerator.

The financial rewards these projects offered the bands made them appealing, but both projects were ultimately defeated due to environmental concerns.