Lost Worlds of 1863. W. Dirk Raat

Benedict, a federal judge in the Territory of New Mexico, wrote a eulogy to President Abraham Lincoln. It ended with these words: “The voice of the blood of Abraham Lincoln will never cry in vain to Heaven from the free ground upon which it has been shed.”⁷⁹ Lincoln was the author of one of the most important documents in the history of the American Republic. His leadership during the Civil War in which he destroyed the institution of Black slavery and preserved the Union at all costs made Lincoln a great statesman. Not only did Lincoln, a grieving father, manage affairs on the domestic front, he also gave to Mexico material and manpower that enabled Benito Juárez and his Republican Army to defeat the imperial armies of France and Austria. In this latter sense Lincoln was not only a great national leader, but was an important international figure as well.⁸⁰ Yet, and unfortunately, from the point of view of many Indians “the Great White Father” was ultimately just another politician.

      Commentary: Lincoln and the Pueblos

      Like most presidents, Lincoln had little or no knowledge and experience with the American Indian. On a personal level he considered them inferior to the white man and dealt with them in a paternalistic way. Most of the Indian matters that confronted him in office were handled by other officials in his administration. Lincoln’s Far West policy was to promote the interests of the transcontinental railroad, miners, farmers, and preachers. In other words, Lincoln personified the ideals of “Manifest Destiny,” which held that the Indians were an obstacle to the expansion of western civilization and must be removed to make room for Christianity, mineral extraction, farming, and the railroad. Most of the Lincoln administration activities involved the cession of Indian lands and the removal and relocation of the Indians from their homelands. While he did get involved in the Sioux conflict in Minnesota, and was concerned with the affairs of the pro-Union Cherokee, he took no part in the events in the New Mexico territory involving Navajos and Mescalero Apaches. The Navajo Long Walk was administered solely by military personnel of the New Mexico district.

      His paternalism did reveal itself in his treatment of the Pueblo Indians. Perhaps, Lincoln, like many of his compatriots, considered them to be more “civilized” than the average “savage” because the Pueblos lived in a sedentary way, dwelling in apartment compounds and practicing agriculture. Pursuing the model of the Spanish King in 1620 and the example of the Mexican government in 1821, he awarded Pueblo leaders with silver-headed ebony canes engraved with his name:

      Lincoln

      President. U.S.A.

      (Name of the pueblo)

      1863

      As scholar W. Dale Mason notes, “These canes recognized the sovereign status of the pueblos. The canes are still revered in the pueblos today and are used to symbolically legitimize the authority of the pueblo governments.”¹

2 Numu (Paiute) Wanderings, Trails, and Tears

      In 1863 Company G of the 2nd California Cavalry was sent to Owens Valley to reinforce fellow troopers assisting American settlers at war with Paiute Indians. On the way, the soldiers surrounded a Tubatulabal village near Keysville and killed 35 to 40 Indian men. On the return trip, the troops marched About 1,000 Paiutes to the Tejon Reserve, bringing 300 to the fort, which had been closed in 1861 … . Neither the Indian agent nor the military provided enough food to sustain the captives.

      Office of Indian Affairs, San Francisco, July 11, 1864¹

      You would make war upon the whites [taibo’s]. I ask you to pause and reflect. The white men are like the stars over your heads. You have wrongs, great wrongs, that rise up like the mountains before you; but can you, from the mountain tops reach and blot out those stars … . What hope is there for the Pah-Ute? From where is to come your guns, your powder, your lead, your dried meat to live upon, and hay to feed your ponies while you carry on this war. Your enemies have all of these things, more than they can use. They will come like the sand in a whirlwind and drive you from your homes.

      Numaga (Young Winnemucca), Pyramid Lake Paiute, Indian Leader and Speaker, April 1860²

      This time he [Wovoka, Mason Valley, Nevada, Paiute and Initiator of Ghost Dance movement in 1887] hadn’t left his body to follow the shamans’ path under the earth or into the shadowy realm of animistic powers and magic; instead, he visited a monotheistic Heaven and spoke to a very Methodist-sounding God with strong Mormon leanings.

      Gunard Solberg, Tales of Wovoka ³

      The early 1860s was a time of turmoil and conflict for the Paiute peoples of Owens Valley east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, as well as the Northern Paiutes of the Pyramid Lake region in what was then Utah Territory and present-day western Nevada. Even in eastern Nevada where the Overland Stage Company ran from Salt Lake City to the Schell Creek Mountains (immediately east of present-day Eli, Nevada), a distance of 225 miles, an eight-month war took place between the cousins of the Northern Paiutes, the Goshutes, and the white intruders. At least 16 whites were killed, and over 50 Goshutes died before peace was achieved in October 1863.⁴

      These incidents and conflicts were followed by events that eventually led to the disintegration of the Paiute homeland and, of course, the Paiute sense of family and identity. The so-called Keyesville Massacre of 1863 resulted in the death of at least 35 Indians,⁵ including many Paiutes, and that event was followed by the removal of nearly a thousand Owens Valley Paiutes to Fort Tejon and the region of southern California. There many would succumb to measles and other “European” diseases.

      The Pyramid Lake War of 1860 was followed by the Mud Lake Massacre of March 1865 when old men and women, as well as children and little babies, were burnt alive, including one of Chief Winnemucca’s wives, Tuboitony.⁶ The disintegration of the Pyramid Lake Reservation led these Northern Paiutes to wander from federal reservation to federal reservation, from army camp to army camp—first at Camp McDermit in northern Nevada, then the Malheur Reservation in Oregon, and after the Bannock War of 1878, to the Yakama Reservation beyond the Columbia River in Washington. The latter was a forced march that became, for the Paiutes, their own “Trail of Tears.”

      After the Dawes Act of 1887 the Paiutes were to be given 160 acres on an individual basis for parcels of marginal land. Many received nothing, and instead they were forced to form small ghettos adjacent to white communities in hopes of doing odd and dirty jobs the white man or woman would not do. It is not surprising then that the ancient Ghost Dance Religion would be revived in hopes of restoring the traditional Paiute values of homeland, family, community, and identity—a heaven on earth that would exclude the white outsider.

      Numa and Numa Folkways

Historically the Paiutes consisted of three related groups of indigenous peoples in the Great Basin: the Northern Paiutes of western Idaho, eastern Oregon, northeastern California, and most of Nevada (an area of over 70,000 square miles); the Owens Valley Paiutes in the arid basin between the eastern slopes of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains and the western faces of the Inyo and White Mountains; and the Southern Paiutes of southern Nevada and southern Utah, northern Arizona, and southeastern California. The Owens River runs approximately 180 miles north to south through the Owens Valley. The word “Paiute” has been interpreted to mean “Water Ute,” but the term the people use for themselves is usually Numa, meaning “the people.” However, some northern Paiutes, such as the Pyramid Lake Paiutes and a scattering of Owens Valley inhabitants, prefer Numu (also Neh-muh), while Southern Paiutes call themselves Nuwuvi, both terms also meaning “the people.”⁷

      Demographic estimates vary depending on the source, but a general approximation for the late 1850s would be about 6,000 Northern Paiutes in western Nevada and 1,000 Owens Valley Indians. By 1980 the figure would be 5,123 Northern Paiutes throughout California, Nevada, and Oregon, and about 1,900 Owens Valley Paiutes. Only about half of that latter number still live in the valley, the rest having moved to Los Angeles and elsewhere.⁸

      The