In Focus Volume 5 No 1

In Focus Volume 5 No 1

A Journal of Archaeology, Essays, Fictions, Folklore, Natural History, Native American Culture, Nevada History, Old Photographs, and Poetry.

Churchill County Museum Association

Churchill County Museum Association

1991-1992

Michon Mackedon

Bryan Branby
Sheilagh Brooks
Roberta Childers
Mary "Bunny" Cushman Corkill
Adam Fortunate Eagle
Ces Jacobsen
Grace Kendrick

7x10 Printed Journal, TIF,PDF, TXT

CHURCHILL COUNTY
IN FOCUS
A Journal of
ARCHAEOLOGY NATIVE AMERICAN
ESSAYS CULTURE
FICTION NEVADA HISTORY
FOLKLORE OLD PHOTOGRAPHS
NATURAL HISTORY POETRY
THE CHURCHILL COUNTY MUSEUM ASSOCIATION, FALLON, NEVADA
1991-1992
CHURCHILL COUNTY
MUSEUM ASSOCIATION, INC.
5
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Harold Rogers, Chairman
Ken Coverston, Vice Chairman
Jack Scheuermann, Secretary
Myrl Nygren, Treasurer
Wilva Blue, Accessions Coordinator
Kathy Albiston, Trustee
Vaughna Bendickson, Trustee
Lauren Chealander, Trustee
Elmo Derrico, Trustee
Dan Luke, Sr., Trustee
Susan McCormick, Trustee
Cyril Schank, Commissioner
EDITORIAL POLICY
IN FOCUS solicits articles or photographs of scholarly or popular interest dealing with the history and people of Churchill County and neighboring Nevada regions. Prospective contributors should send their work to the Editor, IN FOCUS, Churchill County Museum & Archives, 1050 South Maine Street, Fallon, NV 89406. Articles should be typed, double-spaced, and sent in duplicate. If the article is available on a computer disk, it can be submitted in this form, to eliminate retyping. For return of the manuscript, include a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Copyright Churchill County Museum Association, Inc., 1990. Manuscripts and photographs for each annual publication must be received by May 15 for consideration for that year's journal.
Authors of articles accepted for publication will receive three complimentary copies of the Journal.
IN FOCUS is published annually by the Churchill County Museum Association, Inc., a non-profit Nevada corporation. A complimentary copy of IN FOCUS is sent to all members of the Museum Association. Membership dues are:
SENIOR (60+) $ 10.00
INDIVIDUAL 15.00
FAMILY 20.00
LIFE 250.00
Membership applications and dues should be sent to the Director, Churchill County Museum & Archives, 1050 South Maine Street, Fallon, NV 89406. Copies are also sold through the Museum Mercantile shop, located in the Museum, by mail, and at several retail outlets.
The Editors of IN FOCUS and the Churchill County Museum Association disclaim any responsibility for statements, of fact or opinion, made by the contributors.
POSTMASTER: Return postage guaranteed. Send address changes to Churchill County IN FOCUS, 1050 South Maine Street, Fallon, NV 89406.
Cover Photograph:
Building a traditional willow framed house. (Courtesy Special Collections,
University of Nevada-Reno Library--Margaret M. Wheat Collection)
CHURCHILL COUNTY
IN FOCUS
ANNUAL JOURNAL OF THE CHURCHILL COUNTY MUSEUM ASSOCIATION
VOLUME 5 1991-1992 NUMBER 1
Contents
SOFT FOCUS
The Editor's Comments Michon Mackedon 1
SHARP FOCUS
Keep the Recorder Turned On:
The Papers of Margaret M. Wheat Michon Mackedon 3
Excerpts from the Interview of Dr. Ralph Payne,
Margaret M. Wheat, Interviewer Dr. Ralph Payne 21
Excerpts from the Interview of Andy Vidovich,
Margaret M. Wheat, Interviewer Andy Vidovich 31
The Legends of "Singing" Sand Mountain .. Mary "Bunny" Cushman Corkill 34
NATIVE AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE
Fremont's Cannon Adam Fortunate Eagle 42
Songs of the Elders,
Recorded by Margaret M. Wheat Paiute Elders 48
PIONEER PORTRAIT
Excerpts from the Interview of Dr. George M. Gardner,
Margaret M. Wheat, Interviewer Dr. George M. Gardner 53
Excerpts from the Interview of John "Jack" and Myrtle Bailey Sheehan,
Margaret M. Wheat, Interviewer John "Jack" and Myrtle Sheehan 64
SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE
Who Were the Stillwater Marsh People?
Sheilagh Brooks and Richard H. Brooks 74
CREATIVE FOCUS
Unfinished Story Roberta Childers 84
MUSEUM MINIATURES
Fallon Quilt Days, October 19-20, 1990 Ces Jacobsen 86
Quilting Grace Kendrick 89
Almost Thirteen Years Ces Jacobsen 93
CONTRIBUTORS 97
SOFT FOCUS
The Editor's Comments
MICHON MACKEDON
IN FOCUS IS now five years old and celebrating somewhat of a landmark birthday in the publishing business. It does seem remarkable that we're still publishing, given the facts that our labor force is a volunteer one and our budget, a small one. Were it not for the support of the Museum Association and staff, for the work of Loree Branby, who did all of the designing, word processing, and copy editing for this edition, and for the encouragement of many of our readers, we would have, by now, joined the ranks of many defunct magazines and journals.
You might be interested in some of the comments made by our readers in a survey conducted by the staff of In Focus in February, 1991. We received quite a few responses to the survey, all of them expressing a desire for the museum to continue to publish this journal. Readers listed as topics they would like to read more about: Fallon's old timers and pioneer families (numerous specific suggestions were made), local Native Americans, early politicians, George McCracken ("CCHS Principal Extraordinaire"), influential educators, the Beckstead store, Newlands Field Station, Sheriffs of Churchill County, hospitals, geothermal drilling, and more. We are now long on ideas, short on authors. If you are so inclined, please sharpen your pencil and help us out!
Over one-half of this issue is devoted to Margaret Wheat, who spent almost a lifetime of work interviewing and recording Nevada pioneers and Native Americans. We asked the leaders of the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe to read and approve the publication of the Payne transcript, as it is in keeping with the spirit of Mrs. Wheat that we wish never to offend anyone or to violate a trust.
We hope you enjoy the 1991-92 edition of In Focus.
MICHON MACKEDON, EDITOR
1
2 Mackedon
SHARP FOCUS
Keep the Recorder Turned On:
The Papers of Margaret M. Wheat
MICHON MACKEDON
IN THE FALL of 1990, I took a sabbatical leave from my teaching job at Western Nevada Community College to read the papers of Margaret M. Wheat (1908-1988), held in Special Collections, University of Nevada, Reno Library. For years, I had heard talk of the work done by Wheat: I knew that she had devoted most of her life to recording the traditional arts and sacred beliefs of the northern Nevada Paiute tribes; I knew that the quantity of her material housed in special collections was large enough to generate a 40 page catalog; I was familiar enough with her 1967 book Survival Arts of the Primitive Paiutes, to respect her knowledge of Paiute traditions and her methods of working with Nevada Indians. Armed with those vague notions, I set out to survey her work and gather information for the Churchill County Museum, in particular, for In Focus. What I was not prepared for was the breadth of the work--nor its intensity. From the moment I opened the first of some two hundred file folders, I was cast into material that amazed my senses, jolted whatever preconceptions I had held about Paiute life, entertained me, fascinated me and overwhelmed me. The one impression that held firm was that I could not do justice to all the material myself; it merits attention from linguists, ethnologists, historians, biographers, myth scholars and the Paiute Indian people. Having thus excused myself from an academic approach, I will offer what comments I can in the hopes that the reader will be tantalized to discover more on his own.
The marginal notes are there because the thoughts were there, for me. If they only confuse or distract you, reader, read on.
The introduction to the catalog of Margaret Wheat's papers, compiled by Special Collections, UNR, reveals that they consist of "6.5 cubic feet of records, approximately 170 audio tapes, several thousand feet of movie film, and several thousand photographic prints and negatives." The print material fills 26 boxes and is organized into 218 file folders of letters, notes, and documents on hundreds of topics. Wheat was a Nevada native, born and raised in Fallon. She received her academic training in geology, but her interests soared beyond what can be encompassed by any one academic discipline. So, in addition to collecting information on the customs and lifestyles of northern Paiutes, she gathered data on such topics as earthquakes, floods, ichthyosaurs, Churchill
3
4 Michon Mackedon
County history, John C. Fremont, early routes through Nevada, pleistocene Lake Lahontan, Baron De Lahontan, Sarah Winnemucca, Lake Winnemucca, Winnemucca Cave, and the Indian prophet Wovoka (Jack Wilson). Nearly a whole box is filled with what she ironically referred to as "battle data"--records and correspondence relating to the controversy and infighting that characterized the Nevada State Parks Commission in the 1960's and 70's and material relating to her own battle to have dedicated as a state park the area near Berlin, Nevada, which contains the fossilized remains of prehistoric ichthyosaurs.
However, it's the interviews with members of the northern Paiute tribe that caught my attention. Wheat began recording the conversations in the late 1950's, using a second-hand wire spool tape recorder. In 1968, she applied for a grant from the Fleischmann Foundation, through Foresta Institute, to continue her work. The fact that she sensed the importance and urgency of the project is evidenced in her application for the grant monies, where she noted the "winter toll"--the names of elder tribal members she knew to have died or suffered strokes during the previous winter.
Wheat received the grant and most of the resulting tape recordings have since been transcribed to typewritten text, making the material accessible to readers and researchers. To date, no complete and definitive text has been developed, and, as a result, the scripts are not of uniform quality. In some cases, transcribers have summarized the contents of a tape rather than transferring words to paper, one by one, rendering the written text rather colorless in comparison to the oral material. A further challenge to the reader lies in the fact that, at various places in many of the transcripts, phrases are accompanied by question marks or left out altogether due to unclear words or low volume on the recording. In a portion of one tapescript, the contents are presented with the words, "This material must be heard to be appreciated."
In any case, the transcripts are absorbing reading, transporting the reader into the memories of elder members of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, or sending him to the shores of the Stillwater Marsh to discuss making rule decoys with Wuzzie George, or setting him in the living room of Andy Vidovich as he talks about his father-in-law, the Indian prophet and doctor, Wovoka.
A hand-written note from one of Wheat's files provides a summary of her interview style: "Just talk & talk--one memory will lead to the next--keep the recorder turned on!" To stimulate conversation and, one suspects, to relax the interview, Wheat sometimes drove around the state, recorder in tow, with one of her Paiute acquaintances, to the shores of the ancient Great Basin lakes or to the tops of ranges growing from the desert floor, letting geographic features stir memory and association. The interview technique was thus free-flowing, and questions were frequently open-ended, "What can you tell me about...?" As her handwritten note indicates, she believed in just talking and talking.
Occasionally, the results are frustrating to study, as discussions may range, quickly and without transition, from the marvelous to the mundane; a startling
Keep the Recorder Turned On 5
comment will be absorbed in seemingly trivial small talk or the conversation will wander to new and unrelated territory. Much of this meandering informality results from an ever-present courtesy on the part of Margaret Wheat as interviewer. She respects what is being said and is sensitive to how things are said. She participates and responds even when (the reader surmises) her mind has jumped to a new idea. However, from the transcripts as a whole, patterns do emerge, both in the interview style and in the material explored. The patterns reveal her concentration on specific topics and a determination to get at them without dominating the dialogues or alienating one of her Indian friends.
The kind of material flowing from the dialogues might be loosely placed into two categories--the factual and the metaphysical. It is as if Wheat, the Scientist, worked side by side with Wheat, the Alchemist, to distill the golden substance of the text. She usually began an interview with questions of fact, asking the person she was interviewing to explain a past event or to clarify a word or phrase of the Paiute language. Then, the conversation settled in less formal matters, shifted to the stuff dreams (and beliefs) are made of: stories of nini' (the water babies and water dogs), tales of miraculous cures brought about through traditional remedies or Indian doctoring, or the legends and customs that held a culture together in a world of "natural magic." The stories that emerge blend what the enlightenment mind would call fact with that more suggestive material sometimes called belief--to call forth powerfully strange, yet strangely powerful, images and ideas.
The script of tape # 98 provides a good example of Wheat's interview style and of the kind of material that spins out in rich and magical designs "as one memory leads to the next."
A Paiute Elder and Margaret Wheat are up on Lovelock Mountain. They are discussing the origin of the Indian name of the mountain: Mo pung habi, which means "mosquito bed," or "a bed to get away from mosquitoes."
ELDER: They dug out a little depression in the
dirt, big enough for one, two or maybe three people, and
"My definition
of magic is very simple. It is the view that there is a logic
of everyday life, but there is also a logic of another world. And that other logic works in a different way and if you can enter into some
magical
practice--
particularly if
you can find
the right form
of words;
then..."
Jacob
Bronowski
Magic, Science
and
Civilization,
New York:
Columbia
University
Press,
1978,
pp. 11-12.
6 Michon Mackedon
filled the depression with cattails or tule. This is what my grandmother, Mary Dave, said she had been told by her parents. She remembers when there were just swarms and swarms of mosquitoes in the Lovelock area. They just came down on the people. And to get away from them they came up here. My grandmother may have come up here, too. I don't know. I think they just came up in the evening and then went back down in the morning, or the day. There used to be a lot of water, all over, where the town is now, and everywhere. And now it's down to just one, the Humboldt River. My grandmother told me about the different foods and the different animals that came out in different times of the year.
We're called the Ground Squirrel people. The Kupa daka. They used to come out, all over, and that's what they ate. The ground squirrels hibernate, and after they came out the Indians waited for them to get fat before they caught them.
MW: I remember when they used to have five-gallon kerosene cans
full of water in the backs of their wagons, and they would take them to the ground squirrels' tunnels and drown them out. Often they could find dens near irrigation ditches and they would carry water from the ditches to drown them. Do you remember that?
ELDER: Yes. I remember it. The Indians would make noises, a whistling
sound, near the entrances to the ground squirrels' tunnels, and then sit quietly and wait. The ground squirrels would be curious and come out slow and look, and the Indians had little short sticks to hit them on the heads. It used to be a lot of fun getting those squirrels. I remember in the spring, when the farmers would start to irrigate and the water would be running across the fields, they would let the Indians come in and hunt squirrels. And when the water ran in the squirrels' holes the squirrels would come out. And there would be a lot of fun. My father wore a glove to catch them because they would bite you. And one day a snake came out of the hole. He was waiting for one by the hole, and instead of a ground squirrel, it was a water snake came out of the hole and he caught it. When they saw it everybody ran screaming in every direction. He never did try to catch them any more like that. But the older people had sticks and they hit them on the head with the sticks.
There's a certain way to fix them, the ground squirrels. Any other animals you have to gut them, cut it open and take the guts out. With the ground squirrel you make a hole under one of the arms. You squeeze the bottom part of it and push all the intestines out through the little hole under the arms. I know how to do that. We don't have any ground squirrels around here any more. But we used to get them at the Getchell Mine. We got a lot of them and my mother showed me how to fix them. To roast them you build a big fire, make the ground real hot. You singe the squirrels real good. To singe them you throw them right into the flames. But you have to be fast and you have to turn them over or they'll burn all up in the fire. And then you take them out. And then you bury them in
Keep the Recorder Turned On 7
the coals, in a certain way. You have to put the stomach down first, all in a row. Then you cover them with ashes and build another fire on top of them. I don't know how long you cook them but they are small and it doesn't take very long. You have to watch them, like anything else. My mother got a piece of sagebrush with a point on it and stuck each one like a toothpick. And if the stick comes out clean they are done. But if it isn't, blood will start coming out of the squirrel. Then you take them out. They have to cool off. Then you peel that dark skin off. The meat is real light, but there is so little to it that you have to eat quite a few of them to get full.
MW: Do they brush the singed hair off? What would they use?
ELDER: A brush made out of rabbit brush, and take all that off. The hair bums pretty near down to the skin and they burn all black. And after they are roasted you peel all that off. Oh! they are so clean! When you take them out of the ashes you'd think they'd be dirty, but they are not. They're clean! ... Ground hogs are fixed the same way but they're cooked longer because they're bigger. And you have to cut them open to gut them ... different people ate different parts of the animals. The old people ate the hearts. And the heads were for the kids. You break the jaw off and that exposes the brains. You are forbidden to eat the eyes. The children couldn't eat the eyes, because the Indians believe that then they would get snow blind, if you ate the eyes, because the eyes when they are cooked turn white....
(There ensues a discussion of fishing and deer hunting)
MW: Did any of them ever eat horses?
ELDER: (Very emphatically) Oh no! We never ate horses! Some people wrote that the Paiutes killed a horse for New Year's celebration. You talk to some of the Paiutes and they say, "Oh, we never do that!" Nobody ever did because the horses were one of their most prized possessions. They never killed a horse, except by accident, and they never ate it.
MW: Did they kill the horse belonging to somebody when they died?
ELDER: No. I've heard of other tribes in the East doing that but not the Paiutes. But like I told you,
Sympathetic
eating: "The
Meres of
Northern India
prize tigers'
flesh as food
for men; it
gives them
strength and
courage. But it
is not suited for
women....
Amongst the
Dyaks of
Northwest
Borneo young
men and
warriors may
not eat
venison
because it
would make
them as timid
as deer."
Sir James
Frazier
The Golden
Bough, v. 11,
New York:
Avenel Books,
1981,
pp. 86-87.
8 Michon Mackedon
they cared so much for people who died they'd cut their hair. They'd put pitch on their faces; you could imagine how ugly they looked. And they would cry. So they probably would kill their horse if they loved it--[the one] that somebody rode all the time.
MW: I have heard stories of them killing a horse and skinning it and then putting the body in the skin for burial. Have you heard anything like that?
ELDER: Oh no! I never heard anything like that!
MW: Will you ask your mother if she has heard of anything like that?
ELDER: Yes. Sometimes my mother knows things that her grandmother told her....
MW: Something else you mentioned was about the spider cure.
ELDER: Oh yes! Black widow. When you are bit by a black widow it leaves dark blotches under your skin. Not like a rash. When you are bit by a spider, it makes you feel hot, like a fever. The cure for that is, whoever has been bitten sits down on the floor, or on the ground, with a blanket or something over his head, so they can't see what you are doing. And make a torch of sagebrush--we use paper now. You carry the torch around the person, walking to your right, (clockwise), carrying the torch, three times. And you have to talk in Indian. Then you take the blanket off, uncover the patient, and then you burn a little piece of the hair on the back of their head--that is the web that the spider has you on. You have to break the web away from the spider.
MW: What do they say when they are doing that?
ELDER: I've almost forgotten what they say. The last time I did it was when I was about thirteen. My niece got bitten by a spider. We took her to the doctor. The doctor thought she had measles and gave her something. And told her to stay in the dark. But she got worse and worse. And my grandmother, who was old at that time, said to "shwa-shwa" her. That's what you say when you go around the three times. You say, "shwa-shwa--I see your teeth, I see your teeth" while you're walking around them three times. Then you see the spider. And then you burn the hair. And then she
"Magical
power has been
attributed to
words,
apparently
almost from the
beginning of
language.
Word magic
appears in a
variety of
forms. Spells,
for instance
words like
abracadabra,
or open sesame
or hocus
pocus, were
once
considered
powerful."
Robert Gorrell,
"Straight
Talk,"
Reno
Gazette-
Journal,
August 18,
1991.
Keep the Recorder Turned On 9
was well after I did that. Whether I did it or the doctor did it, I don't know. I tried it on her before. It seems like spiders like to bite. And as soon as I'd do that to her, she'd get well. Shwa-shwa is just a word. I don't know what it means. This sounds sort of crazy, doesn't it?
MW: It doesn't sound crazy to me.
ELDER: When you believe in some of these things, you just believe in
them ... (tape # 98).
Wheat's interest in the spider-bite cure is part of her ongoing quest for information relating to traditional cures and to the practices of the Indian doctors. That quest also brought with it the burden of carrying knowledge about beliefs and rituals considered sacred and private to the members of the tribe. In an interview with Andy Vidovich, son-in-law of the prophet and doctor Wovoka, Wheat reveals her feelings about her responsibility to her sources:
WHEAT: Andy, do you want any of what we were talking about
this morning recorded?
VIDOVICH: I don't know ... people wouldn't understand it. They
would put it in as a wild tale ... fiction, and I don't want that.
WHEAT: One thing, I will try never, never to do is write or make
something public that will hurt someone else. It's a great responsibility to me ... like having a knowledge you didn't know what to do with (tape # 100).
Wheat's respect for the Paiute people is evident throughout the tapes. In tape # 46, she lets the elders she is interviewing give their version of one of the early battles with white soldiers. It is clear that Wheat is a sympathetic listener and that she has done prior reading on the battle. When the conversation then moves into the more mysterious realm of legend and myth, one senses that Wheat's sympathies are again in tune with the material, that she feels that truths about the past, as well as those more universal truths relating to man's nature and the nature of his universe, might be just as well explored in the Paiutes' stories as in the white man's techniques of induction, deduction, chronology and documentation. For, certainly, in this interview, as well as in the previous one, Wheat knows when and how to elicit the material which she knows is important and which she loves to hear.
Participants in the discussion (tape # 46) are four Paiute Elders (referenced below as Elders 1, 2, 3, 4) and Margaret Wheat. The opening words refer to a geographic feature where the battle between Paiutes and white soldiers had taken place:
ELDER 1: Marble Butte - Atu- that was the lookout that had the holes in it.
That's where they see the soldiers from.
ELDER 2: It used to be pretty tough fight.
10 Michon Mackedon
MW: You know, the first day the Indians beat
the whites, then they went back and brought another army, but I think most of the Indians had just disappeared by that time. There was some fighting. What did your grandmother do then?
ELDER 1: I guess they found a hole in a rock and stayed there until the fighting was over, and that's how they came (out) alive. They took food with them. They found a hole just along the lake. They couldn't have gone far because the soldiers was coming fast. There were people from all over; the people from up north, they had a house in a hole over here some place near the Pyramid (?)
ELDER 2: I heard about Tumu Sha Ga Pu when he was a little boy, soldiers coming and they got so scared. The mother packed that little boy and jumped right into the river where there was an overhanging bank, lots of willows, and hay growing there. She go under there and hide and take hold of edge of willows, sit among the grasses. She's got the little boy with her, a little tiny boy, and he never cry. She hear the foot noise, the soldiers' noise going right on top of her, looking for somebody. That's the way she saved their life. Another woman got baby, she pack baby in basket, couldn't run fast. Everybody run this way towards mountains. This lady couldn't run fast. She dig a hole in a gopher hole, deeper. She got the baby in a rabbit blanket, hoope (cradleboard). She stuck that little baby into a gopher hole, let him stand in it, put sagebrush on top. And that baby, good thing he never cry, went to sleep. All those time, soldiers around looking for 'em. That's what I've been told. And the mother go away off towards the mountain, follow the other Indians, stood there, watch this way (back), see the soldiers walking around. Good thing they never see that baby. When the soldiers all got through, quit moving around, in evening time, she come back to that baby, pick 'em up. Funny thing about that baby, never cry--sleep.
Wheat asked why they had that fight, but they didn't know.
"Old
Winnemucca
the leader of
the Paiutes
in the 1840' s
and for many
years
thereafter,
originally
dreamed of
whites and
Indians
living
together in
mutual
respect and
friendship."
James Hulse
The Nevada
Adventure:
A History.
Reno:
Univeristy of
Nevada
Press, 1965,
p. 29.
Keep the Recorder Turned On 11
ELDER 2: Some Northern Paiute come this way, killing some white guy's cattle, and make these Paiutes get into trouble. Then somebody went and told the soldiers. Northern Paiutes make them get into trouble because they're killing their cattle. That's what I heard.
ELDER 3: Did she (Elder 4) tell you about our great grandmother, how she used to travel right over the mountains? When she was coming through the mountains over there, she was cutting through a canyon, she smelled an awful smell, an awful odor coming from the west, there was a real breeze. The juniper trees were thick and she was wondering what that smell is. "Must be a dead sheep some place," kept on coming to it, kept on coming to it, and here was an angel setting on a juniper tree. When the angel saw her coming up she look like the angel was going to take off, raise his wings, then finally (the wings) went down again, and she was so scared she went clear around. And, it smelled an awful smell, she said, that Indian. She used to tell my father, "The white men when they draw the angels are always nice and fancy, and just like a human being, except the wings, that's the way the white man draw, but the one I seen didn't look like that," she said, "and the wings were just like a bat," she said. "They were webbed, you know how bat's wings is, and the fingernails like a hook, toenails same way, and big eyes and dirty, dirty face--never washed his face, and stinked." That's the kind she seen on those mountains.
MW: What color was it?
ELDER 3: Oh, it was so dirty, kind of a dark gray.
Then another time she seen a big snake, oh, about that big around (12 inches) and head like a horse face, big nostrils and hair whiskers and from here (top of head) kind of a mane all along the back to the end, and sound like it was a bass drum, she said. She seen that kind in the canyon too.
MW: Those are great stories....
ELDER 3: Did my cousin tell you about my father when he was trapping for otter? There used to be otters in this lake a long time ago, and he was trapping. Must be way up on other side of Pyramid, some place, long
"The poet
must...learn
to mythically
as well as
rationally
and never be
surprised at
the weirdly
azoological
beasts which
walk into the
circle; they
come to be
questioned,
not to
alarm."
Robert
Graves
The White
Goddess,
New York:
Random
House, 1948,
p. 455.
12 Michon Mackedon
time ago. He make a round through his traps after windy day. I guess my father feel kind of lazy and he try to get his brother to go. "You go round and look after my traps." I guess my uncle was a real young fellow. He said he was scared of those things and didn't want to fool with them. "You go round and make rounds yourself." So after the storm he went around. He had two traps set. His traps were all unscrewed and piled up on one little heap. Some are kind of riveted so the nuts won't come off, and they were riveted. And my father think some kind of animal got caught in there and unscrewed them. They must have been something like human beings to screw nuts. And there was blood all over. When it first been caught in one of those traps it must have been going round and round like that. My father went down to the shoreline, it was nice and sandy, a little baby's tracks. Waterbaby. He used to tell it but lot of people won't believe it. No such things exist like waterbaby. But that was a long time ago before I was born. That's all I know. Sure must have had some strength to unscrew those screws. And they were all piled up neat in one pile (tape # 46).
The water dogs, like the water babies, live in memories of the elders, phantoms from a time before the white civilization changed forever the Great Basin and its people. One story relates how a group of Indian people used to travel to Pyramid from the north from Summit Lake, Susanville. "Always travel around lake. No good road then. Rough road. They come from Fort Bidwell. That takes long time to get to Nixon with horse and wagon. Getting nighttime when they get to the lake. They going to stop on other side this lake, stop over night. Those Indians roam around catching fish, take their guts out, sling them beside lake along shore. They stop over night and early in the morning, just about sun coming up ... (one man) heard something come out of that water, water dogs come out of this lake. Ears long, brown-looking and white-spotted dogs. Pretty good-sized dogs. And when they got to the shore they eating that waste, cui'ui waste. Make funny kind of noise ... and then he wake those other sleeping people
"Now
speech has
perished
from the
lifeless
things of
earth, and
living things
say very little
to very few."
Annie
Dillard
Teaching a
Stone to
Talk, New York: Harper and Row, 1982,
p. 70.
Keep the Recorder Turned On 13
and look over there, dogs coming out of the lake, fifty or sixty. Quite a bunch ... just like dogs, with floppy mouth, floppy ears, all slick, light brown. When those people get up they make noise looking at them. Those dogs see them looking at them. Got surprised and run back into the lake. Never come out again ... long time ago! (tape # 91). Another storyteller gives a similar description, "The Nini' i dogs had four feet, spotted just like bird dog." (tape # 98).
These stories seem rooted in an ethic that calls for recognizing the power inherent in all of nature's own. The mountains, the lakes, the very ground, the plants that grow and all the creatures of the earth have sensibilities that are violated if care is not taken to consciously coexist with them. So, many of the tales go beyond entertainment, etiology, or cultural history to suggest a duty to the cosmos, a faith in the miracle we simply call nature, and, most of all, a belief in the power of the thought, the word, and the deed. In a story, the son asks, "What would you do if a waterbaby landed on the boat?" The father replies, "Don't say that." Sure enough a big wave comes up, whereupon both pray to the waterbaby for forgiveness and safety. Both see in the wave a tiny brown person. He was "strong, real strong. This is a real story, not legend." Another story, this one of a water snake, ends, "Nowadays you can't make fun of that Summit Lake. If you do make fun of it you sure going to see something terrible." The example of "make-fun-of' was to say, "Oh, that's like nothing. I can swim in there." In a similar vein, Wheat elsewhere comments that "Wuzzie scolds me when I say something, like when we were driving down the road and there was what I thought was a beautiful electrical storm, lightning and everything, and I said to her, 'Look at that! Look at that!' She turned to me quickly and said, 'Don't say that! Don't say that! It come get you.' So I didn't say it any more." Wheat's companion replied, "Yeah, you should never say anything about the storm, especially the lightning. It could strike you dead, kill you for talking or making fun of something like that ... you're taught that; or we were. Never to brag ... like a rock shaped like something. You are not supposed to make fun of, or laugh about or point at it or anything ... don't say anything about anything because the ground is our mother...." Another elder expresses the same idea this way: "Don't make fun of the lake. The real old-timer people believe in these kind of things. Tell the young generation, 'When you get in this lake, Pyramid Lake, don't make fun of it or don't say anything. When you want to get inside the water, take off your shoes and wade in there; you wash your face first, splash it around your head and pray nothing will hurt you. No nini' i come. You proud you got good lake (tape # 91). '"
There are also stories of powerful snakes, which, in days past, slouched toward the waters of the lakes. The following story was told on tape in the Paiute language, then translated. In Paiute, it is a wonder to hear, but some of its lyrical qualities remain even in the English version.
14 Michon Mackedon
And great big snake long time ago crawl along and make hills
like a deep canyon with high walls.
And lots of people trail 'em through the grass.
And he crawl along and into a big lake place and Indian know there's a snake.
Indian know there's a big snake in there in that big round place, great big snake,
and the Indian start to make fire all around that snake.
And the fire started to roar around.
Big hill in there with lots of bushes.
And the fire coming toward the snake makes big noise.
And, gee, the fire making a roaring noise all around, even the trees shaking, and
the snake make it do that.
He been laying in the thick grass, moving the trees and the fire came
and burn the snake up.
And the next day the Indian came back and look in there
and snake burned up and bones laying here.
Great big bones.
That's where they kill big snake, all coiled up burned.
That's where old-times kill snake long time ago.
Frank's grandpa and his grandpa's grandpa, them days, saw it.
There is another snake in Oregon somewhere crawl into the lake.
They saw the tracks.
In Oregon somewhere saw another snake.
Long time before white people Indian can tell snake crawl along this way
all over up and down.
They know how he crawled.
Somewhere in Cedarville along side a mountain
there's where snake been overnight.
Those indians can tell snake trail.
They can tell where coiled up overnight by mountain.
Then the snake crawl along toward Gerlach
and then go toward the Summit Lake.
And then go into the lake there.
There's a lake there, a pretty good-sized lake.
He been crawled into that lake.
He been crawl into that Summit Lake, and he sit down
under that water and his eyes shine like a star (tape # 91).
It's easy to understand why the fabulous lore of water babies, water dogs and snakes captured Wheat's imagination. The stories are charming--graceful and musical. They speak to many levels of the imagination and intellect, from the historical and anthropological to the mytho-poetic and psychological. It is tempting to look for modern psychological meanings in images like that of the
Keep the Recorder Turned On 15
angel, who, instead of looking like the beautiful clean apparition promised by the white man, was colored dirty grey and stank! Too, there seems to be a significance beyond that of a story-telling trope in the fact that so many of the tales of water babies or snakes end with the words "they never again appeared," and refer to new sounds or "smells" (in one story a 'funny kind of car smell') that keep them imprisoned beneath the surfaces of the Great Basin Lakes. A woman walks with her sister and an old blind lady who is their aunt: "They came along the road with that blind woman. She had stick. They make her walk on good side, so she won't fall. Walk along slow. Way down here by Sutcliffe somewhere. They walk along slow and they heard a splashing noise, way down. Lot of noise going on. They wonder what that noise is. The young ladies leave that old lady stay there, tell her they going to see what that noise is. They peeked at it. Here was two little human beings, water babies. Tiny people, short, naked ones. Got no clothes on. Dark hair all hanging down. They stood there, look at them so surprised. They know it's water babies. One of those little water babies look back and saw those ladies looking at them. And he get so scared, run to the water and splash into the lake and the other followed and they go way in there and never come up again ... that woman right away know. She whisper slow, 'That's a nini' i. Let's go quick.' They kept on walking faster 'cause they got so scared ... there is such a thing in our lake. Long time ago when everything's quiet. Now all gone 'cause too much noise and smell. Funny kind of car smell. Snake, they don't like that (either). They disappear or died off' (tape # 91).
Could it be that there is no place for nini' i in a world that worships the balance sheet, the computer printout and the footnote? After all, storytelling is word magic, truth disguised by a spell. When the story is no longer told, its characters cease to exist and the spell is broken.
Margaret Wheat understood the truth and beauty of the material she was working with. Her devotion to
"I was in a
Printing house
in Hell & saw
the method in
which
knowledge is
transmitted
from
generation to
generation."
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
16 Michon Mackedon
recording the words as spoken, rather than paraphrasing or imposing her own interpretations, is proof of her own sensitivity to the poetry of the speech and the nuances of the delivery. That she had given some thought to publishing the material is made clear in a note from her papers:
"Look at the whole thing and decide what to do with it
1. Save it for future generations (rare documents @library)
2. Compose it into a book.
To interest what reader.
1. Nevada history.
2. Anthropological reader.
3. Human interest--etc."
Her health failed before any book took shape, but the material was wisely saved for future generations. It forms a monument to her and to the Indian people to whom she devoted so much time, affection, and thought. I invite you to read it, enjoy it, and let it sink into your soul.
The Marean Ranch in Fallon, where Margaret Wheat was raised. (Churchill County Museum & Archives--Margaret M. Wheat Collection)
Keep the Recorder Turned On 17
Margaret Wheat and an unidentified friend. (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Nevada-Reno Library--Margaret M. Wheat Collection)
Margaret Wheat at work with her trusty recorder. (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Nevada-Reno Library--Margaret M. Wheat Collection)
18 Michon Mackedon
Wheat took many photographs of northern Paiutes engaged in traditional activities. (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Nevada-Reno Library--Margaret M. Wheat Collection)
Margaret Wheat (R), Wuzzie George (C) and an unidentified woman take a moment to talk during a field trip. (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Nevada-Reno Library--Margaret M. Wheat Collection)
Keep the Recorder Turned On 19
Margaret Wheat sorting PinOn Pine cones on a field trip. (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Nevada-Reno Library--Margaret M. Wheat Collection)
Building a traditional willow framed house. (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Nevada-Reno Library--Margaret M. Wheat Collection)
20 Michon Mackedon
This young man will grow up knowing more about his heritage thanks to the work of Margaret M. Wheat, Wuzzie George and the Paiute Elders. (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Nevada-Reno Library--Margaret M. Wheat Collection)
Excerpts from the Interview of
Dr. Ralph Payne
MARGARET M. WHEAT, INTERVIEWER
1970
Courtesy Special Collections,
University of Nevada-Reno Library
[Ed. Note: Dr. Ralph Payne was serving as a Public Health Service physician in Schurz, Nevada, at the time of the interview. He had been invited to attend a healing ceremony and, in the interview, tells Margaret Wheat what he experienced. His wife also participated in the interview.]
WHEAT: They started on Monday, and ended on Friday?
PAYNE: I don't know if they started Monday or not. They were running Schurz and Yerington at the same nights. He would do the singing in Yerington and then come over and do it in Schurz, that same night. And after Friday night, then, he had his meal and then went over in Yerington to repeat the floor-plan of the sing over here. They talked on how tired and how really beat he was.
...His name was Raymond Harris ... and he is an Arapaho, and he was trained by his grandfather. Apparently his training is directly from his grandfather, and [those who know him] say the grandfather he refers to is his grandfather's spirit. And this is unique to him as an individual Indian doctor. It is a personal spirit that means something to him in his position as an Indian doctor, and would not have the same meaning to any other Indian doctor.
So--it was Friday, April the 17th [1970].
...there were, oh, I'd say thirty or thirty-five people there.... The seating arrangement was sort of semi-circular.... I noticed people were sitting in the same position they were sitting the time before that.... Most people sat on cushions on the floor. There were a couple of young, teen-age boys who participated as janitors ... I walked in, and people who knew me recognized me and acknowledged my presence and made me feel perfectly at home; [they] were very friendly and people who didn't know me gave me the "Who's he? And what's he doing here?" look. I was told immediately that I was required to sit in one of the back rows, that I couldn't sit up front ... I just sat and watched.
21
22 Interview Excerpts
What started this, I called Raymond Harris up and asked if I could attend and he said, "yes, it's okay." I said, "What time?" He said we were to be there by six. I think it got started about six-thirty, when they locked the doors and tacked up the blanket over the door; and it was about eight-thirty when they opened them. The whole thing took about two hours.
I was noticing the kids, the younger kids that were there; they were noisy and running around--typical kids and were constantly being told to keep quiet. There was a very serious, solemn time while we were sitting there. People were quiet; there wasn't any talking; the older people sort of thinking, or just sitting, watching; very minimal amount of verbal communication. The children's parents and other adults were going "sh, sh"--you know, correcting them. So, it seems like before the ceremony starts it's like entering the average church: everybody's quiet and sort of gets themselves in the proper frame of mind. Everybody got seated; they had a group of people from Bishop coming up.
They divided the group into three groups--the people who had presented their pipes into three groups--and the third group was in an adjoining room. They were not even in the main room, because there wasn't enough space. And there was, perhaps, about eight people to a group. There was a lot of talking, between the groups, until everybody got their positions straight, and all that. So, while this was going on Raymond Harris was setting up his ceremonial pieces in the alter-like, which he carries in an average foot locker.... Things were wrapped up in this blanket that I described before: I can't remember exactly how I described it, but it was a rectangular blanket about two feet wide and about six feet long.
WHEAT: It was a narrow blanket, then?
PAYNE: Yes. It was red with a lot of stripes in it.
WHEAT: Did they use black in it?
PAYNE: No, this was another; this one was spread out on the floor, and there were strands of sage laying cross-wise and he rolled it up in this blanket; and he took his boots off. And then he prepared the altar there, kneeling on sages. And I noticed that everything he set out, like his pipes, his feathers, and all that, he always had a little sage he put them on, and a little sage blanket that separated them from the floor, with a few strands of sage. And there was one roll of sage that was in a ball which he rolled up, and he rubbed it over his hands, and his head, his arms and his legs, and he lit that and it started to smoke.
WHEAT: Was he talking while he was rubbing it over him?
PAYNE: No, not that I could tell. He just seemed to be getting things ready. He took his [another] blanket, which is a sort of turquoise blue, flannel perhaps; looks like what's in every blanket I've seen, like regular blankets for beds. It had the eagle, looks like it is embroidered on the back, and took it out of a little case, it was a little case, a little sheath, you know, a sack of the same color and material, with the eagle on it. He took that out, unfolded it, and set it out. There were about three different types of rattles. They were about the size
Dr. Ralph Payne 23
of a small grapefruit--the skin part of one. I had been told they were deer ear, but they were not recognized as an ear at all, it was pretty well stretched. And his pipe looks like it's wood, a reddish, mahogany-colored wood, and it comes apart. The bowl sets into part of the stem and the remaining part of the stem just pulls out, down near the bowl. But it looks like it's all wood.
WHEAT: Now, were the two rattles all deer ears?
PAYNE: I don't know. They looked the same; there were three sets. And of course there were six rattles, but they looked very similar.
WHEAT: Oh, there were six rattles?
PAYNE: Yes, There were three sets of two. There were some feathers, like wings, eagle wings. There was a ball of twine, which is the twine he was tied up with. It looks like it's a thong, a rawhide thong, or something, six feet long, even longer than that, maybe twelve feet.
WOMAN: He was tied up with it?
PAYNE: Uh huh. There were two of them.
WHEAT: Could it have been woven hemp? Coarse hemp?
PAYNE: It looked like it might have been of rawhide. I'm sitting perhaps fifteen feet from there. And it looks like it might be rawhide thong. Then there was a sort of little thing; I didn't know what they were. Little decorated objects, like little vases, that he put sage in; small receptacle-type things.
WHEAT: They weren't beaded were they?
PAYNE: No, They looked like they may have had a design painted on them, but I couldn't tell what they were. The coffee cans with the sand, that the pipes were in, the representatives of pipes I guess, were red, green, yellow, orange, blue: I think those were the colors. And--....
WHEAT: What made you feel these were pipes? Did they look like pipes?
PAYNE: No. it was just that I was told they were called pipes. When they presented the pipes somebody mentioned this, that this was what they were. But they were a stick, maybe eighteen or twenty inches long, with a little walnut-size enlargement at one end. And over this is tied a colored cloth, like an Arabian headpiece. Goes down the back, you know. Ties around the head, and then flows over the back. What it is, it looks like a lolly-pop with the cellophane part hanging clear down to the bottom. Covers it up. And these are stuck with the identical-colored ones, in the same cans. Now what he did then, while he was setting the stage, this man, Conny from Bishop, came out and he took four coffee cups and put them in the four corners around the altar, and Mr. Harris is in the middle.
...While he's doing this, the two young boys are passing around the burning sage which he had lit at the beginning. Yes, a bowl of sage, just in sort of a wooden bowl. I really didn't notice. And it's burning. And then everybody
24 Interview Excerpts
takes some of the smoke out of there and rubs it on their arms and into their hair, and into their mouth, and rubs it all over them. And everybody gets it.
WHEAT: Did you do it?
PAYNE: Yes. I tried to do exactly what everybody else did. Not knowing why or what they were doing. I just did what everybody else did. And then they passed out the strands of sage which they hung over the ears, the right ear. Everybody's sitting watching quietly. Before they passed the sage around, when he first lit it, he took all the pipes, all the colored cloth pipes that were in a bundle, and he passed them in a rocking motion through the sage smoke. Both ends, you know, to make sure they were well smoked in the sage. He did this with his smoking pipe too. What shall I refer to that as, to get the two pipes' differences?
WHEAT: I don't know.
PAYNE: I should say "the symbolic pipes" and the actual pipes. But he did this to both the symbolic pipes and the real pipes. And then he put them out, stuck them out, stuck them in the cans and then the cans were placed.
...They had removed the two light bulbs from the ceiling previously, I guess as a precaution.
MRS. PAYNE: They had actually unscrewed them?
PAYNE: Unscrewed them. They were just light bulbs screwed into the socket, and they had been removed. He made an interesting comment, too, because one of the younger [boys], looked like someone fifteen, sixteen or seventeen, was going to be manning the lights. And the light cord, just a pull cord, was affixed to a cabinet. He made it a point to break that fixture because he said you might accidentally bump the string and the light might come on. So I'm sure he's being very observing about the physical conditions of the room, and making sure there would be no slip-up and get light in there.
WHEAT: How is it lit now?
PAYNE: It's lit by one or two lights, one light bulb over the sink which is at one end of the room. The door has been sealed. And he just sort of signals "Ready" and the lights go off.
WHEAT: Does he come in just prior to the sealing of the door? Or has he been there for some time?
PAYNE: He's been sitting there, in and out, walking around. Everybody seems like they spent some time in one of the back rooms before they got started. But I mean the singers and the doctor--seems like they had all been in the back. Whether they were just socializing or relaxing from the afternoon. I was told that all individual counseling and medicine was done on a one-to-one basis that afternoon, with sweats and without sweats. He sort of signalled and the lights went out. And this time there wasn't the English prayer that was before. It was an Indian prayer.... They said a prayer and I noticed that the people would respond to certain parts of the prayer with a certain sound ... a-ha'a.... In fact, in
Dr. Ralph Payne 25
some of the prayers later on it sounded like it was a "yes-no" type of response. A-ha'a, good, o-o-o, bad, or something like this. But everybody was responding. I was in position to be sort of sitting in the middle, rather than on the outside. Later on I was sort of sitting in the middle with people who had been in the second group had to make room for the third group in the other room as they came in and so they would pick up, you know, what the people were saying and the kids, [I was] sitting next to a girl that must have been about nine years old and a girl must have been thirteen or fourteen, so I could hear some of their prayers, what they were praying for. But anyway, under the sequence, they sang the song ... and I was, personally, quite awed by [the lead singer's] voice. I think he's got a beautiful voice, and it was really quite an experience just to listen to him sing.
And then people would come in and pretty soon the whole room was singing, everybody was really singing it up.
WHEAT: Now the lights are out while they are singing?
PAYNE: Yes. The lights are all out. I was told that some Indian doctors don't require the lights being out. And the old-timers, a lot of old-timers didn't have to have the lights out, to get the spirits in. But somebody said that Mr. Harris--the spirits will leave him if the lights are on. So that's why his ceremonies are in the dark. So he can control, or call the spirits only when it is dark, pitch dark. So, anyway, everybody's singing, and he, first thing he starts swinging the rattles with the flasher of light, and I tried to orient myself in relationship to where I thought that cord was, and the flashes were outside the cord, too. So I was trying to think: Well, if it is Mr. Harris shaking the rattles, then he is outside this little confinement, after the string has been closed too. So it was a closed square or rectangle, and he was outside with the rattles, if it was he doing it.
WHEAT: And when the lights went out he had been inside it?
PAYNE: Yes, he was just standing there.
WHEAT: And he was the only one inside?
PAYNE: Yes. Everybody had--there was a particular arrangement, a way to work, like the altar boys in the church, in a Catholic church. They walk certain ways, walk around in a certain pattern to get from one point to another. And it was always to the right. If they were seated on Mr. Harris' left, front, and they wanted to get to his, rear corner, they'd go clear three sides; they just wouldn't take the shortest distance....
Now he was the last person to get the smoke sage, too. Everything ended with him. And after that they closed the circle and turned out the lights. And they sang some songs, and then the lights came on again. And this man ... from Bishop came out and he did tie his [Harris'] hands behind his back, with one of these cords; and then shook this blanket like a shroud over and tucked it in around his neck, and so he was completely covered from about mid-legs to his
26 Interview Excerpts
head. And then tied one loop around his neck, and then in a series of half-hitched, went down his body. Then tied it below his knees, and then put him face down on this sage-covered two-by-six foot blanket. And then the lights went out again and immediately, it couldn't have been more than a second or two, the rattles start, and you can hear the rattles and start seeing the flashes of light. This is what the people all talked about ... "Who's doing that?" If it's him, then he has to get out of that [blanket]. And he's tied tight; he's tied in there pretty tight. And he has to get out of that just like that [snapping his fingers]. And he doesn't have the rattles in his hands, either. Everything else is laid out.
MRS. PAYNE: Are you aware of him struggling, trying to get out?
PAYNE: No. It's just like they put him down, and he's face down on this altar, and they turn the lights out and, it's just like that [snapping his fingers].
MRS. PAYNE: No one helps? You haven't been aware of his wife and anyone else helping him out?
PAYNE: No. It's just a few seconds. I'm pretty secure sitting there throughout the whole ceremony, except for this point here. If there's anything that would shake anybody's faith, who doesn't believe in this, you know, it's this point here, because you just don't know. It's pitch black, and he's laying down and somehow there's rattling and you see these flashes of light.
...It's--I can't explain that, only I want to explain it, as; he gets out of this confinement, or he's in the process of getting out of it, while he's being lowered, like a Houdini trick type of thing. As soon as the light's out, he's out. And the time lapse is the time he takes to know where the rattles are, (he knows where they are), pick them up and start. But it's, the big question mark in my eyes, I don't know what goes on there. I can explain in my own mind, I think, that all of the rattles are his rattles. Because people say that he pounds, that they are being pounded by the rattles, and you can see the flashes. They're not bright enough to see outlines of bodies, but you can hear it and you can't see anything but pretty soon you can hear. It's where you don't think people are standing and....
MRS. PAYNE: It is possible the spirit is shaking the rattles?
PAYNE: I don't know. I've never had anyone tell me what it's supposed to be. I think, I think that really--people ask me, "Well, what do you think?" My only answer is that I don't understand. And I've got to understand before I can give an opinion.
PAYNE: ...Then they told the first group to stand up. His wife did. And talked like, "Okay, first group stand up" and he'd repeat the stands. "Is everybody up? Is everybody set?" And he first said to her, "Have this group stand up." It seems like that. "Everybody's ready? Okay. Fine." And then they do the first group. And I'm told that they don't tell him where they hurt. Somehow they get the doctor on the spot. If you have a sprained ankle you don't tell him, "I want my sprained ankle fixed." You tell him you'd like to ... you tell
Dr. Ralph Payne 27
him something but don't localize the problem. And they get doctored on the ankle. And they get beat with these rattles. I asked Nell, "How does he, how do they know it's your ankle?" "Well, I don't know." Or, "How do they know it's your head, or a headache?" "I don't know." But somehow--the particular spot gets doctored.
WHEAT: And the doctoring is done by the tapping or the beating? I wonder how hard the beating is.
PAYNE: Well, it is, they say, the comment was that (I didn't ask that question) but the comment was that you get worked over. I'm sure it's not very painful, though I'm sure it's enough to sort of move you around a little bit while you're standing in the dark. You're unstable anyway. And the people are shoulder-to-shoulder. And after everybody gets through, there must be a signal back and forth because the rattles change their pace. They sort of ch, ch, ch, like that, rattling with the little flashes. And the pace changes. And he stops and then the singers take that cue up and they start the song. And then they--I was told, too, they sing different types of songs. Some of them are Arapaho songs; some are Shoshone songs, some of them Paiute songs. And everybody is really just singing. It's loud singing; it's really quite neat. The lights come on again and then the second group is told they're next. And the lights go off, and they stand up. No. Wait. The lights didn't come on, because they just told him; he signalled his wife, okay, and they told the second group to stand up. They did and there was some laughing here because there were some older people who had trouble standing up. And the people helped them. There was a little bit of laughter and joking there. And then the same thing went through again; they had the same situation starting from one end and working down the line. And then they stopped, turned on the lights, and he's standing in the middle of his little altar-like; the blanket was folded up, to the right on the blanket, the sage-covered blanket. He was, you know, very relaxed, like he'd just been standing there the entire time. Then they had the shuffling. They brought the people in the other room in, and that's when people started sort of floating around me. And then the lights went out and he doctored that group.
WHEAT: He didn't go through the tying up deal again?
PAYNE: He just did that once. And he doctored that group; there was a unison prayer there, too. Everyone said their own prayer verbally, out loud, at the beginning. Everybody was doing their own praying. And after the third group was doctored, then the lights went out again and he called the Grandfather Spirit in, I assume it was the Grandfather Spirit. And there was a [he knocks on wood a number of times] like that, like a peg-leg or a cane on the floor and this noise was being made. And people then, everybody broke into a verbal praying to Grandfather, everybody saying their own prayer. You know, it was a prayer for help, being a better person, and praying for somebody else's health, bless Raymond, the Indian doctor and his wife, give them safe trips home so they can come back and help us feel better, and heal their hearts, you know, that type
28 Interview Excerpts
of prayer. And this went on for maybe three minutes. Oh, And people just kept praying.
WHEAT: To the buffalo, wasn't it?
PAYNE: I was told it was the Grandfather. "Grandfather, help us; watch over us; dear Grandfather....
WHEAT: I think it would be kind of interesting to take down. I think that that might be the grandfather's spirit helper. It was the buffalo. That's his power, you see. The buffalo and the eagle are his power.
PAYNE: It was explained to me that the "grandfather" represented Raymond's grandfather.
WHEAT: His own grandfather?
PAYNE: Yes.... And then everybody stopped their praying and it sounded like some of the women were crying, like they were very emotional; there were tears. And afterwards everybody was sort of calming themselves down, like they were in sort of a frenzy a little bit. Then the eagle came. And you could hear the feathers, the feathers hitting the floor, wh, wh, wh, and you could almost hear the rushing air through the wing feathers, like if you heard a large bird flying by you, that wh, wh, wh, that noise; you could hear that. And it sounded like the feathers were hitting people and you could hear some sounds like people....
WHEAT: Catching their breath?
PAYNE: I don't know that, or maybe getting some individual ... I don't know. Anyway, it sounded like people were responding, with noises, cries or something like this. In the far part of the room when the feathers, the sound of the wings, was in that far part of the room, they may have been touched by the eagle. And they were responding to this, or what, I don't know. Something.
Then this went on, and then the third spirit came in, which I assumed was the buffalo, but I didn't get a confirmation on this. It was ... no, no. I beg your pardon. After the eagle was the Clown. There were only three spirits; the tapping on the floor, the wings and then the Clown came in. And it sounded like Raymond was verbalizing what the Clown Spirit was telling him. "He says, you know, that everybody ought to have fun." The people laughed. Then you hear some candy or something fall on the floor. And the people, you know, the kids, trying to reach for it without calling attention to the fact that they were reaching for the candy. And ... I'd seen the bowl of candy before and I saw him set a little bowl with some coins in it, up there with his stuff. And it sounded like he was picking the coins up and dropping them into the bowl, and people were going "oo la," you know, and laughing. And there was this back-and-forth; he says, "Ch, I can't remember any specific thing," you know, like he wants you to have a good time. And then there were some questions asked, like "Does anyone want to ask him any particular questions?" And that's when his wife said, "Oh, yes, sir. Can we rest after tonight? Can we rest before we go home?" And his [the Clown's]
Dr. Ralph Payne 29
reply was, "You think you need a rest?" [Dr. Payne makes several Indian sounds.] "I think we ought to have one day." And he says, "Okay, one day fine. You can have two days if you want it." And then everybody laughed, and said, "Yay, yay!"
WHEAT: Was that Raymond talking?
PAYNE: Right. You know, I sort of got the idea he was kneeling, sort of kneeling, with his ear to the floor. I don't know why I got that, but just the way the sound was coming up. It was pitch black, too, so couldn't tell. But it sounded like, you know, that he was low to the floor. And this went on, oh, three or four minutes. And finally [Raymond said] "He is going away." And everybody, "Oh no, no, no; don't let him go away." And "He says well, he's got to go." but he wants everybody to know [that] everything's okay, everybody [said] "Good, good," and then he said....
WHEAT: Did anybody call him the Clown?
PAYNE: No. No. There wasn't any mention at all. But everybody told me the Clown will be there. There was some more candy thrown around. And Raymond would say, Ivan, sing four songs," as if this was not planned, and Ivan would say, "You mean the do-da-da?" He'd name some song having four verses. And so everybody would sing, and sing, and sing, and sing. And then there'd be a little bit more and then he'd say, "Sing two songs." And after a number of sings: there may have been some singing like this between the grandfather and the eagle, and the Clown, too. I don't remember. But after this ... it sounded like one time he said, "Sing the three songs" or whatever it was, that Ivan was not prepared to do this, and so he had to pick up his drum or something like this. He wasn't ready for the time to sing.
WHEAT: And this was all in the dark?
PAYNE: All in the dark. And pretty soon the songs ended and the lights came on. And it was all over.
...But when the lights went on, the people who hadn't, started pulling at the blanket, and they gave it to him and he put it next to the little package; he put everything away and packed up and walked out. And the people started the ... Oh.
While this was going on they passed out the water and everybody sipped the water. And then they passed the pipe, he lights the pipes and they passed out the pipes to those people who were participating in the ceremony. And then he's packing up; he takes the last sip of water, he takes the last pipe, puffs on the pipe, the real pipe. The water and the stew are within the rectangle formed by the coffee cans and the symbolic pipes. The stew and the water, in their pots, are sitting at one corner.
Then there's also--there's one coffee can with white symbolic pipes way out by the door. It's outside, sort of like it's just stationed out like a sentinel.
WHEAT: Why do they call it "grandfather's stew" too? They do.
30 Interview Excerpts
PAYNE: They call it "grandfather's stew?" I didn't know that.
WHEAT: That's what they call it, "grandfather's stew."
MRS. PAYNE: Is this regular meat and potatoes?
PAYNE: It's just plain beef, in fact it's quite good beef, you know. It looked like, in fact, it looked like T-bone meat; you could see the T-bones, no salt. That's all, it seemed like to me, very watery broth. Then he packed up, put everything away; they swept up; people sort of got up and stretched and moved around, they set up a couple of tables, spread all the food out....
Sessions S. Wheeler (3rd from L) joins Wuzzie George (R) and Margaret Wheat (taking photograph) at an interview session. (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Nevada-Reno Library--Margaret M. Wheat Collection)
Excerpts from the Interview of
Andy Vidovich
MARGARET M. WHEAT, INTERVIEWER
1969
Courtesy Special Collections,
University of Nevada-Reno Library
[Ed. Note: In the following interview, Andy Vidovich recalls the blessing of his newborn son, Harlan, by the great Indian prophet Wovoka, father of Vidovich's wife Alice. Alice was living in Carson City while Vidovich worked in a mine outside Yerington. This interview took place in February, 1969.]
VIDOVICH: About the lad being blessed ... there's something peculiar about it. I was working out there at Thompson Smelter, and the fellow that packed in the mail from Wabuska, he come up to the furnace and said, "Andy, I got good news for you." And I said, "What is it?" Tell me, tell me quick." He said, "You've got a little son born to you this morning." And I said, "You could be mistaken." He said, "Your father-in-law and your mother-in-law are going up to Carson City to see the baby now. And they told me to tell you there was a little baby born." I didn't hear anything about it, I didn't know it. To go to Carson City you come in from Mason in a wagon, then you take the train, the Tonopah-Goldfield, and you go on up to Mound House and change to the Southern Pacific Line--the Southern Pacific hooked up to the V&T ... and all morning I wondered how the dickens they knew. I couldn't think they could send them a telegram this morning. I thought if I get over to Wabuska I could meet that train when they come in, [and] I could find out. I had old Mickey Butter take me down there [that] day when that train come in, and no, they didn't show up. Later my brother told me [they came] when the old V&T came in from Virginia City, about six o'clock, on July the 2nd. How would the old folks know where my brother lived? But they went up there, 'til they got up to Corbett Street, and my brother told me there was a big loud knock at the door. "And I see a great big Indian out there, with a nice big hat, dressed up good, had a suit on, his hair was cut off to there, and his wife was with him. And the big fellow said, 'I came up to see my daughter and my grandson.' I was going to point him the way, show him where the room was. But he came in and walked down the hall,
31
32 Interview Excerpts
cut over next to the lavatory and went left, like he'd been there a thousand times." I asked Alice what they did when they came in, when I saw her about three months later, and she said, "Andy, you know if I'd borned that baby in a hospital, I would say they had exchanged babies on me. Because all the little Indian children have long hair, and this little fellow, Andy, didn't have no eyebrows, no eyelashes and no hair on his head. He was a ugly little fellow. My, I would swear somebody had changed that baby if I was in the hospital. But he was born right here and he never left my side. And I told mama, 'Don't look. He's the ugliest little baby.' And she said, 'Now listen. When you was a little baby this baby looked better than you did." He didn't have no hair for a long time. He used to have to wear a cap. Because we were ashamed because he didn't have no hair.
So Wovoka and Mary stayed at the house for about four days. They fixed 'em up good, with a room. So he [Wovoka] told Alice, "Tomorrow morning, that's the fourth day, we'll take the little baby and go over to that hill, right there on the other side of Corbett Street," and he told her, "Now you bring a pan and everything, and tomorrow we'll go over with him, we'll walk over there!" And I asked, "What did he do?" And Alice said, "Oh, he made a big fire; he cut brush and everything and made a nice fire, and he took that pan and heated up the water. This was before the sun came up. You know, I thought it was kind of cold even if it was July 2nd." But Wovoka said, "The baby won't get sick. We have to do this." "All right," he says, "Take 'em off and put 'ern over here." They put that little fellow in that water, and he was stark naked, put lots of water on him all over, every place. "Put 'ern in, cover everything," he says. Alice said, "I was kind of scared, but mama done it. And then the old man gave a prayer for him. He asked the Great Master to bless the little one. 'Give him a good body, a good mind, and so that the mind will act in unison with the body, and to keep his spirit good and keep it clean." Oh, lots of things he asked, you know. And then he asked that this little boy, going to school with his white brothers and sisters, that he won't be behind in his school, give him knowledge, and he asked the Great Spirit to be with him always and to love him, never let the little fellow out of his sight. Then after he got through he gave a prophecy. He said to dress the little baby, put his clothes on and dress him up. He said, "This little fellow will go to school. He won't go to the Indian school, where you and his papa go, but he'll go with his white brothers and sisters. And he's not going to be back in his lessons at school. And he's going to grow up and be a clean fellow. He'll be a credit to his people. And you know, there's something else I must tell you." And he says to Alice, "This little fellow will use a pocket knife of his father's, and his father uses a sharp knife." [Andy took a knife out of his pocket.] I've got a pocket knife here and you can feel the blades of it and I keep these blades just as sharp as a razor. And Wovoka said, "You can let him use it. He won't cut his hands. He'll make his own toys." And you know, after he grew up a little ways,
Andy Vidovich 33
he wanted my pocket knife all the time! And that little bugger would make airplanes--I wish I had saved them. They had propellers and everything on them, and they'd be modem like they have today. He even makes that lightning like the Flying Tigers used. And then he'd go along, br-r-r--- make the propellers go. And Wovoka said, "He'll be flying in the skies. (There weren't too many airplanes them days.) And then he's going to join the United States Flying ... Outfit." He didn't come out and say The Air Corps. "And then he'll be flying in the skies. He'll have a good mind, good body, sharp eyes, everything. And he will lead the white men in the skies. He will become a great captain." --It happened.
[Harlan S. Vidovich was born in July, 1920 and was raised in northern Nevada. He studied at Tempe State Teachers College, where he received recognition as a mathematician. At the outbreak of WWII he joined the U.S. Army Corps, and served as a Captain with General Chenault and the Flying Tigers. He was killed in 1944 on a flight over Eastern China.]
34 Mary "Bunny" Cushman Corkin
The Legends of "Singing" Sand Mountain
MARY "BUNNY" CUSHMAN CORKILL
Just to the north of the old Overland Trail-Lincoln Highway-Highway 50, some 25-26 miles southeast of Fallon, Churchill County, Nevada, lies the "singing" sand dune called Sand Mountain. This natural phenomenon rises 500-600 feet out of a valley floor which is located between the southern edge of the Stillwater Mountains and the Four Mile Flat. Over the years its size has been measured from three miles down to two miles long and from one-half mile to one mile wide.
Peggy Wheat had a love affair with this mountain of sand that sang songs to her. "It sounds like rolling thunder," Mrs. Wheat said. "It's absolutely quiet out there and then you can hear it clear down at the highway more than a mile away.... The Indians had a feeling that this was almost a living creature because it roared.... Paiutes gave Sand Mountain a wide berth when they went to the eastern mountains to gather pinenuts. They would even get up and leave at night if it was making a noise." Peggy's beliefs concerning the Paiutes, while differing from other sources, were recorded by Bob Welkos in a 1977 interview. (1)
In his Nevada Handbook, Deke Castleman, calls it "striking and anomalous," which translated into Great Basin Twang, means it changes size every day, stands out, and is irregular in shape! (2) In fact, its unique appearance allowed early-day travelers on the Overland Trail to use it as a landmark on their westward trek. "Members of these emigrant parties were probably the first whites to climb Sand Mountain, but the first recorded ascent by women was that of Miss Blanch Ruff and Mrs. J.J. Williams in October of 1907," according to historian Phillip Earl. (3)
While Singing Sands occur in many places around the world, Sand Mountain is one of the only three reported singing dunes in North America. The other two are Crescent Dune near Tonopah, Nevada, and Kelso Dune in the Mojave Desert of California. In Arabia they are a common occurrence, with the natives attributing the eerie sounds to supernatural forces. Some scientists say that the strange vibrating moans and thunderous roars are caused by heat, friction, and possibly electrical influences. Some say the voices are due to the uniformity in size and shape of the grains of sand ... the billions of smoothed, almost polished grains of quartz, feldspar, and magnetite. The song of the singing sand will vary with the season, the humidity, the wind direction and intensity, and amount of
35
36 Mary "Bunny" Cushman Corkill
disturbance. As stated by Sharon Elaine Thompson in the Lapidary Journal, "According to a 1883 report on Sand Mountain, however, the sound was less like a lullaby and more like a Wagnerian opera belted out in an acoustically perfect hall. Lizards disturbing the face of the dune produced sounds so loud that they were heard at a distance of six to seven miles, and it was deafening to a person standing within a short distance of the sliding sand." (4)
At Sand Mountain, the prevailing southwest winds continue to deposit new sands as they have for thousands of years since the Great Lake Lahontan, which covered most of western Nevada, receded. It is believed that the sand comes from the Weber Reservoir area's "beaches" many miles away, is carried through an opening in the Cocoon Mountains, through Simpson Pass, across the Four Mile Flat and is deposited at the back end of the valley. It is here that the winds rise sharply over the mountains and the sands are left in a canyon. A back wind helps pile up the sand.
In the third biennial report of the Nevada Historical Society in 1911-1912, another theory was presented: "Sand Mountain is 15 miles east of Carson Lake and 25 miles west of Middle Gate on the old road from Virginia [City] to the Reese River Mines. The [Sand Springs] station was located near a mountain of pure sand about three miles long, one-half mile wide, and about 1,500 feet high, and which is supposed to be geyserous in origin. Even now a rumbling sound may be heard at times. Springs have broken out at the foot of the mountain, hence its name." (5)
In a footnote, the report continues, "C.W. Kinney [Nevada Directory 1864-65; pp. 38-9] says that one half mile from Sand Springs are 1,800 acres of salt fields, which even in those days were being worked. Mr. B.F. Leete says that at one time camels were imported into Nevada by the Government and were used by Mr. Sharon [of Virginia City fame] to carry salt from Sand Springs to Empire; but when his own [Leete's Eagle Salt Works 24 miles NW of Fallon] salt works opened up both Sand Springs and the camels died." (6) This event could account for the lifeless name given to the mountain range which runs along the southwest border of Churchill County--the Dead Camel Mountains!
First surveyed in May of 1868, the sand dune was thought to be worthless for mining purposes although in the ensuing years some meager gold mining activities were attempted. Israel Cook Russell, a member of the United States Geological Survey Team in 1885 recorded: "Another area of drifting sand occurs to the southwest of the Carson Desert and covers portions of Alkali Valley and the desert basins south of Allen's Springs. This train of dunes commences somewhat to the eastward of the Sand Springs Pass, at the east end of Alkali Valley, and may be traced westward for at least twenty miles to the mountains on the east side of Walker River Valley. The width of the belt is not more than four or five miles. In a sheltered recess, a mile or two northwest of Sand Springs, the sand has accumulated by eddying wind-currents so as to form a veritable
"Singing" Sand Mountain 37
Evening shadows spread across Sand Mountain. (Churchill County Museum & Archives—Albert A. Alcorn Collection. Photograph taken by Laura E. Mills)
mountain, rising, by estimate, two or three hundred feet above the plain. The ever-changing mountain of creamy sand varies its contours from year to year, while every zephyr that blows is busy in remodeling the rounded domes and gracefully curving crests and in altering the details of the tracery that gives grace and elegance to the structure. The dunes in this train are traveling eastward across the mountains and deserts and seem little affected in their ultimate course by the topography of the country. In the desert valley south of Allen's Springs the sand is carried up the steep eastern border of the basin and finds temporary resting places on the terraces cut by the waves of Lake Lahontan in the Black Basalt of its shores. The yellow sands loading these ancient terraces bring out the horizontal lines in strong relief by reason of their contrast in color and accent the minor sculpturing of the cliffs."
He continued, "It is impossible to trace the sands forming these various dunes to their sources, but we may be sure that they have traveled far and were not derived from the waste of the rocks in their present neighborhood. Similar areas of drifting sand occur at many localities throughout the region west of the Rocky Mountains, a number of which are known to be traveling in the same direction as
38 Mary "Bunny" Cushman Corkin
those of the Lahontan Basin. It is possible, as has been suggested by previous writers, that these various areas belong to a single series, and are formed of the beach sands of the Pacific which have been blown inland by the prevailing westerly winds. It seems more probable, however, that they owe their origin to the subaerial disintegration of the granites of the Sierra Nevada." (7)
To the amateur, the dune area does not appear to be prolific in its flora and fauna, but in a plant survey of the terrain prepared in 1978 by the Northern Nevada Native Plant Society in co-operation with the Carson City District, Bureau of Land Management, more than 70 species of plants are listed with many additional sub-species. (8) Locals residents have frequently seen coyotes and kit foxes in the area. In her Nevada Nomads, Byrd Wall Sawyer revealed: "There are folk tales in Churchill County that eagles steal lambs. The only proof of this are the sheep bones found in eagle nests near Sand Mountain." (9)
The legends of Sand Mountain have been told by generations of local folks. Some legends tell of great Indian wars where the Chief was killed and now the mountain mourns for him. Some say the mountain was the dwelling place of a loud-voiced and fearsome god and if one slid down the mountain he would growl in anger.
Gerry Graham Steve recalls that her mother, a member of the local Shoshone Indian Tribe, warned her children not to go near Sand Mountain because it was haunted and they might be harmed. It seems that during the early days there were "three bad white men" who robbed a stage and in "bad men" style, they hid the bags of gold up near Job's Peak. Upon their return to the scene of the crime at Sand Mountain, the sands swallowed them up ... proper punishment for such a heinous crime. Gerry said that her father, Bodie Graham, always wanted to go search for the hidden gold but never got around to it. (10)
Helen Stone, a member of the local Paiute Indian tribe, tells of her people coming back into this valley from having spent the summer in the hills east of here ... "Tying the loads upon their backs, they turned toward the west and started on their long journey back to the Carson Sinks. Many, many stops were made. Close to the singing sand hill, as our people called the sand hill near Salt Wells, they stopped for the night near a spring. Across from them was a sand hill. Here, they took down the heavy loads off of their backs and rested; in the evening they built their bonfires and cooked their meals. After the evening meal was over, they sat and talked together. Smoke was lighted, and, as each grew tired, they laid down and went to sleep. Some of them waited, laying upon their beds; as it grew dark, the sand hill began to hum and hum, so they listened. Soon, they also fell asleep. They tell us the sand hill felt sad for the ones who were sick and tired, so he hummed them to sleep, to rest through the night. Others tell us he was happy to see his people sleeping close by, so he hummed and hummed over them. The next morning bonfires were started, and they ate together and traveled to the end of the Stillwater Mountain Range and turned to the north on the trail toward their homes near the Carson Sinks." (11)
"Singing" Sand Mountain 39
In a different vein, former Stillwater resident, Mary Peer Holliday, recalled: "Somewhere in my early childhood, while growing up in Churchill County, I heard about the singing sands of Sand Mountain. Perhaps the story began during the Mesozoic Era when the mountains were being thrust up in the Great Basin. It was a time when Plesiosaurs and Ichthyosaurs of the oceans became trapped in an inland sea.
The Ichthyosaurs became beached and, being heavy of body, collapsed under their own weight. But the Plesiosaurs,being slender sea monsters, slithered to safety into ancient Lake Lahontan. A pair of these long-necked serpents survived in the waters of Walker Lake where the violent winds came to dry the land and change the shape of the earth.
While heavy winds were lifting sand from the shores of Walker Lake and depositing it at Sand Mountain, the serpents were safe in the depths of the desert lake. Day after day the storm raged on while they waited, dozed, and waited. But--hearing the music of the wind, the female was lured from the quiet safety by her desire to roll in the waves and play. Many times they had risen together and in delight had ridden the mighty waves that leaped high into the air. Together they would entwine their lengthy, fifty-foot bodies against the pull of the storm and glory in their combined strength against the forces.
But without the protection of the huge male's weight, a whirlwind caught her and swirled her into the vortex of the storm that left the sandy shores rough with rocks. Along with tons of sand, she was spun away and plunged beneath the weight of Sand Mountain many ridges to the north.
Now she moans for her mate of long ago and the blue waters of Walker Lake and the pure joy of swimming free. No longer does a sweet spring at the base of Sand Mountain gush forth at twilight to wet her tongue; and while the winds blow, she twists and turns in torment with thirst. It is for her need that the sands sing to rest her agony." (12)
Three or four generations of Churchill County school children have enjoyed field trips to the singing dunes. No one who ever had the opportunity to climb its ridges with Laura Mills or Peg Wheat as their guide will ever forget the love that these women had for one of nature's miracles. There are those who believe that the mountain's greatest enemy in 1991 is Homo Sapiens and his gas fired all-terrain-vehicles that can reach the peak of Sand Mountain in about thirty seconds. Every year there are a number of people seriously injured and several killed on the mountain. Is it their bad luck, poor judgment, or is it one from a legend seeking retaliation?
The best time to visit the dune is in the evening in summer when it is dry, because the drier and hotter it is, the easier it is to hear the mountain sing. The brisk winds make an unforgettable hummmmmm, and as you climb up and down the sand, you are aware of a rumble under your feet at every sliding step.
A short visit to "Singing" Sand Mountain may serve as an inspiration to start your own legend!
40 Mary "Bunny" Cushman Corkill
REFERENCES
1. Welkos, Bob. "At Sand Mountain, Frenchman, Woman Enjoys Rolling Thunder." Reno Evening Gazette, Monday, Nov. 14, 1977.
2. Castleman, Deke. Nevada Handbook. Chico, California: Moon Publications, Inc., 1989, p.153.
3. Earl, Phillip I. "This Was Nevada" series, Sand Mountain: Dune of Mystery. Nevada Historical Society.
4. Thompson, Sharon Elaine. "Wagnerian Sands of the Desert," Lapidary Journal, July 1990, p.28.
5. Nevada Historical Society. State of Nevada, Third-Biennial Report of the Nevada Historical Society 1911-1912. Carson City: State Printing Office, 1913, p.175.
6. Paher, Stanley W. Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps. San Diego: Howell-North Books, 1970, p.92.
7. Russell, Israel Cook. Department of the Interior, Monographs of the United States Geological Survey, Volume XI. Washington Government Printing Office, 1885: Geological History of Lake Lahontan, A Quaternary Lake of Northwestern Nevada, pp.155-156.
8. Bureau of Land Management. Sand Mountain Plant Survey. Prepared by Northern Nevada Native Plant Society, November 21, 1978.
9. Sawyer, Byrd Wall. Nevada Nomad. San Jose, California: Harlan-Young Press, 1971, p.156.
10. Steve, Gerry Graham. Personal Interview, 15 April 1990.
11. Stone, Helen Bowser. In Focus, Annual Journal of the Churchill County Museum Association, Fallon, Nevada 1987-1989, p.47.
12. Holliday, Mary Peer. Nevada Official Bi-Centennial book. Copyright by Thomas C. Elgas and the State of Nevada. Edited by Stanley W. Paher. LasVegas, NV: Nevada Publications, 1976, p.137.
'Singing" Sand Mountain 41
Map of Churchill County, Nevada. Prepared by the Churchill County Drafting Department, 2-1-78. (Churchill County Museum & Archives)
42 Adam Fortunate Eagle
Map from The Lost Fremont Cannon Guidebook, John M. Townley, Reno: Great Basin Press, 1984. Courtesy of John M. Townley.
NATIVE AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE
INTRODUCTION:
JOHN CHARLES FREMONT was one of the greatest explorers in American history. Between 1842 and 1853, he led five epic expeditions that charted the American west from the mighty Mississippi to the shores of Mexican California. From the Rio Grande to the Columbia, his explorations and mapping of an uncharted West stoked the flames of Manifest Destiny that would power an expanding Republic for half a century.
His journeys were full of high adventure and at least one enduring mystery. In the winter of 1843-44, while charting the Great Basin, Fremont's party found themselves far from civilization and running low on supplies. Deciding to forge a way across the Sierra Nevadas to California, they soon found themselves struggling through hostile mountains and an unforgiving winter. At one point, to ease the burden on his weary men, Fremont ordered the company cannon, a 225-pound, two-wheeled howitzer, abandoned on a snowy ridge, a silent monument to man's quest for knowledge and adventure. To this day "Fremont's Cannon" has never been found.
BRYAN BRANBY
General Fremont' s Cannon
ADAM FORTUNATE EAGLE
Ever since I was a little boy on the Chippewa Indian Reservation at Red Lake, Minnesota, I have had a fascination for guns. They were a necessity for our tribe whose major source of meat was deer and moose. A good rifle meant meat in the pot for a hungry family; with a side dish of wild rice, vegetables and home made bread, you could enjoy a veritable feast.
My uncle was a bootlegger on the reservation; most reservations are closed reservations which means it's against the law to serve or sell alcoholic beverages. So the bootleggers can do quite well, unless, of course, they get caught and find themselves spending time in the slammer. However, my uncle was one of the clever ones who eluded arrest. It was a treat for me to visit him when I was just a little boy, 'cause leaning against the corner in the living room was a stack of
43
44 Adam Fortunate Eagle
rifles that the Indians used to hawk for booze. At that early age it was the greatest collection of guns I had ever seen and it helped stimulate a life long interest in firearms.
My first rifle was a brand new Marlin 336 in 35 caliber. I figured that heavy 200 grain slug could just about drop anything in this continent. It was a beautiful carbine with a pistol grip stock, and with it I got my first buck in the East Gate range of Nevada back in 1952. My Shoshone father-in-law, Bodie, was very proud of his new son-in-law for showing interest in the same things he had enjoyed for many years. We both loved hunting and the great outdoors. His main interest was prospecting and he taught me a lot about the various minerals and how to find them. My wife, Bobbie, and I were now living in California and every time we were to visit her folks on the Stillwater Reservation in Nevada, Pop and I would go hunting, prospecting or both. He used to tell of lost mines or of a cave at Silver Peak where gold nuggets glittered by the light of the carbide lamp. The two guys alleged to have found this incredible cave had their base camp in Austin. After their initial discovery of the cave, they went back to Austin and got new supplies. They shared the story of their exciting discovery before they left town; the two were never to be seen alive again.
The next spring a search party left Austin heading toward Silver Peak. In the vastness of the high desert, they came upon the remains of the small wagon the prospectors had used to haul their supplies. In the litter, they found a couple of small pouches full of solid gold nuggets! The secret of that fabulous cave died with these prospectors. Despite repeated efforts, their friends were to find no trace of the prospectors; they suspected they froze to death when overtaken by a brutal winter storm when their wagon broke down on the return trip. That little cave entrance was believed to have been sealed up before the prospectors left on their final journey, as no one has ever found it since.
This and many other stories Pop used to tell his fascinated son-in-law; however, it was the story of General Fremont's cannon that always grabbed me the most. In 1844, General Fremont came through northern Nevada with his troops, looking for an easy way to the California territory. They also dragged along a bulky, heavy cannon that often got stuck in the sand or mud. After several skirmishes with the fast-moving Paiutes, General Fremont found his cannon to be more of a damn nuisance than a help. So he decided to stash the cannon in a safe place until he could return and retrieve it at a later date. His troops dragged that little cannon up a rock-strewn slope to a strategic outcropping overlooking the valley and left it there.
To this day, no one has ever found that little cannon of General Fremont, and it was my dream that one of these days I would find it. Bobbie and I had three children to raise in California and, during that time, I continued my interest in guns. Every time an old pistol or rifle was added to my developing collection, I also added a book or a magazine to expand my understanding and knowledge of
General Fremont's Cannon 45
the gun world. My collection grew to include virtually every model Winchester of the last century, starting with a beautiful and extremely rare iron frame Henry rifle of 1860. The Henry was the first successful repeating rifle to use a self contained cartridge and was to be the immediate successor to the Winchester rifle of 1866. The Winchester rifle company was to develop its fame and fortune on the western frontier. Colt and Smith and Wesson pistols were also being added to my growing collection, but always in the back of my mind would be the ultimate acquisition ... General Fremont's cannon!
After raising our children and seeing them all married off, complete with Indian ceremony, Bobbie and I moved back to her reservation at Fallon. Again, the quest for the old or unusual gun was continued. I took on a temporary job as tribal building inspector while we built a ceremonial style round house which was to be our art gallery and museum. In the mornings, the men employed by reservation programs would hang around the coffee pot swapping yarns or, heaven forbid, gossiping! Some of these guys turned out to be worse gossips than most women, especially the tribal cop. At 8:00 a.m. the talk concluded as the men went out to their jobs.
One morning I decided to make my move, careful not to tip my hand as to the true purpose of the question. "Anyone seen any old cannons laying out in the hills?" To my surprise an older Paiute guy who had been a wrangler and mustanger for many years said, "Yah, hell, I know where there's an old cannon out there in the hills; damn thing's too heavy to carry out though." I tried to hold down my building excitement cause this guy knew the hills like the back of his hand.
So in a casual and offhanded way I say, "Could you tell me where it is?" "Sure, it's easy," says the Paiute, "Go out highway 95 toward the Walker River reservation. You know those hot springs out there? Well, at the next canyon you will find a road leading out across the flats to your left. You know the place I'm talking about?" "Yah, I know that road," I answer. He then continues, "Well, you take that dirt road out about 10 miles and off to your right you'll see a saddle in the mountain range; be real careful here as there is a dim road that will disappear in the sand as you go higher. You get out of your pickup and walk up and over that pass. Once you get through the pass you veer to the right along that slope and in a rocky outcropping, you will find an old cannon."
All that day I had a hell of a time concentrating on my work; all I could think of was that at long last we had got that elusive cannon. I went over the directions in my mind, over and over so that I committed them to memory!
When quitting time finally arrived, I rushed on home and excitedly told my son Adam, "Tomorrow we are going cannon hunting!" Early the next morning, a Saturday, Adam and I packed "Old Blue," our 3/4 ton pickup. The hood was all rusty and the paint was peeling or chipping off the chassis but that rig could sure do the job. On went pick, shovel, come-along, and 2 x 12 planks, in case we got
46 Adam Fortunate Eagle
bogged down in the sand. Water! we got to take plenty water, you never know about the high desert. We don't want to end up like those guys at Silver Peak. Bobbie packed a big lunch and right after breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast and coffee, we were ready for the big adventure.
It's a beautiful autumn day as we take the initial eight mile trip to Fallon. In town we pick up Highway 95 and head out toward the Walker River reservation. Adam is my look-out. "There's the hot springs" ... "There's the road to the left leading out toward the flats." Hot damn! Everything is just as the Paiute wrangler told me. About ten miles out in the flats, we spot that little dim road leading up toward the pass and just like the wrangler said, it peters out into the sand.
We park "Old Blue" and grab our lunch and canteen. We'll be back for the heavy stuff after we've located General Fremont's cannon. I chuckle to myself thinking of how easy it was for me to get that information about a historic cannon from that Paiute wrangler.
We hike up toward the pass through the sage and scrub brush. My heart is beating harder now from the exertion of the climb and the excitement at being so close to our quarry. We finally reach the mountain pass. "It can't be too far now," I holler at Adam who is walking along about 30 yards from me. When we are hunting we usually spread out like this as it improves our chances of finding something.
Over the pass we veer to the right as we were instructed. Something is different about this area though; some kind of powerful force had torn up some of the cedar trees and sage brush. The further we walk along the slope, the greater the devastation. "What the hell caused all this?" I shout to Adam, "Beats me!" he hollers back. Before I could give it any more thought I spot the rocky outcropping, "Look, there it is!" I happily shout, for protruding through the rocks is a cannon barrel!
We scramble up towards the rocky outcrop and the closer we get our excitement cools for what looked like a cannon barrel was a 4 x 4 post lying down among the rocks. On the other end of the post is attached a sign, face down. We turn it over and the sign reads "DANGER, U.S. NAVY BOMBING RANGE - KEEP OUT."
Damn!! I am a victim of the Indian version of the white man's infamous snipe hunt. We could only be thankful the Navy wasn't using the "Bravo 17" bombing range that day -- and there's no way in hell I'm going to tell that Paiute wrangler that I got suckered in by his story!
THE CANNON:
[Fremont's cannon is described in John M. Townley's book The Lost Fremont Cannon
Guidebook]
...Early in the 19th century, the French designed a 12-pound mountain
howitzer for their troops then engaged in Algeria. Called a "twelve-pounder"
General Fremont' s Cannon 47
because powder and shot totalled twelve-pounds, the piece was easily disassembled and packed into rough country by mules. The U.S. Army purchased several and later ordered several dozen semi-copies from Cyrus Alger & Company of Boston in 1835 and 1841. When Fremont requisitioned his field piece, he could have been issued either a foreign gun or an Alger piece. Arguments on that point turn the air blue - the point is, we simply don't know.
What about the cannon's dimensions? Its tube was brass, according to Fremont (Alger tubes were bronze), with "ears" to aid disassembly. It measured about 37" long, had a 5" bore and weighed about 225 pounds. The two-wheel carriage stood 38" high, was six feet long, a bit over three feet wide, and weighed almost 300 pounds. Two mules drew both tube and carriage.
Ammunition and equipment topped six hundred pounds and were divided among mule-borne packs and chests. Powder and shot filled two leather packs on one mule. Another packed the tool chests, while the battery's remaining equipment could be strapped to a single remaining mule.
Range of the piece exceeded a half-mile for round shot, but fell to 250 yards for canister charges.
Pyramid Etching from Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the years 1843-44. U.S. Senate, Executive Document # 174. Washington, D.C.: Gales & Seaton, 1845.
48 Paiute Elders
Wuzzie George wearing tole hat, vest, skirt and shoes that she made. (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Nevada-Reno Library--Margaret M. Wheat Collection)
Songs of the Elders
MARGARET M. WHEAT, RECORDER
Courtesy Special Collections,
University of Nevada-Reno Library
[Except for the titles, the lyrics that follow were extracted, verbatim, from the transcripts of the tapes of Margaret M. Wheat. Titles have been added, and the poems "formatted" by the Editor.]
MY GRANDMOTHER SAID
My grandmother said
You should never be afraid of the dark.
Don't be afraid of the Blackness,
not ever.
A long time ago that was the way the Indians got away from things that were
dangerous:
Soldiers might be coming into your camp to kill you and the
Darkness could take you away
and hide you
See! We were taught never to be afraid of the dark
Because that can save you.
-HW-
(tape # 107)
-HW-
49
50 Paiute Elders
BIRD-GIRL
Long time ago
Indians were playing a stick game,
like you white people playing football.
One lively woman go round...
Play with them.
Pretty soon she keep on running, running, running.
Up in the air
She disappeared
Everybody saw her, gazing up
Never came back again
Go into air somewhere
Everybody know it
Long long time ago
Just took off like a bird
Good-looking girl do that--
Long hair--
Everybody cry
She went up!
-MWP-
(tape # 121)
PRAYER
We pray to the spring:
"You make me feel good
After I drink you.
You nice clear water
Coming from mountain,
I drink you.
Help me be good."
-MVP-
(tape # 113)
Songs of the Elders 51
WOVOKA
To me he was a gifted, regular messiah.
He knew a lot of things, like what was coming.
He even said he'd seen the heavens--
Yeh! When he went to sleep
He was gone for about half a day.
And then he'd tell the Indians:
'When it's time for me to wake up,
you sing songs, a certain kind of song,
And that will revive me again."
So they did sing those songs
And when he came back from Heaven,
He told them about this,
About this beautiful place he'd been to.
-NE-
(tape # 110)
MY MOTHER SAID
Don't play with guts
Or the porcupine when you kill it
Because it makes the rain or storm.
The same with rabbits
When they take the gall out of the liver
They talk to it and hide it away under the bush and say
"Come out when the hunter is out so there will be plenty for him
to shoot."
They wrap the gall in the skin of the tail.
My mother was great for that.
She would talk to it.
Even little bit of sagebrush she take off to burn,
She talks to it,
She says, "You're going to make us get well."
52 Paiute Elders
Like the old saying:
You throw a stone, you always
Receive the stone back.
Don't ever brag or make fun of somebody
Because in your time,
Some time along in life
Or someplace in your family,
It will came back on you
Don't ever steal and
Don't talk bad about your neighbors.
Always be good
Even if you got no food in the house,
If you got coffee or Indian tea,
Make that for them and give that to them.
That's good.
That's my mother's belief
I believe in feeding people.
That's my belief
-NE-
(tape # 110)
PIONEER PORTRAITS
Excerpts from the Interview of
Dr. George M. Gardner
MARGARET M. WHEAT, INTERVIEWER
1958
Courtesy Special Collections,
University of Nevada-Reno Library
[Ed. note: Dr. George M. Gardner was born in 1875 in Carson City, Nevada. He was a member of the first graduating class of Stanford University in 1895 and was graduated the following year from Cooper Medical College in San Francisco. His long and successful medical career began in Elko, Nevada and included a stint in Churchill County as project physician for the Lahontan Dam Reclamation Project between 1904 and 1917, after which he moved to Reno and, later, to San Francisco. The papers of Margaret Wheat include several documents relating to Dr. Gardner and reveal what must have been her long-standing interest in a man who had become, for her, a family legend.
One document consists of the first two pages of what she tells us was planned to be a rather long biography of Gardner's life. Her story begins: "I took my second son and my fourth grandson to visit the old doctor. For them the legend of four generations became flesh and blood for the first time."
The file also contains Dr. Gardner's obituary, clipped from the December 31, 1970 Oakland Tribune and informing the reader that he "was one of the earliest proponents of spinal anesthesia, at a time when most other physicians were reluctant to use the then-new technique." The newspaper also states that Gardner Mountain, on the west side of Lake Tahoe, is named after George Gardner's lumberman and cattleman father, Matthew Culbertson Gardner.
In Wheat's interview with Dr. Gardner, excerpts from which follow, the "Van Voorhis" family referred to is that of W.A. Van Voorhis, who served as Indian Agent on the Stillwater reservation from 1909-1917. He died in Fallon of pneumonia, in January 1919. Van Voorhis Air Field, NAS, Fallon is named for his son Bruce, killed in the battle of the Solomon Islands, July, 1943.]
GARDNER: I was the Indian school doctor. I brought one, and maybe both of the Van Voorhis children into the world, Bruce I am sure ... Van Voorhis was a fine fellow. They ran that school. I think Mrs. Van Voorhis taught.
WHEAT: I want to talk about that man who took a shot at you.
GARDNER: That man's name was Fuller. Fuller was the head of the San Francisco Construction Company, on the ditch work. It was on a Sunday,
53
54 Dr. George M. Gardner
Dr. George M. Gardner c1958. (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Nevada-Reno Library--Margaret M. Wheat Collection)
Interview Excerpts 55
and the dentist and I went into the saloon for a glass of beer. There were a lot of men that worked on the ditches in there. On a Sunday they crowd around and drink. And this Fuller had been there and he was teed up pretty good. He saw me coming in the front door. So he walked in behind the counter and he said, "Dr. Gardner , I owe you $12.00. And I want to write you a check." I said, "That's all right, Fuller." He was loaded and I thought it would be a pretty good chance to get my money. So he wrote the check, in the front of the saloon, where they had pen and ink there. Well, I carried a cane. [Ed. note: When Gardner was a young boy he lost both legs below the knees in a train accident. He apparently got around quite well, using prostheses and a cane.] It was a kind of a soft wood cane. And I had a habit of kind of sitting on it. And when I'd go up to the bar I sort of sat on it. They hadn't got to serving us the beer yet, and the dentist was to my left, right up against the wall, right next to the door. Well, he came back and put the check right down with his left hand, and he reached over the counter and hauled off and hit me in the face. He didn't hurt me but he made me awfully mad. So I just took this cane and put it in my right hand and hit him over the head with it. And I broke the cane. You see, there were two things he did. He socked me ... he hit me hard enough but he hit me sideways so it glanced off or it would have knocked me for a row of pins. After I hit him he put his hand in his pocket and went down. I saw him doing something; he had a hold of something, and I thought, "See, there's something in that pocket. I wonder if it's a gun." I thought, "No, he wouldn't do that." And then I could see the handle of the gun, but the hammer got caught in his pocket. I said to myself, "This is a good place to get out of [here]." The dentist was right there and saw the whole thing. I went out and pulled the door closed behind me. And the gun went off. I thought, "That fellow didn't shoot that gun at me. He just shot at the ceiling to scare me." So after the gun went off, I opened the door, like a chump, and I went back in. I looked around and I couldn't see Fuller. He was gone. I said, "Where is Fuller, anyway?" They said he went out the back door. He ran around the corner and ran around to the lawyer's office--I found out later. He said, "I killed Dr. Gardner. I want you to represent me." He was very excited, and very sorry he had killed me. He was so excited and so sorry he had killed me, the attorney told me that he wet his pants. And the lawyer's floor. Well, when he told him that, the attorney got excited and said, "Where'd you do it?" And he said, "Across the street, in the saloon." The lawyer says, "Well, come on, and we'll go over there and see." He went over and Fuller followed him. He was a scared thing. And he opened the door and looked in there, and there I was, standing. The lawyer said, "Is that you, doctor?" I said, "Yeh. Want a glass of beer?" The lawyer said, "I thought you were dead ... Fuller said he killed you." It turned out that he had shot at me, but you know the rods that are about as big as your finger, that they used to have across saloon doors, to keep the glass from breaking? The bullet hit that and glanced off and had gone into the wall. Now wouldn't that beat you?
56 Dr. George M. Gardner
And I had been standing right outside the door. Right in line with where he shot. After that they arrested him and put him in jail down there. And then they let him go, on his word. They asked me what I wanted to do about it. I was mad at first, and I said, "Soak him. I don't like him shooting at me. You always do something about it, don't you?" And it was the jury, and they was meeting anyway. And they wanted to know if I wanted to put it up to the jury, and I said, "Sure I do. And you better do it."
And after the jury got to talking about it over at the courthouse ... "Well, Fuller was drunk and he didn't know what he was doing. He was crazy." One of the boys from the jury came over and said, "Let's look it all over. In the first place you hit him with your cane. And that made him mad." And I said, "No, he was mad before. You see, he made out that check, a $12.00 check, on the counter, and I tried to take it but he wouldn't let go of the other end of it. So he tore it but I eventually ... he took his hand off and I put the check in my pocket." So the fellow said, "But you hit him with your cane. You broke your cane." "Yes," I said. "Well, if you go to the grand jury, to bind him over you have to have some reason." "Well," I said, "I have plenty of reason. He hit me first. He slapped my face; if it hadn't been a glancing blow, it would have been a pretty hard hit, believe me." "Well," he said, "All right, if you want to [try], go
ahead and, why, the grand jury [will] hear it ... " I said, "Well, now tell you
what you do. Let him go for a year. This grand jury, don't do anything. Put him over to the next grand jury. A year from now." And I said to do that to make it just as hard on that guy as we can make it. He'll have to furnish a bond and he'll have to come back here. He'll be going away from here now. He lost his job on account of that, with the San Francisco Construction Company. So he disappeared and everything was quiet, and they held him over for the next year. Now, the next year, he had to come back to Fallon and the Grand Jury met again, and they said, "Well, what do you want to do?" I said, "Turn him loose. He didn't kill me, but it wasn't his fault, that he didn't kill me. I was mad. I got over it, you see, in a year. It was just one of those things, you know. When they bonded him he had to put up six thousand dollars, so that he would appear.
And I was at the Court House, with the Grand Jury, when this was going on. And he was with his attorney from Reno, a couple of attorneys. He had quite a little expense attached to that business. He sent word in to me, to come out and shake hands with him. And I said, "Now listen. I don't ever shake hands with a fellow that takes a shot at me. It isn't necessary for me to shake hands with him at all. You go back and tell him this world is pretty good-sized, he can have one half of it and I'll take the other half." And then that ended that.
That's the story of the shooting. And the funny part of that was his running over to the attorney's office. We laughed about that afterwards.
During the time Rawhide was discovered, why I had the drugstore. Drugs made good money. If a thing cost 25 cents you added 25 cents and sold it for 50
Interview Excerpts 57
cents. If it cost a dollar you added 25 cents and sold it for $1.25. You always added 25 cents.
When there was a mining boom you could sell drugs, so I wrote to Kirk Gary Company in Sacramento and said, "Send me $6,000.00 worth of drugs." The firm wired back and said, "That is a lot of drugs. What are you going to do?" "I'm starting a drug store in Rawhide," I wired back. The drugs came by train to the nearest depot and then were freighted by team over to Rawhide, to the new drugstore which was a tent with shelves in it. I built that store right over the tent, and, when it was finished, I took down the tent. The miners used to come in and read all of the labels and then pick out what they wanted and bring it up and pay for it. My store was right next to Tex Rickard's Great Northern Saloon. Wherever he went, Alaska, Goldfield, or Rawhide, he built a saloon called the Great Northern.
One Day Tex came into my store and said he had an awful pain on his right side. I told him to go into the back and lie down on a box and I would examine him. "Does it hurt here?" I asked. He jumped and yelled. "You have appendicitis and you better get it out before it kills you. You come down to Fallon and I will take it out for you." "You doctors are all alike," [he said], " always wanting to cut on somebody. Just give me some medicine and I'll get well."
I gave him some, and he went home. Next morning he was back and said he felt fine. "That place on your side is still sore when you touch it, isn't it? I thought so. Well, that is because it broke and it won't bother you for a while but, mark my word, someday it will kill you. And when you get sick, when you are dying, I want you to do one thing for me, just remember me. Now don't you forget. When you are dying, remember me." I pointed my finger at him and he said, "All right, Doc. I promise. I won't forget." He laughed and went on out. After that he went to South America and then came back to promote fights at the Garden. Well, one day, I picked up a paper and there I saw Tex Rickard had died while being operated on for appendicitis. You know, I often wonder if he thought of me. Someday I'll ask him.
I guess every mining camp has had its big fire. When Rawhide burned down both the Great Northern Saloon and my drugstore burned, but we built them back again.
Also, I had a stage line to Fairview and Rawhide. Two big Royal Tourist cars that I paid $4,000 a piece for. Automobiles. About 1906 or 1907. In those days tires had tubes, and the tires'd only go about 30 or 40 miles and then blow up. I charged $20 to go to Rawhide in the car, and I had a stipulation that if there was a breakdown they'd have to pay the $20 just the same, and they could walk into Rawhide. And Fairview too. And we had plenty of breakdowns! The car would hold 5 men--the driver and four others but so many fellows would come in wanting to buy tickets to Rawhide, or Fairview. I'd tell them the charge was $20
58 Dr. George M. Gardner
and about possible breakdowns, and that I didn't give no money back, if they had to walk to Rawhide.
We went through Sand Springs, where they had an old team of horses, or mules and they'd hook on. And there was one place there, going upwards, oh! that sand was so deep! The horses would have a terrible time and if we turned on the juice we'd scare the horses, so they'd pull like. They didn't realize they were tied to the noise.
I never thought of taking a picture of anything. I just thought, " It's today, and tomorrow we'll forget all about today."
WHEAT: Tell me about your hospital.
GARDNER: It was a big tent divided into two rooms, just in case anybody'd come in down there, hurt and I'd have to do a little surgery on them, why I'd have a place. I had one broken leg, and things like that. We had a wood floor raised up, and banked up about three boards high along the walls, in sections; then we put the pole on and the tent on over.
WHEAT: That came pretty close to being the first hospital in the area, didn't it?
GARDNER: Oh, yes. There was the county hospital on the ranch out there. We used to tend that too. [The owner of the ranch] was a 7th Day Adventist and he had a ranch and he had a little hospital in his house over there. He had quite a big house and only a couple of beds. These old fellows sometimes'd go out there and they didn't need a bed.
WHEAT: Was he a doctor?
GARDNER: No. A 7th Day Adventist; just thought he'd take in some sick people and the county said you do that, and we'll make it a county hospital. I can't think of his name right now.
WHEAT: That Mark Wildes thing was something, too.
GARDNER: Yes. You mean when they shot that Indian, I mean the boy. The Indian shot the boy ... about this boy. He was so afraid of getting in the Army. He thought that was sure death, I guess. I can't think of his name right now. [Ed. note: The boy's name was Paul Walters. See Phillip I. Earl, "The Wildes-Walters Murder Case," In Focus, Vol. 2, 1988-89.]
He got so scared when they were going to take him he didn't answer the call, so they went after him, to get him. And he heard they were coming. So he ran away; went down to Stillwater, and on down to the Sink there, and way out onto the desert, and in the toles. Mark Wildes and a posse went down there--my nephew Tom went with them. That was the craziest thing I ever heard of in my life, going after a 16 year-old kid, who was going to school! They found him; he came out of the toles. The kid had a gun, and when Mark Wildes said, "You're under arrest; you ran away," why, he up [and] shot him [Wildes]. Mark was killed and another fellow that was hurt was brought home. And the boy ran away again. They didn't get the boy. Mark was dead, and the next thing they did was
Interview Excerpts 59
to get a posse and go out and hunt this boy. And they had an Indian they said was a good tracker [Ed. note: his name was Skinny Pascal]. They went way down there in the Sink, in the east tules, and the tall grasses around there, and the kid got in there and laid down and thought they wouldn't find him. And the Indian fellow [Pascal] was walking all around the tules, and he looked down, and by Jove, he saw the boy lying down in there. They never tried to arrest him, never got a chance. The Indian up and shot him dead. He killed him. Then they all came home and told everyone. And I said, "You take an Indian out like that, and tell him he might have to kill him, and he did."
WHEAT: Is it true they buried him (the boy) right there on the desert?
GARDNER: No. I think they brought him back to his folks. His father and mother lived on the ranch there; might have been some other kids too. As I told Tom [his nephew] lots of times afterwards, "You fellows didn't have any sense at all. That boy you shot; the way they went at him. They scared the life out of him." A regular lynching mob.
WHEAT: Only there weren't any trees out there.
GARDNER: No, just tules.
WHEAT: I was quite surprised when the paper told about your X-ray machine. I didn't realize you had one.
GARDNER: Yes. I had one of those old friction glass [ones].
WHEAT: Was it a glass tube?
GARDNER: ... it had a big glass piece, a big round thing, to revolve like a wheel. It had four wheels of glass and it had a pulley and you turned the little crank, and the thing'd go around and then you'd get static electricity. And I had an X-ray tube, and we fastened both ends of it; the positive and the negative ends. And it had these positive poles sticking up there. And I wanted to show people what a wonderful thing it was; you'd turn the thing and a spark'd just z-z-z--! And the spark'd just go from the positive to the negative, and boy! They'd look at that a while, then they'd want to see the X-ray. So I'd get the tube out, and I'd get a great big thick dictionary, and put a dollar in it, and then let them take the fluoroscope, to look in through that thing and see that dollar, right through that book. I had that in Elko, you know. And I brought it down with me. I could look at bones; it was good. I could look at any of those things.
WHEAT: I didn't know they had them that early. Let's see. It was 1904 when you came to Fallon.
GARDNER: Yes. 1904?
WHEAT: Actually, February 20th, 1904, according to the newspapers, you opened your office in Fallon, and by March the 19th you had your X-ray.
GARDNER: Yes, I brought it from Elko, I used to do that in Elko. I put my hand in under there, under the X-ray, until I finally pitted every one of my
60 Dr. George M. Gardner
finger nails. They were like little pinholes and they were here for several years. And finally went away.
WHEAT: It was a wonder you didn't lose your hand.
GARDNER: It just wasn't strong enough. If it had been as strong as the X-rays they have now, why, I'd have lost my whole hands. That was the first time those people had ever heard of X-rays. Oh, they used to come by the dozens, to look at it.
MRS. GARDNER: In the bigger cities, I suppose they didn't have to crank it by hand, they used the electric current.
GARDNER: Yeh. They used a dynamo. They didn't have electric power in Elko or in Fallon, either, when I got there. We burned that acetylene. Then after a while they all began to get electricity.
MRS. GARDNER: Who was the lady who used to call it licorice lights?
GARDNER: Oh, that was a little German who lived out of town. She always used to call electric lights, "leecrich" [?--German accent] lights. They lived out of town , and when we first got electric lights they had wires out there, too, and they had the "leecrich" lights. Oh ... Mrs. Mauz. And he was a ..., in San Francisco afterwards, and even before he got there. He worked on the, oh pxhaw! on printing, and things like that. He was a lithographer.
WHEAT: The old [machine] with the little white at the end of the globe.
GARDNER: Yeh. A little point at the end of the globe.
WHEAT: Out at Fairview right now, the old couple that live there....
GARDNER: Yeh, they took electricity out there, only they didn't take it out from Fallon, they took it out from Reno. It hooked onto the big Reno-Sierra electric--40,000 volts. One of my patients walked in there under the lightning arrestor, and it jumped clear down through his back and through his feet, he was standing in wet ground, we'd just had a rain, and I doctored him for about two years. And he had a hole in the back of his [feet] ... it just burned his whole skin off, you know. And I grew these spots, skin grafts. I'd take a little piece of his skin and stick it in there and all around, and finally I got the thing cleaned up. It took me a couple of years to do it. I just did that as a pastime. He's in Berkeley now. I don't think he ever died; I think he's down there. A great big tall fellow, he used to come to see me. He'd come to the office, not to the house. Bill ... Bill somebody. Well, it burned his feet. And then we went to court.... We went to Carson and they got two or three lawyers from San Francisco. We sued them for $25,000. And there was a kind of funny little incident in that. They got the anatomy book out--it had just burned under his feet just burned the whole tissue (fascia) out of there, and some of his toes were knocked off. Mr. Farrington was on the stand, and then they called me, as a witness for him, you see. And these lawyers got kind of funny; they asked me
Interview Excerpts 61
The Indian School near Fallon. (Churchill County Museum and Archives--Nadine Leffler Collection)
62 Dr. George M. Gardner
funny questions. "Well, now, doctor, are these muscles that go down the leg and into the foot, are those contractual-extension muscles?" Well, the muscles extended the foot, so they were called extension muscles. But they contract the toes, so that makes then contractual you see. Why, I said, they are flexor muscles. And the minute I said it ... didn't want to run on like [I] didn't know my anatomy ... so they looked ... and put on, and [said] "That so?" And Farrington [the patient] and the judge were sitting looking at me, and here was the jury and I said to myself, I'll never tell 'em I ever made a mistake. "So, doctor those are flexor muscles, are they?" "Yes, indeed, they are." "Well, have you ever read Gray's Anatomy?" "You bet I have. I've read it well." And they laughed. And the dirty smirks on their faces. And I knew what it was all about. And I thought, well, I'll fix them, all right. "Well, now, doctor, you say you've read Gray's Anatomy, doesn't Gray say that those are extensor muscles?" I said, "Yes sir, they do! That's one place that Gray and I disagree! You've got no right to call those extensor muscles because they extend the foot, but they flexed the toes. So I say they are flexor muscles of the toes. And I know as much about it as Mr. Gray does." Well, that got 'em. And the jury laughed. And the judge laughed. And I had the attorneys right there, with them, you see. And they laughed. And they quit. They quit! They didn't try to disagree with me any more. And that broke up the ... well, anyway, we won the case. And it was $20,000. We'd sued them for $20,000. Well, the jury went out.... The jury talked it all over, and said, well, if we give him $20,000 they can appeal it to the U.S. Courts and then eventually it would have to get to the Supreme Court. And that would probably take about 15 years. And we'd all be dead by that time. So they said, we'll give him $19,000. And they gave us $19,000. And I took out what my part was, and the lawyers took out a little and old Bill got the balance of it.
MRS. GARDNER: You didn't explain why it was in Federal court.
GARDNER: Yes. It was in Federal Court for one reason. He wasn't an American citizen. He was an English citizen. And he'd never taken out his papers. But he'd lived over here all of his life. And when you're not a citizen....
WHEAT: What was the basis of the suit?
GARDNER: The lightning rod was there, and they proved that it was too low. And when he walked under the lightning rod the jump must have jumped 20 feet and hit him. He grounded himself, in the wet.
WHEAT: Did they bring electricity over from Lee Vining, into that area?
GARDNER: I don't know where they brought it from. I thought they brought it maybe from Reno. It might have come from Wabuska, down in Mason Valley.
GARDNER: Down in Stillwater--that was the county seat at that time, and whenever they held court, everybody came down there and got drunk--that was
Interview Excerpts 63
why they went down. A fellow shot another man and he killed him. They got into a sort of fight. And this fellow killed the other fellow--I guess he'd have gotten killed if he hadn't killed the other fellow first. Anyway, that's the way the story went. To make a long story short, they got into the court there; Lem Allen was the Judge, Johnny Cirac was a citizen down there, and quite a few others around from the little ranches.... The court came to order; they pleaded their cases, and 'bout every half-hour the judge'd pound on his gavel and say, "The court is adjourned for one half hour. We'll retire over to the Cirac place, go over there and have a drink." And someone would say, "But you can't leave the prisoner here, while you go over and take a drink." So he said, "All right, we'll take the prisoner with us. We'll give him a drink." So they'd take him over, then they'd come back and they'd hold a little more court, and get rid of more evidence, and they'd get more drinks. And then all of a sudden somebody said, "What are we gonna do with the prisoner tonight?" Well, that was a question, you know! Nobody could answer it. The Grand Jury couldn't answer it except one fellow had a bright idea. He said, "There's another well, a dry well, out there. We'll put him down in the well. We can give him a bed and make him comfortable, and he can stay there." So that's what they did. They said, "That's a good idea." So they got a rope and they threw the bed down in first, and told the guy he could go down there and make his bed, and they let him down on the rope. The well must have been probably 12 or 14 feet deep, a little hard for him to get out. They figured he wouldn't try to get out. And I don't think he wanted to get out, either, because he was having such a good time. He had a drink every time the other boys had a drink. Well, they'd bring him up in the morning, then they'd take him over and feed him at Charley Cirac's, and then they'd all repair to the court house. The gavel would come down --"Court's in order." And then every half-hour, the court would adjourn, for a half-hour, to "repair across the street." They kept that up for three, four, or five days. And then the jury went out, and you could hear them in there; they'd laugh and laugh, and then, "Not Guilty." And then they all went out again and had some drinks. That was all; court was over, the fellow was out, and that's all there was to that.... They'd put a courthouse up and they didn't have a jail. Just a court room.... That's the Old West!
64 "Jack" Sheehan and Myrtle Sheehan
The Bailey Family. Back, L to R: Myrtle Bailey (married Jack Sheehan), Charles, John, and Iva Mae. Front, L to R: Charles H. Bailey, Joseph, and Mary Christina Allen Bailey. (Churchill County Museum & Archives--Gardner Sheehan Collection)
Excerpts from the Interview of
John "Jack" Sheehan and Myrtle Bailey Sheehan
MARGARET M. WHEAT, INTERVIEWER
1950
[This tape recording was made January 6, 1950 by Mrs. Wendell Wheat, and transcribed by Paul Jensen. John Henry "Jack" Sheehan (1864-1952) and Myrtle Bailey Sheehan (1875-1965) were Churchill County pioneers.]
MR. SHEEHAN: I am 86. I was born on the Comstock on the 10th day of
January 1864. I am the oldest man living that was born on the Comstock. I run away from home, when I was only nine years old ... I used [to] have trouble with my step-mother. And a funny thing--and the old man would get after me. And when he whipped me, he would almost beat me to death. So, I got so that I would be afraid of him. Anytime, I thought I was going to get whipped, I wouldn't go home. I would stay out at night and I would sleep in an ore bin. Anywhere at all, where I could keep warm--keep from freezing to death. Sometimes, I would be out three or four days. The old man looking for me--and me dodging him.
One day the boys come along. The old man sent me down town for something. I don't know what it was. And I got down town with the boys. I used to live up in Crown Point Ravine. And the boys said, "Let's go down to the Slaughter House"--that was down on the American Flat, with the boys, and we got down there. I didn't go after this errand. And we got down there, three or four of us together. And they called us in for dinner. When we got back, I knew that I would get the whey knocked out of me, and I left home.
I got to thinking about the matter and thought "well, the old man will murder me if I go home. I will just get out of here." They used to run a train every hour out of Gold Hill--one up and one down. That night, I went down and slept under the Crown Point mill. The next morning there was a 6 o'clock train going to Carson. I went up and jumped en that train, and went to Carson. When I got to Carson, there was another one going to Reno and I jumped on that train. And I went to Reno. And I got to Reno, along come another train going to 120 and I jumped on that train, and I landed in Truckee at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. That was pretty good traveling for a kid nine year's old, who didn't have any money
and anything to eat. 65
66 "Jack" Sheehan and Myrtle Sheehan
I got up to Truckee and started up the platform and I see a boy come toward me with a bootblack box on his shoulder. When I got up to him, he was a Gold Hill boy that had run away. I knew him well. His name was Tom Booth. He was tickled to death to see me.
He said, "When did you eat?" I said, "Yesterday noon," and he said, "Come on." And he took me over to a China Restaurant. We had a meal. So he goes to work and says, "I will get you some brushes and fix you up. Here is a bootblack box and you can black boots and get some money to eat. So he did. We stayed around Truckee for awhile.
Then, I jumped a train and went to Sacramento. I got down to Sacramento and stayed there for a while. Things didn't suit me, and I jumped on a train and went back to Truckee.
I stayed in Truckee for awhile and I thought; "Well, I had better get out of here. I went and got on a freight train--a load of lumber. I jumped on that and I went to sleep, and when I woke up, I was across the river over here--Old Wadsworth. Wadsworth used to be across the river.
I got up and looked around to see where I was. I saw lots of teaming going out of there--teams. I went down town. Of course, I always was a horse man. Liked horses. We used to go over to the corrals there. They used to have big feed yards and lots of teams there all the time--teams, in here loading, coming in and going out. And I got in with them teamsters.
I helped them lead the horses to water, helped them feed, helped them get their hay and grain. And, by gosh, I just was getting along fine. Blacking their boots. In them days, all teamsters used to wear boots, you know. Good deal! Oiling their boots, used to be two-bits. They all had big boots. You had to oil them especially in the winter time, you know, black them boots. Instead of giving me a quarter, they would give me a half-dollar.
There was a store-keeper there by the name of Jim Ferguson. He was my banker. I would pick the money up and give it to him, and he would keep it for me.
Then there was a fellow, there, by the name of Waters. I guess, you wouldn't know--Waters died. Yes, he had a livery stable there, and he had a yard.
This old rancher would come in there. I used to be around Waters a good deal. I seen he was helping these fellows down there. So old John Luce come in there. He was there for a day or two and bought some horses. So old Water's said, "John, why don't you take him out there. He will be company for you and a good boy and a good worker." John said, "I don't know about that. I don't know--but I will--I will see him and have a talk with him." So he got to talking to me and he wanted to know if I didn't mind going on the ranch. And I said, "I don't know." He said, "I will tell you what I will do. I will give you a horse, saddle and bridle." That just hit me. I said, "Let's go." That is how I come to get out in the country. And I went out there and stayed with him for over a year.
Interview Excerpts 67
He had a bunch of horses. He had 40 or 50 head of horses. Nothing there that would suit me. And he said, "If you see any horse around this country that you would like, I will buy him." So I run across a horse one time. And I said, "That is the horse, I would like to have." So he bought the horse and gave me the horse. Then he sold that ranch.
He sold the ranch to Lem Allen, and I stayed there quite awhile.
There was a fellow, who used to live up there at Soda Lake. He got my pedigree and know what my name was. He know the old man at Gold Hill. So, one day, he went to Gold Hill and asked the old man if he had a boy down there on the Sinks. And the old man said, "I got a boy somewhere, but I don't know where in the devil he is. We ain't heard from him for 18 months. He run away from here." "Well," this feller said, "he is down on the Sinks." He said I was stopping with Lem Allen then. And he said, "I come up here every now and then." My old man said, "You go and get him and talk to him. And bring him home here. And, I will pay you for bringing him." So, by-gosh--the way things will come to a fellow.
I was out there watering a horse. I saw a fellow drive up there to the old Allen place in a buggy and stop his team. I looked up at that fellow, and it just struck me that he was after me. "Now, if he is after me," I thought. I had my horse and saddle there. "If he was after me ... I will give him a run for his money. Just as soon as I can get that horse saddled, I will get on that horse, and I will--and he won't catch me." I figured it out there while I was settin on that trough, watching that fellow.
Finally, that fellow drove down. His name was Stone. He asked me my name. I told him. He said, "Where do you live?" I said, "I am living here." He said, "Where does your folks live?" I said, "At Gold Hill." Then he up and tells me that he was talking with my old man. He said, "He sent me down after you." So I was figuring what he would do. Now, I will wait until he gets away from me, and I will saddle that horse and I will beat it....
That Wightman woman ... wanted me to come and stay with her. I thought, "Well, I will just beat it, and go out there and stay with her. I will just beat this fellow to it."
When, I was studying this over, Lem come down. Old Lem Allen. He told me that this fellow was down here after me, and that Father wanted me to come home. And he told me, what he said, that if I will come home, "I will never lay any hands on him again ... and come home, and go to school." And so he talked me into it.
And Lem said, "You leave the horse here. You go on home and go to school. When vacation time comes, you come down and get your horse and stop with me on your vacation. And I said, "All right, I will go home." And that is how I come to stop at the Stockton Station. That was in the year of 1875.
68 "Jack" Sheehan and Myrtle Sheehan
One night, we started up there. He said, "I will be down here in the morning and we will go to Virginia and Gold Hill. We started and I never seen the wind blow so hard, as it did coming down toward the Stockton Station. So, we stopped all night at the Stockton Station. There was a station there then.
MRS. SHEEHAN: He didn't stay home very long, though.
MR. SHEEHAN: I went home and went to school until vacation. Then went down there and got my horse and took him up there and sold him. During vacation, my step-mother and me got into a rough [one] and I said I am going. And I said, "Give me that money, I am going." She gave me that money. The old man was somewhere on a picnic. She said, "How are you going?" I said, "I am going on the train tonight." She said, "Ain't you going to wait until your father comes home?" "No," I went over and jumped on the first passenger train. And away I went. And I never did go home to stay.
WHEAT: Where did you go next? Where did you stay when you
went back down there?
MR. SHEEHAN: I guess I went to Ragtown then. And then I went to work and went to school. And then I went to work for Asa Kenyon.
MR. SHEEHAN: Every man had--would have to ride a colt in the morning. Two green horses. They would give every man a number of horses and colts, they would have to break. So, we got up there to Smoke Creek and camped there early in the morning--and a feller had to ride. I told the feller, "You catch that sorrel mare there. You ride her this morning. We might as well start in now." So he did. He caught her. I didn't think she would buck much. After they had caught them, well, I stayed there to help these fellers with the green horses. They got on this horse and this mare started to run and buck--and stepped into a gopher hole--and fell. And when she got up, she was lame. I could see she was lame and wouldn't do to ride. So, I got another horse for this fellow, and turned her loose. We turned her loose, and went into a place called Duck Lake up north. Surprise Valley. Do you know what they called Duck Lake out there? Duck Lake Ranch. We went over there that day. And the next morning, when we went after the horses, she was still lame. So I said, "I don't want to take this mare any farther." She is still lame. I will leave her until I come back. And when I come back, I will pick her up." He said, "All right." So I left her there, and went to Oregon and got the cattle and came back with the cattle. When we got there, the mare was just as lame as the day I left her. I didn't think she was going to get over it. So, I said to this feller, "Here, that mare is still lame, I will give her to you. I won't take her home. She is no good to me." So we came down here.
We had to camp at Ragtown over night. We drove and made a dry camp on the other side of Fernley, and the next day we went to Ragtown. And so when the horses were in there, I had a man take a saddle horse to go ahead with the horses.
Interview Excerpts 69
And he (Asa Kenyon) came out to look for his mare and his mare wasn't there. I was behind with the cattle. When I got there Asa come out there and chatted. He said, "Where is my mare, Johnny?" I happened to tell him that I was sorry about what had happened to her. And, he never said anything. He was one of these fellers, when he got mad, he didn't side in like anybody else and tell you what he thought about it--or cuss or something, like that. But, he would just stand there and laugh. I knew him so well. So, I thought. "Old boy you are not putting anything over on me--I know you too damn well." I said, "You are not, but you dare not say anything for I will make it damned interesting for you if you do." So he didn't say anything.
One day there was some fellers in there and they got to talking about me. And they got to telling what I was doing and what kind of a feller I was. And old Asa was there and he was taking it all in. "Well," he said, "I used to think a whole lot of Johnny, but he stole a horse from me." He thought, I had got away with his old mare. It used to be comical, the set-toos they had.
MR. SHEEHAN: Did you ever hear about the school? The Churchill County Institute.
WHEAT: Where was it?
MR. SHEEHAN: It was where they called the Upper Sink. That is what they called it--the church. [The church belonged to the Adventists.] It was four or five miles south of Fallon. That was the only school in Churchill County. It was a boarding school. I went to that school. All the children in the country went to that school, and the children would board there. On Friday afternoon, the people from ten and fifteen miles around would come and get their children, take them home Friday night and Saturday and bring them back on Sunday afternoon.
MRS. SHEEHAN: Tell them who your teacher was.
MR. SHEEHAN: W.H.A. Pike, Judge Pike, and his wife, Ida Pike, was the daughter of Asa Kenyon. She was matron there. The boys and girls would come there.
...Do you know where Grimes was at the Upper Sink? That lake from Grimes's was 12 miles long and six miles wide when that lake was full. There were three branches of the Carson River. The branch went south of the Theelan place--that was called the Upper Sink. The other went north of the Theelan place--the other was on the north and went into the old Humboldt Sink. That was the Upper Sink and about 2 miles east of the Theelan place was where the New River branched off from Old River--there was where I lived. The Old River was on the north. It ended up in the Humboldt Sink. There were only four ranches, when I went to live with John Luce. They were on the New River, Old River and Upper Sink--between the Sink and the Humboldt. From Grimes's, the water went to Stillwater. It got to Grimes's before it got to Stillwater and then into the Lower Sink--from Stillwater on down.
70 "Jack" Sheehan and Myrtle Sheehan
Do you know where the old Lem Allen ranch is? It lies below the river forks. That was on the Bailey ranch. Below it were two islands. One was called the little island, the other one the big fork went to the lake. The other fork of the river went to the ranches. The other land belonged to the Dillard [family].
MRS. SHEEHAN: I know they used to call that Allen's station where grandpa and grandma lived--that is the Wild Cat.
WHEAT: When was it named Wild Cat?
MRS. SHEEHAN: After they left.
MR. SHEEHAN: That road wasn't used and hadn't been used for a long time after I went there. Now the main road was from here (Wadsworth). Now Wadsworth was the feed town for all them towns like Austin, Ione, Belville and Candelaire [sic]--Columbus. All that freight came to this town--when the town used to be across the river there. The old town used to be across the river. All that stuff was hauled by big teams--16, 18, as well as 24 mule teams going to them camps. Some of them teams would go to Belville and two and three teams would go to Columbus, another would be for Candelaire [sic], another for White Pine, another for Belmont, another for Austin. That was the main road from here going east.
WHEAT: The one going passed Allen's station--was the road for all this?
MR. SHEEHAN: No, that was the old road. This road went from here to Hazen. Hazen was off to the right. It went where they called the Wells. They went there where the first water was. That was called the Wells. The next station was called Ragtown. The next station was Pap McGees - that was down below Aliens, where Wayne Wightman lives. The next station was Grimes's and from there on out there would be stations every 20 or 25 miles.
WHEAT: Can you tell men where the well is close to, I have never been able to find it?
MRS. SHEEHAN: Well that well is from where the old town is. The old town (Hazen)--she was off west about three quarters of a mile from the old town from where the road is--that used to be the old town. It is off there. The highway is to the right of the old well. No, it would be to the southwest. The well is off to the south. The well is off to the left.
WHEAT: Which way are you going?
MRS. SHEEHAN: Going towards Fallon. That would be to the west on the east side. It would be off to the left about three quarters of a mile from the old town of Hazen. Off to the left. That would be about a half mile from the highway, as I can judge now, from the highway over to the old well. It was toward Fallon from old Hazen. Why sure, towards Fallon, towards Ragtown. Ragtown was the first water until you come to the well....
Interview Excerpts 71
WHEAT: I have heard of the well, but I haven't been able to locate
it.
MRS. SHEEHAN: Well there it is.
WHEAT: It was called just the "Well"?
MRS. SHEEHAN: There was a little station there. Bob Shirley ran the station and a saloon there for a little while and then he went to Fallon; Bob Shirley was his name. Bob Shirley used to be sheriff. You probably read about him when you were kids.
WHEAT: When your mother was living out there at Allen's Station.... Did she tell you far the water was from the house? Where the well was.
MRS. SHEEHAN: Why their house was right along by the lake and they used the water that run near the house like a slough and they drank it. ...Now I have another story to tell you. They drank that water. My uncle and aunt was there at that time. They were living on their place, but that was before they bought their old home. She went down to the slough and got a drink and it was late and she thinks she must have swallowed a little bunch of snakes. As much as 30 years afterwards, every once in a while she would get very sick, deathly sick. Mother would say she thought she was going to die. And then Doc Bemis. Old Doc Bemis was an old quack of a doctor out there. They called him and he laid his hand on her stomach. He said, "Lem, I will tell you. There is something that is making her so sick. I am going to give a little strychnine." And he said, "If there is, it will kill whatever it is and it will pass and we will see what it is. But, I am not going to give her enough to kill her." He gave her some every hour and she passed the snakes. One of them was 'bout this long. I remember my mother was there for a long time and she didn't think she would live. And she passed three snakes.
WHEAT: What kind?
MRS. SHEEHAN: Water snakes. She never could imagine where she got them and she finally got to talking to mother. "Mary," she said, "I think I know-I took a drink one night, I had a dipper and dipped up some water and took a drink and something got into my throat, like straws and I tried to cough it up and spit it out and I couldn't. "And" she said, "that was when I swallowed them snakes." They were just little snakes and they kept growing up. She had a family of six children after she swallowed those snakes.
They lost their first three children, after they came out here. That is the Allen girls' mother--mother of Daisy and Bess. The girls wouldn't talk about it. But their sister, who lives in Sparks, Mrs. Proctor and her sister and especially Ma, we talked about it. I don't see anything disgraceful about it.
MR. SHEEHAN: I should say not. It was only an accident in the first place. That old doctor saved her life.
72 "Jack" Sheehan and Myrtle Sheehan
MRS. SHEEHAN: Dad used to work up at that ranch, Wingfield place. When we come there--course we were at the 'dobie for a while. And we worked for Uncle Bill a while and then we homesteaded that ranch and he set out some posts. There ought to be some trees there about 70 years old on that ranch unless they cut them all down. That would be them two ranches, the oldest would be the Bond ranch and the Bailey ranch. The three ranches were all together. William's Avenue. Right there. Jake Allen had the Oats place. And my other uncle, by the name of Bond, my mother's sister's husband.
WHEAT: What was her name?
MRS. SHEEHAN: Kate Bond. And then Uncle Jake's wife's name was Kate on the Oats ranch. Oh my, there were some huge big trees all around the lane. And they were where the Williams lived. Cora Hursh, their daughter, lives there. He sold out to Harmon. He sold the land that is now Fallon. That was when they started the Post Office. And that was where they got its name.
WHEAT: Was the first post office where Cora Hursh lives?
MRS. SHEEHAN: It was on the corner where Della Williams had her
papers. The printing office. And she sold that to the store.
WHEAT: And there is a Federated Store there now?
MRS. SHEEHAN: Well, there was where I went, where Jim Richard's store was. Richard's had a store there and a post office. The town was named Jim Town. The Indians used to call it Jim Town. It was the first store put in there.
Fallon lived in that house where Cora Hursh lives. He was the one that started the post office, but he never had the post office in his house. It was put in Jim Richard's store. I have gone in there and sorted out mail for him many times. He had a little store and post office.
WHEAT: Richards, you say, lived in the Bond house?
MRS. SHEEHAN: Oh, I mean Fallon. Oh, Fallon owned that--Fallons' brother-in-law. Well, I knew him, but I can't remember him. Mike Fallon.
Ira Fallon married one of the Theelan girls. Jess Bruner was Fallon's brother-in-law. That was Mrs. Fallon's brother.
MR. SHEEHAN: I met him up there on the ranch. [And] the old lady Fallon. He used to work in the Sunny Saloon. That was the only time I met him. He was a little club footed. He walked with a limp. I knew him years and years ago. He married George Cirac's sister [in-law]. He had three or four children. They told me that they had three. She died, but he is still alive.
Jessie (Bruner) there, is Fallon's brother-in-law. There is a Fallon boy that married Kate Theelan, and moved over to Smith Valley. The other one Minnie married Fred Branch.
WHEAT: It was the one that married the Theelan girl that started the post office?
[ANSWER:] No. It was his father.
WHEAT: No wonder, I couldn't get it straight.
Interview Excerpts 73
MR. SHEEHAN: Did anybody tell you about Dr. Bemis and his wife living out there in that school house? You never heard about it. By Gosh, there is a lot of things you should have. (he chuckles) I have so much enjoyed this evening.
MRS. SHEEHAN: My sisters, like Daisy, would say, "Oh hell, what is the use of telling about those old things." I says, "Don't you like to think about them?" Now here, I don't have anybody to talk to. Now, when I would go out there, I would bring up one thing and another to the girls. I said, "I like to talk about those old times and what we did and all."
WHEAT: The reason I like it so much is that I know every inch of the ground in Churchill County. I have pictures of what is left of the old station. The beautifully made walls out there. There must have been an adobe house, some rock houses and some small sheds--they probably kept saddles in them. Those were right close to the corrals. They must have had some cellars.
MR. SHEEHAN: They did, there ain't an old person in Fallon that could give you any information. Ira Kent and me, I think come there the same year. I think, I was there a year ahead of him. Kent and someone else came bout the same time.
WHEAT: Old man Smart came about that time.
MR. SHEEHAN: Oh no! Not for a long time after that! Callie Ferguson came there before that. She was a teacher.
MRS. SHEEHAN: "I went my second term of school to her. She was my teacher. I went to Callie Ferguson. Vet Smart didn't come there until after she was married. She taught there for another year and was married. She married John Ferguson. Old man Smart came down. He was a blacksmith. Then Vet, and Cora, and Frances.
MR. SHEEHAN: They had some fine old men out there too. They had to be fine to live out there and make a go of it. They were the finest men you ever seen. Their word was just as good as a 20 dollar gold-piece. If they promised a certain amount of money on such and such a day, you bet your boots, you got it. And if they didn't, they were there to tell you why you didn't, but now days in this younger generation what are they?
[Ed. Note: The house that Mrs. Sheehan refers to as "where Cora Hursh lives" was actually an earlier dwelling than the presnt "Hursh" home (376 West Williams Avenue). That first house, a white two-story home, was later moved to what is now the Venturacci ranch and is still standing.]
SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE
Who Were the Stillwater Marsh People?
SHEILAGH BROOKS AND RICHARD H. BROOKS
Reprinted from Halycon, 1990.
Courtesy of Nevada Humanities Committee.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
For years people in northwestern Nevada have been aware of various types of stone tools or artifacts made by prehistoric Indian people from the region of the Stillwater Marsh, but no Indian occupation sites had been found. In 1984 heavy summer rainstorms occurred throughout the Nevada Great Basin region, filling the playas and marshes with water. After a dry summer, the flood waters receded in the Stillwater Wildlife Refuge area of the Carson Sink. The vegetation on the earth hillocks in the marsh was disrupted and numerous archaeological sites with artifacts and human skeletal remains were exposed. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife rangers at the Stillwater Wildlife Refuge, members of the Nevada State Museum, and other volunteers, under the supervision of Donald Tuohy, Curator of Anthropology at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, salvaged the archaeological materials and human remains in about a four-square-mile area.
Prior to the salvage of the skeletal remains from the marsh, only a limited number of burials had been recovered from the entire Nevada portion of the Great Basin. Some of this skeletal material, housed at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), was studied by a number of individuals, resulting in several M.A. theses and the first publication concerned with these archaeological recovered skeletons. (1) Later, C. Stark analyzed for her M.A. thesis (2) 250 burials, which were then available for study in the UNLV Physical Anthropology Laboratory. Many skeletons in this series had no data on where they were found and no archaeological associations to provide a method of estimating how long they had been buried. Despite these drawbacks, Stark's thesis was the first major study of Great Basin human skeletal remains since 1959. (3)
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Stillwater Marsh People 75
STILLWATER HUMAN SKELETAL REMAINS
The Stillwater skeletal series is the largest collection of human remains from a single locale in the Nevada Great Basin with information on time depth. Limitations were specified during the salvage procedures in a Memorandum of Agreement signed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Stillwater Indian Tribal Council, and the Nevada Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology. Total recovery of the Stillwater skeletal material was not permitted. Only disturbed or 50-percent-exposed burials and isolated bones could be collected. Additionally, a three-year period of laboratory research was allowed. Any destructive analyses, such as radio-carbon dating, was confined to already-fragmented bones. Within this time period, an intense and extensive physical anthropological analysis was conducted.
Study of the Stillwater human skeletal remains began in 1985, and 416 individuals were identified from the commingled remains: 272 were based on single bones or incomplete skeletal elements, and only 144 were relatively complete skeletons. (4) Radiocarbon dates were derived from four Stillwater long bones which had been broken prior to recovery. Each was from a different marsh locale that had been selected as a key archaeological site. The resulting dates ranged from about 848 A.D. to around 1698 A.D., (5) though some of the artifactual materials recovered imply beginning dates of over 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. (6)
Archaeologists refer to the artifacts from this period in northwestern Nevada as the "prehistoric Lovelock Culture," and to the people who made them as the "Lovelock People." Until the recovery of the Stillwater skeletal series, few scattered skeletal remains were all that existed of the Lovelock People in northwestern Nevada. Most of these were the skeletons that Reid found in and around the Lovelock Cave area, his "redheaded giants." (7) Questions arose about the relationships between the new and old skeletal series: were these new skeletal finds similar to previously described skeletal series from northwestern Nevada: Were the Stillwater Marsh people indigenous Nevadans, or migrants from another region? These questions are pertinent since artifacts similar to those classified as Lovelock were found during the 1984 salvage operation in the Stillwater Marsh. (8) Are the human skeletal remains physically similar in both their quantitative (anthropometric) measurements and their qualitative aspects (morphological studies) in each area where Lovelock artifacts are found, or do they differ between the locales? The answers to these questions could be obtained only by comparative skeletal analyses, which were conducted from 1985 through 1988. (9)
During this discussion references are made to skeletal series, or human remains, but not to populations. The skeletal remains recovered from archaeological sites are considered a limited representative sample of the actual
76 Sheilagh Brooks and Richard H. Brooks
population who might have lived in the area prehistorically. It is impossible to obtain skeletons of all those who inhabited the region of the Humboldt and Carson sinks during the period which produced artifacts that archaeologists now consider Lovelock types. Even modem cemeteries do not contain the entire population of a particular town or city. Some die or were killed elsewhere and are not buried in the local area, others are cremated and not interred. This same situation is assumed to have occurred prehistorically and historically. (10)
About 10 percent--38 to 40 individuals--of the 416 total remains had associated artifacts with them (some were multiple burials), and were assigned to an earlier or later period based on the archaeological interpretation. The time period estimated from the four radiocarbon-dated bones extends over about 850 years. These 416 individuals can in no way reflect the total number of people who lived in the Stillwater Marsh or Carson Sink area during this length of time. The recovered burials from the Carson and Humboldt sinks do not represent a contemporaneous breeding population, but are instead skeletal samples of the people who lived during the "Lovelock culture" period, which were recovered archaeologically.
THE STILLWATER SKELETAL SERIES:
Description of Their Physical Appearance
In the preliminary analysis by Haldeman (11) the commingled bones were sorted into individuals; some represented by an almost complete skeleton, others by a single bone. Data can be derived from single bones, even if just the information that another juvenile or adult individual is represented. Among the 416 individuals, 144 were relatively complete skeletons of whom 31.3 percent were male, 19.4 percent were female, and 49.3 percent were of unknown sex. These "unknowns" were either under 16 years of age, or missing those particular bones used to determine sex. Skeletal traits that differentiate males from females usually do not appear until after puberty, so it is difficult to make sex identification on most infants and children.
The results of the anthropometric measurements (12) for this series were obtained from those individuals with fairly intact bones. Information from these measurements is derived regarding the size and shape of the skull (cranium) and limbs or postcranial skeletal elements. Qualitative research or the recording of morphological skeletal traits (emphasis on shape rather than just size) can be conducted on some broken or fragmentary bones, consequently there are higher frequencies from this type of analysis than from anthropometric measurements.
The quantitative results varied slightly within the Stillwater skeletal remains, but a composite description was derived from these data for the cranial and postcranial skeleton. The Stillwater series had 17 measurable male, 18 female, and 9 unknown adult (incomplete) crania; and 12 male, 14 female, and 9
Stillwater Marsh People 77
unknown adult skeletons had measurable postcranial bones. Where possible, measurements were taken on incomplete cranial and postcranial bones to obtain information. In this discussion only the results for male, female, and unknown sex adults are utilized to describe these people.
After measuring a skull, a series of indices are obtained by dividing pairs of measurements--length and width of skull and lower jaw or mandible--and used to describe the relative sizes and shapes of the skeletal remains. Both male and female Stillwater skulls range from long to medium headed (head length relative to head breadth). Most of the facial indices, including the mandible, are medium breadth relative to length although both medium--and long-faced individuals occur. Upper facial index, without the mandible, was more often medium. In profile their faces were relatively straight, with little or no protrusion forward of the face or the teeth, except for the nasal projection and some alveolar prognathism of the upper jaw (a protrusion of the upper tooth-bearing bones similar to "buck teeth"). The Stillwater series nasal indices are all medium wide relative to length.
Stature derived from the leg bones is usually more reliable than from the arm bones. The stature for Stillwater males--obtained form the leg bones--ranges from 5'6" to 6'0", and for females the range is 5'2" to 5'7". These are similar to the statures derived for the people from Humboldt Sink sites, as well as the male "redheaded giants." (13) Limb bones for these skeletal series were robust for both males and females.
Continuous morphological traits or characteristics are described along a continuum as small, medium, and large, and these also were recorded. They provide a picture of either the ruggedness or gracility of skull and facial features. The Stillwater series' continuous morphological traits share a number of similarities related to robusticity with other northwestern Nevada prehistoric skeletal series. Males have very large ridges above the eye orbits and female ridges are medium sized. Many of the males have large crests above their mastoid bones (behind the ear opening), while the females were mainly medium sized. The occipital, or bone at the back of the skull, has lines or ridges were the neck muscles occur, and a torus and/or inion (also places where muscles or ligaments attach). These are further evidences of robust crania and are apparent in the Stillwater males. The females also had some large inions.
Nasal profiles in males and females are concavo-convex and prominent. Upper jaw or alveolar prognathism (protrusion) ranged from slight to medium. Mandibles for males were medium to large, usually with square chins. The female mandibles were mostly medium with median-shaped chins. In general, the males are large with robust-appearing skulls, and the females are somewhat less robust with a few rather gracile, smaller individuals.
Discrete morphological traits are those characteristics that can be noted as present or absent and have a potential of being under some genetic control. The
78 Sheilagh Brooks and Richard H. Brooks
Stillwater series showed frequencies of certain of these traits, both cranially and postcranially in male, female, and unknown adults. The frequencies are also similar to those traits recorded for the skeletons from the Humboldt Sink region.
When the Stillwater skulls were placed in a row they showed a marked similarity or homogeneity of their craniofacial appearance. They are comparable to skulls from the Humboldt Sink, also considered "Lovelock People," but as the Stillwater remains had to be analyzed in Carson City, no joint photographs of these skeletal series could be made.
A statistical analysis designed for small samples confirmed the similarities between the individuals in the Stillwater series and the skeletons of another small series from the Pitt Mound near Lovelock. These statistics also concurred with the observations of homogeneity for this region and the "Lovelock People." (14)
Dental and Skeletal Pathologies
Dental wear patterns and evidences of cavities, abscesses, and periodontal disease in Stillwater individuals are comparable to those of other skeletal series in northwestern and central Nevada. There is heavy wear through the enamel on the chewing surfaces of the teeth, the result of food preparation practices. These include grinding seeds on flat stones called metates with manor (hand stones), or using mortars and pestles. These means of preparing food introduce debris into the food, which wears down the enamel on the chewing surfaces of the teeth.
Another cultural pattern also observed in dentition from other Nevada regions (15) left grooves on the chewing surfaces of front upper teeth where plant fibers or sinew were held between the teeth. Perhaps they were preparing the fibers or sinew for various purposes, as making basketry or bow strings. Two females and five males from the Carson Sink were recorded with these dental grooves which are visible in the worn chewing surfaces of these individuals, who were over 30 years of age.
Skeletal pathologies included: broken legs, arms, or noses; osteophytic growth on vertebrae in the spinal column (extra bone growth around the bony sections of the spine which cause back pain); osteophytes on many other joint surfaces (bone growths around the facets or contact areas of joints); swelling or growths on bones not located at joints (including the skull); evidence of infection affecting the surfaces of limb bones or fingers and toes; and an unusually high frequency of eburnation, a type of joint disease or arthritic problem. Except for this last pathology, these skeletal problems of increasing age, stress, and damaged bones are not uncommon in prehistoric skeletal series.
Discussion of Eburnation
Eburnation refers to the polishing of the surfaces of bones where they make contact at a joint. Usually there is a cartilage or soft tissue cushion occurring
Stillwater Marsh People 79
between the bones in the body, so there is not direct contact of bone with bone. In the case of ebumation, the cartilage between the bones has become completely eroded and friction caused by continued use can then polish, or ebumate, the bone. (16) The affected joint surfaces will display a smooth or polished appearance and shallow grooves may appear in the eburnated areas.
A total of 38 joint surfaces in the Stillwater series showed some evidence of eburnation. These ranged from slight to well-developed with associated osteophytes. These extra growths were referred to as "mushroom shaped," (17) since the osteophyte curved over a section of the limb bone shaft, somewhat resembling the edge of a mushroom cap. Among the 416 total Stillwater individuals, 3.1 percent had at least one eburnated joint and among the 144 relatively complete burials the frequency was 6.3 percent. Both males and females were affected.
Few Harris or growth arrest lines in limb bones were noted in the 41 individuals radiographed. Harris lines are a series of white streaks seen in x-rays, usually towards the upper or lower ends of the bone. These lines are considered the effects of some type of trauma: shock, illness, malnutrition, physiological or psychological problems. In the sample of x-rayed bones a 16.7 percent correlation was recorded for Harris lines occurring in the same individual with at least one eburnated skeletal element. (18)
Other pathologies observed in the Stillwater series are no different than those recorded for Humboldt Sink, Pyramid Lake, or other diverse locations in Nevada. When compared with skeletal studies from various areas of North America, such as the southwestern or southeastern regions, the Nevada Great Basin Human remains generally show little evidence of malnutrition, tuberculosis, or many of the pathologies noted for these other archaeologically-recovered skeletal series. On the whole, the prehistoric human material from Nevada seems unusually healthy. (19)
Only a few cases of ebumation have been recorded for individuals in the Nevada archaeological skeletal series. (20) Causes proposed as explanations of the eburnation frequency include the cold and damp effects of the marsh region. Another proposal is that eburnation results from the wear and tear on joints through daily, repetitive physical activities. (21) This idea applies not only to this region, but to most of the Nevada Great Basin, since archaeological and ethnographic data about these Indians, prehistorically and historically, confirm that most were hunters and gatherers performing similar tasks. There were agricultural groups in the area of the Moapa Valley in southern Nevada, but they were also physically active in a continuous cycle. The descriptions of the Great Basin Indians (22) made well after the Indians had been stressed with disease, moved from their original tribal lands, and harassed by the encroaching Americans--are hardly a reflection of their pre-contact existence.
The numerous Stillwater Marsh archaeological sites, the amount of recovered human skeletal material, and the natural productivity of the marsh itself are
80 Sheilagh Brooks and Richard H. Brooks
evidences of the pre-contact availability of food and resources. The marsh, even today, is occupied seasonally by huge flocks of migrating birds, and normally has ample freshwater shellfish, fish, and plants, (23) as well as mammals of various types. (24) The problem of what caused the eburnation is not explained by daily activities, an unhealthy wetlands environment, or an unusual frequency of any other pathology.
Some other factor or combination of factors are needed for an explanatory cause. Recently a nutritional cause was suggested. (25) Spores from a parasitic fungus can affect grain stored in a damp, cold climate, producing a toxin which, when the grain is eaten, apparently destroys the cartilage tissue pads between the bones in joints. As the cartilage disintegrates, the normal wear and tear of daily activities could eventually result in ebumation. Since there would be variability in the effects on different individuals, varying amounts of food eaten, or activities engaged in by each person, ebumation might or might not have developed in any particular person.
Ethnographical data from the Carson and Humboldt sink regions confirm the indigenous collection of wild seeds or plants and storage in earth pits. (26) In the research on the eburnation problem, information is accumulating that there is a parasitic fungus which can affect western North American wild seed plants, especially if they are stored in a damp, cold area. Hillocks in the Stillwater Marsh would be ideal for the development of toxins on the plant seeds stored in the archaeologically recorded storage pits. Further research is in process regarding this possibility.
CONCLUSIONS
Quantitative measurements and qualitative morphological data were recorded for this Stillwater skeletal series. Despite the small numbers of measurable individuals these skeletal remains are the evidence for the physical appearance, as well as the dental and skeletal pathologies, of the peoples who lived in northwestern Nevada during the period when the Lovelock cultural pattern occurred. Their similarity and comparability with other Great Basin skeletal remains, especially form the northern and central areas of Nevada, indicate that a relatively homogeneous, robust people occupied this region of the Nevada Great Basin from perhaps 3,000 B.P. to the time of Euramerican contact, (27) with no evidence or replacement by other peoples or migration. Stark (28) also found in her analysis of the 250 human remains from scattered archaeological sites throughout Nevada, that there was an overall comparability and similarities in both size and shape, cranially and post cranially.
The frequencies of eburnation with osteophytic growths observed in the Stillwater skeletal series is unusual for the Great Basin skeletons examined to date. A possible nutritional factor in combination with the daily strain of physical activities may be causative agents in the destruction of the cartilage in the joints, leading to eburnation.
Stillwater Marsh People 81
Fewer recorded skeletal and dental pathologies reflect a generally healthy and nutritionally well-nourished people. The damp and marshy environment did not apparently affect the well-being of the inhabitants. In addition, the abundant wildlife and available land animals and plants in the adjacent areas provided the indigenous people of Stillwater with an ample and balanced food supply.
The significance of skeletal research on the Stillwater series is the resultant picture of the people obtained from the quantitative measurements providing data on their stature and robusticity. The morphological records and discrete trait analysis provide the possibility of determining hereditary relationships with other groups.
More importantly, the description of the pathologies and evidence of disease increases the knowledge of the problems these peoples encountered during their daily lives, giving clues to health and welfare in this prehistoric period. Broken bones that were set and healed fractures indicate the presence of some type of medical specialist. Only through intensive and extensive studies of archaeologically recovered skeletal material can indications of the life-style of the prehistoric inhabitants of an area become available to modem individuals interested in the past.
NOTES
1. S. Brooks, M. Galliher, and R.H. Brooks, "A Proposed Model for Palaeodemography and Archaeology," in D.D. Fowler, ed., Great Basin Models and Great Basin Prehistory, Desert Research Institute Publications in the Social Sciences (Reno, 1977) no. 12:169-194.
2. C.R. Stark, The Determination of Variation in Skeletal Remains in Nevada Through the Use of Discrete Morphological Traits and Anthropometry, M.A. Thesis, Anthropology Dept., Univ. of Nevada (Las Vegas, 1983).
3. K.A.R. Kennedy, "The Aboriginal Population of the Great Basin," University of California Archaeological Survey (Berkeley, 1959) report no. 45.
4. D.R. Tuohy, A.J. Dansie, and M.B. Haldeman, Final Report on
Excavations in the Stillwater Marsh Archaeological District, Nevada, Nevada State Museum Archaeological Services, Reports (Carson City, 1987).
5. R.E. Taylor, Personal Communication concerning radiocarbon dates: UCR 2336 - 1140 - 80, L2/2; UCR 2337 - 290 - 80, L8/3; UCR 2338 - 660 50, L29/4; UCR 2339 - 1080 - 50, L52/4.
6. Tuohy, Dansie, and Haldeman, Excavations in the Stillwater Marsh.
7. S. Brooks, C. Stark, and R.H. Brooks, "John Reid's Redheaded 'Giants' of Central Nevada: Fact or Fiction?" Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, 27 (1984), pp. 243-252.
82 Sheilagh Brooks and Richard H. Brooks
8. Tuohy, Dansie, and Haldeman, Excavations in the Stillwater Marsh.
9. S.T. Brooks, M.B. Haldeman, and R.H. Brooks, Osteological Analyses of the Stillwater Skeletal Series, Stillwater Marsh, Churchill County, Nevada, report prepared for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Stillwater
National Wildlife Refuge (Fallon, 1988).
10. A. Boddington, A.N. Garland, and R.C. Janaway, eds., Death, Decay and Reconstruction (England: Manchester University Press, 1988). J.M. Suchey, Biological Distance of Prehistoric Central California Populations Derived from Non-Metric Traits of the Cranium, Ph.D. Thesis, University of California, Riverside (1975).
11. Tuohy, Dansie, and Haldeman, Excavations in the Stillwater Marsh.
12. Brooks, Haldeman, and Broods, Osteological Analyses.
13. Brooks, Stark, and Brooks, "Redheaded 'Giants'."
14. S. Brooks, C. Stark, M.B. Haldeman, and R.H. Brooks, The Prehistoric
People of Lovelock, An Interpretation Based on Skeletal Series from the
Carson and Humboldt Sink Areas, paper presented at the Great Basin Anthropological Conference, Park City, Utah (October 1988).
15. C.S. Larsen, "Dental Modifications and Tool Use in the Western Great Basin," American Journal of Physical Anthropology 67 (1985), 393-402.
16. C.F. Merbs, Patterns of Activity-Induced Pathology in a Canadian Inuit Population, Archaeology Survey of Canada, Paper no. 119. National Museum of Man Mercury Series (Ottawa, 1983).
17. Brooks, Haldeman, and Brooks, Osteological Analyses.
18. S. Brooks, M.B. Haldeman, and R.H. Brooks, High Eburnation Frequencies in a Nevada Skeletal Series, paper presented at the European Anthropological Association meetings, Budapest, Hungary (September 1988).
19. C. Stark and S. Brooks, "A Survey of Prehistoric Paleopathology in the Nevada Great Basin" In C.F. Merbs and R.J. Miller, Eds. Health and Disease in The Prehistoric Southwest, Anthropological Research Paper no. 34 (Arizona State University, Tempe, 1985).
20. Stark, Skeletal Remains in Nevada.
21. Merbs, Activity-Induced Pathology.
22. J.H. Stewart, Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. 120 (Washington D.C., 1938). The classic publication on Great Basin Indian ethnology.
23. S. Thompson and A. Raymond, Ecology of Stillwater Marsh: Implications for Prehistoric Subsistence, paper presented at the 21st Great Basin Anthropological Conference, Park City, Utah (October 1988).
24. Tuohy, Dansie, and Haldeman, Excavations in the Stillwater Marsh.
25. S.D. Comis and R.M. Flinn, Severe Joint Disease-A Nutritional Cause?, paper presented at the 6th Congress of the European Anthropological Association, Budapest, Hungary (September, 1988).
Stillwater Marsh People 83
26. Tuohy, Dansie, and Haldeman, Excavations in the Stillwater Marsh.
27. Brooks, Stark, Haldeman, and Brooks, Prehistoric People of Lovelock.
28. Stark, Skeletal Remains in Nevada.
CREATIVE FOCUS
Unfinished Story
ROBERTA CHILDERS
Sometime in 1940 Juanita Springmeyer asked me to accompany her to interview George Likes. We were both members of the newly formed Sagebrush Scribblers writer's club.
Mr. Likes was a Churchill County pioneer and had retired from the County Clerk and Treasurer's office. He was confined to this home by advancing age and illness. We found him comfortable in a wheelchair. He seemed pleased to be interviewed by Juanita, who took many notes. I did not, as it was her interview. (I wish I had not been so scrupulous. So far as I know, she never used the notes.) She left Fallon and passed away some years ago.
Mr. Likes came in the later 1800's, as so many of our settlers did, a cowhand looking for a job. He worked for a big "cattleman"; he could have been a Stillwater rancher, or Bill Bailey, who owned the Big Island Ranch.
The story that he told that interested me most began somewhere beyond Stillwater. He and another rider were rounding up cattle scattered for many miles on the desert. They had been riding for days. The area stretched from Carson Lake to the marshes and beyond toward the Emigrant Trail to Ragtown.
As he passed through this territory the cowboy with him suddenly got off his horse, bent down and picked up something, calling George to come back.
It was a piece of bone with an arrowhead stuck in it. The men looked around, saw a cradleboard almost completely buried, saw a skull beneath another sagebrush. The area appeared to be a burial ground.
They dug out the cradleboard. It held an infant skeleton. The cowboy or George started to pick it up.
George said, wonderingly, "It disintegrated before our very eyes!"
They had no more time to investigate. The cowboy took the bone with arrow in it as a future conversation piece. They planned to come back on the drive home and investigate further.
George said, "These were not Paiutes. I've often wondered if the Paiutes had been invaded by a Washoe or some other tribe who had tried to move into their territory."
"What else did you find when you came back?" Juanita asked.
"That's the odd thing," George answered. "We had a windstorm one of the 84
Unfinished Story 85
days we rode, and when we came back we never could find the spot, although we were sure we were at the right place. We searched as long as we could."
I felt I couldn't use the story then. It was Juanita's. But it haunted me. So I wrote a poem that later appeared in Desert Magazine. (Sept. 1941)
I've often wondered, since archeologists now study the ancient burial ground of an earlier tribe near Stillwater, could this have been the cowboy's find?
If the experts now had the bone and arrow, could they learn more? Like so many artifacts taken by an amateur collector (who later tires of the "junk" and junks it), that clue has disappeared into oblivion.
AN ANCIENT INDIAN BATTLEGROUND
Poor foolish ones. Today I found
A mortar stone on this battleground
Where your tribes met in mortal strife.
Your bones are bleached, yet point to life
With symbols of your peaceful days.
What greed, what hate had changed your ways?
A pelvic bone, pierced arrow-through,
A papoose basket, skull I view.
They shatter dust though my touch is light.
Your shroud is laid by sad wind's breath.
The victor conquered all but death.
Copyright--Desert Magazine
MUSEUM MINIATURES
Fallon Quilt Days,
October 19-20 1990
CES JACOBSEN
"We expected a fair number of quilts for registration because Churchill County has been known for a great many years as a place with many quiltmakers and quilters. But we did not realize we would be setting records in registering the number we did," said Loree Branby, the director of the June Taylor Machado Memorial Quilt Days, with a happy but tired smile.
On the last day of the two day registration period the doors had to be closed at three o'clock as there were still so many quilts left to register and photograph. The quilt volunteers finally left the Regional Park Multi-Purpose Building at 9 PM.
"It could never have happened if it hadn't been for our marvelous volunteers," said Sharon Lee Taylor, former Churchill County Museum Director. "Not only did we have volunteers sign up early in the month for the project, but people who brought in quilts, seeing we needed help, stayed to assist after registering their quilts."
The two-day registration was held under the auspices of the Churchill County Museum and Archives and the Nevada State Heritage Quilt Project. Monies received from memorial contributions in the name of June Taylor Machado, as well as funds from the Churchill County Museum Association and a grant from the Nevada 125th Anniversary Commission of the Secretary of State, underwrote the expense of the registration days and the services of quilt historian William Ormond, Curator of the Pioneer Trails State Historic Park, Salt Lake City, Utah.
In one of the most successful, if not the most successful, quilt registration events held in Nevada, 455 quilts were recorded and photographed. The results of all the quilt registration days in the state under the statewide project will be compiled and housed in the Nevada Historical Society. A touring quilt show of some of the most interesting quilts is in the works--as well as a book. According to Taylor, "The museum staff is also discussing the possibility of an exhibit or event developed around the tremendous interest shown in quilts and quilting." Until that special exhibit gets under way, Taylor suggests visitors to the museum make sure they visit the quilt room to see a small sampling of the museum's own quilts.
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Quilts Days 87
Fallon ladies quilting. (Churchill County Museum & Archives--Albert A. Alcorn Collection. Photograph taken by Laura E. Mills)
There were many, many interesting stories associated with the quilts brought in and the volunteers who worked with them. Norma Morgan has an old cotton quilt which she referred to as an "ugly duckling." When the quilt, which was made by her husband's grandmother in South Dakota in 1895, was hung and lighted on the photo rack, it "was transformed into a thing of beauty."
A very nice lady brought in some tied modem quilts which she gives to people in need. Another woman brought in some tied lap quilts which she makes for the residents of the Fallon Convalescent Center.
Geri Eberly was quite ill and in a hospital intensive care unit on Monday. But she had volunteered to work at Saturday's registration and nothing was going to keep her from helping. She was there!
Kathy Wilson, June Taylor Machado's daughter and quilter Lucy Melendy's granddaughter, along with Nancy Perazzo, rounded up quilts from five or six different families and brought them in to be documented. Other people did the same. Two Girl Scouts, Dana Smith and Rachel Wingate, who are working towards a quilting merit badge along with Martha Smith, their leader, also responded with great enthusiasm.
The museum wishes to thank the following people for helping to make quilt days such a success:
88 Ces Jacobsen
...Bunny Corkin and Ilene Christiansen "for the wonderful lunches and snacks, Laura Edabum and Greg Taylor for the quilt banner which was flown from the Courthouse balcony.
Lorraine Alexander, Janet Beeghly, Anne Berlin, Jan Bishop, Pat Boden, Berney Lou Brande, Dana Smith, Martha Smith, Rachel Wingate, Mary Carter, Kelly Chouinard, Jane Conlin, Beverly Copeland, Carol Cote', John Dalton, Felice De Los Reyes, Pat Deeken, Donna Derrico, Jean Detomasi, Geri Eberly, Laura Edabum, Shirley Fabel, Christine Fetherolf, Sue Fitz, Grace Harper, Alice Harrison, Millie Hassard, Jacquie Hettinger, Ann Heying, Leona Hicks, Audrey Holt, Georgeen Huber, Thelma Huntsman, Carol Huntsman, Barbara Jacobi, Ces Jacobsen, Dawna Johnson, Mollie Karius, Bula Keene, Muriel Kennedy, Betty Kieber, Maurine Klein, Denise Koster, Ronnie Kuppen, Jean Lattin, Marge Lister, Marian LaVoy, Jennifer Manha, Flora Miller, Emelie McHugh, Harriett McPartland, Myrl Nygren, Trini O' Shaughnessy, Marianne Papa, Nancy Perazzo, Barbara Ponte, Marguerite Powrie, Irene Quesenberry, Judy Renfroe, Doris Sheppard, Bernice Sorensen, Peggy Sorensen, Jeri Stewart, Gregory Taylor, Clayson Trigero, Betty Trigero, Beverly Trigueiro, Shirley Tucker, Gracie Viera, Jode Wemple, Carmae Whitaker, Isobel Williamson, Kathi Wilson, Colleen Wilson, Eva Winder, Lee Workman, Joyce Wren, Paul Nemeth of the Nugget/Bonanza, Bill Katen, Director of Parks and Recreation, the Churchill County Parks and Recreation Board, the Churchill County Museum Association Trustees, and the Nevada 125th Anniversary Commission.
The members of the Nevada State Heritage Quilt Project: Helen Bennett, John Bird, Ann Bird, Hope Estes, and grandaughter Sarah, Marilyn Fashbaugh, Judy Hendrix, Eileen Hildebrand, Jane Marfisi, Deborah Owen, Elaine Pedersen, Gertie Ritterby.
Quilting
GRACE KENDRICK
[Submitted for publication to The Antiques Journal in 1965]
THE ART OF quilting is the last of the Early American crafts to survive. In various communities, usually rural, across the United States, good old-fashioned quilting bees still are given with enthusiasm equal to a now-popular "a go-go" session. The guests stay all day, visiting and gossiping while their skillful fingers work at this almost-forgotten art.
No heirloom treasured today involved so many man-hours, so much patience, love and sentiment as a patch-work quilt.
First the quilt top must be "pieced." The piecing usually is done by one person over a period of several years, involving hundreds of intervals of half-hour duration. The busy artisan steals a few minutes' relaxation at her hobby while the baby is napping, or puts together one block while she listens to Bonanza on the TV. In the piecing of a quilt, a talented person has an opportunity to display her ability. Even though she follows an old traditional pattern, like the "double wedding ring," such versatility is offered in choices of cloths and colors and combinations of materials, that no two quilts will be alike.
Considerable skill is required in cutting and stitching together tiny pieces of fabric that may not be as big as a postage stamp. Love itself is stitched into the quilt top containing bits of grandpa's work shirt and Susy's first Easter dress. The finished masterpiece has a beauty and nostalgia comparable to a Grandma Moses painting.
The day before the quilting bee, the hostess must put her quilt onto the frames and mark the quilting pattern. The quilting pattern offers another opportunity to express artistic talent and to produce individuality in a quilt. Sometimes the design for quilting simply follows the existing patch work and serves to exemplify and complement its pattern. In others, the quilting pattern will continue the motif of the patch work and will become an integral part of the whole design. Some lovely quilts are made with no patch work; the complete interest being the quilting design.
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90 Grace Kendrick
The quilting party will begin about 8:00 o'clock in the morning, as the conscientious guest realizes there are many man-hours of labor required to quilt a quilt. Each guest will seat herself at the quilt without being instructed, and go to work with her needle as she exclaims her "How-de-do"'s, "Nice-to-see-you"'s, and "What a gorgeous quilt top!"
When the quilting spaces are filled with the maximum number of quilters (it will accommodate four on each side, and three on the ends) an unvoiced competition seems to begin. Each side of the quilt feels a rivalry with the other to see which will "roll" first. When the quilting design along the edge is completed as far as the quilters' arms can reach conveniently (about one foot) the clamps are released and the quilt is rolled under, to expose a new area to be stitched. The unspoken goal of a quilting bee is "to roll before dinner."
"Dinner" is served family-style, promptly at noon, and is a feast such as is seen in modern homes only at Thanksgiving time. It is a noisy, relaxed meal full of laughter and jokes about dieting. The guests will move directly from the dinner table back to the quilt. The two or four ladies who no longer have room to quilt since the quilt has been rolled to a smaller size, will help the hostess do the dishes.
"Quilting" is a simple running stitch taken along a marked route. The expert will take tiny uniform stitches, (6 to 12 per inch), that are the same on the bottom of the quilt as on the top. This is an art which requires practice and skill, since the needle must pass through several thicknesses of material plus a puffy layer of filler. The modern quilter has an advantage over her ancestors with the invention of Dacron as a bast. Dacron allows an easy penetration of the needle and still remains airy and fat between the stitchings.
The act of quilting requires no meditation and leaves the participants free to visit and enjoy each other's company. The close quarters seem to encourage intimate conversations of personal problems. It has been my observation that women who are attracted to quilting are very alert and intelligent people.
They are aware of civic problems and well-versed on world affairs. They welcome this opportunity to get together and voice their opinions. The conversation is usually lively with much laughter, but occasionally tempers flare as these women tackle such subjects as politics and religion.
Chore time comes, the guests go home, and the hostess is left with the unfinished quilt set up in her front room. The hostess will work on it far into the night. Her friends will stop by whenever they can to visit and put in a few stitches. Finally the quilting is finished. Everyone is anxious to be there when the quilt is released from the tight frames. They turn it over to observe the tell-tale stitches on the wrong side, and they express amazement at the beauty of the quilting design, which now looks so soft and puffy.
Quilting 91
The edges of the quilt are then bound by hand with a coordinating material cut on the bias. The quilt is carefully folded, wrapped and presented to a grand-daughter as a wedding present.
I don't believe this craft of the Pilgrims will ever become extinct. As long as there are ambitious, industrious women with art and creativity in their souls, some will continue to express themselves through the wonderful medium of quilting.
92 Grace Kendrick
Grace Kendrick at the quilting frame c1965. (Churchill County Museum & Archives--Albert A. Alcorn Collection. Photograph taken by Laura E. Mills)
Almost Thirteen Years
CES JACOBSEN
Reprinted from The Lahontan Valley News-Fallon Eagle Standard, Copyright 1991.
CourtesyThe Lahontan Valley News-Fallon Eagle Standard.
"It really isn't too easy to reduce all that time into one thing. There are several things that flow together, that make the museum what it is today, that I am really proud about."
I had just asked Sharon Lee Edaburn Taylor, former Churchill County Museum Director and Curator who had resigned after twelve years and eleven months, what aspect of her museum stewardship over the years had brought her the greatest satisfaction. I was quite surprised at her response because what she told me was that she is most proud of having upgraded the physical plant of the museum.
"The first thing is one that nobody really realizes, except myself and some of the older hostesses. Safeway buildings (the museum is housed in a former Safeway store) once received an award ... for having the most poorly designed corporate roof of any corporation. This is really true. Not something funny. I saw the magazine article. In the first ten years I was there my emphasis was on upgrading the facility, working with the county and the association on that.
"When I came, we had a burglar alarm that was improperly installed ... the roof leaked ... that was our first consideration, a better burglar alarm, a better fire alarm. It used to ring [the alarm] outside the building, no line to the police department. Somebody would have to see water coming out of the building, which it eventually would, or get tired of the noise and call. I know they did because we had some funny incidents, including someone calling 'Mayor Mert' of the City of Fallon one morning at three, when the museum belongs to the county and not the city.
"Another area is the care of the collections. I had a lot of on-the-job training. Original historic photographs were being displayed rather than copies. The old photographs were deteriorating." She remembers how Churchill County Association Board members immediately said, "Let's get right in and get doing whatever needs to be done." Judy Selinder was chair at the time, but she also remembers Frank Woodliff III, as those two were very supportive, and Susan McCormick, who is still on the board.
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"My brother, James Edabum, came up to help me when I first got this job. We went into the back room in August, I had started in May 1978. I just about had a heart attack when I first saw it. There was almost no way that anybody could get into the area. There were boxes piled all the way to the wall. They were about eight feet high--just boxes." She tried to find out what was in the boxes, but no one seemed to know.
"You have to put things in perspective when you are trying to keep a constant check on probably around twenty thousand items, at least, not counting photographs. There are at least one hundred thousand photographs. But things are so much better now. Go in there now and you see boxes, shelving, work tables, areas where people can work, and computers--and so much better organized."
She assured me that she wasn't putting anybody down, pointing out that Irene Ross, retired museum hostess and Jess Brown, former museum curator, used to have to mop the floor of the Churchill County Museum before the carpeting had been put down. People just weren't sure in what direction the museum was going to go. She feels that in the beginning the museum board was not as aggressive in going for money as it could have been. Another of her favorite board members, Ed Clayton, used to say when board members didn't want to spend money, "This association and these trustees were not set up to be bankers." And after they discovered grants and foundations available to the museum, it became much easier.
"We found out that there is money out there! All you have to do is spend a lot of time telling them what you want and have a good reason. We were extremely successful. That was a joint venture between Myrl Nygren and myself. She always did the financial aspects. It was so exciting."
Another area from which Sharon has gotten pleasure and satisfaction is the changing displays, which she initiated. The very first one was called The Encyclopedia of Collectibles. "We got these beautiful ceramic letters from A to Z. Then we went around into the community. We got a lot of things from the community and from the museum collection too. I remember running down things. Skip Cann and his dad collect one-lung engines. So we had a gasoline engine. A guy who collected spark plugs had an 1896 one. It was the year that was amazing to me. They had what they call primer plugs. You had to put gasoline into them to make them work.
To get our X, Susan McCormick's boy John lent us his xylophone. Z we had--a model zeppelin. All the hard letters were covered. And of course we had glassware. We had everything you can imagine that people collect--buttons and bows and dishes. We had so much fun doing it. That was our first changeable exhibit and it was great fun." Sharon and the Churchill County Museum went on to do many more exhibits using grant money, and sharing exhibits with other museums.
Almost Thirteen Years 95
Sharon Taylor went on telling about other things which have brought her satisfaction at Churchill County Museum such as the Woodliff Building and the Firemen's Annex and their contents and the computer programs she began to initiate before her retirement because of illness. When she recovers her health, she is planning to work as a computer consultant to museums and archives using programs with which she has had experience and developing new ones.
She made some trenchant points in our taped conversation about the direction Churchill County Museum has gone under her curatorship. She came from the Railroad Museum in Sacramento and she has always been interested in machinery. "We acquired--machinery, tools, things that are not normally things that people think of. We have tripled our exterior display, including some really choice agricultural pieces that are representative of an early agricultural society. The new director may go in a totally different direction. And probably will. That's why I am excited for the potential for the new person, because that person is going to bring whole new talents, ideas. The museum is going to flower again. So on to the next phase."
Though Churchill County Museum has been widely lauded in both professional journals and such magazines as Sunset during her tenure, and people from around the United States and foreign land are unhesitating in their praise, Sharon Taylor believes "Churchill County Museum is for the people of Churchill County." For them to claim as their own. For them to see where they have been and how they have gotten where they are.
Sharon Lee Edabum Taylor. Self-portrait.
96 Ces Jacobsen
CONTRIBUTORS
Bryan Branby is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy with a degree in Political Science. His avocation is writing.,
Sheilagh Brooks, Professor of Anthropology and Richard H. Brooks, Research Professor of Anthropology, have taught at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 1966 and have published several articles on skeletal and artifactual remains.
Roberta Childers is a Fallon resident and author of a book and many articles on Churchill County history.
Mary "Bunny" Cushman Corkill, a Nevada native, is Research Assistant for the Churchill County Museum.
Adam Fortunate Eagle is a member of the Red Lake band of Chippewa, of Minnesota. He owns the Roundhouse Gallery and is known for his skill as an artist and for his teaching of Native American traditions.
Ces Jacobsen, a retired Fallon school teacher, now writes columns for the Lahontan Valley News.
Grace Kendrick lives in Fallon and is the author of numerous books, many on antique bottles. She was listed in Two Thousand Women of Achievement Reference Book, Melrose Press, London, England. 1972.
Michon Mackedon is an English Instructor at Western Nevada Community College. She is the editor of In Focus.
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98 Contributors
CHURCHILL COUNTY
MUSEUM & ARCHIVES
1050 South Maine Street
Fallon, NV 89406
(702) 423-3677
MUSEUM STAFF
Myrl Nygren, Museum Administrator
Wilva Blue, Office Assistant
Jean E. Jensen, Assistant Registrar
Carol Cote, Curator of Photographs
Bunny Corkill, Research Assistant
Laurada Hannifan, Senior Hostess
Felice De Los Reyes, Attendant/Hostess
Bob Walker, AttendantlHost
Marge Seevers, Attendant/Hostess
Ces Jacobsen, Tour Guide
William A. Landman, Computer Consultant
IN FOCUS STAFF
Michon Mackedon, Editor
Loree Branby, Volunteer
PRODUCTION CREDITS 1991-1992 ISSUE
Production Photography: Carol Cote
Typesetting: Amiga 3000 with a NEC LC 890 Postscript
Laser Printer and Professional Page v.2.0 software
Production: Heffernan Inc.
Worcester, Massachusetts
Cover stock is 80-1b. Cambric Beckett Birch
Text is set on 60-1b. acid-free book stock
FOUNDED IN 1967, the Churchill County Museum Association seeks to advance the study and preservation of local history. The Association does this through special programs, exhibits in the Churchill County Museum & Archives, which opened in 1968, and this publication, Churchill County IN FOCUS. The Association is also active in the collection and preservation of historic photographs and collects manuscripts, maps, artifacts and books, making its collections available for research. The Museum is the repository for both the City of Fallon and Churchill County government records.