Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863 - W. Dirk Raat - Страница 24

In January 1844, when John C. Fremont and his group wandered from Oregon into northwestern Nevada, he came upon a body of water. He noticed a 300 foot rock or tufa formation in the lake. Since the “Pathfinder” was obviously America’s Napoleon, the tufa reminded him of the Great Pyramid of Egyptian King Cheops, and therefore he named the inland sea Pyramid Lake. The 100 or so inhabitants already had a name for the lake; it was called Kuyui Pah, named after the tasty black sucker kuyui fish that lived there. The people called themselves the Kuyuidokado, or “kuyui eaters.” As for the Great Pyramid rock, it was simply called “wono” or basket.⁵⁸

In 1844 the lake was larger than today, measuring 40 miles long and 20 miles wide. As for depth, as writer Bernard Mergen has noted, “you could drop the island of Manhattan … into Pyramid Lake, and all but the tallest buildings [the Empire State Building is 1,250 feet high] would be covered.” Although a bottomless lake to its protectors and admirers, it is probably somewhere between 320 and 335 feet at its deepest point. The source of the lake is the Truckee River, with its headwaters at Lake Tahoe, and since Pyramid Lake has no outlet and evaporates the water is slightly saline (about 17% as salty as ocean water). This water not only supports the kuyui, which spawn in the Truckee River in the spring, but a cutthroat trout that is a species of lake salmon.⁵⁹

Since the life of the indigenous peoples is intimately tied to the environment, it is not surprising that spawning time is fishing time and ceremonial time and prayer time. The lake was cultivated akin to the way suburbanites till their gardens, with tules, cattails, fish, and waterfowl carefully protected and utilized. Pyramid Lake was made a reservation in 1859, but not legally confirmed until 1874 (Walker River Reservation in Nevada was also proposed in 1859 and confirmed in 1874, while the Malheur Reservation in Oregon was established in 1871).⁶⁰ The history of the Pyramid Lake people since 1861 and the end of the Pyramid Lake War has been one of protecting the lake and the river that feeds it from squatters and other outside encroachments.

The decade of the 1860s witnessed the murder of close to 300 Northern Paiutes involved in interracial conflicts. Between 1860 and 1866 the Pyramid Lake population was decimated, with 850 individuals either being killed in war, dying from disease, or fleeing their homeland lake for the safety of the mountain country. A population estimated at 1,550 in 1860 was reduced to 700 by 1866. The decline continued so by 1880 they were only 396 Kuyuidokado (by 2010 the census listed 1,330 enrolled members of the Pyramid Lake Reservation).⁶¹

The immediate background to the Pyramid Lake War began in 1859 when war fever broke out among the white miners and settlers in Carson City and environs. This was partly the result of the starvation winter of 1859–1860 and the continuing flow of gold and silver prospectors to Paiute lands. Prior to these underlying events, however, was the immediate cause of the mysterious death of Peter Lawson in April 1859 near Pyramid Lake. Lawson, a personal friend of Old Winnemucca, was killed by a sharpshooter with a rifle. Indian Agent Frederick Dodge suspected the Mormons, but most of the residents automatically blamed the Indians for any and all violence. Dodge noted that blankets, beef, and whiskey, which Indians would usually take, were left intact at the site of the murder. While the case remained unsolved, most of the Carson City inhabitants had no doubt the murder was the result of the Pyramid Lake Indians.⁶²

Another event prior to the Lawson incident (sometime between 1857 and 1859) was the murder of two pack train operators, John McMarlin and James Williams, in the high Sierra above Lake Tahoe. Arrows had been carefully placed in the bullet wounds. When the Pyramid Lake leaders were taken to task by their Comstock neighbors, they identified the arrows as Washo. The Washo chieftain was then ordered to bring in the culprits. Three Washo men were brought in to be interrogated, but on their way to prison they broke from their captors and ran. Frontier justice was immediately realized when their captors shot the three dead.⁶³ Later on, according to the testimony of Sarah Winnemucca, the actual culprits were two white men who were found with the money that had been stolen from McMarlin and Williams. They had planted the arrows so as to redirect the blame toward the Washo Indians.⁶⁴ In any case, it was just one more misplaced event that added to the increasing war fever of the Comstock crowd.

The final outrage of a series of transgressions by whites against Indians, including squatting on Paiute lands, stealing fish from Pyramid Lake, hunting and destroying their forests and game, and rape and murder, led to a retaliation known as the Williams Station Massacre of May 7, 1860. In this instance two brothers who ran Williams Station, a combination saloon and general store on the Carson River northeast of Carson City, kidnapped two 12-year old Paiute girls who had been out digging roots for food. They were taken back to Williams Station, held prisoner in a cellar hole, their mouths gagged with rags, and forcibly raped. Just before dark a party of nine Paiutes, including the father and brother of one of the girls, discovered the girls alive in the cellar. In their anger the Numu killed the two brothers and three other men at the station, and then burned the place down.⁶⁵ This was the Williams Station Massacre that led to the Pyramid Lake War that started on May 12 of that year.⁶⁶

Within three days news of the “massacre” reached Carson City and Virginia City. The person who had discovered the burnt bodies, a third Williams’s brother, anxiously proclaimed that at least 500 Indian warriors were on the warpath.⁶⁷ Sarcastically telling the white viewpoint, Sarah Winnemucca said, “The bloodthirsty savages had murdered two innocent, hardworking, industrious, kind-hearted settlers.”⁶⁸ “Doctor” Henry DeGroot, the Comstock romantic and correspondent, reported that the Virginia City citizens were in agreement that the Paiutes should be punished. Describing the armed force that would be sent against the Indians, he noted, however, a few men “… of ruffian proclivities, who believing that an Indian war would furnish them employment at public expense, and possibly afford opportunities for securing Pah Ute ponies at a cheap rate, did all that lay in their power to promote a scrimmage of this kind.”⁶⁹

So a militia of about 750 vigilantes composed of volunteers from Virginia City, Silver City, Carson City, and Genoa was quickly formed with Carson City’s most prominent citizen, Major William Ormsby, as their nominal leader, and the troops—rascals and professionals—marched toward Pyramid Lake by way of Williams Station and the Truckee River. Some of the volunteers, unorganized and poorly armed, stupidly followed a small party of Paiutes up a ravine. Once in the ravine a few hundred Paiutes appeared and, closing off any escape routes, proceeded to kill 76 of the 105 members of the vigilante army, including Major Ormsby.⁷⁰

When the remaining volunteers returned to Virginia City from the ambush at Pyramid Lake, they barricaded their houses and gathered their women and children into places of safety. They quickly dispatched couriers to California. In the meantime, Texas Ranger “Colonel” Jack C. Hayes organized his militia. His “Washoe Regiment” consisted of 500 volunteers, and they were soon joined by a detachment of US artillery and infantry from Fort Alcatraz, California. They met up with Numaga and perhaps as many as 600 Paiutes, first south of Pyramid Lake, and later in a skirmish northeast of the lake. Many of the Paiutes scattered, either east across the Great Basin or in the rugged terrain east and north of the lake to the Black Rock and Smoke Creek deserts. Indian sources say as few as four Paiutes were killed, while other “official” military reports claim 160 Paiutes were killed, with only four regiment members killed.⁷¹

While the casualty numbers were probably not large, the disruption of life at Pyramid Lake was great, especially food gathering activities and fishing. Starvation was the main problem for the remaining Paiutes that had not fled, although the non-Indian position was that the influx of whites who overran the country brought clothing and food that was an improvement on their previous habits of eating mice, ants, and grasshoppers.⁷²

The federal forces returned to the Carson River near the site of Williams Station and constructed what became Fort Churchill in 1861. The desert outpost was designed to curtail hostile Paiutes at the Pyramid Lake and Walker River areas, as well as protect the Pony Express and other mail routes.⁷³ When the “Washoe Regiment” returned to California, and the regulars withdrew to the Carson River, Old Winnemucca’s people, mostly peaceful, returned to Pyramid Lake. Other returnees were not so placid and would continue depredations for the next few years. The arrival of new farmers along the Truckee River and near Pyramid Lake only aggravated their situation. Along with the squatters, vigilantes, fishermen and miners, the army at Fort Churchill would now be a permanent feature in the lives of Pyramid Lake Paiutes.

By October 1860, the month when Chief Truckee died in the Pine Nut Mountains southeast of Carson City, the Pyramid Lake War of eastern Nevada was over. But other skirmishes and battles were to continue through 1865. During May 1861 over 1,500 Paiutes assembled at the mouth of the Walker River. They were led by Wahe, who claimed to be spirit chief of all Paiutes and the brother of Old Winnemucca. A spirit chief was a leader who was believed by his followers to be immune to the white man’s bullets.

Wahe and others conspired for several months. Their plan was to gain entry to Fort Churchill posing as friends of the white man, and then at a signal they would slaughter the small garrison of about forty men. The planned conspiracy was discovered by the Walker River Indian Agent, and Wahe was forced to flee to Oregon. He died upon his return to Nevada in May 1862.⁷⁴

Other Indian troubles occurred in 1863 when E-zed-wa, chief of the Walker River Indians was killed, along with his horse, by a drunken white man outside of Fort Churchill. His body was later found in the Carson River by members of his band. Several prospectors were killed in Humboldt County in 1864 (although Indian responsibility has never been proven). Two other gold hunters were murdered by Paiutes near Walker Lake in the early months of 1865. In this instance the Indians were taking revenge on people who had recently flogged them. But the most grievous of events took place on March 14, 1865. This is known to history as the Mud Lake massacre.⁷⁵

The killings at Walker Lake led the territorial governor, following the hysteria of Honey Lake residents who called for “exterminating the whole race,” to send for the troops. Answering the call, the Fort Churchill commanders sent the young and inexperienced Captain Almond B. Wells, and a contingent of Nevada volunteers, to Mud Lake (known as Lake Winnemucca today), where it was reported that Indian cattle thieves were camped. Unaware of any danger, 30 or more Kuyuidokado were camped east of Pyramid Lake at Mud Lake.

At the site Captain Wells divided his forces into three squads and attacked the Paiute encampment. At least 29 Paiutes were killed (other sources reported 32 Indian dead). Well’s report described hand-to-hand combat with no casualties among the volunteers.⁷⁶ While the annals of the Civil War called the action a “skirmish,” it was reported by the leaders at Fort Churchill as an “Expedition to Pyramid Lake.”⁷⁷ Only in hindsight has it been named a “massacre.”

The Paiute perspective of the event, as told by Sarah Winnemucca, differs from the official explanation. Her account was later substantiated by Numaga at a peace conference at Fort Churchill. First, as Numaga reported, with the exception of three or four men in the camp, all the dead were women and children. The cattle thieves had evidently left before the arrival of Well’s volunteers. Some women who tried to escape jumped into the water and were drowned, while others were shot while in the lake. The infants and babies that were still tied up in their baskets were burned alive as the camp was set on fire. At least two of Old Winnemucca’s wives were killed, including Sarah Winnemucca’s mother, Tuboitony.⁷⁸

Finally, to speculate a bit, many Nevada volunteers had served time in Utah under General Connor’s command and were later transferred back to Nevada.⁷⁹ It is likely that some of them knew of the Bear River Massacre of 1863 (see Chapter 8) and the follow-up campaign against Chief Pocatello, and were imbued with the kind of hatred that such actions produced. It is little wonder that the young and inexperienced officers with volunteer soldiers would take the cries for extermination literally, and while so doing make a name for themselves. As for Old Winnemucca, he would pursue his own spiritual quest in the Steens Mountains. After the Mud Lake massacre he, and many of his followers, refused to return to Pyramid Lake.⁸⁰

Throughout the end of the 1860s the Northern Paiutes of Pyramid Lake and western Nevada had several concerns. Violence and conflict with whites was one of them, especially in 1866 after the soldiers shot “everything that wore paint” at Rock Canyon, north of Pyramid Lake and east of the Modoc area, killing 80 Indian men and 35 women.

A more persistent problem was the activity of Indian agents on many of the “de facto” reservations, including the Pyramid Lake Reservation. They often refused to give out rations, engaged in illegal transactions then arrested and sometimes killed the Indians for engaging in illegal acts, refused to educate their children, and most of all, they would not protect the Paiutes from white encroachments. In 1868 measles killed over 100 Pyramid Lake Paiutes while the agent did nothing to aid the sick Indians (similar numbers died at Walker Lake due to typhoid fever and consumption). By mid-summer hatred of the Indian agent led many citizens of Pyramid Lake to abandon the Paiute reservation and wander to other areas, including Camp McDermit in northern Nevada immediately south of today’s Oregon border. In July Old Winnenucca and 490 Paiutes came into Camp McDermit, and by the end of the year there were more than 800 Paiutes that were allocated food. There hopefully they could join the Quin River Paiutes and some Bannocks, and find a sanctuary from reservation agents at a military installation where the army would issue rations to them.⁸¹ Yet many Paiutes, especially women, still worried about living too close to the white man.

One concern, strange to say, was cannibalism. Most whites suspected that the savages were cannibals, but in this case it was the Paiute who was concerned about the cannibalistic whites. As early as the spring of 1847 Captain Truckee and the Paiutes learned of the fate of the Donner Party in which the desperate snowbound group of whites turned to eating themselves as well as their Indian guides. The Paiutes became convinced that the whites not only killed people but ate them.⁸²

As a child Sarah Winnemucca’s mother, Tuboitony, told her that the whites were killing and eating people. When some whites were spotted her aunt told her mother, “Let us bury our girls [Sarah and her cousin], or we shall all be killed and eaten up.”⁸³ As an adult Sarah remembered that her father, Old Winnemucca, had called the whites “owls,” conjuring up the image of the Cannibal Owl, a Paiute boogeyman who, according to ancient tales, carried away misbehaving children and ate them.⁸⁴

The Owens Valley Paiutes knew about Panatűbiji’, the Indian who experienced the cannibalistic acts of one of the first white men to enter the Valley. The stranger took Panatűbij’ to the body of a corpse, proceeded to cut off both legs, and returned to the camp near Soldiers’ Pass where he brewed up a stew pot. At dark the white man satisfied his hunger by eating the human stew. As for his Indian hosts, they refused the stew and left the camp to hide in the caves of the mountains.⁸⁵ So, as can be seen, in the history of Indian–white relations it was not always clear who was and was not the savage cannibal!

At Camp McDermit another concern for the Paiute women was fear of rape and sexual violence by white men. Molesting Indian women was typical of life around military installations, and Camp McDermit was no exception. Sarah Winnemucca, who spent her entire life fearing rape by white men, got the military commander to declare the Indian camp off limits to both settlers and soldiers.⁸⁶

As a youngster she and her sister were taken to a camp in San Joaquin, California. There, after Truckee had left his grandchildren to go to the mountains, hired hands working for the ferry would assault her sister. In Sarah’s words, “The men whom my grandpa called his brothers would come into our camp and ask my mother to give our sister to them. They would come in at night, and we would all scream and cry; but that would not stop them.”⁸⁷ Captain Truckee was unaware that in California Indian women were often seized and forced to serve as concubines.⁸⁸ Later on a major cause of the Bannock War of 1878 was the rape of a Bannock girl who had been out digging for roots (similar to the catalyst of sexual violence involving young girls prior to the Pyramid Lake War).⁸⁹

In the late 1860s, the Paiutes at Camp McDermit were encouraged to go north to Fort Harney in south-central Oregon (McDermit would become a reservation in 1889 with some Paiutes receiving allotments a few years later). By this time the wandering Paiutes favored military posts over government reservations, so several Paiutes traveled to Fort Harney. By 1872 the Malheur Reservation, immediately east of Fort Harney, was established by executive order, and now the Paiutes were encouraged by Agent Samuel B. Parrish to settle there. Unlike many other Indian agents, Parrish, although not particularly religious, was a humane man who told the Paiutes that the reservation belonged to them and they would no longer be working for the agent. Winnemucca and his group, along with Chief Egan (Ehegante) and his followers (Egan was born a Cayuse, adopted as a Paiute, and eventually became leader of an Oregon band), went to Malheur. There by 1875 they had succeeded in digging a two-mile ten-foot-wide irrigation ditch, clearing and planting 120 acres, and building a schoolhouse.⁹⁰ It appeared that some of the wanderers had found a home.

Alas, the good life was not to last. First, the fine citizens of Canyon City, a mining town a short distance from the northwestern corner of the reservation, had petitioned the Office of Indian Affairs. Evidently, the governor of Oregon and others asserted that the Paiutes had no claim to the western side of the reservation, and that the Harney Lake basin and nearby meadows should be used by cattlemen and not Indians. Then, in 1876, Parrish was removed ostensibly because he was not a practicing Christian and religious societies, like Mormons and Methodists, were to manage the reservations for the Indian service. Enter practicing Christian William V. Rinehart, an ex-miner and Indian fighter who, unlike Parrish, could not be accused of “soft-heartedness” toward the Indians. Not humane like Parrish, he was a man of violent temper who regarded Indians as the enemy. His major goal was to push the Paiutes out of Malheur and allow the whites to encroach on what was once their newly promised land. After the harvest of 1876 when the deduction of past expenses for rations and clothing left the Numu with very little pay, Egan and the others knew that Rinehart was purposely pushing them out of the Malheur Reservation. Some went to Fort Harney, while others followed Old Winnemucca to the Steens Mountains south of Malheur Lake.⁹¹

Then in 1878 the Bannock War erupted, lasting from June to August 1878. A combined force of about 500 Bannock, Northern Shoshone, and Paiute warriors fought the US Army and a variety of militia and volunteer groups. The early fighting took place outside of Fort Hall, Idaho, and at Camas Prairie near the Snake River, but the later phases involved the army pursuing Egan and his warriors through the Steens Mountains and Silver Creek area south and west of the Malheur Reservation. Both the Bannock leader Buffalo Horn and the Paiute War Chief Egan were casualties of the war. When the fighting subsided most of the Bannocks returned to Fort Hall. There their connections with other tribal groups were restricted. The Paiutes at the Malheur Reservation were removed to Fort Harney, and from there 543 Bannock and Paiute prisoners of war were sent to internment at the Yakama Indian Reservation north of the Columbia River in Washington. Most of the Paiutes had not participated in the war, but their innocence was not recognized by the federal government. Because of pressure from settlers, the Malheur Reservation was “discontinued” in 1879.⁹²

When the first orders were sent out, it was said that all the Paiutes on and off the Malheur Reservation were to gather at Fort Harney so that they could be provisioned and returned to the Malheur Reservation for the coming winter. This included Paiutes still remaining in Camp McDermit and environs, excluding Winnemucca’s band. Although the gathering Paiutes were treated well at Fort Harney, their suspicions were heightened when they observed the settlers moving onto the reservation, constructing cabins, and preparing fences for their livestock, without the military taking any action. Then the bad news was delivered—all of the Paiutes assembled at Fort Harney were to be treated as prisoners of war and forcibly marched to the Yakima Reservation in Washington.⁹³

On January 6, 1879, the journey to Yakima of 350 miles over mountains and snow began. While the agency at Yakima constructed a shed for 543 prisoners, the exact number of people who marched to Yakima cannot be known with certainty. Winter clothing was inadequate, especially for the women and children. Soldiers dragged the women and children to the wagons, while the men moved slowly through the snowdrifts shackled in chains. The casualties were remarkably light, with at least one old man, one woman who had given birth the day before, and at least four or five infants dying on the trek. They arrived on January 31 after a twenty-five-day trip on their own “Trail of Tears.”⁹⁴

As exiles the Yakima Indians would treat them as inferiors, and steal their horses and clothing.⁹⁵ In 1883 most of the Numu returned to Nevada on their own, some returning to Pyramid Lake, others to Fort McDermit, and the remainder to the Duck Valley Reservation on the border between southwestern Idaho and north-central Nevada.⁹⁶

After 1889 those who did not receive allotments of land or were dissatisfied with the actions of the Indian agents, strove to solve their problems through other means. Most settled outside the reservations, attaching themselves to ranch families or living in colonies on the outskirts of Nevada cities. Here the women would labor as dishwashers, launderers, or housekeepers, while the men took jobs from chopping wood and doing farm chores to feeding livestock and stacking hay. Others hunted rabbits and squirrels, and took fish and game for sale.⁹⁷

And most of them, on and off the reservation, continued their “pernicious” fandangos that irritated Agent Rinehart for so many years. But now the dance of communion, the traditional Round Dance, would usher in an Indian millennium in which all would be “peace,” and “good will” would prevail between men and women of all colors.⁹⁸ The new era would be a return to the golden age of the past before their white brothers came to the Sierra. The Round Dance was known to outsiders as the Ghost Dance.