The Parrusits, notwithstanding their primitive agriculture, moved about
a great deal within their territory, as the exigencies of the season,
the food supply, sanitary conditions, or their relations with other
Indians demanded. They occasionally went into the high mountains in
summer to hunt or fish but returned at intervals to the valleys to tend
the crops. In the fall they went nut gathering among the pinyon pines of
the foothills. The winters were usually spent in the valleys.
Their wickiups were made upon a framework of poles lashed together at
the top in such way as to leave an opening for smoke to escape. The
poles, tied with sinew in the conventional tepee shape, were plied with
brush or woven willows and then covered with long strips of juniper bark
or with skins of rabbits. At one side an opening was left for an
entry-way. The fire was built in the center, leaving space around the
sides for eating and sleeping.
Camps were usually located on a mesa, hill or flat, so that water had to
be carried some distance from stream or spring. For this purpose, they
wove jugs with narrow necks from the limbs of the squawbush and
waterproofed them with pitch from the pinyon pine. Sinews were tied to
the necks of the jugs for shoulder or head straps. Basketry was
competent, but there is no evidence of pottery among them.
Paiute equipment for life was simple. Clothing consisted of a
breechclout for the men, and for women a brief skirt hanging from the
waist. These were sometimes supplemented by robes hung from the
shoulders for warmth, buckskin moccasins for the feet, and ornaments of
various kinds, particularly beads and feathers. They had no regular head
dress, but often painted themselves with a special red earth which gave
them a weird appearance. Breechclouts, skirts and robes were usually
made from rabbit skins. In order to have the fur both inside and out,
they would take a strip of fur and roll it in a spiral around a sinew or
yucca fiber. Many such strips sewed together with sinew thread made a
skin cloth from which clothing could be fashioned.
Hunting equipment consisted principally of the bow and arrow,
supplemented by stone skinning knives. Their arrows were shafted with
feathers and tipped with hard wood or stone points, small ones for birds
and small game and larger ones for war or big game, all held in place by
sinews. The shaft of the arrow was made from a straight limb or from
reed cane. Sinew was made by shredding the tendons of deer or other
large game. If arrows were to be poisoned, a concoction was made by
inducing a rattlesnake to bite into a piece of liver, letting it stand a
few days and then mixing it with crushed black widow spiders. Arrow tips
dipped in this were considered deadly.
The Paiutes used the rock grinder or metate and mano for grinding such
foods as corn, mesquite beans, and the coarse grass seed from which they
made bread. The meal was mixed with water to make a batter and was
cooked on a hot rock in the fire. The rock was first rubbed with clay to
keep the meal from sticking. According to one method, the batter was
made thin and poured over the rock in a flat cake. The heat from the
rock soon set the batter and the rock was then stood upright close to
the fire so the cake would bake on both sides. In the other method, the
batter was made thicker and put out on the rock in the form of a conical
loaf and coals were heaped around it.
Though the Indians raised corn, squash and beans, they lived principally
upon fish, birds, wild game, wild fruits, roots and seeds. The principal
game was rabbit and deer but occasionally antelope and mountain sheep
supplemented their meager fare, and any sort of smaller game was used
when obtainable. Hyrum Leany, who settled in Harrisburg in 1862, relates
how the Indians used to go hunting lizards and chipmunks (ta-bats
pa-shugi). The boys would tuck the heads under their belts and sometimes
would come home with a beltful. The chuckwalla lizards were regarded as
delicacies and the Indians had learned the art of removing them from the
crevices in which they puff themselves up until their sides are pressed
tightly against the rock, thus making it difficult to dislodge them. By
puncturing the distended lungs with a sharp hooked stick, they were
easily extracted.
To cook a small animal, such as rabbit or chipmunk, the Paiutes laid it
in the fire without any preliminary preparation other than the removal
of the skin, and the hot coals were raked over it. All parts of the body
were eaten and nothing edible was missed. Surplus meat was usually
dried.
Among the plants, grass seed was a staple article of diet. It could be
gathered in those days almost anywhere, though the grass has largely
disappeared since the advent of the white man’s horses, cattle and
sheep. The fruit of the cactus (tuna or prickly pear) furnished a food
mainstay in midsummer. In places where the yant (_Agave_) was found, the
young flower stalks were roasted barbecue fashion. This was a delicacy
designated as pe-ya-ga-mint, “a sweet food.”
Sugar was obtained in small quantities from the water willows and from
the reed cane (_Phragmites_) by cutting it when plant lice had been
working on it. As it dried, crystals of sugar appeared. This was
gathered by shaking off the crystals and using them as a delicacy.
Among the native fruits gathered in season were the wild grapes and the
sour squawberries of the stream banks in the valleys, the little red
ookie berries of the semi-alkaline flats, the weump berries (_Berberis
fremonti_) of the foothills, the sarvis berries (_Amelanchier_) of the
lower mountain slopes and the choke cherries (_Prunus_), strawberries,
and raspberries (_Rubus_) of the mountains. Pine nuts obtained from the
cones of the pinyon pines were a staple fall crop gathered in large
quantities and kept for later use.
It is certain that the Parrusits Indians raised crops by irrigation
before the whites appeared among them. Escalante, in 1776, remarked only
about corn and squash, but it is believed that they also raised beans
and probably melons. Their farms were located on small flats where water
could be easily diverted from spring or stream. Farming implements were
mainly sticks of various kinds, usually of ash, about three feet long
and three or four inches wide toward one end, with the edges sharpened
and running to a point. Ditches were hard to make and maintain due to
periodic floods. Cultivated areas were usually very small, five acres
being the maximum.
An old Kaibabits Indian named George graphically described the farming
operations thus: “Kaibab Injuns no raise’m crops. ’nudder Injuns
raise’m. No shovel, no hoe. Use’m stick; dig’m ditch; make water come.
Dig little hole over here, over there, all around; plant’um corn.”
The squaws performed most of the labor in tending the crops. The bucks
were the warriors and hunters. Harvesting the corn, carrying water,
gathering grass seed, grinding corn meal, making bread, making clothing,
all were squaw’s work. There may, however, have been a more equal
division of work than appears to us now, since the food supply and
safety of the home depended much upon the prowess of the hunter and the
vigilance of the warrior.
The simple personal equipment and belongings gathered up by an
individual during his lifetime were usually buried with him for his
spirit journey. Nothing of material value was passed on from generation
to generation; each had to depend upon his own efforts. Weaklings,
cripples, and the aged had a hard time. If they became burdensome, they
were usually abandoned and sometimes burned. St. George cattlemen at
Mount Trumbull frustrated an attempted burning as late as the nineties.
The Uinkarets had just left camp when the cowboys accidentally stumbled
upon it. One wickiup was left standing. The doorway had been fastened,
wood and trash had been piled around it and set on fire as the Indians
left. Inside, an old blind Indian named Waterman was nearly suffocated
when the cowboys released him. The Indians having abandoned him refused
to care for him further and he became a burden on the whites.
At the time of the white settlement of the Virgin River Valley in the
50’s and 60’s, there were perhaps a thousand Parrusits in various bands
along the stream with their principal camping places near Rockville,
Virgin City, Toquerville, Washington Fields and Santa Clara. These all
appear to have recognized the leadership of Chief Tut-se-gavits, head of
the Tonaquint band living on the Santa Clara Creek, and to have been
held together under regular tribal control.
G. H. Heap, one of the Argonauts, described the Paiutes in 1853 in the
following uncomplimentary paragraphs:
The Pah-Utah Indians are the greatest horse thieves on the continent.
Rarely attempting the bold coup-de-main of the Utahs, they dog
travelers during their march and follow on their trail like jackals,
cutting off any stragglers whom they can surprise and overpower, and
pick up such animals as stray from the band or lag behind from
fatigue. At night lurking around the camp, and concealing themselves
behind rocks and bushes, they communicate with each other by imitating
the sounds of birds and animals. They never ride, but use as food the
horses and mules that they steal, and, if within arrowshot of one of
these animals, a poisoned shaft secures him as their prize. Their arms
are bows and arrows tipped with obsidian, and lances sometimes pointed
with iron, which they obtain from the wrecks of wagons found along the
road. They also use a pronged stick to drag lizards from their holes.
Yearly expeditions are fitted out in New Mexico to trade with the
Pah-Utahs for their children and recourse is often had to foul means
to force their parents to part with them. So common is it to make a
raid for this purpose, that it is considered as no more objectionable
than to go on a buffalo or a mustang hunt. One of our men, Jose
Galliego [_sic_], who was an old hand at this species of man-hunting,
related to us with evident gusto, numerous anecdotes on this subject;
and as we approached the village he rode up to Mr. Beale and eagerly
proposed to him that we should “charge on it like h—l, kill the mans,
and maybe catch some of the little boys and gals.”[6]
The coming of the Mormon pioneers gradually upset the Paiute government.
The whites frequently settled on Indian camp sites and occupied Indian
farming lands. Their domestic livestock ate the grass that formerly
supplied the Indians with seed, and crowded out deer and other game upon
which they largely subsisted. This interference with their movements and
the reduction in the food supply tended eventually to bring the Indians
into partial dependence upon the whites.
Within a few years, farm crops and livestock brought to the whites more
food and clothing than the Indians had ever dreamed of. No wonder they
became beggars in the towns and thieves of cattle and horses on the
range. As long as the whites were in the minority, they used to feed the
Indians. In the words of John Dennett, an old settler of Rockville, this
“gave them an idea of some other kind of food beside grass seed and wild
game.”
As the whites increased and became strong enough to defy the Indians,
the attitude changed from one of fear to that of domination. Although
they continued more or less to feed the begging Indians, they soon put a
stop to thievery on the range, punishing it in many cases by death. This
transition was marked by bitter feeling and even by war between the
races. In time, it became increasingly difficult for the Indians to
maintain themselves.
Not only was their food supply reduced, but the whites also spread
strange maladies among the Indians. Measles and smallpox are known to
have been fatal in many cases. When Silver Reef, a mining town of 1500
people, was flourishing in the 70’s and 80’s it is known that venereal
diseases were spread among the Indians. Fatalities from disease and the
diminution of food supplies were undoubtedly heavy factors in the
drastic reduction of the Indian population. Of the estimated thousand
Parrusits living along the Virgin River in the 50’s and 60’s, there was
only one survivor (until his death in June, 1945), an old fellow called
Peter Harrison, who lived among the Shivwits Indians on the Santa Clara
reservation.
Among the neighbors of the Parrusits there remained in 1933 only about
seventy-five Kaibabits on a reservation at Moccasin, Arizona, some fifty
Shivwits on a reservation on the Santa Clara Creek, fifty miles to the
west; and about fifty Com-o-its in the vicinity of Cedar City. The
Uinkarets and several smaller groups are today entirely extinct.
Asked to account for this tragedy, the old Kaibabits Indian George
explained it this way: “When white man come, lotsa Injuns here; alla
same white man now. Injuns heap yai-quay [meaning lots of them die];
maybe so six, maybe so five, maybe so two in night. Purty soon all gone.
White man, he come: raise’m pompoose. Purty soon lotsa white man.”