THE RED PROPRIETORS.
As we have now been a long time among the mines, the reader will
probably not object to a little more information concerning the Indians
of the country, before making another plunge into the “lower levels” of
the Comstock lode.
The Piute Indians were formerly the owners of all that region in which
the Comstock mines are situated; also, of nearly all of the western part
of the State of Nevada, though the Washoe Indians held Carson, Eagle,
Steamboat, and Washoe Valley, the Truckee Meadows and the country in the
neighborhood of Lake Tahoe. The Shoshones owned what is now Eastern
Nevada, and they still live in that region.
The Piutes range nearly up to Oregon, and far south toward Arizona. They
have always been great travelers, and as early as in the days of the
“Mission Fathers,” were in the habit of crossing the Sierra Nevada
Mountains and visiting the Pacific seaboard every summer; a journey
still taken by many of them each year, as not a few Piute women are
married to Spaniards who own large ranches in the vicinity of Santa Cruz
and other towns in the southern part of California.
Originally, it is said, the Piutes, the Utes, the Pitt River Indians,
the Queen’s River Indians, and some other small bands, were all
Shoshones, but the tribe multiplied rapidly, and at last was spread over
such a vast extent of country that one chief could not govern all. They
then broke up into large bands that took the names which now distinguish
them as tribes.
The Piutes belonged to the Ute band at the time that the original
Shoshone tribe broke up through its own weight and unwieldy size. They
settled about the lakes—Humboldt, Pyramid, Carson, and Walker—and were
therefore called Pah-Utes; that is, water Utes, “pah” being the word
that signifies water among all the Indians of the Great Basin region,
Finally, the Utes and Pah-Utes, or “Piutes”—as the name is now
generally, though improperly, written—became separate tribes.
The language of all the tribes in the Great Basin region and far to the
northward still retains a sufficient number of the words of the original
Shoshone tongue to enable members of any one of the present tribes to
make themselves understood by their neighbors. When pressed to go far
back into the dim and distant past, beyond the time when they were all
Shoshones, the Piutes have a legend according to which they owe their
origin to the marriage of a white wolf and a woman. The white wolf came
from the far north, and the woman, who was the daughter of a great
chief, came from the south.
The Piutes, according to the legend, are the descendants of this strange
pair.
Away north, on the summit of a high bluff on Pitt River, is to be seen a
huge white rock which, when viewed from certain points, bears a striking
resemblance to a wolf in a recumbent position. To this day, many of the
Piutes point to this rock and say that it is their great father—the
father of all the Piutes—that he never died, but was changed into this
rock, in which he still lives. I once told this story to an old and very
intelligent Piute, and asked him what he thought about it. He said: “Who
told you this story, Tom or Natchez?” referring to two of the sons of
old Winnemucca, the head chief.
“I have heard it from Tom, and also from many other Piutes,” said I.
“O,” said he, “it is only a story of times long ago. It was while we
were still Shoshones, that this happened. You have heard the story the
way the old women tell it.”
[Illustration: WASHOE INDIAN SQUAWS.]
[Illustration: WASHOE INDIAN HUNTER.]
He then proceeded to say that, a very long time ago, there was a great
war between a tribe of Indians living in the north, the name of whose
chief was White Wolf, and a tribe living in the south. For years they
fought every summer, and many on both sides were killed. Still, the old
men would stir up the young men to continue the strife. At last both
tribes grew weak and weary of the long war, and at a big council it was
arranged that the White Wolf should marry the daughter of the chief of
the tribe against which he had so long drawn a hostile bow, and thus all
difficulties were settled. The two tribes settled down and lived
together, all as Shoshones.
The old Indian then proceeded to give me the true and most ancient
tradition that has been handed down in the tribe, in regard to the
origin of the Indians living in the Great Basin. He said that the
Indians were made by a man and his wife, who came from he knew not
where. They made the Indians of clay and something else, taken out of
the water, the English name of which he did not know. After the Indian
men and women were made, the man made all kinds of animals; as bears,
deer, antelopes, buffaloes, rabbits, wolves, and the like. The woman
made the birds and the flowers, and all the fishes in the rivers, and
the grass and the nut-pine trees, and all the bushes that bear berries.
The man taught the men to make bows and arrows, spears with which to
catch fish, and nets for use in fishing and taking rabbits. He also
taught them to build and navigate tule (a giant bulrush) boats, for all
the country was then covered with great lakes, and the tops of the
present hills and mountains were islands. The woman taught the Indian
women to make baskets and how to prepare food and do all things proper
to be done by women.
After they had done all these things the mysterious pair took their
departure, going away to the southward.
“Do you expect them to return some day?” I asked.
“How can I say?” answered the Indian. “They came of their own accord at
first.”
“Do you hear the old men of the tribe speak of them?”
“Often.”
“Do they think the man and his wife will come back?”
“How do they know? They only know that they are gone.”
“That is all the old men know?”
“Well, they sometimes say they have gone south to the big water—maybe
they live in the big water. Who knows?”
When an Indian begins to say “who knows,” he has then told you about all
he knows in regard to the point upon which you are questioning him. All
the Indian could say was that the pair came and did their work of
creation, and then went away to the southward.
This tradition bears a striking resemblance, in many respects, to that
of the Peruvians in regard to the appearance among them of Manco Capac
and his sister and wife, Mama Ocllo Huaco; also, to the Mexican
tradition in regard to the Huastecas, the strange family that came,
whence, no one knew, to the mouth of the Panuco River, headed by
Quetzalcoatl, priest and lawgiver, and who afterwards disappeared in the
direction of Guatemala. The disappearance of Quetzalcoatl is strikingly
like that of the pair mentioned in the Piute tradition. Strange as it
may appear, a prehistoric skull was found at the depth of several
hundred feet in the Comstock vein which, on being sent to the Academy of
Sciences, San Francisco, was found to exhibit peculiarities to be found
only in the skulls of the ancient Peruvians, the people to whom appeared
Manco Capac and his wife.
What is said in the Indian traditions, about nearly the whole face of
the country having been covered with water in ancient times, is
undoubtedly true. In all the valleys throughout the Great Basin are to
be seen traces of water, and on the sides of the hills water-marks have
been left that are visible at the distance of a mile, and can be traced
for many miles. In places, there are four or five of these water marks,
showing the gradual subsidence of the lakes. For hundreds on hundreds of
miles, on all sides, there was a labyrinth of lakes. The water-marks
showing the former levels of the lakes (in places two or three hundred
feet above the present level of the valleys) not having yet disappeared
by erosion, the date of the subsidence of their waters cannot be many
centuries back. The Piutes and Shoshones have lost nothing by the coming
among them of the whites; indeed, they appear to fare better now than in
the days when they were in undisturbed possession of the whole land.
They pitch their camps in the suburbs of the towns and fare sumptuously
every day on the broken victuals collected by the bushel at hotels,
restaurants, and private houses, by the squaws. The men, unlike the men
of many other tribes, are not above work. They work at sawing and
splitting wood, at grading off building-lots, or anything that they can
manage—all they want is to be shown money.
It is not unusual to see a Piute brave marching through a street in
Virginia City with a wood-saw and buck under his left arm, and upon his
right shoulder an ax—the living exemplification of the dawn of
civilization upon barbarism. Thus far, however, he is one of the
civilized, and represents “labor” seeking “capital,” but with all the
implements of peaceful industry borne about him, his pride still clings
to the ancient insignia of the “brave” in his tribe. His face is painted
in zigzag lines of black, white, and red; a necklace of bear’s claws
rests on his breast, and an eagle feather decorates his scalp-lock; but
instead of bearing a bow and arrows, a tomahawk and scalping-knife, he
carries only his saw, buck, and ax, and is only on the war-path to do
battle with a wood-pile; therefore is either a peaceful warrior or a
warlike wood-sawyer, just as you may choose to consider him. He has, as
we may say, beaten his sword into a plowshare, but has not the heart to
throw away the scabbard.
Old Winnemucca, the head chief of all the Piutes, is about 70 years of
age, and has but little to say about the “affairs of the nation”;
indeed, there is little demand for legislation as the tribe is at
present situated. Many years ago the old fellow appears to have turned
over business of almost every kind to his nephew, young Winnemucca, then
war-chief. Young Winnemucca was in command at the time of the trouble
between the Piutes and the whites, in the spring of 1860. Young
Winnemucca never gambled, but old Winnemucca was an inveterate
gambler—that is, among his own people. The Piutes do not gamble with
white men. Old Winnemucca has been known to lose all his ponies, all his
blankets and arms, and, in fact, everything he possessed, down to a
breech-clout, at a single sitting. He is a good-natured, kind-hearted
old man, but not a man remarkable for either wisdom or cunning.