Journeys West: Jane and Julian Steward and Their Guides

3. Valley of the Paiutes

3. Valley of the Paiutes Jane and Julian arrived in Lone Pine late in the day and found a comfortable cabin in an auto camp. With a population of just 360 the town seemed cosmopolitan after Olancha, Cartago, and Darwin. Located at the foot of Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the forty-eight states, Lone Pine enjoyed a brisk tourist trade. Hikers and mountain climbers passed through on their way to the snow-capped peak of Mount Whitney or other points in the High Sierra. Film crews from Los Angeles also visited, often lodging at the Lone Pine Hotel while they shot footage for Westerns in the nearby Alabama Hills. Its rugged and open landscape, with lofty peaks of the Sierra Nevada as backdrop, made the Alabama Hills a favorite location of Hollywood directors. Among other amenities, the town had a theater that showed some of the latest movies. Most of the residents of Lone Pine were white, but Paiutes and Shoshones lived on the outskirts of town. Long before American settlers arrived in the valley, at least one Paiute village had stood along Lone Pine Creek, now also the site of the town. The Paiutes who lived in Lone Pine fell under the jurisdiction of the Bishop Agency, as did the Panamint Shoshone Indians Julian had worked with around Death Valley. The Bishop Agency was one of many administrative units of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, itself part of the U.S. Department of the Interior. A census showed that most of the Indians who lived in Lone Pine were Owens Valley Paiutes. Some Panamint Shoshones had also moved to the town years earlier from Saline Valley and other parts of the Death Valley region.1 54 part 1 Since Julian and Jane had arrived too late in the day to look for an informant, they took the rest of the day off and went to a movie that night. Time in town also gave them a chance to buy a newspaper and magazines and catch up on the news. Most cars did not have radios, and most radio stations did not report much in the way of news. The front page of the Los Angeles Times carried a few lines that day about Amelia Earhart, the world-famous aviator. She had put off attempting a nonstop flight from Mexico City to New York City due to a spell of bad weather. Another story told of refugees who had fled worse weather, the severe drought on the Great Plains. A hundred destitute families were streaming into California each day, many without any place to live. In the Imperial Valley, hundreds of miles south of the Owens Valley, some found shelter only under trees. One state official recommended action “‘to stop this influx.’”2 The next morning, rested and ready to work in Lone Pine, Julian and Jane spent hours trying to locate a Paiute informant. Finally they found Andrew Glenn, whom Julian had met during summer fieldwork in 1928. Glenn had briefly served then as an informant and remembered Julian. He agreed to help the following day because he was too busy working in his garden with some relatives to answer questions that afternoon.3 Glenn was in his midfifties and a widower. When he was young, his two older brothers had married wives who were sisters. As Steward would learn, this was a preferred form of marriage not only among Paiutes in the Owens Valley but also among native people in other parts of the Great Basin. Likewise, a brother and sister might each marry a woman and a man respectively who were siblings. Spouses always came from unrelated families; this was prescribed, not just preferred. After one of Glenn’s brothers died, his widow observed a year of mourning as was customary. Glenn then married her. Steward later recorded that marriage as a case of the levirate, the term for the practice of a man marrying the widow of his deceased brother. The levirate 55 Valley of the Paiutes too was prescribed, not simply preferred. The only way to avoid it was to make payment to the woman’s family. Steward also learned of another practice, known to anthropologists as the sororate, which required a man whose wife died to marry one of her sisters or to make payment. Glenn said that sometime after marrying his brother’s widow, his other older brother died...