Great Basin Indians: An Encyclopedic History

J

152 J Jake, Clifford (Southern Paiute, 1919–2009). Clifford Jake joined the Native American Church on the Uintah-Ouray Reservation in Utah in 1946 (see Peyote Religion). Nearly a quarter century after having served as a road chief, the World War II veteran, whose peyote ministry was in Cedar City, Utah, helped fellow Southern Paiute in 1969 incorporate and obtain a local charter in the internationally expanded Native American Church of North America. A traveling missionary who has also led peyote services on other Great Basin Indian reservations, Jake divulged to Omer Stewart the following miracle that took place in 1974 during his pilgrimage to the Peyote Gardens in Texas, where one might purchase this cactus plant ingested during all-night meetings of the neotraditionalist religion. After having searched in vain for what Spanish priests following Cortez’s conquest in Mexico called the “diabolical root”—thereby inaugurating centuries of interference and oppression of what might be a ten-thousand-year-old truly indigenous Native American religion that historically was also opposed by the United States—the Southern Paiute road man related how he had then closed his eyes out of frustration and begun to pray. All of a sudden, after having blown smoke over the single peyote plant he sighted, Clifford Jake related that when he reopened his eyes, an entire field of Lophophora williamsii surrounded him. Indeed, he further related to Omer Stewart (1987, 292) that the miracle of those few plants he purchased seemed “inexhaustible ,” and that his supply of them certainly anyway lasted a minimum of six years. Moreover, as spokesperson for the Indian Peaks Band (see Southern Paiute), Jake would stand up to the bully pulpit of Utah’s senator Arthur Watkins as a young man, when the author of a congressional bill whose intent was to shut down all federal reservations attempted to convince the Southern Paiute during an encounter about the presumed wisdom of what ultimately proved to be a disastrous federal policy (see Termination). “You better sit down, and mind your business and shut-up,” Watkins reportedly then snapped at Clifford Jake, who simply inquired whether his fellow native Utahan had ever visited a Southern Paiute reservation in his home state. As Jake recalls their encounter, “Mr. Senator, did you ever visit Indian homes? You talkin’ there, did you ever visit the Paiute Nation. Do you know how they live. I tell you. We go through your trash and junk and make a shack. Maybe a board, maybe a tub for an open fireplace, cook things out there” (W. Hebner 2010, 73). The last word on that subject traumatic to the Southern Paiute and all Native Americans then should rightfully also belong to Clifford Jake: “I think my band is not ready for termination ” (Tom and Holt 2000, 134–36). Clifford Jake, a.k.a. Mertowithz (Moon), was born in Indian Peaks. His voice can heard in McPherson, philosophically lamenting about these Great Basin Indian times shortly before his passing: “White way is a real hard way to live. No justice on the Indian. . . . There’s powerful medicine still in these hills, powerful, waiting for an j i m , c a p t a i n 153 answer. . . . The songs too. . . . Paiutes now got to decide if they want to be Paiute or white people. . . . My thinking is this way. . . . Everything’s going haywire, messing up, people one against another. The medicine knows it already. It comes from the Earth. Air. Everything a part of it. . . . Gonna be there until there’s an answer. Indian medicine , still waiting for an answer” (2011a, 69–74). James, Evelyn (Southern Paiute, 1920?–). According to what Evelyn James told anthropologists Bunte and Franklin, no sooner had she decided to enter Southern Paiute tribal politics in 1983–84 than did this future San Juan Band tribal chairperson begin to experience visions. “Let them go!” James in one vision related when seeing herself holding two scorpions in one hand and hearing the Southern Paiute Creator ’s admonishment: “They’re dangerous. And only if you let them go, can you kill them. But either way, you’re going to handle the situation like this” (1987, 277–78). Thus, Evelyn James, who was the daughter of Annie Whiskers, a shaman “considered by many Southern Paiute elders from other tribes to be one of the foremost living orators in the Southern Paiute language” (ibid., 216), and a highly regarded Southern Paiute father (see Lehi, Alfred; see also Booha), interpreted her vision to...