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Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah
- Utah State University Press
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51 1. Alva Matheson, Indian Stories and Legends (Cedar City: So. Utah St. College Media Services, 1974 and 1990), 19–21. 2. Floyd A. O’Neil, Foreword in Ronald G. Holt, Beneath These Red Cliffs: An Ethnohistory of the Utah Paiutes (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992), ix. 3. J. H. Simpson, Report of Explorations Across the Great Basin of the Territory of Utah (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1876), 462. Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah I was at the flour mill helping my father when old Toab, the medicine man, came walking up the road to get some flour . . . There was a plank resting on two blocks of wood, which served as a seat . . . Old Toab was nudging father to move over. Father moved several inches. Toab moved closer and said, “move some more.” Father complied. Toab said, “Move some more.” “I can’t move any more. There’s no place to go,” Father replied. “Move anyway,” said Toab. Father moved off the plank and sat on the porch. “Now where will you go?” queried Toab. “Well,” said Father, “I’ll stay here unless you let me back on the bench.” Toab moved over to make room and Father returned to his seat. “Now you see?” queried Toab. “Same thing. White people come to Indian land. Indian move back. More white people come. Indian move back some more . . . Pretty soon white man say ‘Move again.’ No place to move …White man say ‘This my land. You go to Indian peak . . . Good place for Indians.’ Ya! Ya! Good place for Indians to starve!” I never knew just how father figured in moving the Indians back from Indian Peak, but I always thought that this incident started the ball rolling toward that end. —alva matheson1 In the history of the American Indians, a number of tribal groups have consistently been neglected by the scholarly community; among them are the Paiutes, and particularly the Paiutes who have dwelt in Utah. Theirs has been a chronicle of enervation and hopelessness, a story of the descent from a viable tribal life to one of economic dependency and despair. —floyd a. o’neil2 A ll of Utah’s Southern Paiute, which prior to contact may have numbered eighteen bands and thirty-five subgroups, were finally eliminated or consolidated down to the five bands of PITU: Kanosh, Koosharem, Indian Peaks, Cedar and Shivwits. Listing them as such from north to south reflects a cultural gradient as the landscape opens from the Great Basin into the Colorado Plateau and Mojave Desert. At times the more southern bands called whoever was north of them Ute. The Kanosh Band historically had a distinct tribal designation as the Pahvant Ute, and some contemporary band members were of Ute heritage but enrolled as Southern Paiute. The Ute and Southern Paiute shared a language and culture until the Ute, with more abundant grasslands and water, access to buffalo, closer availability of Spanish livestock, and proximity to other competing, mounted Indians, adopted the horse and other Plains Indian traits, while the Southern Paiute did not. The Ute began to raid their southern cousins, stealing and bartering for women and children. Mexicans and Navajo also raided the dispersed Southern Paiute to such a crippling degree that Indian Agent Garland Hurt noted in 1850 that “scarcely one-half of the Py-eed children are permitted to grow up in a band.”3 Non-Indian contact began with Domínguez and Escalante in 1776; trappers and explorers like Jedediah Smith and John C. Fremont followed. From 1830 to 1850, traffic increased along the Old Spanish Trail and the southern route of the California Trail from Mexican and Ute slavers, and Anglo miners and other emigrants bound for California and Nevada. However, the story of the contemporary Utah Southern Paiute became principally the story of their ongoing cultural collision with the Mormons, who arrived in 1848. 52 4. Brigham Young’s gubernatorial message to the Utah Legislature early in 1852, quoted in Fred Collier , ed., The Teachings of President Brigham Young, vol. 3, 1852–1859 (Salt Lake City: Colliers Publishing, 1987), 16. 5. Ron Holt and Gary Tom, “The Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah” in A History of Utah’s American Indians, Forrest Cuch, ed. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2000), 123. 6. Martha C. Knack, Boundaries Between: The Southern Paiutes, 1775–1995 (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 252. At first many of the Southern Paiute welcomed the Mormons, who called them friends and...