Southern Paiute: A Portrait

Willie Pete, Moapa Band and Caliente

114 Willie Pete holds court at the Branding Iron Café in Caliente. All the waitresses check in as they walk by, making sure he has enough coffee, in turn admonishing me for waiting so long to finally interview him. Everyone talks about the record breaking floods that just ripped through the area. Arthur Richards brought me here specifically to record Willie’s Mountain Meadows story. Arthur watched me carefully for a few years before finally telling me that he knew a direct descendant from a principal Southern Paiute witness of the massacre, the Shivwits man who watched from the Pine Valley Mountains. Willie has a thick hide; none of these stories bother him. He relates all with the easy grin of a content man. Ifirst heard of that Mountain Meadows Massacre when we were driving to see dad’s relatives in Gunlock, a Model T on that old dirt road. Keno, my brothers Carl and probably Wes was with us. Dad pointed to the big mountain over there, said, “that’s where they were.” My father, Charlie, he was sixteen years old. They were on the hill getting pine nuts. Massacre took place, dad said, not where you see the marker; that’s on the west side of the road. Right in that little valley on the east side, that’s where it took place. It ain’t where they say it took place. It’s there to this day if you’re gonna dig for it. All of a sudden there was quite a commotion across the valley. Why, it was the start of the massacre, running around like you see in the movies, shootin’ at them and all that. I guess they killed a few. Charlie witnessed, after they stopped shooting, these warriors get off their horse, wash the mud from their face. Turned up they were white people. Saw that from up on the mountain. They hurried away, knew they’d be blamed. He said it was all bad Indians that helped Lee, renegade Indians who were kicked off their tribes; that’s all he knew. I don’t know, maybe ten or fifteen Indians. I’ll draw you a map, my friend. Soldiers come up from California; they were out to stop polygamy. Too many wives. The Civil War came, the soldiers went back east without doing nothing. About ten, fifteen years later, just after the Civil War, it started getting pretty strong, them wanting to find out who was to blame. They’d pick the Indians. That’s when my grandparents and dad started drifting west again and settled in Barkley. Dad worked for people in that valley. His Indian name was Chipate. Too hard to remember your name, they said. Let’s cut it short; we’ll call you Charlie Pete. Doesn’t bother me we got blamed. Nah, goes in one ear, out the other. No big deal to me. But if they’re the ones that should feel sorry . . . Why should they try to push it off on the Indians? Willie Pete moapa band and caliente, born ca. June 18, 1924 116 Lucky we talked about this massacre; I never heard of it till he pointed it out to us. Nobody here ever said anything about it. Indians would come out here to visit, tell stories. But I never heard them talk about it, mention that massacre. The only time I heard about it was going to Utah with my dad; he just pointed it out. Never did say who he was with. Never did say whether there were Paiutes involved or not. There was one white guy that hid out, found that mine out of Elgin—Klingonsmith. He’s the one who found that gold at Pennsylvania Mountain. He lived here many years, had a ranch right up from here in Echo Canyon where these flood waters are coming down right now, down across Dutch Flat. Later when Pioche mine was discovered, he went up there. We settled here. Us kids went to school here in Lincoln County. My dad worked for a good mayor, named Tom Dixon; he was from Kentucky. Dad cleared all the brush, made that town park right there. As payment, Dixon deeded us that property where I live now. Surveyed it off. After that we just paid taxes. Before that, nothing was surveyed; you just come down here and built. There was Indians all throughout here: Panaca, Alamo, Caliente, down through Elgin, Eagle Valley. We’d...