Boundaries Between: The Southern Paiutes, 1775-1995 (review)

Having spent more than twenty-five years of her career studying the Southern Paiute, Martha Knack has established herself as a leading authority on the ethnohistory of this Numic-speaking group. Her recent work on postcontact Southern Paiute lifeways and adaptive strategies focuses upon the social, political, and economic boundaries that developed between the Paiute and non-Indians after about 1850.

I found the first half of the book, which begins with a theoretical orientation and description of Paiute society during precontact times and concludes with the early reservation period, to be informative and comprehensive. One of the most significant protohistoric disruptions to Southern Paiute peoples resulted from nearby Ute bands acquiring horses, which allowed them to interact with Spanish traders. Equestrian Ute economic activities soon grew to incorporate slave raiding, and mounted Ute (and later Navajo) parties preyed upon Paiute camps in search of women and children for the Spanish slave trade. This was finally ended by Mormon settlers in the mid-1800s; although a permanent Euro-American presence among the Paiute countered Ute dominance, it also displaced Natives from their most productive foraging and gardening areas and water sources. This forced many groups to modify their traditional subsistence and settlement systems and become associated with non-Indian farms and towns, where they were encouraged to become farmers and ostensibly converted to Mormonism.

As mining towns were established in parts of Paiute territory, Natives settled on their outskirts and began working as wage laborers by about 1870. At the same time, the federal government became involved in Southern Paiute affairs, establishing the Moapa Reservation in southern Nevada in 1873. By 1930, a total of nine small and highly dispersed federal reservations had been set aside for Southern Paiute bands in four states. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) naively believed that these reserves contained adequate resources that would allow residents to become independent farmers and ranchers. However, because virtually all of these parcels were characterized by poor soils and little water, most Native occupants were forced to combine seasonal wage labor and foraging in off-reservation areas with small-scale agricultural efforts on reservation lands.

Much of the book's second half describes the collective Paiute experience after about 1920, focusing upon sociopolitical relations in both on- and off-reservation contexts, Paiute economic struggles during the Great Depression and World War II, land claim and termination processes, government neglect, and finally, reinstatement. In 1951, the Indian Claims Commission held initial hearings on the Southern Paiute's case, and the government offered them $8.25 million as compensation for loss of their lands in 1964. While this case was unfolding, the four Paiute reservations in Utah were terminated. Although the BIA provided funding for posttermination vocational training programs that were designed to facilitate integration into non-Indian communities, these efforts failed miserably.

Following termination and distribution of land claim money in which most adults received about $7,500 each, Utah Paiutes remained poor, existing in "pockets of poverty" that were geographically and socially separated from nearby non-Indian communities. In 1980, the Utah Paiutes finally were restored to federal tribal status as a single political unit, which consisted of five semiautonomous bands associated with six small reservations in southwestern Utah.

Beginning in the 1970s, Southern Paiute groups began to pursue business opportunities associated with the Southwest's expanding tourist industry. These efforts resulted in profitable small-scale ventures such as RV parks, convenience stores, and tax-free tobacco shops. On a larger scale, the Las Vegas Paiutes developed a hotel/golf course resort complex northwest of Las Vegas. Most of these economic development projects have succeeded, resulting in improved reservation infrastructure and quality of life for many tribal members. Perhaps more importantly, they have demonstrated that the Paiute can directly benefit from the regional, non-Indian-dominated economy that they have been excluded...