The Paiute
Great Basin
Recorded and Edited by Willard Rhodes
Music Of The American Indians From the Archive of Folk Culture AFS L38
The Indian tribes that inhabited this vast geographic area have been described by Dr. Ruth Underhill in her book Red Man's America as "those who had little to lose." The Great Basin is an intermountain desert country, bound on the east by the Rockies and on the west by the Sierras and Cascades. The ecology of the desert provided a hard and meager living, and the small seminomadic family groups were kept moving in their ceaseless quest for food.
Women dug for edible roots and gathered seeds and nuts. Grasshoppers were driven into trenches, roasted alive, then ground into flour. Men hunted for rats, lizards, and small game, and with nets made of hemp, they snared rabbits and birds. The wikiup, a dome-shaped arbor of poles and reeds, was their shelter from the heat of the day and the cold of the night. It was a hard life, and one wonders how the people were able to survive in this hostile environment.
Great Basin Indian culture was determined to a large extent by the land. Living in small family groups, they had no need for a formal social organization, and the physical demands of keeping alive left little time for the development of religion and the arts. Their lack of contact with other tribes and the stimulus that results from such contacts may be regarded as impeding the technological development of these people to whom the derogatory name "Diggers" was applied by some whites who regarded them as living no better than animals.
THE PAIUTE
The earliest information of the Southern Paiute is reported in the journal of Father Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, who, with Father Francisco Atanasio Domonguez, led a party of eight men in an attempt to find a feasible overland route from Sante Fe to the missions in California. On October 10, 1776, they met a seed gathering party of Paiutes in Southern Utah, near the present community of Cedar City. He noted, "They dress very poorly, and eat grass seeds, hares, pinion nuts in season, and dates."
A day or two later he "found a well-made mat with a large supply of cars and husks of green corn which had been placed on in Near it, in the small plain and on the bank of the river, there were three small corn patches with their very well-made irrigation ditches." Later travelers report their contacts with the Paiutes in derogatory terms, emphasizing their poverty and primitiveness.
In The Paiute People (1972), Prof. Robert E. Euler reveals other aspects of the tribe's life. "The skill required to produce a warm and serviceable rabbit fur robe, the expertise required to know and locate edible seeds and roots, the ability to understand the physics of the bow and arrow and to produce functional weapons of this type, all point to the rapport that the Paiutes enjoyed with their culture and their environment" (Euler, p. 3 7).
In the early 1850s, the arrival of Mormon settlers and missionaries introduced a new chapter in the history of the Paiutes. Brigham Young arrived at Harmony on May 19, 1854, with the following explicit instructions to his followers:
The Paiutes were often the victims of Apache and Navaho raids in which their children were kidnapped and sold to the Spaniards, and then later to the Mormons.
It was in Nevada that a Paiute prophet, Wovoka, or Jack Wilson, arose preaching and prophesying the salvation of the Indians through a return to the old ways. This was the Ghost Dance religion, which ended so tragically for the Sioux with the Massacre of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1890.
Under the terms of the Indian Reorganization Act, the Paiutes established their constitution and a duly elected tribal council. "The Kaibob Paiute, with a reservation of 120,413 acres, a population of 136, and a land claim settlement of slightly over one million dollars, are on the threshold of better times at last."
Women dug for edible roots and gathered seeds and nuts. Grasshoppers were driven into trenches, roasted alive, then ground into flour. Men hunted for rats, lizards, and small game, and with nets made of hemp, they snared rabbits and birds. The wikiup, a dome-shaped arbor of poles and reeds, was their shelter from the heat of the day and the cold of the night. It was a hard life, and one wonders how the people were able to survive in this hostile environment.
Great Basin Indian culture was determined to a large extent by the land. Living in small family groups, they had no need for a formal social organization, and the physical demands of keeping alive left little time for the development of religion and the arts. Their lack of contact with other tribes and the stimulus that results from such contacts may be regarded as impeding the technological development of these people to whom the derogatory name "Diggers" was applied by some whites who regarded them as living no better than animals.
THE PAIUTE
The earliest information of the Southern Paiute is reported in the journal of Father Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, who, with Father Francisco Atanasio Domonguez, led a party of eight men in an attempt to find a feasible overland route from Sante Fe to the missions in California. On October 10, 1776, they met a seed gathering party of Paiutes in Southern Utah, near the present community of Cedar City. He noted, "They dress very poorly, and eat grass seeds, hares, pinion nuts in season, and dates."
A day or two later he "found a well-made mat with a large supply of cars and husks of green corn which had been placed on in Near it, in the small plain and on the bank of the river, there were three small corn patches with their very well-made irrigation ditches." Later travelers report their contacts with the Paiutes in derogatory terms, emphasizing their poverty and primitiveness.
In The Paiute People (1972), Prof. Robert E. Euler reveals other aspects of the tribe's life. "The skill required to produce a warm and serviceable rabbit fur robe, the expertise required to know and locate edible seeds and roots, the ability to understand the physics of the bow and arrow and to produce functional weapons of this type, all point to the rapport that the Paiutes enjoyed with their culture and their environment" (Euler, p. 3 7).
In the early 1850s, the arrival of Mormon settlers and missionaries introduced a new chapter in the history of the Paiutes. Brigham Young arrived at Harmony on May 19, 1854, with the following explicit instructions to his followers:
You are sent [he said] not to farm, build nice houses and fence fine fields, not to help white men, but to save the red ones, learn their language, and you can do this more effectively by living among them-go with them where they go, live with them and when they rest let them live with you, feed them, clothe them, and teach them as you can-[and] not many generations shall pass away till they become a white and delightsome people.
The Paiutes were often the victims of Apache and Navaho raids in which their children were kidnapped and sold to the Spaniards, and then later to the Mormons.
It was in Nevada that a Paiute prophet, Wovoka, or Jack Wilson, arose preaching and prophesying the salvation of the Indians through a return to the old ways. This was the Ghost Dance religion, which ended so tragically for the Sioux with the Massacre of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1890.
Under the terms of the Indian Reorganization Act, the Paiutes established their constitution and a duly elected tribal council. "The Kaibob Paiute, with a reservation of 120,413 acres, a population of 136, and a land claim settlement of slightly over one million dollars, are on the threshold of better times at last."
Play song |
Name |
Performed by |
Description |
Native Words |
Translation |
Notes |
 |
Paiute Coyote Song | The music of this area, is marked by simple archaic characteristics that set it apart from the more elaborate musical styles of other Indian cultures. The tonal range of the songs is small, rarely exceeding the interval of a major sixth, and employing scales of three and four tones. The Paiute Coyote Song illustrates these features. | Paiute | |||
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Paiute Mountain Sheep Song | The Mountain Sheep Song is an example of the recitative-chant type with its repetitive rhythmic declamation of words on two or three tones. | Paiute | |||
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Paiute Round Dance | Many of the Paiute songs are organized on the principle of paired phrases such as AABB or ABAB, the repetition being subject to minor variation. It was this pattern that distinguished the Ghost Dance songs and was strictly adhered to as the songs were accepted by the Plains tribes as an integral part of the Ghost Dance Religion. The vocal technique is relaxed and non-pulsating and contrasts markedly with that of the Plains-Pueblo area as described by Prof. Bruno Nettl in his study North American Indian Styles. | Paiute | |||
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Paiute Game Song 1 | Game songs provide social entertainment and accompaniment to guessing games that are variously described as moccasin games, shoe games, hand games, and stick games. The games are played by two teams of individuals who sit in parallel lines facing each other. The object of the game is to guess in which moccasin or hand certain objects have been hidden by the opposing team. Scores are kept with sticks, which serve as counters as they are moved from one side to the other as the game proceeds. The songs are strong rhythmically, short in length, and subject to endless repetition as the game continues. The excitement that develops in the friendly rivalry between the two groups is reflected in the songs as they increase in volume and tempo. Game songs are widely distributed among the tribes of North America. |
Paiute | |||
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Paiute Game Song 2 | Paiute | ||||
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Paiute Song 1 | The three Paiute songs were sung by Leah Hicks Manning, a graduate of Bacone College, Muskogee, Oklahoma, the first Indian college in North America. When the songs were recorded in 1942, Ms. Manning was teaching in a government Indian school in Nevada. Lullabies are not common among Indians, but the Paiute Lullaby is especially lovely with its simple melody and swaying rhythm. | Paiute | |||
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Paiute Song 2 | Paiute | ||||
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Paiute Song 3 | Paiute |