The Paiute tribe consists of many different bands distributed across a large part of the western United States.
For a millennium, the Paiute tribe has dwelled in the region presently known as Utah, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Arizona.
Their home is close to the Great Basin and includes the Colorado Plateau and a part of the Mojave Desert.
After 25 years of contact with the Mormon settlers, the Pauite tribe population was reduced to 90 percent and grew from being peaceful, self-sufficient farmers and foragers into poor, landless people who survived by doing a part-time jobs for the European settlers.
Certain Pauite groups even ceased to exist.
We, however, review the historical evolution, culture, and facts of the Paiute Tribe.
Paiute Tribe History
Pre-colonial contact
The Pauites trace their root to the story of Tabuts, a wise wolf who decided to form many different people out of sticks.
His goal was to scatter them equally within the earth, so they would have a fertile place to flourish, but Tabuts had a cunny brother, Shinangwav, the coyote.
Shinangwav opened the sack, and people fell into groups worldwide.
The people were enraged at this treatment, so several people fought.
The people remaining in the sack were the Southern Paiutes. Tabuts endowed them and placed them in a fertile place.
It is believed that the Southern Paiutes and many Numic-speaking tribes began migrating into the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau by 1000 A.D.
Before contact with the Europeans, the Pauites’ territory measured more than thirty million acres of today’s California, south-central Utah, southern Nevada, and northern Arizona.
Their customs constantly included moving according to the seasons, animal migration, and plant harvest patterns, and they lived in self-sufficient groups of three to five households.
An important consensus was made in council meetings.
The niave (traditional leader) offers suggestions at meetings and works to implement the council’s decisions later.
Colonial contact
The Pauite tribe faced a lot of disruption and violence from the Spanish settlements in the American Southwest.
Most importantly, the Spanish brought the violent slave trade to Great Basin Indians.
The Paiutes failed to adopt the use of the horse as a mode of transportation, so their communities were regularly raided for enslaved people by adjacent equestrian tribes, New Mexico, and eventually, Americans.
Slave trafficking of Paiutes heightened after the opening of the Spanish Trail, a trade route that links New Mexico to the Pacific Ocean.
Children and girls were in high demand.
The southern Paiutes in the mid-1800s had met with the Euro-American travelers, traders, and trappers but had not had dealings with the white settlers on their lands.
However, in 1851, members of the Latter Days Saints Church began colonization efforts in southern Utah.
By the end of 1858, the Mormons had established eleven communities in the Southern Pauite territory.
At first, the Paiute tribe welcomed the Mormons’ arrival, as it gave them some protection against raiding Navajos, Utes, and Mexicans.
Sadly, the Mormon settlement also brought widespread epidemics.
Some Paiutes groups lost more than 90 percent of their population to disease.
Finally, many Mormon settlers also led to a tussle over Paiute resources and lands.
One of the most contentious events involving the southern Paiutes occurred in September 1857 near Cedar City, Utah.
At the Mountain Meadows Massacre, 100-plus emigrants en route to California were attacked and murdered.
For more than a century, the usual history was that Pauite Indians first attacked the wagon train.
The Paiutes then reportedly appealed to the Latter Days Saints settlers for help, and the settlers met the emigrants under a flag of truce.
However, it is of utmost importance to say that the Pauite oral tradition strongly points out that the Paiutes did not participate in the initial attack or the massacre.
1890s-1980s: Reservation period
The reservation for the Paiutes’ was established in 1891 on the Santa Clara River west of St. George.
The government officially recognized the reservation in 1903.
In 1916 the president, Woodrow Wilson, issued an order which extended the size of the reservation to its current 26,880 acres.
Three other Paiute reservations followed afterward.
However, the reservations were too small and needed more resources for the Pauites to sustain themselves, making the Paiute dependent on Mormons’ charity and the federal government’s goodwill.
The goodwill finally ended in the 1950s under the federal government’s policy of termination, which was designed to encourage assimilation and self-sufficiency among the Indian tribes but rather had a devastating social and economic outcome.
However, under termination, several bands lost federal recognition and their eligibility for federal aid.
Numerous reports indicated that the Paiute tribe was not ready for termination, and it is still a puzzle as to why they were picked to be part of the program.
The Paiute tribe languished immensely under termination.
Present day
Recently, the Paiute tribal government has enhanced healthcare and education in the reservations, and Paiutes Economic Development is working to create job opportunities nearer to home.
With a place called home, the Pauite tribe eventually became visible in southern Utah.
Their yearly Restoration Gathering attracts attention to the pride and heritage of the Paiute people.
Pauite Culture
Customs and Beliefs
Like many other Native Americans, many traditional Paiute homes were small, temporary huts made from willow poles and covered with reeds and brush.
These huts were frequently built near streams, where the Paiutes could draw water or fish for irrigation and sustenance.
Though marriages had no traditional importance, the Pauites did observe two rituals.
The first was for young women during their first menstrual period, and the other was for young couples awaiting their first child.
During the menarche ritual, the young women are isolated for four days.
At this time, they observed taboos against touching their face or hair with their hands, eating animal-based foods, and drinking cold liquids.
The rites for couples expecting their first child are similar but last 30 days.
The pregnant women adhered to the same taboos and took advice from older women, while the awaiting father ran east at sunrise and west at sundown.
Cuisine
The Paiutes were nomads, moving all over the region to different food sources.
Traditionally, the Paiutes feed on vegetables such as rice grass and roots and piñon pine nuts and berries.
Many used stones to grind seeds into flour and made the flour into bread.
They also hunted ducks, mountain sheep, and rabbits using bows, arrows, or long nets.
Certain bands in mountainous areas fished, while others in arid desert regions dug for grubs, lizards, and insects, which were high protein sources.
The Southern Paiutes cultivated maize from the Pueblo peoples, and the Owens Valley Paiutes developed irrigation techniques to cultivate different crops.
Many native foods are still major elements of tribal weddings, ceremonies, and other community events.
Social structure
The Paiutes’ social system was based on family. Fluid groupings of families sometimes created loose bands, often named after an important resource or geographic feature of their home territory.
The groups gather together in the fall for dances and marriages.
While monogamy was the norm, marriage variants such as sororal polygamy and polyandry were practiced.
Language
The three main Paiute groups speak unique languages of the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family.
The Northern Paiutes speak a Shoshonean language, while the Owen Valley Paiutes speak the language related to the Mono people of California.
Members of the different subgroups have sustained their Native languages to varying degrees.
The San Juan Paiutes, a Southern Paiutes band whose reservation is within the borders of the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, is one of the only groups that persistently teach Paiute to children as a major language.
The Yerington Paiutes, in the 1980s, developed a dictionary and made a series of workbooks and storybooks.
Paiute Tribe Facts
1. Hunting was a skill other than the Paiute men could best.
Bows and arrows were the major tools used for hunting.
However, their bows could have been more effective. Since the number of animals they could kill was very small, tribe members wore very little hide clothing.
2. The Paiute tribe firmly believe in “Puha,” or power, a historical belief that everything in the universe possesses a life force.
It is believed that health, weather, wartime victory, and fertility were achievable through Puha.
They practice meditation and perform certain rituals to make use of the Puha.
3. The Pyramid Lake War of 1860 happened in Nevada, a succession of wars between the Paiute tribe and the European settlers.
The settlers came to the region in search of gold and silver and, in their search, congruously eradicated the Indians’ valuable natural resources, resulting into great tension between the Paiute and Chief Numaga.
4. The Paiute tribe reached their turning point when white settlers abducted two Paiute girls.
It provoked the most intense battle in Nevada’s history, and the first battle left numerous white traders dead and 75 members of the militia dead.
Conclusion
The tale of the Paiute tribe is one of iron-clad will to survive, as they defeated the odds to ensure their traditions and culture withstand the test of camp.
Unravelling the story about the unique Native American tribe reveals the extent of the challenges the first settlers of America endured to become the tribe they are today.
