CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE RED PROPRIETORS.

As we have now been a long time among the mines, the reader will probably not object to a little more information concerning the Indians of the country, before making another plunge into the “lower levels” of the Comstock lode.

The Piute Indians were formerly the owners of all that region in which the Comstock mines are situated; also, of nearly all of the western part of the State of Nevada, though the Washoe Indians held Carson, Eagle, Steamboat, and Washoe Valley, the Truckee Meadows and the country in the neighborhood of Lake Tahoe. The Shoshones owned what is now Eastern Nevada, and they still live in that region.

The Piutes range nearly up to Oregon, and far south toward Arizona. They have always been great travelers, and as early as in the days of the “Mission Fathers,” were in the habit of crossing the Sierra Nevada Mountains and visiting the Pacific seaboard every summer; a journey still taken by many of them each year, as not a few Piute women are married to Spaniards who own large ranches in the vicinity of Santa Cruz and other towns in the southern part of California.

Originally, it is said, the Piutes, the Utes, the Pitt River Indians, the Queen’s River Indians, and some other small bands, were all Shoshones, but the tribe multiplied rapidly, and at last was spread over such a vast extent of country that one chief could not govern all. They then broke up into large bands that took the names which now distinguish them as tribes.

The Piutes belonged to the Ute band at the time that the original Shoshone tribe broke up through its own weight and unwieldy size. They settled about the lakes—Humboldt, Pyramid, Carson, and Walker—and were therefore called Pah-Utes; that is, water Utes, “pah” being the word that signifies water among all the Indians of the Great Basin region, Finally, the Utes and Pah-Utes, or “Piutes”—as the name is now generally, though improperly, written—became separate tribes.

The language of all the tribes in the Great Basin region and far to the northward still retains a sufficient number of the words of the original Shoshone tongue to enable members of any one of the present tribes to make themselves understood by their neighbors. When pressed to go far back into the dim and distant past, beyond the time when they were all Shoshones, the Piutes have a legend according to which they owe their origin to the marriage of a white wolf and a woman. The white wolf came from the far north, and the woman, who was the daughter of a great chief, came from the south.

The Piutes, according to the legend, are the descendants of this strange pair.

Away north, on the summit of a high bluff on Pitt River, is to be seen a huge white rock which, when viewed from certain points, bears a striking resemblance to a wolf in a recumbent position. To this day, many of the Piutes point to this rock and say that it is their great father—the father of all the Piutes—that he never died, but was changed into this rock, in which he still lives. I once told this story to an old and very intelligent Piute, and asked him what he thought about it. He said: “Who told you this story, Tom or Natchez?” referring to two of the sons of old Winnemucca, the head chief.

“I have heard it from Tom, and also from many other Piutes,” said I.

“O,” said he, “it is only a story of times long ago. It was while we were still Shoshones, that this happened. You have heard the story the way the old women tell it.”

[Illustration: WASHOE INDIAN SQUAWS.]

[Illustration: WASHOE INDIAN HUNTER.]

He then proceeded to say that, a very long time ago, there was a great war between a tribe of Indians living in the north, the name of whose chief was White Wolf, and a tribe living in the south. For years they fought every summer, and many on both sides were killed. Still, the old men would stir up the young men to continue the strife. At last both tribes grew weak and weary of the long war, and at a big council it was arranged that the White Wolf should marry the daughter of the chief of the tribe against which he had so long drawn a hostile bow, and thus all difficulties were settled. The two tribes settled down and lived together, all as Shoshones.

The old Indian then proceeded to give me the true and most ancient tradition that has been handed down in the tribe, in regard to the origin of the Indians living in the Great Basin. He said that the Indians were made by a man and his wife, who came from he knew not where. They made the Indians of clay and something else, taken out of the water, the English name of which he did not know. After the Indian men and women were made, the man made all kinds of animals; as bears, deer, antelopes, buffaloes, rabbits, wolves, and the like. The woman made the birds and the flowers, and all the fishes in the rivers, and the grass and the nut-pine trees, and all the bushes that bear berries.

The man taught the men to make bows and arrows, spears with which to catch fish, and nets for use in fishing and taking rabbits. He also taught them to build and navigate tule (a giant bulrush) boats, for all the country was then covered with great lakes, and the tops of the present hills and mountains were islands. The woman taught the Indian women to make baskets and how to prepare food and do all things proper to be done by women.

After they had done all these things the mysterious pair took their departure, going away to the southward.

“Do you expect them to return some day?” I asked.

“How can I say?” answered the Indian. “They came of their own accord at first.”

“Do you hear the old men of the tribe speak of them?”

“Often.”

“Do they think the man and his wife will come back?”

“How do they know? They only know that they are gone.”

“That is all the old men know?”

“Well, they sometimes say they have gone south to the big water—maybe they live in the big water. Who knows?”

When an Indian begins to say “who knows,” he has then told you about all he knows in regard to the point upon which you are questioning him. All the Indian could say was that the pair came and did their work of creation, and then went away to the southward.

This tradition bears a striking resemblance, in many respects, to that of the Peruvians in regard to the appearance among them of Manco Capac and his sister and wife, Mama Ocllo Huaco; also, to the Mexican tradition in regard to the Huastecas, the strange family that came, whence, no one knew, to the mouth of the Panuco River, headed by Quetzalcoatl, priest and lawgiver, and who afterwards disappeared in the direction of Guatemala. The disappearance of Quetzalcoatl is strikingly like that of the pair mentioned in the Piute tradition. Strange as it may appear, a prehistoric skull was found at the depth of several hundred feet in the Comstock vein which, on being sent to the Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, was found to exhibit peculiarities to be found only in the skulls of the ancient Peruvians, the people to whom appeared Manco Capac and his wife.

What is said in the Indian traditions, about nearly the whole face of the country having been covered with water in ancient times, is undoubtedly true. In all the valleys throughout the Great Basin are to be seen traces of water, and on the sides of the hills water-marks have been left that are visible at the distance of a mile, and can be traced for many miles. In places, there are four or five of these water marks, showing the gradual subsidence of the lakes. For hundreds on hundreds of miles, on all sides, there was a labyrinth of lakes. The water-marks showing the former levels of the lakes (in places two or three hundred feet above the present level of the valleys) not having yet disappeared by erosion, the date of the subsidence of their waters cannot be many centuries back. The Piutes and Shoshones have lost nothing by the coming among them of the whites; indeed, they appear to fare better now than in the days when they were in undisturbed possession of the whole land. They pitch their camps in the suburbs of the towns and fare sumptuously every day on the broken victuals collected by the bushel at hotels, restaurants, and private houses, by the squaws. The men, unlike the men of many other tribes, are not above work. They work at sawing and splitting wood, at grading off building-lots, or anything that they can manage—all they want is to be shown money.

It is not unusual to see a Piute brave marching through a street in Virginia City with a wood-saw and buck under his left arm, and upon his right shoulder an ax—the living exemplification of the dawn of civilization upon barbarism. Thus far, however, he is one of the civilized, and represents “labor” seeking “capital,” but with all the implements of peaceful industry borne about him, his pride still clings to the ancient insignia of the “brave” in his tribe. His face is painted in zigzag lines of black, white, and red; a necklace of bear’s claws rests on his breast, and an eagle feather decorates his scalp-lock; but instead of bearing a bow and arrows, a tomahawk and scalping-knife, he carries only his saw, buck, and ax, and is only on the war-path to do battle with a wood-pile; therefore is either a peaceful warrior or a warlike wood-sawyer, just as you may choose to consider him. He has, as we may say, beaten his sword into a plowshare, but has not the heart to throw away the scabbard.

Old Winnemucca, the head chief of all the Piutes, is about 70 years of age, and has but little to say about the “affairs of the nation”; indeed, there is little demand for legislation as the tribe is at present situated. Many years ago the old fellow appears to have turned over business of almost every kind to his nephew, young Winnemucca, then war-chief. Young Winnemucca was in command at the time of the trouble between the Piutes and the whites, in the spring of 1860. Young Winnemucca never gambled, but old Winnemucca was an inveterate gambler—that is, among his own people. The Piutes do not gamble with white men. Old Winnemucca has been known to lose all his ponies, all his blankets and arms, and, in fact, everything he possessed, down to a breech-clout, at a single sitting. He is a good-natured, kind-hearted old man, but not a man remarkable for either wisdom or cunning.