The Law Of The Paiute And Other Stories

The Law of the Paiute and Other Stories is about interesting people and events which are exciting, adventurous, real, life-changing, and original. It was written by an author who had lived much of what he wrote about during his 97 years.

Based on extensive fieldwork that spanned more than 50 years, this comprehensive dictionary is a monumental achievement and will help to preserve this American Indian language that is nearing extinction.

Legends of the Northern Paiute shares and preserves twenty-one original and previously unpublished Northern Paiute legends, as told by Wilson Wewa, a spiritual leader and oral historian of the Warm Springs Paiute. These legends were originally told around the fires of Paiute camps and villages during the "story-telling season" of winter in the Great Basin of the American West. They were shared with Paiute communities as a way to pass on tribal visions of the "animal people" and the "human people," their origins and values, their spiritual and natural environment, and their culture and daily lives. The legends in this volume were recorded, transcribed, reviewed, and edited by Wilson Wewa and James Gardner. Each legend was recorded, then read and edited out loud, to respect the creativity, warmth, and flow of Paiute storytelling. The stories selected for inclusion include familiar characters from native legends, such as Coyote, as well as intriguing characters unique to the Northern Paiute, such as the creature embodied in the Smith Rock pinnacle, now known as Monkey Face, but known to the Paiutes in Central Oregon as Nuwuzoho the Cannibal. Wewa's apprenticeship to Northern Paiute culture began when he was about six years old. These legends were passed on to him by his grandmother and other tribal elders. They are now made available to future generations of tribal members, and to students, scholars, and readers interested in Wewa's fresh and authentic voice. These legends are best read and appreciated as they were told--out loud, shared with others, and delivered with all of the verve, cadence, creativity, and humor of original Paiute storytellers on those clear, cold winter nights in the high desert.

With world-wide environmental destruction and globalization of economy, a few languages, especially English, are spreading, while thousands others are disappearing, taking with them cultural, philosophical and environmental knowledge systems and oral literatures. This book serves as a manual of effective practices in language revitalization. This book was previously published by Academic Press under ISBN 978-01-23-49354-5.

David H. Wilson Jr. recounts an epic story of the Northern Paiutes’ resistance and adaptation as they faced settler colonization and governmental misappropriation of their land in Oregon Country from the early 1850s to the 1930s.

2023 Oregon Book Award Finalist In 1870 a twenty-six-year-old Paiute, Sarah Winnemucca, wrote to an army officer requesting that Paiutes be given a chance to settle and farm their ancestral land. The eloquence of her letter was such that it made its way into Harper's Weekly. Ten years later, as her people languished in confinement as a result of the Bannock War, she convinced Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz to grant the requests in her letter and free the Paiutes as well. Schurz's decision unleashed furious opposition from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, cattlemen, and settlers. A campaign of disinformation by government officials followed, sweeping truth aside and falsely branding Paiute chief Egan as instigator and leader of the Indian forces. The campaign succeeded in its mission to overturn Schurz's decision. To this day histories of the war appear to be unanimous in their mistaken claim that Egan led his Paiutes into war. Indian agents' betrayal of the people they were paid to protect saddled Paiutes with responsibility for a war that most opposed and that led to U.S. misappropriation of their land, their only source of life's necessities. With neither land nor reservation, Paiutes were driven more deeply into poverty and disease than any other Natives of that era. David H. Wilson Jr. pulls back the curtain to reveal what government officials hid--exposing the full jarring injustice and, after 140 years, recounting the Paiutes' true and proud history for the first time.

In the 1850s, early Euro-American settlers established two remote outposts on the slopes of the eastern Sierra Nevada, both important way stations on the central emigrant trail. The Carson Valley settlement was located on the western edge of the Utah Territory, while the Honey Lake Valley hamlet, 120 miles north, fell within California’s boundaries but was separated from the rest of the state by the formidable mountain range. Although these were some of the first white communities established in the region, both areas had long been inhabited by Indigenous Americans. Carson Valley had been part of Washoe Indian territory, and Honey Lake Valley was a section of Northern Paiute land. Michael Makley explores the complexities of this turbulent era, when the pioneers’ actions set the stage for both valleys to become part of national incorporation. With deft writing and meticulously researched portrayals of the individuals involved, including the Washoe and Northern Paiute peoples, Imposing Order Without Law focuses on the haphazard evolution of “frontier justice” in these remote outposts. White settlers often brought with them their own ideas of civil order. Makley’s work contextualizes the extralegal acts undertaken by the settlers to enforce edicts in their attempt to establish American communities. Makley’s book reveals the use and impact of group violence, both within the settlements and within the Indigenous peoples’ world, where it transformed their lives.