The history of the Northern Paiutes of Pyramid Lake in northwestern Nevada is one fraught with the conflicts and tensions of the modern West—relentless encroachment by non-Indians into Indian lands; disputes over scarce water; endangerment of a rare and valuable species of fish—all played out on a stage that stretches from the centers of national politics in Washington, DC, to a remote desert reservation where an ancient people struggles to preserve the traditional center of its spiritual and economic life. Martha Knack’s and Omer Stewart’s brilliant interdisciplinary study of the Pyramid Lake Reservation, first published in 1984, is considered a major landmark in American Indian history—a lucid and insightful examination of the Paiutes, their reservation, and the ongoing controversy over control of their land and the life-giving Truckee River waters that feed Pyramid Lake. The complex interethnic relations described in this book offer readers a case study of the dominant issues in Indian affairs and the themes of the legislation and court decisions that shape the fates of native peoples.

Austin's charming and evocative stories dramatize the legacy of conquest upon a land and its native peoples. Although these stories, out of print for almost a century, were first intended as delightful and instructive reading for children, on another level they are an intense examination of the dramatic implications of a legacy of conquest upon the land and its native peoples. In Austin’s tales, cocky young glaciers, contemplative pine trees, resourceful ancient Paiutes, and rabbits too clever for their own good all become companions and teachers to Alan, the young son of homesteaders in early Nevada. The kindly but mysterious Basket Woman, who tells him these tales, is a keeper of her people's traditions. She doesn't simply tell stories: she transports her young friend into a powerful and mythic past, where Alan learns the secrets of the trees and animals and the wisdom of the people who flourished in this "land of little rain" before the arrival of foreigners from the east. A new foreword by Austin scholar and environmental writer Mark Schlenz provide ample context for a multilevel appreciation of one of this remarkable writer's most important works.

An action-packed story set during the violent and conflict-ridden days of the early 20th century, Dust Devils takes place in the rugged mountains and deserts of Eastern California and Northern Nevada. Ira Hamilton, the teenage son of rugged Indian-hating rancher John D. Hamilton, wins the bronc-riding competition at a local rodeo and comes away with a special prize: a beautiful Arabian colt. But the horse is soon stolen by Hawkeye, a notorious local rustler. Accompanied by Cricket, a young Paiute who has been his closest companion since infancy, Ira vows to retrieve his prize. On the way, Ira must find the courage to overcome the challenges of nature and outlaw, and to love the woman of his choice. This vivid tale will thrill readers with its authentic depiction of Nevada's lonely back country, its hardy ranchers, and its native peoples. Ira Hamilton's adventure shows us the last days of the Old West, when cowboys, sheepmen, and Indians still struggled to survive and overcome their long-standing animosities, and violent men rode boldly and unhindered across the harsh landscape.

University of Utah Anthropological Paper No. 130

This publication presents the first volume (Las Vegas) of the early ethnographic field work of anthropologist Isabel T. Kelly. From 1932 to 1934, Kelly interviewed thirty Southern Paiute people from southeastern California, southern Nevada, and southern Utah about “the old ways.” During this time, she filled thirty-one notebooks, made several maps, took roughly fifty photographs, collected nearly 300 ethnobotanical specimens, purchased and shipped over 400 ethnographic artifacts to museums, and traveled more than 7,000 miles. Her notes comprise the most extensive primary ethnographic documentation of Southern Paiute/Chemehuevi lifeways of the middle to late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries existing today.

Although Kelly intended to publish these notes, she was unable to before her death. Fowler and Garey-Sage have now synthesized the first set of these handwritten field notes and sketches, providing commentary and illustrations to put them in context for the modern reader. Kelly’s data, most of which could not be gathered anew today, are offered here for the use of generations to come. 

This autobiographical work was written by one of the country's most well-known Native American women, Sarah Winnemucca. She was a Paiute princess and a major figure in the history of Nevada; her tribe still resides primarily in the state. Life Among the Piutes deals with Winnemucca's life and the plight of the Paiute Indians. Life Among the Piutes is Winnemucca's powerful legacy to both white and Paiute cultures. Following the oral tradition of Native American people, she reaches out to readers with a deeply personal appeal for understanding. She also records historical events from a unique perspective. She managed to record the Native American viewpoint of whites settling the West, told in a language that was not her own and by a woman during the time when even white women were not allowed to vote. Sarah Winnemucca dedicated her life to improving the living and social conditions for her people. She gave more than 400 speeches across the United States and Europe to gain support for the Paiutes. She died of tuberculosis in 1891. Life Among the Piutes was originally published in 1883.

The desert has long been a theme in Mark C. Taylor’s work, from his inquiries into the religious significance of Las Vegas to his writings on earthworks artist Michael Heizer. At once haunted by absence and loss, the desert, for Taylor, is a place of exile and wandering, of temptation and tribulation. Bones, in turn, speak to his abiding interest in remnants, ruins, ritual, and immanence. Taylor combines his fascination in the detritus of the desert and its philosophical significance with his work in photography in Mystic Bones.

A collection of remarkably elegant close-up images of weathered bones—remains of cattle, elk, and deer skeletons gathered from the desert of the American West—Mystic Bones pairs each photograph with a philosophical aphorism. These images are buttressed by a major essay, “Rubbings of Reality,” in which Taylor explores the use of bones in the religious rituals of native inhabitants of the Western desert and, more broadly, the appearance of bones in myth and religious reality.

Meditating on the way in which bones paradoxically embody both the personal and the impersonal—at one time they are our very substance, but eventually they become our last remnants, anonymous, memorializing oblivion—Taylor here suggests ways in which natural processes can be thought of as art, and bones as art objects. Bones, Taylor writes, “draw us elsewhere.” To follow their traces beyond the edge of the human is to wander into ageless times and open spaces where everything familiar becomes strange.

By revealing beauty hidden in the most unexpected places, these haunting images refigure death in a way that allows life to be seen anew. A bold new work from a respected philosopher of religion, Mystic Bones is Taylor’s his most personal statement of after-God theology.

In 1949, renowned journalist A. J. Liebling came to Reno to obtain a divorce, which required that he establish residency in Nevada for a period of six weeks. Liebling stayed at a guest ranch on the shores of Pyramid Lake. While there, his reporter’s curiosity was engaged by a bitter dispute raging between the Paiutes and non-Indian squatters who were claiming the most agriculturally productive lands of the reservation and the waters feeding the lake that was the economic and spiritual heart of the Paiutes’ ancient culture.

Liebling recorded the litigation over the fate of the Pyramid Lake Reservation lands in a series of articles published in The New Yorker in 1955. Reprinted here in their entirety, the essays discuss the affair in detail, following it from the shores of the lake to the halls of Congress, and introducing readers to the colorful world of 1950s Nevada. This is a valuable record of one of Nevada’s most enduring and significant debates over the uses of the land and the precious water that nourishes it. Introduction by Elmer R. Rusco.

Sand in a Whirlwind is a dramatic account of the events surrounding hostilities between settlers and Pyramid Paiutes in the spring of 1860. Thirty years after its publication Ferol Egan’s now classic tale continues to enlighten and engage readers.

This paper is the first of two volumes presenting the ethnographic field notes of Willard Z. Parks, who studied the Northern Paiute from 1933 to 1940.